The Old Yemenite Synagogue, known to its congregation as Beit Knesset Ohel Shlomo (lit. "Solomon's Tent Synagogue"), is a restored synagogue[1] from the nineteenth century[2] Yemenite Village (Harat al-Yaman in Arabic),[3] the Kfar Hashiloach (Hebrew: כפר השילוח) neighborhood in the Jerusalem district of Silwan.
Between 1885 and 1891, 45 stone houses were built for the Yemenite Jews which had arrived in Jerusalem in 1882[4] In 1936, during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Yemenite-Jewish community was removed from Silwan by the Welfare Bureau of the Jerusalem Community Council (Va'ad ha-Kehillah), the local counterpart of the Jewish National Council (Va'ad Leumi), into the Jewish Quarter as security conditions for Jews worsened.[5] and in 1938, the remaining Yemenite Jews in Silwan were evacuated by the Jewish Community Council on the advice of the police.[3][6]
According to documents in the custodian office and real estate and project advancement expert Edmund Levy, the buildings of the Yemenite Jews were occupied by Arab families without registering ownership.[7][8]
In May, 2015 Ateret Cohanim, a Jewish group that had established legal ownership of the old synagogue, moved into the building.[9][10][11] Local residents threw rocks at the activists as they moved in.[9]