The Gardens Shul, formally the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation (CTHC), also called the Great Synagogue, is a Modern Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in the Company's Garden, in the Gardens neighborhood of Cape Town, South Africa. The congregation was established in 1841, making it the oldest Jewish congregation in South Africa.

The congregation, known as "The Mother Synagogue of South Africa," possesses two historic structures, the 1863 synagogue known as the Old Shul and the 1905 synagogue. The South African Jewish Museum, located in its grounds, also occupies the Old Shul and is responsible for its upkeep. The 1905 building is an example of Edwardian architecture and has been called "one of the most magnificent synagogues in the world."

The congregation first met in 1841 on Erev Yom Kippur in a private home. The next week it established the Society of the Jewish Community of Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope or Tikvath Israel (tikvath meaning "hope").

In 1842 it purchased land on Albert Road in Woodstock to establish a cemetery for the congregation, after the Municipality of Cape Town refused a request for a customary free grant of land for a cemetery and demanded the congregation pay £10 ({equivalent to R2,000 in 2018). for a plot on Somerset Road. The congregation was upset by the refusal and the plot's proximity to a slave cemetery, which it understood as a reference by the Municipality to Jews being descended from slaves in Egypt, so it withdrew the application and raised funds for the Woodstock plot.

The congregation moved into a purpose-built synagogue in 1848, next to the Houses of Parliament. 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."

Pulver was replaced by Joel Rabinowitz, who formed the Jewish Philanthropic Society (now the Board of Guardians). In 1863 the congregation moved into a larger building, now known as the Old Shul. 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.

In 1896, the congregation formed its own school on Hope Hill, the Cape Town Hebrew Congregational Public School. It was supported by Cecil Rhodes and Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr and by 1902 had 500 pupils in its high school and separate junior school. It was eventually taken over by the Cape School Board, but lost its character as a Jewish school and closed in 1920.

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. In 1899, 25,000 refugees from the South African War arrived in Cape Town, 3,000 of whom were Jewish and mostly from Eastern Europe. Many of the Jewish refugees' English was not sufficient to easily follow Bender's ^{[clarification needed]} sermons, and were uncomfortable with the less strict religious observance of the Anglo-German Jewish establishment, and with Bender's antipathy towards Zionism. 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.