Old Yemenite Synagogue (Silwan)

Old Yemenite Synagogue
Old Yemenite Synagogue
Religion
Affiliation	Judaism
Ecclesiastical or organisational status	Synagogue (1890–1936); Profane use (1935–2015); Synagogue (since 2015);
Status	Active
Location
Location	Silwan, East Jerusalem
Country	State of Palestine
	Location of the synagogue in Jerusalem
Geographic coordinates	31°46′07″N 35°14′13″E / 31.7685°N 35.2369°E
Architecture
Completed	1890; 2015 (restored)

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]