Izmir synagogues to reopen as museums

As part of a Jewish heritage project in Izmir, Turkey, nine historic synagogues will be reopened as museums.

From June, visitors to the old bazaar of Kemeralti can get a taste of life as it was when this buzzing area on Turkey’s Aegean coast was home to 30,000 Jews, a community that was boosted in 1492, when Jews were expelled from Spain.

While the town’s skyline is now dominated by minarets and spires, the restoration of Jewish buildings means visitors will see how Jews lived in big numbers.

Six of the nine synagogues being restored are grouped together “practically wall to wall” around a courtyard. Work is also ongoing to restore the former office of the city’s chief rabbi and a building that once housed a kosher winery. It was the third largest Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire and historians have recorded a remarkable 250-period of stability for the region’s Jews, largely free from persecution and harassment.

In the middle of the 19th century, the 17,000-strong Jewish community began moving to the nearby town of Karataş, starting a slow departure from Kemeralti. There remain about 1,000 Jews in Izmir.

The oldest of the restored synagogues, Etz Hayim, dates to the 1600s, but local historians have recorded a Jewish presence there since the Byzantine Empire.

In 2004, the World Monuments Fund added ‘Central Izmir Synagogues’ to its World Monuments list, calling them “an unparalleled testament to the city’s rich Jewish heritage”.