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Letter
to the Wall Street Journal
By
Shelomo Alfassa / March 10, 2010
In
regard to an article about the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem
March 10, 2010
Mr.
Benjamin Balint
Wall Street Journal
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
212-416-2000
Dear
Mr. Balint,
I take
note of your article, "In the Holy Land, a Rebuilding
for the Generations" in today's Wall Street Journal.
While the article is positive about the breathtaking and
celebratory rebuilding of the Hurva synagogue, there are
some inaccuracies in regard to its history.
You
wrote it was once "Jerusalem's grandest," but
this a subjective notion. There were many 'grand' synagogues
in the Old City of Jerusalem, 58 before 1948, and it can
be argued that one was more grand than the next. You made
the synagogue sound very old by indicating the "Hurva's
story began in 1701," but groundbreaking for the Hurva
didn't actually start until 1855. The oldest of the large
synagogues standing in the Old City is most likely the 'Kahal
Grande,' often called the Yohanan Ben Zakkai synagogue.
It was known to have been built at least prior to 1677,
by European refugees that fled the Spanish Inquisition.
You
mention the Hurva was run by Ashkenazi Jews, and that they
were the "European" Jews that had been expelled
from the city by the Arabs, however, this is not fully precise.
For while the majority of the Jews of Jerusalem were indeed
European, they certainly were not expelled. The preponderance
were European Jews from countries such as Spain and Portugal
as well as cities such as Adrianople, Constantinople, Livorno
and Salonika. It is well recognized from documents found
in the sijill (Muslim court records) of Jerusalem
that Sephardim (European Jews) had a fairly sophisticated
community by this time and that they took orders from the
Chief Rabbinate which was based in Europe at Constantinople.
The
Sultan in Constantinople ruled over all people in Palestine,
and it was only the Sephardic leadership that he accepted
as representative over all of the various Jewish groups
in Jerusalem. The va'ad haedah hasefaradit bi'yrusalayim
(Sephardi Community Council of Jerusalem) was made up from
Jews almost exclusively from European descent. This organization
was said to be founded early as 1267 with the arrival of
Rabbi Nahman (RaMBaN) who had traveled to Jerusalem from
Europe himself.
You
told that the Hurva was a forum for "public assemblies"
and that "the city's Jews" held memorials and
celebrations for world leaders there. Nonetheless, assemblies
and celebrations took place in other Jerusalem synagogues.
When Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph II arrived in 1870, a
grand celebration took place in the Kahal Grande as did
it when Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany arrived in 1898. After
WWI a community-wide thanksgiving was held there as were
other celebrations, for the Kahal Grande synagogue was considered
the "most suitable" of all the Jerusalem synagogues
for this.
Lastly,
you mentioned the Hurva was the "tallest" Jewish
landmark in Jerusalem for "eight decades," however,
while the Hurva was tall--it was not the tallest. Today,
near the east side of the Hurva Square, stands the remains
of what was the tallest building in the Jewish Quarter before
being destroyed by the Jordanian Arabs in 1948. The Tiferet
Yisrael synagogue, built by Hassidim that had come from
Russia, had been the tallest for many decades.
While
all three synagogues, Tiferet Yisrael, the Hurva and the
Kahal Grande were destroyed by the Arabs, it was only the
latter two which were reconstructed.
Sincerely,
Shelomo
Alfassa
Author
of A Window
Into Old Jerusalem
cc:
Mr. Robert Thomson, Editor WSJ
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ORIGINAL
ARTICLE
The
new Hurva, in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter
By
Benjamin Balint - March 10, 2010
Jerusalem
- In this city so crowded with religious symbols,
where houses of worship vie with one another to render
the religious past visible, no synagogue bears more
symbolic weight than the one called the Hurva, in
the heart of the Jewish Quarter.
Just
days ahead of its March 15 rededication ceremony,
finishing touches still were being applied to the
synagogue, once Jerusalem's grandest, which had remained
in ruins for six decades. The rebuilt Hurva, made
of the white stone that is Jerusalem's vernacular
material, had already assumed its former prominence
in the city's crowded skyline. Only interior details
remained to be done.
