The Jews of Tire, Turkey

Tire, is a town in Izmir province, which is located in the western part of the Anatolian Peninsula, on the eastern side of the Aegean Sea. With its climate, location and large seaport it has long been an important city, dating back at least 5,000 years.  
The Jewish community in the area is also long established, dating back to sometime in the early 1400's when 2 Ottoman sultans invited the Jews who had been persecuted in Spain and Portugal to settle in the Ottoman cities. The community truly became a melting pot as not only did the Jews come from Spain and Portugal, but also  Greece, and in the 17th century, places such as Italy and Holland. It was in the early 1600's, when the Jewish people truly

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became a community and built their first synagogue. In 1609, Rabbi Isaac HaLevi Dayan, arrived from Istanbul, becoming the first Rabbi of Izmir.
Even with the long history of this area, this post is not about that, but is about the incredible work being done to document the Jews who lived in Tire.
Under the leadership of Murat Sanus, the people of Tire will never be forgotten.  His website, www.jewsoftire.com, is a wonderful example of a project that brings family history to life.

The site is very friendly to  researchers and includes incredible amounts of information. In addition to the records we are familiar with this project includes a treasure trove of pictures documenting the families of Tire. In addition to the website, a book of the community, Jewish Citizens Lived in Tire,  has been published and they are hopefully of producing a film about Tire. I would encourage everyone to search through the databases and see what an incredible resource this is. 

Thanks to everyone involved, they will never be forgotten.

Cigar makers of London

As we do more and more research into Jewish families, it becomes quite clear that certain areas dominate various industries. A simple search of census records through the late 1800's shows that one of those areas was the East End of London. This area, namely Spitalfields, Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, is the home to the tobacco industry and most of the Cigar Makers in the British Isles.

Being a cigar maker in London, meant working long hours, at a low wage. It was work that was repetitious, day in and day out. The largest group of these workers were cigar makers were immigrants from the Netherlands. The 1881 Census belows shows a typical immigrant family that has settled in Spitalfields, with dad and his four sons working as cigar makers.

This was by no means the only family like this, this example fits hundreds of other families, many of whom were immigrants from the Netherlands. These immigrant workers not only worked together but lived together, they can be found on the census as neighbors of one another.

The records of these families can be found in The Jews of The British Isles.