by Nadav Shragai
The 144-year-old Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City withstood bloody battles in the War of Independence until an Arab bomb brought it down • Now the government has approved funds to restore it to its former splendor.
Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue
once soared over the other buildings in the Old City of Jerusalem
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Photo credit: Ben Zvi Institute 
Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue was the last post of
the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to fall before it was
overtaken in the War of Independence. The synagogue was notable for its
splendor. Its great height, which reached up and overshadowed the
mosques on the Temple Mount was an eyesore to the Muslims. Perhaps
that's why it came under direct fire from the holy Mount and Al-Aqsa
mosque. When Tiferet Yisrael was first built, 144 years ago, its famous
dome was painted light green, but in the face of the fury of the
Muslims, who had claimed that color as their own and associate it with
strength, growth and renewal, the synagogue's wise founder Nissan Beck
was quick to repaint it white.
Beck tried to be considerate of the Muslims,
but his gesture did nothing for the Jews over the course of 76 years.
When the Jewish Quarter was lost in 1948, the Jordanians shelled the
white dome of Tiferet Yisrael, along with its "twin" -- the Hurva
Synagogue. The two monuments that appeared in all the historical
panoramas of the Old City and were captured in paintings, etchings, and
decorative objects, were turned into piles of rubble.
Now, six years after the government
resurrected the Hurva Synagogue, despite the ongoing protests of Muslim
extremists and riots in Jerusalem, it is reconstructing Tiferet Yisrael.
Al-Aqsa mosque cleric and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Hussein
might describe the plan as "a scheme to wipe out any trace of Islam and
Arabs from Jerusalem," and Al-Aqsa Institute might lie and say the
synagogue is on "Islamic waqf land," but the wheels are already in
motion.
The plan to reconstruct Tiferet Yisrael is
currently being launched, and more historic justice is being done in the
form of a new book, "High Upon High," which relates the history of this
venerable Jerusalem institution through the work of 12 contemporary
researchers on Jerusalem and its history, who traced the synagogue's
history from the day it was founded until it was brought down in the
last battle for the Jewish Quarter in the War of Independence. The book
is published by the Ben-Zvi Institute and the Company for the
Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of
Jerusalem Ltd., which is also in charge of rebuilding the synagogue.
The Hassidim beat the czar
Tiferet Yisrael is named after Rabbi Yisrael
Friedman of Ruzhin. It took 14 years to construct and was dedicated in
1872. News reports from the time describe how the event brought local
residents out into the street, rejoicing.
Tiferet Yisrael was a grand structure that was
even higher than its more famous neighbor, the Hurva Synagogue. While
Hurva was a center for the "mitnagdim," the Ashkenazi stream of
scholarly Judaism that disassociated itself from the hassidic movement,
Tiferet was the beating heart of the Jerusalem hassidic community and
was built by the Ruzhin Hassidim.
The driving force behind the establishment of
the synagogue was Beck, who served as the gabbai (synagogue manager)
until he died. Beck's near-total identification with the synagogue led
it to be known for years as "Nish's schul" (Nissan's synagogue.) Beck,
who was a pillar of the Jewish community in Jerusalem, also built the
Kirya Neemana homes north of the Old City wall, across from Damascus
Gate, which locals called "the Nissan Beck houses." He also helped build
the Yemenite neighborhood in Kfar Shiloah (today the Silwan
neighborhood.) Our generation learned about him when, some 20 years ago,
Jews began to return to the Nissan Beck houses, and when Jews began to
resettle Kfar Shiloach about a decade ago.
Beck built the Hassids' prayer hall on an
abandoned lot that was for sale in the eastern part of the Jewish
Quarter. Czar Nicholas I of Russia and his ecclesiastical
representatives were also keen on the site, but after a bitter battle
the Hassidim won out. Their victory prevented the Russians from building
a Russian Orthodox church on the site, thus blocking access to the
Western Wall. When the czar heard that the Jews had beat him to it, he
was furious and retaliated by acquiring a large plot of land outside the
Old City walls. We still call the land Nicholas purchased "the Russian
Compound," and Israel's Supreme Court used to stand there.
Dr. Eyal Davidson discovered that the Turks
granted the Hassidim a permit to build Tiferet Yisrael four years after
they approved the construction of Hurva. But only five years on, when
sufficient funds had been raised, did construction get under way, with
the aid of Russian architect Martin Eppinger. In a twist of fate,
Eppinger was also the one who planned the buildings that were erected on
the Russian Compound, the czar's consolation prize.
But the most famous story about Tiferet
Yisrael relates to a meeting Beck held in 1867 with Emperor of Austria
Franz Josef I. Many writers, both of their time and those who came
later, wrote about the meeting at length and described it differently.
The main point was Beck's flattering response to Franz Josef, who asked
him, "Why hasn't the dome of the synagogue been finished?"