Early
this month, as the Israeli architect Nahum Meltzer
looked on, a whorled woodwork crown covered in gold
leaf was hoisted to its perch atop a two-story holy
ark. The ark, which stands beneath the building's
gleaming 82-feet-high dome, is a nearly exact replica
of the original that stood on the spot more than 150
years earlier, encapsulating the basic principle that
guided Mr. Meltzer's reconstruction: not innovation,
but historical accuracy.
In
a sense, however, this moment was the culmination
not merely of eight years of construction, but of
300. The Hurva's story began in 1701, when a group
of Polish immigrants to the Holy Land started to build
a synagogue here. Two decades later, after the group
had exhausted its funds and defaulted on loans, Arab
creditors destroyed the building—and expelled
the city's Ashkenazi (or European) Jews for good measure.
For
a century, the synagogue—which came to be called
the Hurva, or "ruin"—lay in shambles,
a reminder of expulsion. But with the passing decades,
the yearning to rebuild it hardly abated, and in the
19th century, with the statute of limitations on the
original loans expired and Ashkenazi Jews permitted
by Ottoman rulers once more to settle in Jerusalem,
the aspirations of renewal could at last be realized.
With funds from Sir Moses Montefiore, the Rothschilds
and communities as far-flung as St. Petersburg, Baghdad,
Cairo and India, the sultan's architect, Assad Effendi,
was hired to erect a domed structure in the neo-Byzantine
style much beloved of the Ottomans.
The
impressive result, completed in 1864, became for the
next eight decades not just the tallest Jewish landmark
in Jerusalem and an architectural archetype for synagogues
around the world. It also was a forum for public assemblies.
Here the city's Jews held a memorial service for Queen
Victoria; celebrated the coronation of King George
V; thrilled to the orations of such Zionist leaders
as Theodor Herzl and Zeev Jabotinsky; and, in 1942,
conducted a mass prayer service for the victims of
Hitler's genocide.
Yet
Jews were not alone in recognizing the Hurva's symbolic
significance, a fact that made the synagogue the prize
of the fierce battle for the Old City during Israel's
War of Independence. On the afternoon of May 28, 1948,
hours after the Old City of Jerusalem fell into Jordanian
hands, and Jews once again were forced to flee, soldiers
of the Arab Legion set off explosive charges and reduced
the Hurva to rubble.
This
time, the Jews' exile was shorter. Very soon after
Israel recaptured the Old City during the Six-Day
War in 1967, several architects—including Philadelphia-based
Louis Kahn—envisioned an ambitious new Hurva
that would serve as a national religious edifice.
According to Haifa-born architect Moshe Safdie, Mr.
Kahn's plan, incorporating both modernist and archaic
elements, was "an inspired design, which would
have been a building for the generations."
Mr.
Kahn's masterpiece would remain unbuilt, undone perhaps
by its own aesthetic audacity. Israeli critics of
the plan, intimidated by Jerusalem's delicate religious
balance, worried that a bold Hurva would compete with
the Dome of the Rock and the Holy Sepulcher or overshadow
the Western Wall. Instead, to commemorate the destruction
of the Jewish Quarter, an austere 52-feet-high memorial
arch was erected over the ruins.
But
symbols of defeat cannot be expected to last long
in this country. Eight years ago, the Israeli government
commissioned Mr. Meltzer to build a replica of the
Hurva as it stood in its 19th-century glory. (According
to Nissim Arzy, director of the state-run Jewish Quarter
Development Company, which oversaw the project, two-thirds
of the cost of construction was donated by the Ukrainian
Jewish oligarchs Vadim Rabinovitch and Igor Kolomoisky.)
The design decision, which some derided as a choice
of nostalgia over innovation, proved controversial.
Mr. Safdie remarked that it bespoke "a lack of
confidence that we can do something great; it says
that we have nothing to say."
The
reconstruction of this most storied of Jerusalem's
synagogues may or may not be attended by a failure
of imagination or by the pious illusion that the original
still stands. What is clear is that the inauguration
of the old-new Hurva—twice destroyed, and now
twice rebuilt—represents a deep and irrepressible
Israeli urge to heal and rebuild, not in order to
obscure memory but to preserve it.
Mr.
Balint, a writer living in Jerusalem, is a fellow
at the Hudson Institute.
His book "Running Commentary" will be published
by PublicAffairs in June.
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