Hurva Synagogue
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Image:Hakhurba-synagogue01m.jpg The Hurva Synagogue was the main synagogue in Jerusalem from the 16th to the 20th century. The synagogue is located in the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
In the year 1700 a mass immigration of Rabbi Yehuda haHasid and his 300 students arrived in Jerusalem from Poland. They bought the courtyard next to the synagogue of Rabbi Moses Ben Nahman (Ramban), which had been closed by the Ottomans in 1589 because of Muslim incitement. On this site they began building a synagogue to accommodate the increased Jewish population of the city. The immigrants were unable to finish building the synagogue, and the unfinished structure was burned, together with the 40 Sifrei Torah it contained, by an arab mob in 1721. The site remained desolate for about 150 years, until the disciples of the Vilna Gaon arrived in Jerusalem after their mass immigration from Lithuania in 1864. They built a synagogue on the site of the ruins and named it "Hurvat Rabbi Yehuda haHasid" -the ruin of Rabbi Yehuda the Hasid. This name was commonly abridged to "the Hurva" or ruin.
From 1864 until its destruction in 1948, the synagogue was widely considered the largest, most beautiful and most important synagogue in Palestine. It was the site of the installation of the chief rabbis of both Palestine and Jerusalem, as well as the centre of Jewish life in Jerusalem. The synagogue was the last outpost of Jewish resistance in the Old City of Jerusalem in the Israeli war of Independence, and when it was captured by the Arab Legion of Jordan during the battle for Old Jerusalem in 1948, they dynamited it to show that they controlled the Jewish Quarter.
The Hurva synagogue followed the fate of the Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue and was destroyed by the Jordanians after 1948. After reunification in 1967, plans were made to rebuild the synagogue as part of the general renewal of the Jewish Quarter. Plans were commissioned from architect Louis Kahn, a world renowned architect who was also a founding member of the Jerusalem Committee. Unfortunately, Kahn died before the project could be realized. Disputes also arose over the modern façade of the new building which some felt did not properly match the Jewish Quarter’s aesthetic. An Englishman named Sir Charles Clore took the initiative and agreed to fund the project provided it could be completed in a specified number of years, his wish was to see the project completed before his death. Sir Denys Lasdun drew up plans that were also modern but played closer adherence to the original; however, bowing to the objection of Prime Minister Begin, the Minister of Interior at the time refused to sign the papers so that construction could begin. Time ran out and the Hurva was not rebuilt, but Sir Clore’s daughter provided the necessary funds to create one of the few open spaces in the Jewish Quarter .Because no permanent solution could be found, a temporary, symbolic solution was agreed upon whereby one of the four arches that originally supported the synagogue’s monumental dome was recreated.
In 2005, the Israeli govenment announced its plan to rebuild the Synagogue exactly as it had been before the Jordanian destruction, assigning the project a budget of NIS 28 million. The work is expected to take four years.