Tag #125780 - Interview #97938 (Moiz Isman)

Thank God, we always had people who had become prominent figures in our society. Veysit the lawyer, Ventura the architect, [In the 1940s, the synagogues in the Galata Tower region could not meet the demand of the population, especially during the festivals like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  So, the architects Elio Ventura and Bernard Motola, newly graduated from Istanbul Technical University presented the community with their new synagogue project, on which they had worked very hard for 6 months.  The Neve-Shalom Synagogue was built for the then huge sum of 300 000 liras and opened on 25 March 1951 on the location of the Aragon Synagogue, which had been built by the first Sephardic Jews who arrived from Spain in the 15th century] Prof. Selim Kaneti, the lawyer [Professor of Law at Istanbul University.  Prof. Kaneti was very well-liked by his colleagues and his students.  He died in 1992, when he was only 59].  Besides them, we also had very important merchants.