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A cursory glance at the exterior of the synagogue building, which stands slightly back from the street, will not reveal its powerful impact, the many stories that lie inside and outside its walls, and all that has happened over the years. It is a story of revival, Torah, Zionism and community life that flourished in the first Hebrew city in modern Israel.
It's 1932 - the period of the Fourth Aliyah to the Land of Israel. Tel Aviv has just celebrated its twentieth birthday. Bourgeois immigrants from Poland and Germany are arriving en masse, joining the tens of thousands of residents in the developing city of Tel Aviv and rejuvenating it. In the north of the city, which after the establishment of the State came to be called “the Old North,” a garden city is planned, in the network of streets where today the famous streets of Ibn Gabirol, Dizengoff and Ben Yehuda are situated. One of the plots is destined to become a neighborhood park for the suburb of Ephraim located there.
In September 1932 (Ellul 5692), a number of residents from the neighborhood informed the city municipality leadership of the establishment of a committee charged with building a synagogue in the neighborhood – the synagogue would later be called the “Central Synagogue for the Northern Neighborhoods.”
The spirit behind the effort to establish the synagogue was a man called Abba Cohen, an active and elderly public figure in Tel Aviv and one of the founders of the Fire Brigade in Israel. Cohen, a resident of the neighborhood in his fifties, received permission from his friend, the mayor Meir Dizengoff, to set up the synagogue. He mobilized the neighborhood residents to become involved in this project. Radio personality and culture buff Mully Shapira, who has known the synagogue since his childhood, recounts that the founders of the synagogue included many of the local residents, both religious and secular – the flower seller, the teacher, the gallery owner and the local butcher. A cornerstone was laid in 1933 on the plot that was converted from its original designated purpose, and in 1936, after raising funds – the synagogue was finally erected. The first gabbai of the synagogue was none other than the very person who had pushed to build it – the local resident, Abba Cohen.
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The first rabbi appointed to serve in the synagogue was Rabbi Eliyahu Aharon Milikowsky, who emigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union in 1928, after having served as rabbi in several cities there. The rabbi and his wife Sheindel faced great difficulty in their continued efforts to operate in the communist state. He made Aliyah thanks to the efforts of his family, who were living in Israel at the time, by invitation from the Chief Rabbinate and encouraged by the Mizrahi organization.
Rabbi Milikowsky, who made Aliyah at the age of 68, chose to settle in Tel Aviv. His house was on Byron Street just a few houses away from the synagogue. He was an outstanding and leading rabbi, and within just a few years he was appointed Head of the Rabbinical Courts in Tel Aviv, until he retired in the early nineteen forties. As rabbi of the synagogue at that time, he led the community, gave sermons to the public and also published a series of books incorporating his religious halakhic responsa, “Oholei Aharon.” In addition, he also took care of the refugees from Europe who came to the synagogue, some of whom even used the synagogue as a temporary abode. In his sermons and Torah lessons, he combined a considerable deal of wisdom gleaned from his rabbi, Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (better known as the “Netziv from Volozhin”), as well as the Torah commentaries of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, which at the time had yet to be translated into Hebrew. His sensitivity to the public was most apparent, right from his first sermon, which is documented in his book:
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In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, Rabbi Shimon Langbart, a resident of Tel Aviv and son-in-law of Rabbi Ya’akov Shapira, the Head of the Volozhin Yeshiva, approached the city municipality asking to establish there the Geonei Volozhin yeshiva for 15 young students. The yeshiva operated there for several years and the synagogue was even modified to accommodate the students’ needs. The yeshiva later moved to other locations in Tel Aviv, eventually finding a fixed location in Bnei Brak. The synagogue’s willingness to host the yeshiva – despite the difficult challenges involved – is testimony to its readiness to come to the aid and support of those in need.
In 1947, Rabbi Milikowsky passed away at the ripe old age of 88. The eulogy printed in the Ha-Tzofe newspaper, written by Rabbi Kazryel Fiszel Tchorz, described him as “a true scholar and giant of halakha and aggada,” adding “an outstanding scholar of aggada, with a clear, coherent style, interesting approach and the way he bases his ideas on the words of our Sages and their aggadot... His halakhic rulings were well set out and polished, he always endeavored to bridge between the various parties and his amiable tone of speech and pleasant approach had a lasting impact on all those who brought their cases before him [...] His sermons on Jewish festivals attracted large crowds. He spoke with moderation, at a good pace, gradually explaining and clarifying [...] His articles and sermons are extremely well set out, with measured sentences.”
