Scholars generally accept the first synagogue was built in the year 1163 in Kaifeng. By this time, Kaifeng had already been occupied by the Jurchen for 38 years, and the Jurchens had made it their southern capital for two years. This site remains in the possession of the Jewish congregation for the next 751 years, until the year 1914.

According to the 1512 Stone Inscription: In the year 1163, a synagogue was built in Kaifeng (宋孝隆兴元年癸未，建寺于汴). The inscription does not mention, however, that this was the first time the synagogue was constructed.

According to the 1663b Stone Inscription: in 1163, the synagogue was first restored (清真寺之修，始於宋孝隆兴元年).

There is no ambiguity to the word 修 in Chinese, as it appeared on the inscription. In no way does it mean to build. Instead, it meant to restore or, to renovate.

Thus, it is worth noting that, according to the text inscribed, the synagogue had already existed before the year 1163; otherwise, it couldn't have been restored then.

Arrived Kaifeng in 988, assuming the inscription of 1489 was accurate, and the first synagogue was built in 1163, then it took the Jewish community 165 years to first develop their communal house of worship.

There are five possible reasons for this long wait.

1.     Before the sizeable communal synagogue was built, it is reasonable to assume there were many smaller places of worship for the individual families or clans. For example, when Father Matteo Ricci met with the three Jews from Kaifeng who came to visit him in Beijing, he noted in his China journal, "they were very puzzled as to why there were no pictures or statues in their large synagogue or their private prayer halls or home." This is a clear sign that the Jews were used to two types of worship venues — a communal one that housed all congregation members and the small family ones.

2.     It might have taken a long time for the early pioneers who paid tribute to the Song emperor to decide on settling down in a foreign land; only afterwards did the other 70 clans follow.

3.     The change of dynasty meant an extended period of war and unrest, which was not conducive to large scale construction.

4.     A piece of land in the centre of the capital city with a dense population was not easy to obtain. After many years of war, the Song Dynasty retreated to the South, Kaifeng transformed from a city with one million people to a town with only fifty thousand. Perhaps this made it possible to secure a piece of land in the centre of the town.

5.     To build a synagogue, a large sum of capital was required, which took time to accumulate.

The inscription of 1489 stated that the synagogue was built during the first year of Longxing during the reign of the Song Emperor Xiao-zong (宋孝隆兴元年); all the following inscriptions just followed this convention. Emperor Xiao-zong was the second emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty (南宋, 1127–1279), which only controlled parts of southern China. Kaifeng was part of northern China which was under the Great Jin’s jurisdiction.

At the time, the conventional way of indicating the year 1163 would have been referencing the third year of Dading (大定) during the reign of the Great Jin Dynasty Emperor Shi-zong (金世宗, reign 1161–1189).

This raises the question — why did the composers of the inscriptions choose the Song calendar when Kaifeng was under the reign of the Great Jin Dynasty? There are four possible reasons.

1.     Perhaps they wished to keep the building of the synagogue on the same calendar as when they offered western cotton cloth as a tribute to the Song emperor.

2.     Some scholars argued that the inscription of 1489 used the Song calendar because the Jews felt a deep attachment to the Song Dynasty because it was a Song emperor who welcomed them with open arms and granted them the freedom to settle down in China and worship freely and openly.

3.     Since the Song Dynasty still existed and had not been officially terminated, they had a semi-legitimate reason for using the Song calendar.

4.     The Jews arrived in Kaifeng during the Song Dynasty, offered tribute to the Imperial Court, and were blessed with the right to settle down in the Middle Kingdom. When the Jurchens overthrew the Song Dynasty and had trouble mitigating inflation caused by counterfeit currency, it was the Kaifeng Jews who helped them alleviate the economic turmoil; the Jews were therefore granted the right to build their first synagogue. Thus, the Kaifeng Jews had formed amicable relationships with both ruling regimes. However, the inscriptions were likely to be biased against the Jurchens because the Great Ming Dynasty was quite anti-foreign after the Jin and the Yuan; therefore, the Kaifeng Jews would not have wanted to anger their Han Chinese rulers. Thus, the composer may have decided to use the Han-Song Calendar over the Jurchen-Jin Calendar to not seem disloyal to the regime.