The Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem

Background of the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem
March 15, 2010

The Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem will be rededicated Monday (March 15).[1]

Jerusalem’s Jewish residents completed the synagogue in 1864, originally named the Bet Yaakov Synagogue, but it was destroyed in 1948 by Jordanian forces.[2]

It is located in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, more than a thousand feet (three hundred meters) west of the Western Wall, the Temple Mount compound and the al-Aqsa Mosque (see map).

Map courtesy of Google Earth

The synagogue is not located near the Temple Mount compound. Nevertheless, a senior Palestinian leader is inciting unrest in response to the rededication. Khatem Abd el-Kader, a Fatah official with responsibility for Jerusalem, encouraged Palestinians to “converge on al Aksa to save it” from “Israeli attempts to destroy the mosque and replace it with the [Jewish] temple.”[3] He called the Hurva synagogue rededication a “provocation,” cautioning that Israel is “playing with fire.”[4]

During the Israeli War of Independence of 1948-1949, the Jordanian Arab Legion besieged the Old City of Jerusalem, defeated the Jewish forces and expelled the 1,200 residents of the Jewish Quarter in May 1948.[5]

Between 1948 and 1967, Jordanian forces destroyed 58 synagogues in the Jewish quarter of the Old City and destroyed 38,000 Jewish tombstones on the Mount of Olives. Some of the tombstones were used to build fences and floor latrines for the Jordanian army as well as to pave roads. Gravestones that were more than 1,000 years old were destroyed. Access to the Western Wall and other places of worship was denied to Israeli Jews by the government of Jordan and only very limited access was granted to Israeli Christians to visit Christian holy sites.[6]

Construction on the synagogue originally began in the early 1700s but the unfinished building was destroyed in an Arab riot in 1721 when the Jewish community which was building the synagogue could not keep up payments for it. In 1978, a memorial arc was erected over the Hurva Synagogue, which remained in place until the reconstruction began in 2005. Funding for the project was provided by the government and a private donor.[7]

Morris, Benny, “1948: The First Arab Israeli War,” Yale University Press 2008, p.219

Lefkovits, Etgar, “Hurva Synagogue restoration nears completion,” The Jerusalem Post, March 28, 2008, http://web.archive.org/web/20080403070951/http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632351868&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer; “The Hurva Synagogue,” The Company for the Reconstruction and Development of Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, http://www.jewish-quarter.org.il/atar-hurva.asp. Accessed March 15, 2010

Abu Toameh, Khaled, and Jpost.Com Staff, “PA calls Arabs to 'defend al Aksa',” The Jerusalem Post, March 14, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=170950

Morris, Benny, “1948: The First Arab Israeli War,” Yale University Press 2008, p.219

Shragai, Nadav“The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Viewpoints (JCPA), July-August 2009, http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=443&PID=0&IID=3052; Jordanian Annexation of West Bank, Resolution Adopted by the House of Deputies, Amman, 24 April, 1950,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1947-1974/10+Jordanian+Annexation+of+West+Bank-+Resolution+A.htm

Lefkovits, Etgar, “Hurva Synagogue restoration nears completion,” The Jerusalem Post, March 28, 2008, http://web.archive.org/web/20080403070951/http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632351868&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer; “Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem,” Sacred Destinations, http://www.sacred-destinations.com/israel/jerusalem-hurva-synagogue.htm.

First Sabbath at the Hurva: Then and Now
by Hillel Fendel
Mar 22 '10, Nisan 7, 5770

First time in 62 years: Hundreds gathered for Sabbath prayers at the renewed, majestic Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Puah Shteiner, who spent her early years in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and was exiled as a little girl when Jordan captured and largely destroyed the area, was one of hundreds who returned to the newly-rebuilt Hurva Synagogue this Sabbath for an emotionally charged, historic experience. She and her husband Rabbi Chaim Shteiner, a leading rabbi at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav, were one of the first Jewish couples to move into the refurbished Old City quarter following the Six Day War in 1967.

“We truly felt that the rebuilding of this synagogue for the third time means that we are now ready for the third rebuilding of the Holy Temple,” each of them separately told Israel National News.

