• Autumn scene with trees displaying green, yellow, and orange leaves, fallen leaves on the ground, and a cloudy sky.

    Welcome to my journey!

    Coming soon in the English section, you’ll find three sides of my writing world: Digital Transformation, Jewish Studies, and a personal blend of travel stories and reflections.

    About me
  • Bookshelves filled with old leather-bound books in a library.

    Jewish Studies

    For the past few years, I have been studying contemporary Jewish communities, especially the Izmir Jewish community, to understand how ancient traditions blend with modern identities in small diaspora groups, revealing the cultural and social forces shaping Jewish life today.

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I’m Ceki* (Jacob),
a Turkish Jew and Italian citizen
currently living in Stockholm, Sweden.

(*Ceki is pronounced like Jacky.
In Turkish, the letter C is pronounced as J in English.)

About My Personal Journey

I was born on 23 November 1986 in Izmir, Turkey. Since childhood, I have felt a deep curiosity about the world, a desire to explore that has shaped who I am. Some people say it is a typical Sagittarius trait, but as I do not know much about astrology, I cannot really argue with that.

That curiosity has taken me far beyond my hometown, to cities like Istanbul and Mardin (Turkey), London and Oxford (UK), Middelburg and Utrecht (Netherlands), Toronto (Canada), Baltimore and New York (US), Stockholm (Sweden), Kigali (Rwanda), Tel Aviv (Israel), and Hong Kong (China). Each place has left an imprint on me, adding new layers to how I understand people, cultures, and communities.

My family background is Sephardic Jewish. I grew up surrounded by different languages and cultural influences: Turkish was my first language, but Ladino and French shaped our family history, and English has since become our common thread across borders. My family has spread across Israel, the United States, Brazil, and beyond. This multicultural heritage sparked a lasting passion for language, culture, and the stories communities carry.

For more than fifteen years, I have worked in civil society, youth programmes, and non-formal education. My work has taken me across EU-funded projects, grant management, community development, and digital transformation consultancy, collaborating with non-profits to help them navigate the digital world and design programmes that make technology feel approachable and empowering.

My connection to community work is deeply personal. For several years, I was closely involved in the Izmir Jewish community, leading an EU-funded development project, managing our digital presence, and working to preserve our cultural heritage. Since then, I completed a one-year programme at Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm, and recently finished an MA in Religious Studies (Jewish Studies) at Lund University, with a dissertation on heritage production and cultural continuity in the Izmir Jewish community.

As a researcher, I focus on contemporary small Jewish communities in the diaspora, examining how identities and institutions evolve in ageing communities, with particular attention to intergenerational connections, collective memory, and cultural continuity.

I am always open to connecting with others who care about meaningful change.

Jewish Studies - Blog