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To our esteemed friends and supporters, in our continuous effort of outreach and dialogue, we have created an informal and unofficial venue, in parallel to our website- in the auxiliary effort of promoting the project on the Facebook social network. If you’re a member of Facebook, you are personally invited to join the vibrant and innovative discussions of youth, students, and young professionals around the world who are united in our common cause.

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Group Name: “www.thejewsoflebanon.org”

النهار:
“القصة الصغيرة ليهود لبنان”، وثائقي للمخرج اللبناني الفرنسي ايف تركية وإنتاج “مؤسسة ذاكرة يهود لبنان”، عُرض في بانوراما السينما اللبنانية التي كرّمها مهرجان السينما في باريس المستمر حتى 14 تموز في العاصمة الفرنسية. ويروي الشريط للمرة الاولى قصة فئة كانت تشكل عنصراً من العناصر المكونة للمجتمع اللبناني، وفيه لمحات من حياة اليهود قبل رحليهم من لبنان.
ولتصوير مشاهده، قصد المخرج تركية، الذي عمل ايضا صحافياً في بيروت حتى مغادرته لبنان مع بدايات الحرب اللبنانية وقبل ان يتحول الى العمل في مجال الاشرطة الوثائقية، تسعة بلدان هاجر اليها اليهود الذين كانوا يعيشون في لبنان ومنها قبرص واسرائيل والولايات المتحدة وفرنسا وايطاليا.
ويقدر العدد الاجمالي لليهود الذين كانوا يعيشون في لبنان بنحو ثمانية آلاف شخص، 1800 منهم فقط كانوا يحملون الجنسية اللبنانية، فيما قدم الآخرون من سوريا وتحديداً من حلب، وغالبيتهم كانت تقطن حي وادي ابو جميل في بيروت. ولم يبق منهم اليوم سوى نحو 70 شخصا.
وقال تركية ان المشروع الاساسي كان يتضمن تصوير اليهود المقيمين حتى الآن في لبنان، لأن “الموضوع كان مطروحاً، وكنا على وشك الذهاب الى لبنان حين حدث اغتيال رفيق الحريري” رئيس الوزراء اللبناني السابق في شباط 2005. وأوضح ان يهود لبنان عموماً يفضلون عدم الظهور وعدم الكلام، مؤكدا انه اراد الابتعاد عن الشأن السياسي وعن الجدل الذي يمكن ان يثيره الوثائقي، وان يعالج موضوعه في اطار كوميدي خفيف.
ويلاحق الشريط العائلات اليهودية المهاجرة ليتعقب مصيرها وحياتها ويبحث عن علاقتها الراهنة بلبنان الذي انقطعت عنه ليبقى حضوره اقوى في الذاكرة.
وقال المخرج ان شريطه غير مخصص للعرض امام الجمهور العريض، إلا ان قناة “ار تي” الفرنسية - الالمانية أعلنت انها ستبثه قريباً.

Photos taken in recent days of a Jewish cemetery in Beirut. One of the ideals outlined by JOL.org is the rehabilitation and clean-up of the Jewish cemeteries in Lebanon. The emotional ramifications are worthy our attention, and in due time, we hope to clean up these sites.

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Emotional plea by a Jewish youth in Lebanon, previously published by JOL.org

I am sitting a few minutes walking distance from the Maghen Abraham, writing this letter, but frankly I am at a loss for words. I am not sure what to say, or for that matter what to feel. The past few years have been a monumental struggle for me, a struggle for finding my identity, my roots, my past. My struggle might be unique in its details, but at its core it is all too common.

Perhaps you will not understand the feelings I am trying to convey. Perhaps words cannot do justice to these feelings to begin with. These feelings are better kept in one’s heart, but I have decided to attempt to at least give you a sense of the struggle that rages in me, even today, when I can safely say that I feel confident about my belonging and identity.

It pains me that I have not had the chance to experience the life that some of you in the audience might have experienced in the past in Lebanon. It pains me immensely that I have to pass by the Maghen Abraham every day without being able to enter, if only to view the destruction, to say a prayer (even though I do not know how to say prayers), to stand there and imagine and visualize what the 1940s, 50s, 60s were like. It pains me that some of you, in the audience, wish to deny that I - a Lebanese Jew - exist. That my family and friends exist. It pains me immensely that I have to keep my identity hidden in my own country, but also that I have to prove my Jewishness to you, my fellow Jews, my fellow countrymen and women. I do not consider myself or my family more Lebanese than you the Lebanese Jews in the audience, just because my family chose to stay in Lebanon. No, I do not espouse such elitist views, nor do I wish to impose labels on you. It is up to every individual to define and exert his or her identity based on his or her experiences and feelings. I might not know how to pray, and I might not have had the chance to go to shul / knis, but I am a product of the context and situation I was born into. I might not sound convincing, and I might not impress you with my words, but I seek neither to convince nor impress. And if it matters, I am writing this with tears in my eyes.

