In 1700, Rabbi Judah he-Hasid and between 300-1,000 students arrived in Jerusalem from Poland. They bought the courtyard next to the Ramban Synagogue, which had been closed by the Ottomans in 1589 due to Muslim incitement and they began building a synagogue to accommodate the increased Jewish population of the city on this site.

Construction was halted due to the sudden death of Rabbi he-Hasid, and the resulting decline of the community. Arab creditors burned the unfinished structure (together with the 40 Sifrei Torah it contained) in 1721. From this time on, the site was called Hurbat Rav Yehudah HaHasid: “the Ruin of Rabbi Judah the Pious.” The name was commonly abridged to “the Hurba” or “the Ruin.”

The site remained desolate for about 140 years, until the disciples of the Vilna Gaon built a new synagogue. This group of ascetic Jews, known as Perushim, immigrated to Palestine from Lithuania between 1809 and 1812 and settled primarily in Safed. Several outbreaks of disease and the earthquake of 1837 drove many to Jerusalem, where they formed the bulk of the Ashkenazi community.

The new synagogue took nine years to build, and was completed in 1864. The synagogue contained 42-foot-high window arches and a domed ceiling that rose 82 feet above the ground. It was the tallest structure in the Old City and was visible for miles. Although officially named “Beit Yaakov” after James (Yaakov) Rothschild, the synagogue was still universally known as the Hurba.

For the next 84 years, the building was widely considered the most beautiful and most important synagogue in Israel. It also housed the Etz Haim Yeshiva, the largest yeshivah in Jerusalem. It was the center of Jewish spiritual life in the city and was the site of the installation of the chief rabbis of both the Palestine region and Jerusalem.

The Hurba synagogue was the last outpost of Jewish resistance in the Old City of Jerusalem during the Israeli War of Independence. The Arab Legion of Jordan captured it during the battle for Old Jerusalem in 1948, and its captors dynamited it to show that they controlled the Jewish Quarter. The Jordanian commander on the scene is reported to have told his superiors: “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact.
This makes the Jews' return here impossible.”

During July and August 2003, an excavation funded by the Jewish Quarter Development Company of Jerusalem took place inside the Hurba. Before the excavation, the Israel Antiquities Authority supervised the removal of the stone flooring which had been laid after the 1967 Six-Day War. The Institute for Archaeology at the Hebrew University and the Israel Exploration Society conducted the dig. Earth was removed to a depth of two meters over an area of 300 square meters. The dig revealed evidence from four main settlement periods: First Temple (800-600 BCE), Second Temple (100 CE), Byzantine and Ottoman. After the reunification of Jerusalem by Israel in 1967, plans were made to rebuild the synagogue as part of the general renewal of the Jewish Quarter. The plans were commissioned from architect Louis Kahn, a world-renowned architect who was also a founding member of the Jerusalem Committee. Unfortunately, Kahn died before the project could be realized.

Disputes arose over the modern façade of the proposed new building, which some felt did not properly match the Jewish Quarter's aesthetic. An Englishman, Sir Charles Clore, took the initiative and agreed to fund the project, provided it could be completed in a specified number of years so that the project would be completed before his death. Sir Denys Lasdun drew up plans that were also modern but more closely adhered to the original. Bowing to the objection of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, however, the Minister of Interior at the time refused to sign the papers so that construction could begin.

Time ran out on Clore's offer and the Hurba was not rebuilt. However, Sir Charles's daughter provided the necessary funds to create one of the few open spaces in the Jewish Quarter. Because no permanent solution could be found, a temporary, symbolic solution was agreed upon whereby one of the four arches that originally supported the synagogue's monumental dome was recreated. The original building, including the dome, stood twice as high as the Memorial Arch.

In 2005, the Israeli government announced its plan to rebuild the Hurba Synagogue exactly as it had appeared before the Jordanian destruction, assigning the project a budget of 28 million shekels ($6.2 million). Work has started on the site and is expected to take four years.