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NEWS
Remaining Damascus Jews Hold Seder in City's Only Active
Shul
by Yated Ne'eman Staff
An AP reporter visiting Damascus during Pesach met the last
remaining members of the only surviving kehilloh in
the Syrian capital after the late President Hafez Assad
permitted Jews to leave the country in 1992. Seven
mispallelim at Beit Knesset Al-Feranj, located in the
city's ancient Jewish quarter, told the reporter they feel no
religious discrimination.
One of the leaders of the Syrian Jewish community, Albert
Qameo, 59, who has been organizing the tefillos since
the local rov left the country in 1994, said that during the
past 16 years 3,700 Jews have relocated to Eretz Yisroel and
the US, but says he has no intention of leaving. "Here I was
born and studied, and here is where I work. Also, we have an
obligation to preserve our holy sites in the country."
Another worshiper, 41-year-old Yosef Hamdani, says the
hostile relations between Syria and Israel have no effect on
the authorities' stance toward Syrian Jews. "I'm on good
terms with my Muslim neighbors," he said. "I don't feel I'm
treated differently."
According to estimates, the Syrian Jewish community currently
numbers 100. Most live in Damascus, with small pockets of
Jews in the northern city of Aleppo (Halab) and the
northeastern city of Qamishli, near the Turkish border.
The Syrian Jewish community, once the largest and most
influential in the Middle East, was probably founded after
Churban Bayis Rishon and has had a continuous Jewish presence
ever since then. Numerous Spanish Jews arrived following the
Expulsion in 1492. The status of Syrian Jews was worse than
in other Muslim countries. In 1840 major pogroms were held
following the Damascus Libel. With the start of the large
Arab uprising in Eretz Yisroel in 1936, Syrian Jews,
suspected of being Zionists, began to suffer extensive
persecution. In 1943 Syria had a Jewish population of 30,000.
After the 1947 UN decision to establish the State of Israel,
the Jews came under attack, especially in Aleppo and
Damascus, and much of their property was burned or destroyed.
Most of the Jews fled in the following years of the few
thousand who remained most escaped by the skin of their teeth
in the early 1990s.
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