If you wish, you may choose to believe that I am not Jewish. You may choose to believe I am not Lebanese. You may choose to believe that I am your enemy in disguise. Go ahead and do it. But I ask you, if I am all these, so what? Is the wish to spread awareness and battle anti-Semitism, the wish to see renovated rather than destroyed Synagogues, the wish to see cemeteries taken care of, the wish to see a Jewish community living openly and being looked at as equals, an act of enmity? If all this is enmity, then I wonder, what does friendship look like? And if you would like, consider me an enemy - I have no objections, as long as you pay attention to these wishes, as long as you listen to those who have been able to reap your trust.

I have this much to say, and no more. I do not believe in throwing fancy words around, words that are void of real feelings and only scratch the surface of the struggle. I believe in expressing honest feelings, the reality of the struggle, the immense pain in my heart. The depth of this issue, its importance for me and my family, necessitate not an amalgamation of fancy words, but a reference to a set of realities that need to be addressed. In the end, I am but one person, ignore me if you will, but do not ignore the question, the issue, the problem, the “non-existent” Jewish community in Lebanon, or whatever else you want to call us.

Maghen Abraham is the symbol of our community. Every day I pass by it, I cannot help but assure myself that it will be the symbol of our renaissance. I wrote my thoughts and feelings in this letter as they came along, but I knew its conclusion from the very beginning. I cannot afford not to know it. For you, it might not be a reality you live with every day, but we are not blessed with that luxury. So I say, let the elderly revel in the nostalgia, but at least give our youth a chance to live it.

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Recently purchased in northern Lebanon at an antique dealership. The second picture is from a Church which was certainly a Synagogue in the past catering to Lebanon’s Jewish sons.

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It has been 1 year since the launch of this website and we hope to continue this endeavor for as many years as it takes until a new reality surfaces in Lebanon- genuine national unity where all Lebanese citizens reserve the right to live freely, openly, and with dignity regardless of their religious persuasion.

Lebanon is a nation built by minorities for minorities and shall remain as such. We must remain steadfast and unwavering in our beliefs, our values, for they are universal values applicable to any citizen in this world.

A great man once said, when working towards righteousness, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win”. We are already successful because we have laid the foundations for this unparalleled undertaking, and in due time, we hope we will continue moving forward with the establishment of an NGO based in Beirut which is the only avenue towards triumph.

In only one year we have caught the eye of major international press, whether Time Magazine or An-Nahar Newspaper, we have proved this project is relevant to all citizens of the world and not specific primarily to Lebanon. The message of love, tolerance, and coexistence must be replenished and protected in the land of the cedars, the land of coexistence- Lebanon. Initially this project was attacked and shamed, but we have proved with time what we really stand for. Not any form of ignorance or hatred can shake the rock we call www.thejewsoflebanon.org

With more determination, ambition, and inspiration, I vow to continue spearheading this project until the new reality surfaces in Lebanon. A country for all, a message for the world.

Aaron-Micaël Beydoun

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Tiny Jewish community lives on in Beirut
From Agence France-Presse - 26/04/1998

Nayla Razzouk

BEIRUT, April 26 (AFP) - A tiny community of elderly Jews continues to live on in Beirut, quietly celebrating feasts and prayers at home, heedless of virulent anti-Jewish feeling and decades of violence pitting Arabs against Jews in the Middle East.

“They are mostly old people living quietly, a few businessmen and a handful of families with children,” said Toufik Yedid, secretary of the Jewish Council, who turns 84 this year.

Yedid, the only member of the tiny Jewish community who agreed to speak, said however that Jews in Lebanon were never subject to “official repression” as in some other Arab countries.

“Some unfortunate incidents happened to Jews, but we did not take it personally because many people associate Jews with Israel, which is a totally wrong perception,” he said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri said earlier this week that his country was officially still at war with Israel, which first invaded its northern neighbour 20 years ago.

“We are Lebanese, but we just happen to be Jewish. We are one of the 19 officially recognized communities in Lebanon,” Yedid said of the some 95 Jews who live in Beirut’s Christian eastern suburbs.

