Yeshurun Synagogue, view from King George Street 1951,
More of Once upon a time in Jerusalem.
The Yeshurun Synagogue is located on the corner of Shmuel Hanagid Street and King George Street and was built in the international style that included a rounded front to the street and narrow windows to preserve the privacy of the worshipers and bring in natural light.
The funds for the synagogue community began to be collected already in the twenties of the last century from the worshipers of the community and the Synagogue Association of America.
The community was established as the Yeshurun Association in the early 1920s by Lou Louver, a newcomer from distant America who arrived in the city, and set itself the goal of building a synagogue that would attract a young audience in a modern Orthodox style.
The community received the blessing of the Ashkenazi chief rabbi at the time, Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook, who even donated the Torah scroll to the synagogue, along with the Elisher family who donated another Torah scroll.
“The United Synagogues of America excavated this holy land in the midst of Jerusalem, the holy city.. and also contributed with a generous hand to this building” – this is what is written on the memorial plaque that stands in the synagogue to this day.
The synagogue became a landmark for major events in Jerusalem.
The location of the synagogue in the Rehavia neighborhood where the heads of the Zionist leadership at the time, the economic and cultural elite of Jerusalem and academics lived, the synagogue attracted a diverse audience.
Among the worshipers in Yeshorun were the presidents of the country Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Zalman Shazar and Herzog, David Ben Gurion came to pray on the day of the foundation of the first Knesset which was located nearby, Prof. Yeshayahu Leibovitch, Chief Justice Menachem Alon and many others, alongside leading women such as Henrietta Sold, Sara Herzog, the wife of the chief rabbi, and many other good people who were part of a diverse worshiping crowd that included traditional and secular residents of the neighborhood.
Over the years, the original and aging community has shrunk, but the synagogue still attracts a crowd for regular Torah classes and other cultural activities.
In the place that Rabbi Kook inaugurated and, on its benches, state presidents sat alongside prime ministers, world-renowned professors alongside judges and intellectuals and a traditional and secular public who all lived together in harmony under one roof, and one God.
This is our Jerusalem – the place where every building and every stone tells a trans-generational story of revival and Zionism alongside a rejuvenating and tolerant Judaism, a social mosaic that represents all parts of the people in one building that contains everything.
And on a personal note – in front of the Yeshurun Synagogue, on one of the last land reserves of the Rehavia neighborhood, the construction of an intimate residential project will soon begin on land steeped in the renewed history of the Jewish people who returned to Zion, where in 1920 the tent camp of the Hebrew labor brigades that built the iconic Rehavia neighborhood was located.
A great Zchut as part of the endless chain of generations of the Jewish people.
“The old will be renewed and the new will be sanctified” – according to the saying of Rabbi Kook.
The eternal capital of the Jewish people is being renewed alongside the glorious history of the most beautiful city in the world.
Shabbat of peace to the far and near from Jerusalem,
May all the abductees return to their homes together with the IDF soldiers and the residents of the south and the north and may peace come to Israel.
