The Old Yemenite Synagogue, known to its congregation as Beit Knesset Ohel Shlomo (lit. "Solomon's Tent Synagogue"), is a Jewish congregation and restored synagogue,[1] located in the Silwan district of East Jerusalem. The synagogue was constructed in the nineteenth century[2]: 87–88 in the Yemenite Village (Harat al-Yaman in Arabic),[3] in the Kfar Hashiloach (Hebrew: כפר השילוח) neighborhood.
History
Jewish community in Silwan (1884-1938)
Between 1885 and 1891, 45 stone houses were built for the Yemenite Jews which had arrived in Jerusalem in 1882.[4]
In 1936, during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Yemenite-Jewish community was removed from Silwan by the Welfare Bureau of the Jerusalem Community Council (Va'ad ha-Kehillah), the local counterpart of the Jewish National Council (Va'ad Leumi), into the Jewish Quarter as security conditions for Jews worsened.[2]: 56 and in 1938, the remaining Yemenite Jews in Silwan were evacuated by the Jewish Community Council on the advice of the police.[3][5]
Jewish reclaim (2015)
In May 2015 Ateret Cohanim, a Jewish group that had established legal ownership of the old synagogue, moved into the building.[6][7][8] Local residents threw rocks at the activists as they moved in.[6]