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This article traces the residential and identity patterns and trajectories of the Jews of Istanbul in the Turkish megapolis and in the different diasporas following their successive migrations: Israel, France, Spain, the Americas both north and south. It is based on an ethnographic study of the community from April 2009 until November 2012. Using the concept of an ‘intermediary minority’, it analyses the evolution of the commercial role of the Jews in the metropolis in the era of globalisation. An economic anthropology of the minority is derived from an examination of the articulation between the community’s internal social structure, especially with regard to hierarchy and giving, and its external role. The concept of’’intermediary minority’ indirectly reveals the process of metroplitanisation in Istanbul.