This implies that the synagogue was built in memory of Malka, the wife of Israel ben Josef. The year 1552 was a very difficult time for the family of Israel: his mother, wife, and daughter-in-law, the first wife of Rabbi Moshe Isserles, and probably other family members died in the epidemic that hit Kraków that year, in addition to numerous Jewish inhabitants of Kazimierz. Israel ben Josef was a wealthy banker who settled in Kraków only in 1519, following the expulsion of Jews from the German city of Regensburg. Another tradition maintains that the synagogue was founded by Rabbi Moshe Isserles himself in memory of first wife Golda, who died at the age of twenty.