Construction started in 1903, and at noon on Sunday, 4 September 1904, the synagogue was inaugurated with Handel's prelude in D major and the Ma Tovu prayer led by cantor David Stabinski (1857–1919), Rabbi Josef Eschelbacher [de] (1848–1916, illuminating the ner tamid) and Rabbi Adolf Rosenzweig (1850–1918) preaching.

In the afternoon of the same day, Berlin's other Jewish community Israelitische Synagogengemeinde Adass Jisroel [de], solely comprising Orthodox members, opened its own synagogue in Artilleriestraße, today's Tucholskystraße.

With its members of different Jewish affiliations, the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin also offered services in its different synagogues following different ceremonial styles.

Other synagogues applied the new style (Neuer Ritus), often including organ music, (mixed) choirs and additional songs sung in German language.

[2]: 23 Each synagogue of Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin had its own elected Synagogenvorstand (board of gabba'im), which developed synagogal minhagim including their own peculiarities.

However, this was protested in the 1920s by a group of congregants, the so-called Kol Nidrei demonstrators, who ostentatiously left the main prayer hall shortly before the service on the eve of Yom Kippur and then formed a minyan in the hallway, praying Kol Nidrei there, before returning again to the main hall.

[2]: 24 The Israelitisches Familienblatt dedicated an article to the 25th anniversary of the inauguration of the Synagogue,[4] while the gabba'im decided to celebrate a special ceremony on Sunday, 29 September 1929.

[5] On 25 January the same year Synagogenverein gathered for a lecture and made the case for unitary siddur and machzor, denying aiming at Reform but at restoring the minhag as it used to be until by 1928, claiming that most congregants disliked the traditionalist changes since.

The Nazi dictatorship, with its anti-Semitic discrimination, invidiousnesses, persecutions, and atrocities, changed the lives of German Jewry so thoroughly that disputes on style and traditions fell silent.

After the new Nazi government had widely banned Jewish performers, artists and scientists from public stages and lecterns, Rykestraße Synagogue opened for their concerts and lectures organised by Kulturbund Deutscher Juden or benefit performances by Jüdisches Winterhilfswerk (Jewish winter aid endowment) in favour of poor Jews, who had been excluded from government benefits.

[7] Instead the Nazis ordered – as in other comparable sites too[b] – a "mere" vandalisation and destruction of furnishings, since the synagogue is located within a block of residential buildings.

[8]: 39  A fire ignited and burning torah scrolls and smashed furniture was soon extinguished before spreading to the actual building.<[2]: 39  Many windows had been destroyed.

The furnishings (chandeliers, lustres, menorot, ner tamid, cupper coverings of doors) of the synagogue made from non-ferrous metal, which was scarce and much needed for war production, were not dismantled.

[2]: 45 The prayer hall lacked most of its benches, and the aron kodesh was screened off by a raw provisional wall built after April 1940.

Erich Nehlhans [de] (1899–1950, Soviet Gulag), who survived the Shoah living underground, the new president of Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin much promoted the reopening of Rykestraße Synagogue.

Material unavailable in the communist planning system, such as zinc to repair the roof, were bought in West Berlin and brought over.

[2]: 48–49 During the course of the anti-Semitic campaigns in Czechoslovakia during the Slánský trial, GDR authorities arrested and interrogated Jews living in East Germany.

Communist Volkskammer deputy Julius Meyer [de] (1909–1979), president of the union of Jewish congregations in East Germany (not including Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin), was interrogated between 6 and 8 January, when GDR officials prompted him to declare in the name of the Jewish community that there is no anti-Semitism in communist states, that Israel is a fascist state and that he acknowledges the Slánský trial.

Georg Heilbrunn and Israel Rothmann held speeches, the latter praising the great Soviet Union and the GDR government.

On Rosh haShana 1987 (23 September) Isaac Newman assumed his office as rabbi for Jüdische Gemeinde von Berlin (after 1970 the Groß had been skipped).

The inauguration saw rabbis bringing the Torah to the synagogue, in a ceremony witnessed by political leaders and Holocaust survivors from around the world.

"It is now the most beautiful synagogue in Germany," the cultural affairs director of the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin, Peter Sauerbaum, said.

Since the archives of Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin were mostly destroyed following the compulsory dissolution of the community by the Nazi government exact years of office cannot be given.