On your right, look for a pale, low-key facade with a long band of Star of David latticework near the top and a wide row of black metal doors marked with gold stars.
This is Neve Shalom Synagogue-its name in Hebrew means “Oasis of Peace,” which is a hopeful thing to call a place in the middle of a busy city street. You’ll find it here on Büyük Hendek Street in Karaköy, in the old Galata area where Istanbul’s Jewish community grew in the late 1930s. More people meant more prayers, more weddings, more bar mitzvahs-life stuff-so the community made a bold, practical decision: they cleared a Jewish primary school in 1949 and built a new synagogue on the site.
The building you’re looking at was finished in 1951, designed by two young Turkish Jewish architects, Elyo Ventura and Bernar Motola. The opening ceremony, on March 25 that year, was a major moment-formal, crowded, and led by Turkey’s Chief Rabbi at the time, Rafael David Saban. Neve Shalom went on to become Istanbul’s largest and central Sephardic synagogue, especially active on Shabbat and the big holidays.
But its story also carries real pain. During a Shabbat service in 1986, gunmen attacked and 22 people were killed-an atrocity later linked to Abu Nidal. There was another attempted bombing in 1992 that, thankfully, caused no casualties. In 2003, car bombs hit the city and Neve Shalom was struck again, part of an attack investigators said was too sophisticated to be purely local.
Ready for Galata Tower? Just walk southeast for about 3 minutes.
