he Yenikoy Jewish congregation included Jewish families living in the Yenikoy, Arnavutkoy, Kuruçesme and Bebek districts. The European shores of the Bosporus developed quicker than the Asian shores. Yenikoy in Turkish means new village. According to Evliya Çelebi, the area is called new village because it was populated in the 16th century, during the Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent period. The ancient name of the area was "Cautes Bucchae" (the rock of Bucchae,) or Neo Polis (the new city.) It is also possible that the Turkish name is the translation of the ancient name of the district. Another theory about the name of the village is that the village was founded by settlers coming from the Geni village in Romania, and they named the area after their place of origin, Geni village.
The writer Edmondo de Amicis described Yenikoy in his book as follow:
"After Istinye, the Bosporus enlarges and we see a view more magnificent than what we have seen until now. In front of us the village of Yenikoy, built at the bottom of a hill covered with vines and pine trees."
According to Evliya Çelebi, an Ottoman traveler from the 16th century, Yenikoy was a Greek Orthodox fisherman village in the 16th century and had no Jewish presence. There neither are any documents in the archives of the Jewish community pointing of Jewish settlement in the area prior to 19th century. Only in the second half of the 19th century and specially rich Jewish families started to use Yenikoy as a summer resort area. In 1957, there were only 5 Jewish families left in Yenikoy.
Only the Rabbi Eliyezer de Toledo refers to a synagogue in Bebek, but there are no records in the archives of the Jewish community about a temple in this area.
Arnavutkoy was the oldest Jewish neighborhood on the upper Bosporus. From the second quarter of the 17th century, there was a Jewish settlement in Arnavutkoy. The European shores of the Bosporus after the Ortakoy neighborhood were not very popular because of transportation difficulties. In the second half of the 19th century, with the use of steam boats on the Bosporus, the migration to those areas started. One of the biggest architects of the Jewish presence on the upper Bosporus was, without any doubts, the Kamondo family. The family bought a house in Yenikoy in the second half of the 19th century; they also constructed a synagogue in the area and a school with the help of the Alliance Israelite Universelle.
The Alliance Israelite Universelle was founded in 1860, in Paris by Adolph Cremieux. The main purpose of the foundation was to strengthen the European Jewish communities against the raising Anti-Semitic movement by giving to the Jewish children a modern and solid education. Active at first in the European countries, the foundation started to show it presence in the Ottoman Empire. The Alliance Israelite Universelle spent 11 million Francs for the schools opened all around Europe. Only in the Ottoman Empire, 74 boys' schools and 44 girls' schools were opened.
There are, in Yenikoy area, two synagogues, one of which is still active:
