In the middle of the most important Jewish neighborhood in the
world’s most important Jewish city was a ruin. This ruin in the
middle of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter of the walled Old City (the
only Jerusalem that existed until the mid-19th century) was no
ordinary ruin. It was the ruin of what had been the Hurva
Synagogue, the largest and most magnificent synagogue in the
Holy Land. And, unlike other ruins that dot the Old City, this
ruin was not caused by the natural erosion of eras. The Hurva
Synagogue was destroyed on one day, on May 27, 1948, in one
malicious, devastating act. As soon as the Jewish residents were
vanquished from that part of the Jewish Quarter, the Arab Legion
exploded a bomb at the top of the massive dome. Or so the
official story goes. I was shocked, however, to see a photograph
in a book called For the Sake of Jerusalem. It shows a uniformed
Arab soldier wearing a keffiya standing on a pile of debris in
the Hurva. The dome and one wall are missing, but three walls of
the monumental buil