About the project
The Isaac Kaplan Old Yishuv Court Museum tells the story of life in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter from the 19th Century through the quarter’s fall to the Jordanians in 1948. The museum is housed in a complex of 500-year-old residential structures surrounding a courtyard that served as the home of the Weingarten family, whose head served as the rabbi of the Jewish Quarter. It also includes two historic synagogues: the Ari Synagogue, where, according to tradition, the Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Ben Shlomo Luria was born in 1534, and the Or Chayim Synagogue, named after a commentary on the Bible by Rabbi Chayim Ben Attar, who came to Jerusalem from Morocco in 1724.The museum exhibits thousands of artifacts that were used in everyday life, such as furniture, china, clothes, pots and pans. The Jerusalem Foundation helped establish the museum, and since has supported several renovation projects, exhibits and educational activities.
