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The paper retraces the urban trajectory and the evolution of the identity of Jews of Istanbul from the end of Ottoman Empire until today. The Jewish minority ( millet) lived for centuries in specific neighbourhoods ( mahalle), nevertheless, they were not ghettos. With the arrival of the Kemalist Republic, new statuses where imposed on minorities, forcing the Jewish identity to mutate. The Jews left their traditional neighbourhoods, moving to new urban polarities, participating to the modernisation of Istanbul, following the example of the Kemalist elite. The decline of these elites in post Kemalist Turkey had an impact on the Jews of Istanbul. This new and more complex context is revealed by their residential strategies: dialectics between homogenization/differentiation in a metropolis where enclave/gated community is the standard for these urban upper classes. The different groups of Jews of Istanbul are increasingly characterised, simultaneously by forms of porosity, and exclusion. This paradox is analysed through the study case of local disciples of the Berg’s Kabbala, a predominantly feminine group, inclusive to Jews and non-Jews.