When it was built in the 1930s, a Portuguese newspaper described it as "A piece of Palestine". The Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue impresses everyone. It covers 2000 square meters. It was especially due to Lord Lawrence making funds available for the completion of the work that Captain Barros Basto was building.

Although the "Portuguese Dreyfus" affair, which coincided with the temple's inauguration, ruined Jewish life for eighty years, today the synagogue has an impressive Jewish life, to the point that the local Jewish community has already needed to create a study center in the city, with a prayer room.

Lawrence's son, Sir Michael Kadorie, recently visited the city of Porto, toured the temple, was pleased with what he saw, and instructed Barros Basto's granddaughter to have a wall of the synagogue repainted, as she had noticed some dampness.

For the Kadoorie/Mocatta family of Hong Kong, with Portuguese roots, the honour they are feeling came not only from the rehabilitation and Jewish life in the 21st century in Porto, with the great synagogue as its headquarters. The film "Sefarad," which tells the community's modern history, dedicates a section to showing who Laura Mocatta was ("the first woman to drive a car in China") and the journey to Oporto of her husband, Sir Eli, and her son, Lord Lawrence.

At the heart of the Jewish community of Oporto, a native of Brooklyn is affectionately called “the boss”. At 95, Marilyn Flitterman regularly attends the central synagogue, plays the piano in a jazz group and drives her convertible every day. She is an inspiration to a community that lay dormant for almost a century but one that, in little over a decade, has undergone a regeneration in religious, cultural, educational and philanthropic terms. Marilyn Flitterman recounts what she saw when she arrived in Oporto in 1970: “Instead of a million Jews, there was my family, three or four other families, that was all”.

The seat of the Jewish community of Oporto, one of Europe’s most majestic synagogues named Kadoorie Mekor Haim, is renowned today for the Yom Kippur it celebrates each year, with hundreds of people shouting as one. Members from thirty nations and many young people enliven this wonderful atmosphere. A Jewish visitor who has been to over fifty-five countries, wrote the following to the Community: “I wrote to several friends and family members afterwards to tell them about how deeply moved I was emotionally. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such passionate praying and singing before in a synagogue. It wasn’t just the power of the voices praying in unison that moved me so deeply, it was also the symbolism of so many Jews gathering together in a synagogue in a country that was heavily impacted by the Inquisition.”

Years ago, during a visit to the Kadoorie synagogue at an Yom Kippur event, the then national Coordinator for the Promotion of Jewish Life stated, impressed: "I didn't know that a Portuguese religious temple existed where one experiences the indestructible sentimental force of a millennial congregation, and even less could I imagine that this happened in a synagogue."