La Ghriba Synagogue

The story

The La Ghriba synagogue stands at 4 He-Halutz Street, in the Old City of Beersheba, and is listed in the register of synagogues of the city's Religious Council. Its name is the name of another synagogue: al-Ghriba on the island of Djerba, off the coast of southern Tunisia. The Jewry of Djerba is considered one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, and some ascribe its beginning to the days of the First Temple. According to the island's tradition Jews came to it with the destruction of Jerusalem carrying one of the gates of the Temple, and in the al-Ghriba synagogue a stone set into one of its arches is displayed to this day, which according to that same tradition was brought from there. On the island are two Jewish quarters that are run as one community — Hara el-Kebira, the large village, and Hara el-Sghira, the small village — and the members of the community mostly trace themselves to the priests, and hence the nickname “the island of the priests”. Another name given to the island is “the corridor of Jerusalem”, and according to the source it expresses the community's effort to preserve the traditions it brought from the Land of Israel. The gabbai listed in the register of the Religious Council is Yitzhak Dahan. In the north of Beersheba stands the Center for the Preservation of the Heritage of the Jews of Tunisia, another house of that same immigration in the city.

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• Beersheba