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Rabbi Milikowsky's successor was Rabbi Menachem Meir Tzioni, a figure who more than anyone else is associated with the history of the synagogue over the years. Rabbi Menachem Tzioni was the son of Rabbi Nissan Ben Tzion and a cousin of Rabbi Yossef Shalom Elyashiv, a renowned leader of the ultra-Orthodox community. His original family name was Smuskovitz but was later changed to Tzioni. Rabbi Tzioni studied at Yeshivat Hebron and at Yeshivat Heichal HaTalmud and was ordained as a rabbi by Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac HaLevi Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel at that time. Even before he was officially appointed, he was well known for his fascinating Torah lectures, and at the synagogue too he delivered Talmud lessons to the general public, and Rabbi Milikowsky became impressed with him at these lectures. In his sermons and lectures, Rabbi Tzioni gave pride of place to the teachings of the Netziv from Volozhin, and especially his commentary on the Torah known as “Ha’Emek Davar” (“Delve into the Matter”), from which he succeeded in bringing numerous pearls of wisdom.
Following his appointment, he received widespread messages of congratulations from across the city and indeed the entire country.
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“He was a special man,” recounts his grandson, the Dayyan, Rabbi Bentzion Tzioni. “He was extremely dedicated to the synagogue and the members, he would always arrive early and be the last one to leave. He treated all those he spoke to with tremendous respect and listened attentively to everybody. He was blessed with a special sense of nobility and a radiant expression, a clear manifestation of the Slobodka method that he adamantly followed. He never spoke off the cuff. Every word he uttered was carefully thought out, after much consideration and deliberation.” “The synagogue-goers would consult with him on every aspect of their lives: wills, bequeathing of property. He was a community rabbi of the old school.” In parallel to his tenure as rabbi of the synagogue, Rabbi Tzioni also served as a dayyan in the Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court, and was eventually appointed Av Beit Din. Rabbi Tzioni earned an international reputation as an expert in dinei gittin, Jewish divorce law. He is known to have been involved in preparing the gett (divorce document) for Jonathan Pollard from his first wife, which presented a complex challenge for many dayyanim. After he retired from this position, he was even hired on a personal contract due to his expertise in this field. His grandson, Rabbi Bentzion Tzioni, served under him during his training as a dayyan.
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In the War of Independence, many of the synagogue-goers and their relatives fought on the battlefield. This is clear testimony of the considerable degree of involvement of the synagogue-goers in the life of the community at that time. A monument to the fallen soldiers of the War of Independence was set up years ago on the southern wall, adjacent to the synagogue entrance, and among those memorialized there are some of the fallen heroes from the Convoy of 35 (known in Hebrew as the “Lamed Hey”), the fallen from the battle of Kis Fallujah, Har Adar (Radar Hill), to name just a few. The stone on the wall is a living reminder of those moments in the life of the synagogue and the entire country in which the rebirth of Israel goes hand-in-hand with the ultimate sacrifice for it. The inscription at the base of the memorial plaque sums it up aptly:
“We shall proudly preserve the memory of our sons – our heroes who founded the State of Israel with their blood.”
Staff Sergeant Gad Noys' name appears at the bottom of the plaque. Gad fell in the Yom Kippur War, and his father, Asher Noys, who also fought in the British Army during the Second World War, was a regular synagogue-goer. As time went by and the number of fallen soldiers and deceased members increased, the names of the synagogue's fallen were placed together with the community's deceased on plaques along its northern wall. The synagogue became an important, cherished location for the families of the fallen who attended regularly over the years.
The synagogue’s construction file in the Tel Aviv municipality documents, in which the synagogue appears at the address of 23 Byron St. (the street which the synagogue's former façade faces), attests to the synagogue's gradual physical development through the various correspondence and procedures kept there. The file contains evidence of the initial planning stages, sanitary planning, correspondence on the addition of a balcony to house a sukkah and so on – all of which document the physical processes that the building underwent until finally reaching its present-day format.
Veteran synagogue members tell of hazanim (cantors) who arrived accompanied by a choir for the festivals. The identity of the hazanim was published in announcements posted on the streets and in the local press. One of the hazanim who came was Benjamin Zeev Monk, a student of the renowned hazanim Naftali Hershtik and Elli Jaffe. Another hazan who used to come to the synagogue accompanied by his choir was Pinchas Braun, who from an early age was termed a “wonder child.” The hazanim who came from afar were put up in a hotel and came to pray at the synagogue with the members of the choir. This is a further indication of the immense magnetism of the synagogue.
During the High Holidays at that time, not only was it impossible to find any vacant seats at synagogue, it was also necessary to reserve seats in folding chairs that were added alongside the fixed pews, in order to accommodate all those seeking to pray in the synagogue hall. This continued to be the case even after the renovation and construction of balconies that expanded the existing space in the synagogue. Over the years, many important and outstanding figures attended and prayed at the synagogue, including Dr. Yitzhak Kavish, the Director of the Ichilov Hospital, the father of IDF Major General Shaike Gavish, Shlomo Solomon Adir, who managed the Bloomfield soccer stadium and his daughter, the athlete Ilana Adir, who represented Israel at the Olympic Games, deputy mayor Zvi Klemantinovski, Dr. Yehezkel Pularevitch, the father of Shabi Maor, a former prisoner of Zion and the doctor of the ill-fated Dakar submarine, as well as many others.
