Expanding: Recently, a request was submitted to the Bnei Brak Municipality Planning and Building Committee to add a floor above the Great Synagogue and the Beit HaTavshiel Hall at 53 Rabbi Akiva Street.
The application has not yet been approved, but the developers have the required permits from the Great Synagogue Association.
The synagogue was formerly used by the national religious community, and today serves as a seminary for graduates of the Hebron Yeshiva. This, After the synagogue's worshippers grew old or passed away, the synagogue's collectors, who came from Hebron and lived on 6 Levi Street in the city, reached an agreement with the association's directors about operating the synagogue, and to this day, a prayer for the peace of IDF soldiers is said every Shabbat.
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Only five veteran worshippers remain in the synagogue. The official management of the association is in the hands of those who remained - the chairman of the synagogue is Haim Ahuvan and the synagogue treasurer is Shlomo Weintraub. In recent years, a representative of Hebron immigrants, Rabbi Aviezer Koldatsky, has been added as a member of the association, who has begun to promote the place as a house of Torah study and not just for prayer.
The entire building is owned by the Great Synagogue Association. On the ground floor there is a huge hall that was rented by the directors of the 'Beit HaTavshiel'.
However, the synagogue itself is rented out throughout the week to a kollel where hundreds of avrechim study, headed by Rabbi Eliyahu Greenblatt and funded by the governor, businessman Dan Gertler, who even renovated the synagogue for the benefit of the kollel.
Recently, an evening kollel was also established in the synagogue, funded by Gertler. Due to the congestion created at the site, since the Hebrews from Hebron also study in various settings in the synagogue hall, lengthy negotiations were held with the synagogue management, and it was recently agreed that the roof of the building would be rented, and an additional floor would be built, where a beit midrash would operate with about 400 seats for Gertler's kollels.