Author Yehuda Haezrahi describes it in his
memoir of his childhood years in Jerusalem: "And so we heard a lot about
Rabbi Nissan Beck, the very son of Rabbi Yisrael Beck, who went up to
Jerusalem from Safed and founded the first Hebrew press in the city, and
everything he went through to build Tiferet Ysrael, but for many years
he didn't have enough money to build the dome of the synagogue, and the
building remained naked and unadorned, and Austrian Emperor Franz Josef
asked [Beck] about it.
"And Beck answered, 'Your royal highness. The
synagogue removed its dome in honor of your royal majesty ...' and his
royal highness the emperor understood the subtle hint in his reply and
offered 1,000 franks to build a beautiful dome." Other writers,
including Haim Beer in "Feathers" and renowned Hebrew educator Yitzhak
Yaakov Yellin also included the anecdote in their literary descriptions
of life in Jerusalem.
Dr. Reuven Gafni of the Ben-Zvi Institute, one
of the editors of "High Upon High" and a researcher of the Jewish
community of Jerusalem in the modern period, notes the literary use
author Shai Agnon made of the synagogue. Agnon himself participated in
the special blessing that took place on the synagogue roof on the eve of
Passover in 1925.
'The sadness of separation'
The experiences of one Lag Ba'omer night on
the roof of the synagogue left a deep impression on Rachel Yanait
Ben-Zvi, while Haezrahi, who was of the generation that founded the
state of Israel, retained the impression of his personal separation from
Tiferet: "The bitter day arrived. New defenders, burdened with packs,
were brought to the Jewish Quarter of the Old city and we were ordered
to return to the new city. Before we left, we climbed onto the roof of
Nissan Beck's synagogue, which was higher than everything else, and
there was the sadness of separation, and a feeling that it was not a
separation: we were torn from it, but it was staying in its place,
always looking for us to return."
The moment of separation from Tiferet Yisrael
was drawn out and turned into a bloody battle, in which Haezrahi was not
present. Historian Dr. Moshe Ehrenwald reports that even in the 1920s,
Tiferet served as a meeting point for Haganah members who came to the
Old City to protect the residents. On Dec. 2, 1947, when hostilities
broke out following the U.N. approval of the Partition Plan, a group of
Arabs tried to break down the concrete wall on Hamadregot Street north
of the synagogue to penetrate the Jewish Quarter, but were run off by
pistol fire.
When the British took up some of the positions
around Tiferet, Haganah members were forced to turn their lookout posts
on the synagogue's balconies into fighting positions. The entry of
"free" fighters, especially female fighters, into the synagogue
originally created conflict with the Hassidim who prayed there, but they
eventually realized that the need to defend the Jewish Quarter came
first.
The fierce battle for Tiferet began after the
British left the Jewish Quarter on May 13, 1948. Two days later, the
Arab Legion invaded, and on the night between May 18th and 19th reached
the Old City and joined the battle for Jerusalem. Abdullah A-Tul,
commander of the Legion's 6th Battalion, was put in charge of the
unorganized fighters who were attacking the Jewish Quarter and added
artillery, mortars, and cannon fire from armored vehicles that were
brought into the Old City.
On May 20, Arabs attacked the synagogue, took
control of it, desecrated it and its Torah scrolls, and raised their
flag. Ehrenwald describes how commander of the Jewish Quarter for
Israel, Moshe Rusnak, put together a counter-attack and led a force that
attacked the synagogue from the west. Avraham Bornstein commanded
another force that was attacking from the south. The fighters burst into
the synagogue and purified it, fighting face-to-face.
In his memoirs, Bornstein writes: "A bloody
battle raged in the synagogue's great hall, with the defenders hiding
behind every pillar. It was an especially brutal face-to-face battle ...
against the Legion division that was armed with Thompson machine guns,
hand grenades, and three Bren guns, stood six defenders holding Sten
guns and two hand grenades each."
"Two [of the defenders] fell at the start of
the battle, and four continued to resist and threw all the grenades they
had at the enemy, who was coming in waves. The battle only lasted 15
minutes. The enemy had about 15 casualties and decided to retreat,
leaving behind crates of explosives, which they had apparently intended
to use to blow the building up."
But the success of the Jewish fighters in
defending the synagogue was only temporary. A short while later, the
Legion once again had the upper hand. On Friday, the twelfth day of the
Jewish month of Iyar (May 21) 1948, mere hours before the Sabbath began,
the Nissan Beck -- Tiferet Yisrael -- Synagogue came crashing down, and
its splendid dome was destroyed. Columns of fire and black smoke rose
from the ruins. The Arabs had managed to plant a large bomb underneath
the synagogue and detonate it.
Before the tearful eyes of young fighter
Esther Zeilengold and a small group of her comrades who were defending
the Jewish Quarter, one of the outstanding symbols of old Jewish
Jerusalem collapsed. Zeilengold was seriously wounded in the battles for
Tiferet. She was transferred to the Armenian Monastery and, while still
on a stretcher, wrote these last words to her parents, who were in
England: "Please don't be too sad. I know that God is with us in his
holy city, and I am proud to pay the price of redeeming the city. Very
soon, I hope, you will come and enjoy the fruits of the fulfillment of
what we are fighting for."
