Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe migrated to the Ottoman Empire in a series of waves that began as early as the fourteenth century. In part they were motivated by repeated invitations from Romaniot Jews urging them to escape the difficult conditions in Christian Europe by settling in the safer, more accommodating Ottoman realm. Rabbi Isaac Ṣarfati in Edirne, for instance, sent a missive to this effect to the Jewish communities of Germany in the fifteenth century. In addition to  Ashkenazi Jews who moved into Ottoman territory of their o…