At Friday night services, it was customary to make kiddush for the children, and every boy and girl would receive a small, personal silver kiddush cup. Bar-mitzvah boys would receive a special gift from the synagogue, a special kiddush cup along with a chumash engraved with a dedication from the synagogue. The event was celebrated on the second floor open balcony, and the women would carry up the full pots (“it was rather difficult,” recounts Shoshana Freidin, a veteran synagogue-goer). Mulli Shapira also recalls tales of youthful mischief such as tying the tzitzit of Rabbi Tzioni to his chair. These were the synagogue's heyday when its reputation reached far and wide. The newspapers reported the lectures and sermons, during prayers the synagogue filled with the voices of synagogue-goers of all ages, and many figures from across the entire religious spectrum of Tel Aviv society frequented it.
One of the key events remembered by the veteran members is the Yom Kippur War. The synagogue was full to the brim just as at any High Holiday season. Scores of men and women packed the aisles, on the folding chairs spread out across the hall. The silence in the street is quickly replaced by a tumultuous noise – numerous military vehicles traveling northwards towards the nearby Sde Dov airfield. Men wrapped in their tallit climbing onto trucks taking them to the airfield.
Media personality Moria Kor, who prayed at the synagogue as a young girl in the eighties and nineties, remembers the figure of Rabbi Tzioni kneeling down on Rosh Hashana opposite her grandfather, who sung out loud in the hazanic tunes from Latvia, as if his family from Riga, who were murdered in the Holocaust, were standing in front of him. “The rabbi knew full well that those few people who still made the effort to come and gather at the synagogue would turn on the television as soon as they got home or would run to the beach on a Shabbat morning, but everybody respected each other.”
The years went by and Rabbi Tzioni continued to proudly lead the synagogue. Even after he suffered a slight stroke, he continued to attend all the prayers in a wheelchair. In 2009, he passed away after more than sixty years serving as rabbi of the synagogue and having had a tremendous impact on generations of synagogue-goers, who to this day still talk about his lectures, his sermons and his involvement in community life.
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As the years went by, and the local population began to age, along with accompanying socio-cultural changes in the nature of the neighborhood, the synagogue began to dwindle and empty out. It appeared that those halcyon days, when you couldn't find a spare seat in the synagogue on Shabbat and festivals, had now gone. Gabbaim who had assumed the burden of running the synagogue for years now decided it was time to leave. On occasions, so the veterans tell us, the minyan on Shabbatot was made up of random individuals who were “taken” from the street. Certain individuals decided to exploit this state of affairs: Criminal elements took over the synagogue and it underwent an overall period of deterioration. The situation reached an all-time low, so much so that at one stage the electricity supply to the synagogue was even cut, and the remaining synagogue-goers were forced to use emergency lighting.
But the situation then changed dramatically. This was the result of the involvement of many who enlisted in the effort to save the synagogue. Among them is Mulli Shapira, who as mentioned above grew up in the synagogue and mentioned the dire situation on his radio show, which led to renewed interest in it; a widow from a senior retirement home who regularly attended the kiddush there and left a considerable amount in her will for renovation of the synagogue; as well as many other men and women who showed interest in its revival. After a long process, the synagogue was returned to the hands of the veteran synagogue-goers, a significant renovation and repairs were made possible – and since then the synagogue has begun to flourish once again.
The Kollel, which has been operating on the synagogue premises since the early two thousands, was one factor leading to the revival. The Kollel, which was established by Rabbi Tzioni's grandson, is home to avrechim studying for the Rabbinate and dayyan exams. Over the course of time, the Kollel merged with the “Shirat Devorah” Beit Midrash. In recent years, it has begun to operate anew inside the synagogue, under the leadership of Rabbi Zvi Knoll. During those years, additional groups joined the synagogue, religious communities from Givat Shmuel who came especially on Shabbatot, students from the Aish HaTorah yeshivot who came en masse, new immigrants who decided to take root in Tel Aviv, etc.
In 2011, the synagogue was awarded a special gift provided by the winner of the television reality show Survivor, Natan Bashevkin. Natan pledged to contribute a Sefer Torah should he win the first prize on the TV competition – and after he indeed did win it, he honored his commitment. The Sefer Torah was brought into the synagogue in a festive and moving event, which was even attended by the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. This was also an important factor contributing to the renewed lease of life enjoyed by the synagogue.
The synagogue is currently once again operating as a community hub for many residents, it is reminiscent of the great days of the synagogue in the last century – yet at the same time, it is moving ahead with the times and adapting itself to the modern age and the changing population. It is clear that the determination, persistence and belief, alongside the caring attitude and involvement of many who enjoyed what the synagogue had to offer them during their lives, led to the revamping of the synagogue after a number of years of decline; there is no doubt as to the important contribution of the various synagogue-goers who joined over the years to writing the new chapters in the synagogue's history.
We are extremely pleased at this, and we hope, together with the help of the public, to continue to strengthen the North Central Synagogue, and as it is now known as “126,” as a thriving community center impacting life both in the local neighborhood and the city as a whole.