The Tzemach Tzedek Synagogue was purchased with the aid of David Sassoon of Bombay in 1858 CE, and a second story was added with another synagogue and a yeshiva in 1879 CE. The additional institutions were named Knesset Eliyahu after Elias Sassoon of Bombay.
The building has never been destroyed although it stood in the heart of the heaviest fighting in the Jewish Quarter during the War of Independence. The late Rabbi Moshe Segal, a Chabad hassid, entered the building shortly after the capture of the city in the six-day war and slept there the first night to personally guard the building.
He lived alone in the Jewish Quarter for almost a year until his wife agreed to join him. During the British Mandate, he blew the Shofar at great risk at the Western Wall to mark the end of Yom-Kippur in defiance of mandate regulations.
