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1978 m arked the fourth y ear since K ahn's death. It had been one year since a stunning resurgence of the p o w e r of the religious a n d trad tio n al Diaspora communiy toppled the Labor secular coalition and brought the right wing Likud coalition into pow er. N evertheless T eddy Kollek of the Labor party m aintained his pow erful postition as a M ayor of Jerusalem . O ddly enough, despite all this conflictual situation, these tw o rivals, the nationalist and the Religious camps, w ould be b ro u g h t together by the very thing that had driven them ap art a few years ago. Kollek and the religious authority w o u ld find th em selv es in a new c am p a ig n to re d e sig n th e K h u rv ah synagogue. This new national "joint" em erged through an unlikely tu rn of events.

In July 1978 M ayor Teddy Kollek (w ith D avid Zifroni, the director of the Com pany for the Jew ish Q uarter) invited three celebrated international architects, along w ith five Israeli architects, to p a rtic ip a te in a closed com petition for designing the K hurvah Synagogue. Indeed, the new Jewish q u arter was by then com pletely co n stru cted except for the vacant central square of the K hurvah. Invitations w ere sen t to Richard M eier, A ldo Van Eyck an d D enys L a sd u n (w ho w e re also m em b ers of th e Jerusalem C om m ittee).246 T h e y im m e d ia te ly re s p o n d e d p o sitiv e ly a n d v isited Jerusalem .247 The enthusiastic response of these architects is in great p art a testimony to the national aura Kahn had established for the Khurva.

246- L e tte rs. Zifroni, the director of the Jewish Q u arter Com pany, to Van Eyck, R. Mier and Lasdun, July 23, 1978 and cables from Lasdun, Van-Eyck and Meir to Kollek, July 3, 1978, Khurvah Folder 106, Archives of the Com pany for Reconstruction and D evelopm ent of the Jewish Q uarter in the Old City of Jerusalem (hereafter cited as Jewish Q u arter Archives) 247-Ibid.

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The program that the client sent to these architects highlighted the nationalist value of the architectural representation of ruins especially those of the D iaspora.248 A rchitects' a tte n tio n w as d ra w n to the new partial re c o n stru c tio n of th e K h u rv a h ru in s (especially the so u th e rn arch). Reiterating a language established earlier by Kahn, these ruins w ere intended to "serve as an eternal m em orial for the synagogue w hich w as destroyed during the fighting over the Jewish Q uarter in the w ar of independence."249 Architects were also provided w ith a concise statem ent on the history of the old K hurva, sh ed d in g light on its p re-Z io n ist D iaspora h istory.250 T he p ro g ram recom m ended th at "th e new sy n ag o g u e and the ru in s of the H urvah m ust be integrated by em phasizing the symbolic link betw een th e m and integrating the ru in s into the plans."251 It is clear th at in m aking this request the client had in m ind K ahn's configuration of the K hurvah as a juxtaposition of the new ly built ru in s an d D iaspora m em orialized ruins. That the site plan w hich was sent to the architects stipulated that the new design must be located w ithin the borders of the adjacent vacant square w hich conformed to K ahn's ow n K hurvah plans is further testimony to the client's aspiration to develop a design in its image 252

U nfortunately for Kollek and the invited architects, the com petition had to be abruptly canceled in A ugust 1978 253 The new chairm an and the

248-T he K hurvah Design C om petition Program . K hurvah Folder 106, (Jew ish Q u a rte r Company Archives)

249- lbid.. p.6. 250-Ibid. 251-Ibid, p.3.

252-Competition Site-Plan, Khurvah Folder 106, (Jewish Q uarter Com pany Archives).

253-Letters. Zifroni to Lasdun, Van-Eyck and Mier, August 15, 1978, w ith copies to K ollek, Khurvah Folder 106, ( Jewish Q uarter Com pany Archives)

com petition's com m ittee in the A ssociation of Engineers and A rchitects in Israel refused to h o n o r the com m itm ent of the late chairm an to a closed c o m p etitio n sp o n so re d by the m u n icip ality . In stead , th e A ssociation d em an d ed a com petition open to all Israeli architects.254 Israeli architects apparently felt that they should not be denied the right to participate in the design of w hat was and still could be the most im portant national symbol of their country.

Kollek refused to budge on the Association's dem and and canceled the com petition.255 H e, h o w ev er, co n triv ed a new tactic to sid este p this bureaucratic obstacle w hich w ould kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. M ayor Kollek convinced Joseph Schoenberger, a Jerusalemite architect well know n for his connection w ith religious authorities, to join as a liaison architect in a venture w ith a foreign expatriate as a chief architect, advising him on "religious affairs an d local conditions and legislation."256 It was Denys Lasdun who w as chosen for the task of designing the new Khurvah.257

In one stroke, Kollek resolved the legal obstacle w hich h ad hindered the direct design commission of foreign architects in Israel, and at the same time w orked to co-opt the religious authority so as to preem p t a potential opposition like the one that stalled K ahn's project. Kollek's new interest in coordinating w ith the religious au th o rity show ed in his insistence upon involving the rabbi of the Jewish Q uarter in various review s of the design. Most im portantly, how ever, is Kollek's request that the chief rabbi and H ead of Religious Courts of Jerusalem, Jakob Zolti, w rite the religious guidelines to

254-Letters. Zifroni to Lasdun, Van-Eyck and Mier, Septem ber 13, 1978, with copies to Kollek, Khurvah Folder 106, ( Jewish Q uarter Com pany Archives)

255-Ibid.

256-Zifroni, handw ritten note and letter, 3 October 1978, K hurvah Folder 106, (in Hebrew) (Jewish Q uarter Com pany Archives)

257-Ibid.

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help L asd u n in the d esign of the new K hurvah. The Rabbi prom ptly cooperated.258