The Ashkenazi courtyard

The Ashkenazi courtyard. . Until the sixteenth century, the "Ramban" was the main synagogue, where members of all denominations prayed together. Its closure at the end of that century is probably the point at which the various streams dispersed. The Sephardi Jews organized in the southern end of the Jewish Quarter, while the Ashkenazi Jews remained near the destroyed synagogue. In 1621, the renowned Kabbalist Rabbi Yeshaya Halevi Horowitz ("The Shlah"), one of the greatest Ashkenazi sages, arrived in Jerusalem and established the Ashkenazi courtyard. , In 1700, "Rabbi Yehuda the Hassid" arrived with a group of several hundred immigrants to live in the Ashkenazi courtyard. Tragically, Rabbi Yehuda died of the plague just six days after his arrival, leaving his students devastated, without a spiritual shepherd. Many left Jerusalem, and those who remained suffered severe financial distress. They had to borrow money from Arab lenders. When they defaulted on the loans, their creditors stormed the Ashkenazi courtyard. On October 29, 1720, the Arab creditors set fire to and destroyed the courtyard and its synagogue. The disciples of Rabbi Yehuda the Hassid fled, and Jerusalem was devoid of an organized Ashkenazi community for many years. Ashkenazi individuals who dared to visit the city during the eighteenth century disguised themselves in local clothes and hid among their Sephardi brethren to evade the creditors. The Ashkenazi courtyard was henceforth called the 'Ruin of Rabbi Yehuda the Hassid' or in short 'The Hurva' and to this day it is identified with the large and central synagogue that was founded there. , In 1808, waves of disciples of the Vilna Gaon ("The Gra") immigrated from Europe and needed a synagogue for communal prayers. Following prolonged negotiations with the Ottoman rulers, the Menachem Zion was inaugurated in early 1837, on the ruins of the ancient Ashkenazi Courtyard synagogue. , In 1841, Rabbi Shmuel Salant founded a school, a 'Talmud Torah' that he named 'Tree of Life' became a Jerusalem phrase sybolizing the world of Ashkenazi yeshivas in the city., (Hebrew text not transcribed)