[6] Rabbi Isaac Pulver, the first rabbi at this location, left for Australia after two years because, he said "first, that I cannot get kosher meat, secondly that I cannot, as a Jewish parent, bring up my children in a place where so little regard is paid to the principles of our Holy Religion; and thirdly, that, notwithstanding nearly two years’ trial to live as economically as possible, I could not make my income meet my expenses.

[6] The architect, James Hogg, is believed to have made a careful analysis of Solomon’s Temple in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and incorporated features derived from this study in the final plan.

[5] The previously Anglo-German character of the congregants began to change as significant numbers of more religiously observant Jewish migrants arrived from Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1948.

The monopoly of the CTHC was broken and The New Hebrew Congregation was formed, with its Roeland Street Shul opened in 1902, accommodating the less affluent, more religiously observant Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe.

Both Bender and Abrahams occupied the chair of Hebrew studies at the University of Cape Town and had the title of Professor.

[5] In 1942 Abrahams addressed Cape Town City Hall as news emerged of the Holocaust unfolding in Europe, telling attendees that two million souls, each one created in the image of God, had been destroyed from this earth.

[12] Membership progressively declined as much of the City Bowl Jewish population migrated to the Southern Suburbs and Sea Point.

In 1995, the synagogue took the lead in Cape Town by hosting a memorial service for the murdered Israeli president, Yitzhak Rabin.

At the turn of the millennium, the congregation was reinvigorated by the development of its campus in providing the South African Jewish Museum, the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, the Jacob Gitlin Library, the Gardens Jewish Community Centre and the kosher cafe, Café Riteve.