The biggest change in the life of Bulgaria's Jewry happened under the Ottomans.
The early Ottoman Empire needed citizens of European education and habits, and generally was tolerant to non-Muslims. Non-Muslims had the right to live in their own communities and practice their own religions as long as they paid their taxes and did not cause trouble. The High Porte came to appreciate the skills of the Jews so highly that it granted them special privileges and even tax breaks.
As early as the middle of the 15th century, Ashkenazi migrants arrived from Bavaria, Hungary and France. The Ashkenazis would continue to arrive until the 19th century. Initially, the new arrivals settled mainly along the River Danube, in Vidin and Nikopol. But as time went by, they reached out into the hinterland as well: to Pazardzhik, Varna, Stara Zagora, Kyustendil, Karnobat, Dobrich, Shumen, Yambol, Haskovo, Berkovitsa and Sliven.
The wave of migration that changed the life of the Balkans forever occurred in the late 15th century. When Spanish royals Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille expelled the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, the Ottoman sultan saw a golden opportunity. Welcoming the Sephardis became a matter of state policy. Initially, the ships carrying them landed in Salonika, but the newcomers soon dispersed throughout the Balkans, including Bulgaria.
The Sephardis – like the Ashkenazis, the Romaniotes and the Frankos – lived within their own communities, brought their own culture, and spoke their own language, Ladino. It remains largely unchanged to this day, despite numerous borrowings from Turkish and other languages.
The Jewish newcomers possessed many specific skills in short supply in the Ottoman Empire. Some were competent doctors, others were professional financiers and tradesmen. They maintained links between their communities that evolved into a close-knit network connecting Salonika and Plovdiv, Skopje and Sofia, Venice and Dubrovnik, Walachia and Moldova. When the Dubrovnik-backed Chiprovtsi Uprising in Bulgaria, in 1688, failed, Jews were quick to fill in the market niches vacated by the Dubrovnik merchants, who had fallen out of favour.
© Bulgarian State Archive
Gradually, however, the Jews found it harder to maintain their level of competence. Most had no access to the superior educational system of Western Europe. The Ottoman Empire was losing interest in their skills and began slowly but surely to deprive them of their privileges. The Jews started growing poorer. The lawless times at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, when the Balkans were plagued by brigands and highwaymen, affected them significantly.
At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries the Bulgarians within the Ottoman Empire increasingly began to identify themselves as a nation distinct from all the other constituent nations. The dream of winning national independence and setting up a nation-state gained popularity. What would the role of Jews in such a state be? On the one hand, the myths about Jewish treachery and the "Jew who opened the gates of Tarnovo" continued to circulate, sometimes with increased vehemence. On the other hand, Vasil Levski (1837-1873), one of the main ideologues of Bulgarian independence, clearly asserted that in that future state all – Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, Armenians and Jews – would be treated equally.
The Jews, like many Bulgarians at the time, were at best equivocal about the necessity for an armed uprising or a war to win independence. Many Jews and Bulgarians, including some revolutionaries, were apprehensive at the prospect of getting Russia to act as liberator. Imperial Russia of the time was the prototypal antisemitic power, and newspapers in the Balkans would regularly report the anti-Jewish pogroms and atrocities. Understandably, many Jews left their homes and headed south when Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877. That war would go down in Bulgarian history as the Liberation War, because reinstating the Bulgarian state, in 1878, was one of its side effects.
History has preserved the names of many Jews who actively supported the Bulgarian national cause. One of them was Eliezer Moshe Kalev from Plovdiv. Being a member of the Ottoman courts, he reportedly overstepped his authority to ensure Bulgarian rebels got minimal punishment. In the days following the failed April Uprising in 1876 a similar role was played by a number of other Jews, notably Mushon Garti from Plovdiv, Davichon Saranga from Stara Zagora and Moshe Tadjer from Kyustendil.
As the war progressed in 1877-1878, some Jews also joined the Bulgarian resistance regiment formed to assist the Russian Imperial Army. The names of Moshe Kalev and Leon Krudov have been recorded. While fighting against the Ottomans as part of the decisive Shipka campaign, the latter saved the life of many Bulgarians when he picked up a unexploded Ottoman grenade and tossed it back among the enemy.
In the winter of 1877 the Russian Army advanced towards Sofia. Rumours began that the retreating Ottomans planned to set the whole city on fire. Rabbi Gabriel Almosino intervened and pleaded with the Ottoman authorities to spare the city. Younger Jews set up a fire brigade, just in case.
Sofia was saved. In 1879, when Bulgaria had regained its independence and Sofia was declared the new capital, the Jews belonging to the self-styled fire Service were appointed to the new Metropolitan Fire Brigade.
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