gue, which dates from 1175 and was carefully reconstructed after its desecration on Kristallnacht, is the oldest in Germany. Prominent students, rabbis andscholars of Worms include Shlomo Yitzhaki (Rashi) who studied with R. Yizhak Halevi sgan haleviya, Elazar Rokeach , Maharil and Yair Bacharach. At the Rabbinical Synod held at Worms at the turn of the 11th century, rabbi Gershom ben Judah (Rabbeinu Gershom) explicitly prohibited polygamy for the first time.
For hundreds of years, uninterrupted, the Jewish Quarter was the centre of Jewish life until Kristallnacht in 1938, when much of the Jewish Quarter was destroyed. Worms today has only a very small Jewish population, and a recognizable Jewish community as such no longer exists. However, after renovations in the 1970s and 1980s, many of the buildings of the Quarter can be seen in a close-to-original state, preserved as an outdoor museum.
In 2010 the synagogue was fire bombed. Eight corners of the building were set ablaze, and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a window. There were no injuries. However Kurt Beck, Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, condemned the attack and vowed to mobilize all necessary resources to find the perpetrators saying, "We will not tolerate such an attack on a