Children also took part in the final battles
for Tiferet Yisrael. Some of them, aged 9 or 10, were put to work
building defenses. The "older" ones -- 12 or so -- carried messages,
food, and even weapons and ammunition. Some of them were killed,
including Grazia (Yaffa) Haroush, 16, and Nissim Gini, aged 9½, who
was the youngest fallen Israeli fighter in the War of Independence.
In addition to being outnumbered, the Jewish
fighters had few weapons and their stores of food were running out, and
defense of the Jewish Quarter and Tiferet Yisrael was limited because of
the fire from the Temple Mount. After the Jewish Quarter was lost,
Jerusalem District commander Avraham Bergman (later Biran) testified
that Nissan Beck's synagogue had come under artillery fire and machine
gun fire from the Temple Mount. But the Jews were forbidden to fire
back. In a conference of Labor Party representatives, member of the
National Committee Meir Grabovsky (later Argov) noted that "A special
situation had been created in Jerusalem in which shots are fired from
the Omar Mosque and we cannot retaliate."
In January 1948, David Ben-Gurion praised the
Haganah members who were "not returning fire at the Temple Mount,"
thereby preventing the entire Muslim world from becoming inflamed and
[providing] legitimization for them to intervene.
A Second Temple-era mikveh
For the 19 years between the War of
Independence and the 1967 Six-Day War, Jews were barred from entering
the Old City or the Jewish Quarter, and when they returned after the
city was reunited, they encountered difficult sights. Haezrahi, who
returned to the Old City, described a "gray hill of rubble and ash ...
that testified to the location of Nissan Beck's synagogue."
In contrast to the great arc of memory that
kept the memory of the Hurva Synagogue alive, Tiferet Yisrael remained
in ruins. Its story had a hard time competing with that of Hurva. Bracha
Slae, who researches the history of the Jewish Quarter, details the
attempts to reconstruct and reopen Tiferet Israel.
Slae notes that the discussion of the fate of
the Hurva Synagogue, which was conducted under metaphorical klieg
lights, decided to a large extent the fate of Tiferet. Only when the
dispute over the reconstruction of Hurva Synagogue came to an end, just
as it was about to be rededicated, did an internal meeting of the
Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter in
the Old City of Jerusalem decide that Tiferet Yisrael, too, would be
resurrected. Only then, admits company deputy director Daniel Shukrun,
was the open wound over what happened to the synagogue exposed.
From November 2013 to April 2014, the Israel
Antiquities Authority conducted an excavation at the site of the ruined
synagogue. The dig was directed by Oren Gottfeld from the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, with the help of Hillel Geva from the Israel
Exploration Society. Beneath the ruins of Tiferet Yisrael, the
archaeologists discovered a thick layer of burned material, testimony to
the sacking of the city at the end of the Second Temple era. In the
burnt layer, they discovered sections of burnt wood, smashed pottery
vessels, coins, glass shards, stone tools, and fish bones.
One of the finds from the Second Temple era
layer was a round stone weight inscribed with two lines in Aramaic. The
bottom line contained the name of the priestly family -- Katros. The
Katros family home itself was located some 25 meters (80 feet) northeast
of the site where Tiferet Yisrael stood. It is better known to the
general public as the Burnt House.
The Jewish Quarter Development Corporation has
for years run an audiovisual presentation about the last days of the
family that was believed to have lived in the house. The Katros family
was a family of senior priests. The men of the family served in the
Temple, but they were held in contempt by later sages for being corrupt.
In the northeast corner of the excavation a
plastered mikveh (ritual bath) dating back to the days of the Second
Temple was uncovered, and the western part of the excavation turned up a
few sections of wall that dated back as far the First Temple era. But
Jerusalem planning entities didn't necessarily need these finds to
decide to rebuild Tiferet Yisrael, including a full and accurate
reconstruction of the original synagogue and the preservation of parts
of the foundation wall that remained from the original building.
The new building is planned to serve as both a
synagogue and a tourist site. To avoid repeating the mistakes of the
rebuilt Hurva Synagogue, which is closed to the public for the several
hours a day it is in use for prayer and study, the district planning
office in the Interior Ministry made a number of decisions.
For example, the ancient mikveh that will be
reconstructed at the site will not be a working mikveh and the building
will be barred for use by specific institutions or groups. The
reconstruction will be overseen by a restoration architect from the IAA,
and the lower levels will be open for public use, for everyone, and
made to fit the existing context of the city.
Shukrun says that the stunning murals of the original
synagogue will also be recreated to the greatest extent possible by
being redrawn on fabric and then affixed to the building's walls. "We
will attempt an exact recreation of the Holy Ark, the bimah [elevated
platform], and the cantor's stand," he says. Shukrun believes that
construction will take three to four years. The government has allocated
a budget of 36 million shekels ($9.5 million) to the project, but
another 12 million shekels ($3.2 million) in donations is required,
money the corporation is busy raising now so that the construction can
be completed on schedule.
Nadav Shragai
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=36995
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