Synagogue of the Immigrants from Turkey

The story

The synagogue “Olei Turkiya” stands at 27 Smilansky Street, in the Old City of Beersheba, and is listed in the register of synagogues of the city's Religious Council. Turkish Jewry is one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Balkan region and in the Middle East: it is supposed that Jews lived in the territory of today's Turkey about two thousand four hundred years ago, and already in the days of the Second Temple Jews settled in Asia Minor. In the city of Sardis, capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, remains of a synagogue from the fourth century BCE were found; the name of Sardis was “Sepharad”, and some identify it with the Sepharad of the Book of Obadiah. Until the Ottoman period most of the Jews of Turkey were Greek speakers of the Romaniote community, and at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth wide waves of Sephardi Jews from Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Portugal and southern Italy reached the region, many of whom found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Most of Turkish Jewry emigrated from the country during the twentieth century, and most of them immigrated to the Land of Israel. As of the year 2022 about fourteen thousand five hundred Jews live in the Turkish Republic, and in the country there are twenty-three synagogues. The gabbai listed in the register of the Religious Council is Shabtai Tsatsashvili.

• Communities
• Beersheba