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RACHEL AMADO BORTNICK
Country: United States of America
Profession: Educator
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A recipient of Daughters of Ataturk’s Women of Distinction Awards in 2000.
RACHEL (Rasel) AMADO BORTNICK was born in Izmir, Turkey and in 1958 came as a foreign student to the U.S, to Lindenwood
College in St. Charles, Missouri, from which she received a B.A. in chemistry. In St. Louis she met her future husband,
architect Bernard .Bortnick, and the couple went to Izmir to have their marriage at the Bet Israel synagogue there in 1960.
They subsequently lived in Holland, Israel, and several cities in the United States. Each one of their three children (two sons
and a daughter) was born in a different country. Presently Rachel and Bernard live in Dallas, Texas. In 1980 Rachel became
certified to teach English as a Second language, a profession in which she has been engaged since then. When demand exists,
Rachel also teaches informal courses in Turkish and in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish).
Rachel has been engaged in promoting Sephardic culture and history, as well as Ladino language in the United States for many
years. In 1985 she founded a club of Ladino-speakers, “Los Amigos Sefaradis”, in Oakland, California, which under her 4 years
of presidency, held monthly educational programs open to the public. In 1988 she was featured in a video-film, “Trees Cry for
Rain; a Sephardic Journey” about Jewish history and Jewish daily life in Turkey. She has lectured at many venues and for
diverse groups on the history of the Jews of Turkey, and on Sephardic culture, as well as written many articles on that subject
in English, Ladino, and Turkish. She has also done the oral history of the Turkish-born activist and centenarian Albert J.
Amateau (1889-1996), which she transcribed and deposited at the Western Jewish History division of the Judah Magnes Museum of
Berkeley, California. Her article on Turkish Jewish women was published in Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review (XV, 2, 1993.)
She is the founder and first editor of the AAJFT (American Association of Jewish Friends of Turkey) Newsletter. From 1996 to
1998 she was President of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society.
In January of 2000 she founded “Ladinokomunita”, a correspondence circle in Ladino on the Internet, which now has over 500
members. (www.spehardicstudies.org/komunita.html). In Dallas she
continues to be the principal force behind the biannually organized Sephardic Festival at the Jewish Community Center.
For her role in publicizing the historic good relations between Turks and Jews Rachel received the Distinguished Service Award
from ATAA (Assembly of Turkish-American Associations) in 1992, a TURANT (Turkish-American Association of North Texas) Award in
1999, and the Woman of Distinction Award from Daughters of Ataturk in 2000.
Sema Karaoglu
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