“Jews in Lebanon? I didn’t know there were still Jews in Lebanon,” said businesswoman Shereen Salem, 34, echoing the reaction of many Lebanese.

“If this is true, then they must be living in complete hiding or there must only be a handful of them because they are really invisible in society.”

The Jewish community numbered more than 10,000 in the 1940s, but a massive exodus, mostly toward Europe and the United States, began after the 1948 creation of Israel and throughout the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.

“Very few Jews went to Israel, but most of them did not stay there for social and economic reasons,” said Yedid.

At the onset of the 15-year civil war in 1975, about 3,000 Jews were still living in Lebanon, but a last wave of departures occurred after the 1984-1985 abduction of 11 Jews by militias in Moslem-dominated west Beirut.

“Four of them were killed and their bodies were recovered. We know that thousands of Lebanese are also missing, but like other communities we are still concerned about the fate of the remaining missing seven,” said Yedid.

Yedid says he is not afraid to stay in Lebanon, but admits that “life in Beirut is difficult for us.”

“We have not had a rabbi since 1975, but we still hold Sabbath prayers and celebrate our feasts quietly in our homes with Kosher meat, wine and matzo (unleavened bread) imported from Syria or Europe,” he said.

Yedid sighed sadly when asked about the 16 synagogues that once existed in Lebanon and the abandoned Jewish cemetery on the former Green Line that once separated warring Christian and Moslem militias in Beirut.

“The synagogues are destroyed but we hope to rebuild them, especially the Magen Abraham synagogue, the only one spared by the bulldozers reconstructing Beirut,” he said.

After a safari-like drive into Wadi Abou Jmil — Beirut’s former Jewish neighborhood in the war-devastated city center — and once clouds of dust from the rough terrain clear, determined visitors can reach the synagogue.

Ironically, the synagogue, once taken over by squatters, suffered most of its damage from Israeli shells during the Jewish state’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

But the synagogue, with Hebrew inscriptions on its facade and a shattered red-tiled roof, has been walled up by the Jewish Council who fear further damage.

A young Jewish businessman who did not wish to be named said he had “no problem in dealing with all Lebanese, even Hezbollah because they consider me Lebanese like them”.

The Shiite Moslem Hezbollah spearheads the guerrilla war to oust Israel out of southern Lebanon and staunchly opposes making peace with the Jewish state.

“I am confident that many Lebanese Jews who have left want to return home once peace is reached in the region,” said Yedid.

“It will be very difficult for Jews to return, but nothing is impossible. Beirut schools once had Jewish, Moslem and Christian students sitting side by side,” said Sana Idriss, a Sunni Moslem woman in her 70s, recalling her childhood memories.”

Religious Tomb of Zebulun

Interior of Synagogue

Copyright © Marie-Claire Feghali/An-Nahar Newspaper Beirut

Lebanese Jews Living in Fear

HALA JABER

(AP) _ The few Jews remaining in Beirut say they live in fear and confusion because of the kidnappings of four Jewish men in west Beirut, where the Jewish community had always lived in peace with Moslems.

“”I am a Lebanese Jew and have lived in Lebanon all my life,” said one woman. “”I still cannot understand the reason behind it, but I must admit I am scared.”

“”What relation have we with the Israelis?” asked another woman. “”What is it to do with us? I don’t understand.”

The women, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of being singled out by the kidnappers, were interviewed in Wadi Abu Jamil, once the thriving Jewish quarter of west Beirut, where most residents are Moslems.

During the 1950s Lebanon’s Jewish population was estimated at about 9,000. Many Jews came to Lebanon because of anti-Jewish fervor in other Arab countries over the creation of Israel.

Judaism is one of 17 religions officially recognized by the Lebanese government. During anti-Zionist demonstrations in the late 1940s, Lebanese police were posted in Wadi Abu Jamil to protect its Jewish residents.

When Lebanon became headquarters for the Palestine Liberation Organization in the late 1960s, many Jews fled. More left during or after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in September, 1982.

Now Wadi Abu Jamil’s decaying apartment houses are occupied mostly by Shiite Moslem squatters forced from their own homes by Lebanon’s long civil war. The synagogue is closed.

Mary Jamous, whose kidnapped husband is the secretary to the head of the Jewish community, estimated there are 200 Jews, “”no more,” left in Lebanon.

Her 51-year-old husband, Salim Murad Jamous, was kidnapped eight months ago. A month earlier, another Jewish leader, Raoul Mizrachi, 54, was abducted and later found slain in Beirut’s Shiite-populated southern suburbs.

