We’ve posted a lot about the Izmir Jewish Heritage Project and the efforts to restore the complex of historic synagogues in the city to form a space of public heritage and culture.
So we’re delighted to see a profile of its driving force, Nesim Bencoya in Tablet Magazine!
The Keeper of İzmir
After 40 years in Israel, Nesim Bencoya returned to his once-cosmopolitan hometown in Turkey to save its hidden synagogues […]
“Imagine a roof,” Bencoya says, waving his arm around the compact quarter that encompasses the synagogues. He doesn’t mean a literal roof enclosing the area, much of which is in disarray, but envisions a restored, integrated heritage center linking the synagogues and adjacent backstreets. As general coordinator of Izmir’s Jewish Heritage Project, Bencoya is the primary force behind this expansive project, which brought him back to his hometown in 2010 after nearly 40 years in Israel, having moved to Haifa for college and worked as the director of the city’s Cinémathèque for 15 years.
Click here to read the whole profile, by Paul Benjamin Osterlund
Click here to see some of our earlier stories about the project
Izmir Jewish Heritage project web site