Sephardic cuisine culture in Istanbul

This research focuses on the Sephardic, one of hundreds of different Jewish communities – especially the Sephardic Jews living within the geographical boundaries of Istanbul - and their culinary culture. Sephardic comes from the Hebrew word "Sephardim" which means Spain / Spanish. In other words, Sephardic is the name given to the Jews who have spread to all over the world by having to migrate from Spain or more accurately the Iberian Peninsula of the period. The Sephardic culture, traditions, habits and basically the cuisine, Sephardic who differentiate themselves from other Jewish communities by this name are the subject of this research. Within the research, nutritional needs, one of the most basic and essential necessities, will be handled in the context of both cultural and religious shaping. It is aimed to analyze Sephardic culinary culture as an identifier by understanding all the symbols, meanings and values related to nutrition and culinary culture. Kitchen and food, which has been neglected for a long time by fields such as sociology and anthropology, is a discovery of late importance by memory studies. However, with the introduction of food as a tool in researches on culture and memory, a wide range of information production was observed. Even though there has been considerable sources written regarding Sephardic Jews and their cuisine, in Turkey, neither the sociological nor the anthropological aspect of the Sephardic cuisine has previously been analyzed. Researching Sephardic cuisine means deciphering not only Sephardic cultural identity, but also other cultures in which it contacts and interacts in this geography. For this reason, this research, which focuses on Sephardic culinary culture and Sephardic identity, contributes to the literature by trying to reveal Sephardic existence through food.