Neither of those crimes aroused as much fear as the seizure of the four Jews in just three days in late March.

The last victim was Ishaq Sassoun, 65, the leader of the Jewish community, who was taken at gunpoint March 31 on his way from the airport after a trip to Abu Dhabi, one of Arab emirates on the Persian Gulf.

Earlier, kidnappers had seized Elie Hallak, a doctor in his 50s; Haim Cohen, a 39-year-old Iranian Jew, and Elie Srour, 68, a Lebanese.

A previously unheard of group calling itself the National Resistance Arm, National Liberation Faction claimed responsibility for the killing of Mizrachi, but no group has said it carried out the other kidnappings.

Mrs. Jamous said she did not know “”which party or group” kidnapped her husband, “”nor can I think of a reason for his kidnapping.”

“”All my neighbors are Shiites and we are on good terms with them. They like us and have nothing against us,” she said.

“”We stayed when the Palestinians were here, and we had no trouble with them, later with the Syrians and then with the Israelis,” she said. “”We never thought of leaving.”

Mrs. Jamous and several of the other Jewish women linked the kidnappings to the Israel’s invasion and its occupation of south Lebanon, from which it is now withdrawing.

“”Since Israel invaded, this country has been a mess,” Mrs. Jamous said.

An aunt of her husband said, “”We, like any Lebanese, hid in shelters during the Israeli invasion and saw none of them. I do not speak Hebrew. I speak only Arabic.”

Lily, a 70-year-old woman, said she was frightened because armed militiamen had come several times to ask her to leave her house so Shiite refugee families from south Lebanon could live in it.

“”I can’t do that because I have no where to go and no one to turn to,” she said. “”The last time they came, I cried and begged with them so hard I fainted and then they left and said they won’t ask for the house any more.

“”But,” she added, “”these days I live in constant fear that one of these nights they might break into the house and do something to me.”

The women also spoke of their confusion, not only at the kidnappings but at their situation as Jews in the Arab world.

“”It is not our fault that we were born Jews,” Mrs. Jamous said, adding that Jews no longer held religious services in Wadi Abu Jamil.

Another woman, who said she had been a teacher in the Druse village of Aley until 1983 civil war battles there, said she could not understand the kidnappings because the victims were neither rich nor political figures.

“”I have never been threatened or insulted or treated differently because I am a Jew,” she said. “”I wish that whoever is doing all this kidnapping will explain their motives and demands. If there is a regulation or law that says we have to leave the country, then we would. But at least let us know about it.”

(Copyright 1985. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Date: 09/04/1985
Publication: The Associated Press

Jewish Leader Abducted

Beirut

Police said yesterday that unidentified gunmen abducted the head of Lebanon’s Jewish community on Sunday, forced him into a car and drove off.

The man, Ishaq Sassoun, 65, worked for a Lebanese company. He was the fourth Jew to be abducted in West Beirut in the last three days.

Police believe the kidnapings may be linked to the fighting in southern Lebanon between the Israeli occupation forces and the Moslem Shiite underground.

About a hundred Jews live in West Beirut. Most Lebanese Jews emigrated after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, mostly to Israel. Others went to the United States and Canada.

Sassoun had just arrived from a visit to the United Arab Emirates and was on his way home from the airport when the kidnapers intercepted him, the police said.

The other Jews were kidnaped over the weekend in the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood. Police identified them as Elie Hallak, Elie Srour and Haim Cohen, an Iranian Jew.

About 7500 Jews lived in Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood before the exodus. They used to be recognized as one of 17 religious communities in Lebanon and were assigned one seat in the 99-member parliament. Now the neighborhood is inhabited by Kurds.

In a related development, a Dutch Jesuit priest who disappeared 16 days ago was found dead at the bottom of a well in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a Jesuit spokesman said yesterday.

The priest, the Rev. Nicholas Kluiters, 43, was one of 11 Westerners who have disappeared or been kidnaped in Lebanon this year, and one of six in the past month.

A police report said the body of a “badly decomposed” man was found near where Kluiters was believed to have been kidnaped on March 14. “Unfortunately, we are now certain it is him,” a Jesuit spokesman in Beirut said.

No one claimed responsibility for his disappearance.

Early today, a French Embassy official said kidnapers have released Gilles Peyrolles, a French diplomat who was abducted almost two weeks ago in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli.

“He has been freed and is in good health,” the official said. He would not say where Peyrolles is.

