Exhibition on Turkish Synagogues in Istanbul

An exhibition of photographs of historic synagogues in Turkey opened this week at the Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul and will run until October 31.

The photographs were taken by Devon Jarvis, and the project as a whole was directed by Joel A. Zack, an architect, author and expert on Jewish heritage in the Mediterranean region. Zack, a former Fulbright scholar, carried out a ground-breaking survey of Moroccan synagogues for the World Monuments Fund that was published in 1993, and he later founded a travel company concentrating on Jewish Heritage tours to Spain, Turkey, Morocco and elsewhere.

The Turkey project documented 50 synagogues and resulted in 30,000 photographs and 130 measured architectural drawings. It is the first such detailed inventory of synagogues in what today is the Muslim country with the largest Jewish population -- some 15,000 to 18,000 Jews, mainly in Istanbul.

Read Full Story in the Turkish Daily News