Synagogues of Jerusalem


This article deals in more detail with some of the notable synagogues of Jerusalem that do not have their own page as yet.

Former synagogues

In around 1870 the first Karlin-Stolin Hasidim settled in Jerusalem and by 1874 had established their own synagogue in the Old City. It was named Beis Aharon after a work authored by Rabbi Aharon II Perlow of Karlin.
After it was destroyed during the 1948 Israel War of Independence, a new centre was established in Jerusalem's Beis Yisrael neighbourhood.
The synagogue was active until the fall of the Jewish Quarter during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War when it was taken over by an Arab family. After the Six-Day War the building became the centre of Bnei Akiva and didn't revert to use as a synagogue.

Old City - Armenian Quarter

Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism

The Talpiot neighborhood in Jerusalem was established immediately after World War I. Its planners' intention was to make it into the capital city of the nascent State of Israel. The first synagogue in the neighbourhood was in a hut, which was established to serve as a structure for the builders of the neighbourhood and after the completion of the construction was converted into a mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic synagogue. Among the first worshipers of the minyan in the hut was the writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon, who lived in the neighbourhood. He described the hut and how the prayer was conducted in it in the short story "The Symbol", Tel Aviv Press 1961. The cornerstone of the current building was laid in Chanukah 1934, in the presence of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook. With the outbreak of the 1936–1939 riots, the construction of the synagogue was delayed and the structure remained neglected. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939 the British confiscated the building and established in it a police station and a warehouse.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, during the period when Talpiot was a transit camp, the State used the building as a warehouse of equipment for the transit camp. In the 1950s the building was leased to the Hebrew University and served as a warehouse of its medical school. In the late 1960s the building returned to the Jerusalem municipality, who renovated the building with the assistance of the Jerusalem Foundation and with a contribution received from author S. Y. Agnon, a resident of the neighbourhood, out of the money he received for the Nobel Prize. In the month of Elul 5772 the synagogue was again inaugurated in a procession where the Torah scrolls from the hut were brought in.