New York Times
(Copyright 1985)
Date: 02/04/1985
Publication: The San Francisco Chronicle

Please check the complete feature story including many new photos, and an unprecedented letter from the editor titled “I want to know the Jews of Lebanon”. The article by Ghassan Hajjar is defined as nothing short of compassionate and respectful. A special thank you to journalist Marie-Claire Feghali, without her humanitarianism and her dedication this would have never been possible. And ultimately, thank you to the entire An-Nahar newspaper and staff, Lebanon’s most prestigious, and Mr. Ghassan Tueni, the patriarch of this historic newspaper.

http://www.naharashabab.com/

Lebanon’s few remaining Jews live out their lives in the shadows
Downtown Beirut synagogue stands as testament to what was once a thriving community
By Rym Ghazal
Daily Star staff
Thursday, May 17, 2007

Lebanon’s few remaining Jews live out their lives in the shadows

BEIRUT: Just a two-minute walk from the sit-in launched almost five months ago by the Hizbullah-led opposition, an abandoned and crumbling synagogue stands as the last remnant of a once-thriving Jewish community in Beirut. Known as the Magen Abraham Central Synagogue, it is located in the heart of Beirut in Wadi Abu Jmil, directly under the Grand Serail where Prime Minister Fouad Siniora works - an area that has become the focus of ongoing political tensions in Lebanon.

The synagogue’s rusty gates are held shut with chains, and its punctured roof howls when the wind blows. While thick weeds and grass have taken up residence around the building’s foundations, the Star of David still crowns its every column.

Given the obscurity of the structure - which dates to 1925 - amid the posh new edifices of the Beirut Central District, some people in the locale understandably said they were surprised a synagogue sits in the area.

Several private security guards patrol the area around the synagogue and have been instructed by Solidere, the publicly held company that owns many properties Downtown, to keep an eye on the place.

“Just in case of trouble,” said one security guard. “Besides the synagogue, there is also some private property around here [owned] by Jewish Lebanese.”

The site was allegedly part of Solidere’s renovation plan, initiated by slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, but that has been put on hold.

Not far from Downtown, a Jewish cemetery in Sodeco contains hundreds of tombstones with names and epitaphs etched in Hebrew.

The Jewish community in Beirut, estimated at less than 100 and nearly impossible to identify, once numbered as many as 14,000 and can trace its roots bacy to 1000 BC

The Jews are one of 18 religious groups officially recognized in Lebanon but generally keep their religious identity secret for fear of persecution from other sects.

“No one likes us here, so we keep a low profile and pretend to be Christian or Muslim,” said one Jewish Lebanese businessman who spoke on the condition that he remain “untraceable.

“We can’t even bury or visit our loved ones in the Jewish cemetery out of fear someone might see us,” he added.

A 2004 report said one out of 5,000 Jewish Lebanese citizens registered to vote had actually participated in municipal elections held that year. Most of those registered are believed to be deceased or to have fled during the Civil War that divided the country along sectarian lines in 1975.

The largest exodus of Jews from Lebanon began in earnest after 1982, when Israel invaded the country.

Some say most of the remaining community consists of old women, and one particular one, a 50-year-old known as Liza Sarour, lives in grave poverty in Wadi Abu Jmil and refuses to talk to the media.

The Jewish community was traditionally centered in Wadi Abu Jmil and Ras Beirut, with smaller numbers in the Chouf, Deir al-Qamar, Aley, Bhamdoun and Hasbayya.

Aaron-Micael Beydoun, a Lebanese-American, is on a quest to revive the history of the Jewish community in Lebanon. He launched a Web site last year, The Jews of Lebanon (www.thejewsoflebanon.org), as a forum for documenting the community’s history in Lebanon.

“I launched it because I refused to believe fellow Lebanese have been forgotten and left in the shadows based only on the premise of their religious belonging and [subjected] to hollow and ignorant geopolitical generalizations attributed to foreign factors,” he said.

Beydoun hails from Bint Jbeil in the South, although his family left Lebanon in the early 1970s due to growing security concerns. Asserting that he has “no Jewish roots whatsoever,” Beydoun said he still cares about a group of Lebanese who have been “completely isolated.”

Beydoun explained that while the first name Aaron is often given to Jewish children, his given name originates from the Arabic name Haroun-Micayeel.

“Aaron-Micael is an English form, as I was born and raised in the US and my parents both immigrated here when they were very young [and], naturally, they gave their children American names to adapt more to mainstream society,” he said.

Beydoun lambasted those who would judge him merely by the spelling of his name, and labeled Lebanon’s political elite as hypocrites for empty calls to respect marks of difference.

