Ben Ezra Synagogue

The 9th-century Ben Ezra Synagogue occupies the shell of a 4th-century Christian church. In the 12th century the synagogue was restored by Abraham Ben Ezra, rabbi of Jerusalem – hence its name. Tradition marks this as the spot where the prophet Jeremiah gathered the Jews in the 6th century after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Jerusalem temple. In 1890, a cache of more than 250,000 papers, known as the Geniza documents, was uncovered in the synagogue; from them, researchers have been able to piece together details of the life of the North African Jewish community from the 11th to 13th centuries.