It is located on the ground floor of a building which also houses the Ohr ha-Chaim Synagogue and Old Yishuv Court Museum. It is named after Rabbi Isaac Luria, (1534–1572), who was known as the Ari (Hebrew: אֲרִי; trans: The Lion), an acronym for haEloqi Rabbeinu Yitzhak (the divine, our teacher, Isaac). He was a great kabbalist who founded a new school in Kabbalistic thought, known as the "System of the Ari" or "Lurianic kabbalah".