“The politicians flaunt their hollow slogans of ‘national unity’ when in essence this statement has no substance whatsoever; national unity is not just tolerance but acceptance of all,” he said.

“Yesterday the Jewish community in Lebanon was silenced - who will be next? Maronites, Shiites, Druze, Sunnis, Orthodox, who?” he asked.

He recalled the story of a girl who grew up thinking she was Christian until her parents told her when she was 23 that they were Jewish but had hidden their ancestry to protect themselves from persecution.

Beydoun has been in touch with the media-shy Jewish community and said that many of them own businesses in Beirut and Jbeil.

“I even know of a few families where the Jewish mothers are still practicing their faith in West Beirut and are married to Muslims,” he added.

“Muslims respect people of the book, and Jews are people of the book,” a Hizbullah official told The Daily Star.

“Muslims would never destroy a place of worship or cemeteries,” he added.

But whatever Beydoun’s feelings on preserving the Jewish community, a community he believes is “in waiting,” some of those interviewed near the synagogue said the place of worship should be “destroyed,” but most stressed that the Jewish cemetery should be left in peace.

“We respect the dead, unlike [the Jews],” said Tony Franjieh, member of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, one of the main opposition parties.

“Unlike the Israelis, we respect places of worship and cemeteries,” he added, referring to the ongoing Israeli excavations around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

While most of the Lebanese interviewed expressed a dislike for the Jewish community in Lebanon, Franjieh summed up the opinions voiced by many: “It’s OK for them to come pray here, but not live here.”

But some of those participating in the sit-in near the synagogue in Downtown Beirut do not share the same sentiments.

“The synagogue is empty now, and that is how it will remain,” said Hassan Khansa, one of the Hizbullah demonstrators camped out just a short stroll from Magen Abraham.

“Good riddance,” said Khansa, who, like many other people in the country, believes that Jewish Lebanese work as “spies” for Israel.

“Their loyalty is to Israel, and so they belong there, not here,” he said, echoing similar statements made by other demonstrators in the tent city.

From Daily Star - 09/04/1999

Munira Khayyat

Daily Star staff

The faded letters chiseled in the eroded stone above a gate in Beirut’s old Green Line are in Hebrew and spell out “bet hayameen.” This is the unassuming entrance to Beirut’s Jewish cemetery in Ras al-Nabaa.

In recent months, the cemetery has been given a facelift as Lebanon’s shrunken Jewish community rehabilitates the resting place of its ancestors.

The steps leading up to the graveyard are lined with pot plants, and old trees cast shadows on the white marble gravestones that are inscribed in Hebrew, Arabic and French.

Carved onto each gravestone is a black Star of David or a seven-pronged candleholder, the menorah, symbols of the Jewish religion. Some of the graves in the cemetery have stones on them, silent pointers to the fact that the graves are visited on a regular basis.

Apart from some cracked gravestones and the occasional bullet-hole that testify to the cemetery’s central place in the crossfire of the civil war, it looks peaceful and well preserved.

But until last summer when its renovation began, the Jewish cemetery was a tangled mass of dried grass and barbed wire. “We had to remove 20 years’ worth of weeds that concealed two thirds of the cemetery’s total area,” said the engineer in charge of its restoration, who did not wish to be named.

The graveyard was also barricaded with barbed wire, metal rods and sandbags, and embedded with anti-personnel mines.

According to Um Ali, a refugee from the Bekaa who has lived for eight years in the structure that previously housed the cemetery’s caretaker, the Lebanese army removed the mines and the barricades just over two months ago.

Um Ali observes all the comings and goings of the graveyard. “Very few people come here,” she said.

Um Ali and her son have informally taken over the duties of cemetery guardians. Ali dug the last grave to be used for an elderly man who died in 1997. In the absence of a Rabbi, an elder of the Jewish community presided over the burial.

Um Ali is familiar with all the graves and points to her favorite one. “She was very beautiful” she said of the woman whose likeness is preserved on a gravestone in a far corner of the cemetery.

Um Ali is aware that the Lebanese Jewish community is an ancient one that was very much part of the Lebanese national fabric. “The Jews here are Lebanese like us, they are not like the Israelis,” she said.

The cemetery land is owned by the Lebanese Jewish Community Council and dates back to the 1820s. The engineer in charge of renovations said the cemetery’s renovation was financed by the council. Although there are Jewish cemeteries in Sidon, Tripoli, Aley, and other Lebanese towns that once had prominent Jewish communities, only the Beirut cemetery will be renovated for now.

