Bet Israel Synagogue (İzmir)

Bet Israel Synagogue stands at 265 Mithatpaşa Street in the Karataş district of İzmir.[1][2] It was built on the neighborhood’s lower level, along the narrow coastline, while many of the Jewish families who worshipped there lived higher on Karataş’s steep hills.[3] In the synagogue’s early decades, travel between the two levels required climbing a 155-step ladder.[3]

Karataş became a Jewish residential quarter as prosperous Jewish families began moving there by the late eighteenth century. They were drawn from congested seaside communities to the greener and less crowded neighborhood on the slopes.[3]

Jewish life in İzmir—known in antiquity as Smyrna—dates to at least the second and third centuries CE.[5] The city’s organized Jewish community began in 1605, when İzmir’s development as an important trading center attracted Jewish merchants. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Jews had established synagogues and communal leadership institutions.[1]

Bet Israel was built in 1860 as the last synagogue constructed in Karataş.[3] Its location below the residential hills made access difficult, particularly for women, children, and elderly worshippers. In 1907, philanthropist Nesim Levi Bayraklıoglu built an elevator to connect the synagogue’s lower level with the homes on the heights.[3]

Published accounts use different totals for İzmir’s synagogues. Roughly 50 synagogues were reported to have operated in the city in an earlier period.[6] A 2011 account stated that 13 of the city’s once-34 synagogues remained, about half of them in ruins.[5] That year, İzmir’s Jewish community received legal foundation status from Turkey’s Directorate General for Foundations, allowing it to register 22 immovable properties, including 18 synagogues and four stores.[5] The report did not explain the difference between the counts of 13 remaining synagogues and 18 synagogue properties, or identify whether Bet Israel was among the registered properties.

An early-twenty-first-century reference account reported that seven İzmir synagogues remained in some use, generally on the High Holidays. It identified Bet Israel in Karataş and Shaar Shamayim in Alsancak as the two synagogues in constant use.[2]

Published estimates have placed İzmir’s Jewish population at approximately 1,500 to 1,700 people.[5][7] These citywide estimates do not specify which synagogues community members attend. The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs states that İzmir and Istanbul have the largest numbers of active synagogues among the Turkish cities it discusses.[7]

İzmir’s rise as a Mediterranean trading center helped attract Jewish merchants and supported the growth of an organized community.[1] By the late eighteenth century, increasing prosperity enabled Jewish families to leave the crowded seaside quarter for Karataş, and Bet Israel’s construction in 1860 formed part of that geographic shift.[3] The community also established schools and hospitals during the nineteenth century; the Alliance Israélite Universelle opened a boys’ school in İzmir in 1873 and a girls’ school five years later.[1]

The 2023 English- and Ladino-language volume The Jewish Pearl of the Aegean: Izmir is a 518-page illustrated work on Jewish İzmir. Its contents list three contributions devoted specifically to the synagogue: Rachel Amado Bortnick’s “Beth Israel synagogue of İzmir: the jewel of İzmir’s Jews,” Hayim Danon’s “The Beth Israel synagogue of İzmir,” and Selim Amado’s “On the 100th anniversary of Beth Israel.”[4]

Two sites associated with Bet Israel reflect the community philanthropy of Nesim Levi Bayraklıoglu. In addition to constructing the Karataş elevator in 1907, he donated one of his mansions for use as the Karataş Jewish Hospital. He arranged for the small fees collected from elevator passengers to help finance the hospital’s upkeep, linking access to the synagogue with support for a communal medical institution.[3]

By 2023, the elevator was described as a tourist attraction, with restaurants and shops along the street leading toward it.[3] The hospital also remained part of accounts of the social and welfare institutions established by İzmir’s Jewish community.[7]

In April 2019, an unidentified attacker threw a Molotov cocktail onto the sidewalk outside Bet Israel Synagogue.[8][9] The synagogue was not damaged.[9] The attacker told police that the attack was intended as a protest against Israel.[8] The incident was first reported by the Turkish-language Jewish news outlet Salom. The Turkish-Jewish community subsequently praised the İzmir Security Directorate for apprehending the suspect and condemned the attack.[9]