The İzmir Jewish Heritage Project, formally “Cultural Wealth of İzmir: Sustaining Jewish Heritage”, was a programme led by the Jewish Community Foundation of Izmir to safeguard the city’s Jewish heritage and pass it on to future generations. Launched on 1 August 2020 and supported by the European Union, it ran for around forty-one months, with the Kentimiz İzmir Association as a key partner.
- Type: EU-supported heritage project
- Formal name: Cultural Wealth of İzmir: Sustaining Jewish Heritage
- Period: 2020–2024 (about 41 months)
- Lead: Jewish Community Foundation with Kentimiz İzmir Association
- Website: izmirjh.com
What the project did
The project combined heritage planning, civil-society development, international exchange and public documentation. Its work included:
- restoration planning for the seventeenth-century Hevra and Foresteros synagogues, part of a rare four-synagogue complex around a shared courtyard near Havra Street;
- a platform to strengthen local, national and international networks around the heritage;
- four books, on İzmir Sephardic stories, İzmir Sephardic women, the Jewish press of İzmir, and traditional synagogue textiles;
- conferences, workshops, training and study visits;
- a public identity, a bilingual website, short films and other material.
Despertar İzmir
A related project, Despertar İzmir, ran from April 2021 to June 2022 under the European Union’s Civil Society Support Programme. Its name comes from the Ladino word for awakening. It set out to make the Jewish community of Izmir more visible and more active in local, national and international civic life, through a festival, exhibitions, trips, a documentary and a national gathering.
After the projects
The bilingual İzmir Jewish Heritage website remains a public reference after the funded period, presenting the city’s neighbourhoods, synagogues, historic figures, ritual objects, cuisine and Ladino culture. See Web Links for the link.