Plans for the renovation of Beirut’s only remaining synagogue, the Magen Avraham synagogue, in what used to be Wadi Abu Jmeel, are being drawn up and renovations will start later this year. “It seems quite by mistake that the synagogue was spared by the bulldozers `reconstructing’ downtown,” said the engineer. The old Alliance Israelite school which children from all communities attended has gone.

“Life is not easy for Lebanese Jews,” he continued. “There are too many powerful misconceptions about who they are. They prefer to stay quiet and lead quiet lives.

“I did not fix the crumbling Hebrew signpost above the gate. I left it faded and broken so as to not attract attention to it. If I had repainted the Hebrew letters, people would have noticed and most probably objected or defaced the Hebrew writing that is powerfully associated with Israel here.”

The Jews of Lebanon started leaving their country after 1948, but most left after the 1967 war. The civil war and the Israeli invasion escalated this emigration until almost no Jews were left.

Today there are about 100 Lebanese Jews in Lebanon. But the likelihood of the Jewish community regaining its pre-war numbers is small.

“Maybe in 200 years, Lebanese Jews will be able to come back and fully partake in Lebanese society as one of the 19 acknowledged religious confessions in this country” the engineer said. “But right now, the association of Jews with Israel is too deeply embedded.”

Because of the Jewish cemetery’s greenline location and the mines planted in its soil, the cemetery became inaccessible to the diminishing Jewish community during the war. A few gravestones dating back to the mid-1970s and 1980s point to the fact that some Lebanese Jews chose to stay in Lebanon despite the increasing difficulties of being both Jewish and Lebanese in a country at war with Israel and Zionism.

“The problem here is that people are not differentiating between the Jewish religion and Zionism,” according to Joe Mizrahi, the head of the Lebanese Jewish council. “More and more politicians are using the word `Jew’ to indicate the Israeli aggressor. We are not Zionists, we are Lebanese and we are here because we choose to stay in our land.”

Yet the Lebanese Jews who left their homeland and went elsewhere are initiating contact. “Some have relatives buried in the cemetery and have commissioned me to restore their relatives’ graves,” the engineer said.

Um Ali recalled a woman coming to the graveyard one day. “She was carrying rocks in her hands and walking among the graves. I thought she was a tourist so I asked her what she wanted.” Um Ali said. “She replied in broken Arabic that she was here to visit her father. I did not really understand at first but then I realized that she was looking for her father’s grave. “She sat for a long while near the grave and then left. I haven’t seen her since. She must have traveled back to where she now lives.”

COPYRIGHT (c) THE DAILY STAR, BEIRUT, LEBANON.
(c) 1999 THE DAILY STAR, BEIRUT, LEBANON.
Date: 09/04/1999
Publication: Daily Star

Announcement

Starting immediately, we will be publishing old news articles pertaining to the Lebanese Jewish community on a regular basis derived from media sources around the world. These archives are not readily available over the internet; we hope to establish our own exclusive news archive here on this website in our further effort of preserving the community’s history.

Concurrently, the NGO evolvement is progressing very efficiently and within a very solid framework. This is on-going and developing.

Jewish schools in Beirut once served purposes of integration
From Daily Star - 09/10/2003

Jewish schools in Beirut once served purposes of integration - But their effects on Arab Jews was noted and denounced by Zionists.

Mazen Wehbe

Special to The Daily Star

The year is 1870. The building no longer exists, but was located somewhere in the bourgeois and aristocratic neighborhood of 19th century Achrafieh.

Antoun Shehayber, lawyer and businessman, was addressing the director of the Jewish School of Beirut: “Yes, director, it is impossible for us to forget what suffering you have endured for our sakes and what efforts and zeal you have shown for our moral upbringing and education. First of all, in order to plant in us the spirit of the noble religion of Judaism you brought us an energetic rabbi. Secondly, you implanted in us the grammar of the Arabic language of our homeland, and how much expense and effort you have borne to bring professor Bekhor Leon for French. We want to assure your excellency, director, that we the Syrian Arabs are grateful for your favors. Although we are Arab in appearance, and our costume is Syrian, we still strive to attain the highest degree of science and progress. Friends, who have nominated me to undertake this noble task, raise your voices with me in calling out: Long live the Syrian, Arab and Jewish director from Sidon, Zaki Effendi Kuhin.”

Sadly, this speech survived but the school didn’t. It was shut down in 1904, probably because of lack of funds. Even though other institutions succeeded the school, and used a similar “Levantinesque” approach to Jewish education, its contribution to Beirut society was unique. In today’s world, the adjectives Syrian, Arab and Jewish would probably be met with disbelief if they were used to describe a rabbi who headed a Jewish school in Beirut.

