Rebuilding the Hurva Synagogue and Jerusalem’s Old City

Every day Meir Eisenman would watch the reconstruction of the Hurva Synagogue which his great-great grandfather Rabbi Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref helped fund over 200 years ago.

A licensed tour guide, Meir explains the history of the Perushim, the students of the Vilna Gaon, who left Lithuania to rebuild the Jewish community of Jerusalem.

They sought to reconstruct the Hurva, or ruined courtyard, where once stood the grand synagogue of Judah HeHasid which was destroyed in 1720.

In 1864 it was rebuilt to be an iconic community center for the Jews of Jerusalem. It was destroyed in the War of Independence in 1948 and rebuilt in 2010.

Find out the inside story from a personal perspective.

Hurva Synagogue. Photo credit: Ben Bresky, 2022.

Hurva Synagogue under reconstruction, 2010. Credit: Israeli Government Press Office.

Former residents of the Jewish Quarter visiting the ruins of the Hurva synagogue. Credit: GPO, Moshe Milner June 29, 1967

18th century Hurva Beit Yaacov synagogue. Credit: GPO, Yaakov Saar, 1986.

Jordanian Legion soldier standing in ruins of Hurva synagogue holding up a desecrated Torah Scroll, Jerusalem, May 1948. Credit: Arthur Derounian, Cairo to Damascus.

Hurva Synagogue, circa 1942. Credit: .Central Zionist Archives.

NOTES:

• Meir Eisenman tour guide

• Family of Avraham Shlomo Zalman (Salomon) Zoref hold a conference in his memory