They are not the first to make the connection. Some 200 years ago, about a century after the synagogue was destroyed for the first time, newly-arrived students of the Vilna Gaon in Jerusalem began rebuilding it – after their saintly and renowned teacher taught them that that would be part of the Redemption process.

Mrs. Shteiner, who wrote a book [translated into English as “Forever My Jerusalem] about her childhood in the Old City with her father, the saintly Rabbi Shlomo Min-HaHar, said, “I spent the years 1945-48 here in the Old City, and I remember walking with my father and my older sister to pray in the Hurva synagogue. It was more pleasant than praying at the Western Wall [whose “plaza” at the time was only a few feet wide – ed.], where the Arabs were always pushing and shoving us, and the British didn’t exactly take our side - but at the Hurva we felt at home. It was the central synagogue of Jerusalem in those times; it was very beautiful and very tall. The commemorative arch that was built [in 1977] was only about 2/3 as high as the original height…”

Blue Ceiling, White Stars

Puah said that though the new building is very beautiful, “it’s missing the ceiling that I remember. It was a deep blue ceiling, with stars; I remember looking up and thinking that there was no ceiling at all, but rather just the heavens. Others remembered it the same way… But now there is just a white ceiling, though with a beautiful painting in each of the four corners…”

Another Rung

Mrs. Shteiner said that she followed the construction as it proceeded – “we live right across the street… I didn’t expect to be as emotional about it when it was completed, but in the end, I was truly drawn into it – especially on the day they brought in the Torah scrolls; there were so many people, and everyone was truly excited, and I was walking together with my older sister; it was a very special moment… We really felt that we had ascended another rung in the ladder of Redemption.”

The prayers this past Sabbath drew people from all over the city, including the Dean of Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav, Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, and the co-founder of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Maaleh Adumim, Rabbi Yitzchak Shilat. “There were women there of all religious stripes – in fact, the women’s section is a bit small,” Mrs. Shteiner said. “It holds only about 60 women, as it did until 1948. Apparently the designers didn’t take into account that more women go to synagogue now than did then…” The men’s section has 200 seats.

Day-to-Day

The prayers will be held according to Ashkenazi custom, in accordance with the long-standing tradition at the Hurva. Rabbi Simcha HaCohen Kook, Chief Rabbi of Rehovot and grand-nephew of the saintly Rabbi Avraham Yitzhcak Kook, will be the synagogue's rabbi. He delivered a special address there in the afternoon.

Day-to-day operations will be handled by a group associated with the Zilberman yeshiva in the Old City; the prayers for the State of Israel and the IDF will be recited every Sabbath.

For the next several weeks, the synagogue will be open daily only for prayers – 7:45 AM and 5:30 PM – but shortly after Passover, it will be open daily for visitors. ‘Women from all over the Jewish Quarter arrived on Friday night,” Mrs. Shteiner said. “It was truly a joyous occasion for all, no matter what religious outlook. Some women came up to me and wished me Mazel Tov…”

Rabbi Shteiner

Rabbi Chaim Shteiner, who also remembers walking to see the Hurva with his father occasionally – he lived in the new city – said, “The building is absolutely beautiful, even if it’s not a perfect replica… The Holy Ark is truly magnificent, even more so than the one in Yeshivat Ponovezh [in Bnei Brak]… All in all, the rebuilding of the new Hurva synagogue gives a sense of impending Redemption.”

Synagogue Shares Joy of New Couple

In its first week of operation, the synagogue has already seen its share of joyous occasions. In addition to two britot (ritual circumcisions), a young couple – an American who made Aliyah without his family and is now serving in the army, and a girl of Ethiopian extraction – was married there this past Tuesday night. Because of their paucity of both relatives and means, they originally feared that their nuptials would be little more than a brief ceremony – but in the end, they "chanced" upon the Hurva on the day it was dedicated, and were treated to a large and joyous wedding with hundreds of people, musicians from the dedication ceremony, and food donated by a local restaurant. As the Sages teach, "Whoever brings joy to a bride and groom is as if he has rebuilt one of the ruins of Jerusalem" – and, apparently, vice versa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e08rcJza0NI&feature=related