The remaining Jewish community in Beirut (around 60, according to unofficial estimates) does not even have a rabbi. The synagogue survived the civil war and still stands, deserted and damaged, in Downtown Beirut, awaiting restoration and the return of the Lebanese Jews, something that might not happen soon.

Most of the Jews of Lebanon fled the country when their quarter in Wadi Abu Jmeel in Downtown Beirut became a battle zone in 1975.

But this is the present, and our story begins in Beirut in the 19th century. The city was still under Ottoman rule. European protection and the “civilizing missions” had transformed the non-Muslim inhabitants into agents of “social change.” Beirut was becoming Westernized.

According to author Leila Tarazi Fawaz, during the 19th century Beirut was transformed from a provincial town of 6,000 to a political and cultural center of 120,000. At this time of profound social change in Beirut, Kuhin (or Cohen) established what would be the first and largest Jewish-Arab college of its kind. Children of the small Jewish community in Beirut (around a thousand at the time) were taught Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, French, German and other foreign languages.

Kuhin and Shehayber (who was either Jewish or Christian, the records are not clear) even set up a Jewish-Arab theater on the same premises in Achrafieh. People from all sects came to the often-packed theater to watch Arabic adaptations of Moliere, as well as original plays performed in Hebrew, and sometimes French and Turkish. In many ways, the Beirut Jewish-Arab Theater was a response to the classic misrepresentation of the Jew in European theater.

Ironically, it was in the city of Beirut in the 19th century that Jewish characters transcended stereotypes and found depth to become the protagonists of European tales hostile to Jews in their original versions. It was not uncommon for a Jewish actor on the stage of the Beirut Jewish theater to quote Koranic expressions and Arabic poems, and mix French with Hebrew.

The whereabouts of what was the Jewish school is now a mystery. The information above was taken from a single article written by P.C. Sadgrove and published in 1992 in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Sadgrove said the plays are now in the possession of the Abulafia family in Israel. The plays interested Sadgrove because to him they were an affirmation that, at the height of the Arab renaissance, Arab Jews were committed to “broader cultural, social and political values of parallel Arab and Syrian identities.”

This cultural participation was not confined to Lebanon. Around the same time in Egypt, Yaaqoub Sannouh, an Egyptian Jew who was also a member of Jamaleddine al-Afghani’s Islamic nationalist circle, was calling himself the “Egyptian Moliere.” His plays were aimed at a general Egyptian audience, and he played a prominent role in the development of the Egyptian dramatic tradition.

In fact, Egyptian Jews are acknowledged to have played important roles in Egyptian culture, specifically theater, cinema, music, the printing industry and the Arabic press. It is well known that Um Kulthoum in Egypt never performed without Daoud Hosni, an Egyptian musician who was Jewish.

In Iraq, we find a multitude of different Jewish authors making similarly important contributions. In fact, until 1948, we could still find outspoken authors like Murad Faraj in Egypt advocating Egyptian nationhood based on equality and fraternity, and Murad Mikhael in Iraq writing patriotic stories entitled He Died for his Country, and She Died for Love.

Kuhin’s school in Beirut was replaced by what some Lebanese still remember as the “Alliance.” The “Alliance Israelite Universelle” was the first international Jewish organization of its kind. Founded in Paris in 1860 by a group of liberal French Jews, it believed that emancipation of the Jews would come through education (L’Emancipation par l’Instruction).

By the turn of the 20th century, there were over 100 Alliance schools across the world in most of the cities with Jewish communities. The schools taught over 26,000 students.

The Alliance’s effect on Arab Jews was seen and denounced by Zionists, who abhorred Jewish integration into Arab society and accused the Westernized Jewish schools in the Levant of weakening the racial awareness of Middle Eastern Jews. Yehuda Nini from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry in Jerusalem said the Alliance schools “paved the way for a gradual alienation from Jewish tradition and Jewish nationalism, and for the perception of Western lands, rather than the land of Israel, as destinations for migration.”

Many Zionist authors argued the Jewish Arabs were only superficially “Arabized.” Zionist writers like Itamar Levin and Norman Stillman generally minimized the role Jews played in Islamic civilization and Arab culture.

The story of the Jewish school in Beirut and the Alliance contradict this version of history. It shows a degree of cultural integration that could have lasted until the present had it not been for militant Zionism, which sought to remove Jewish Arabs from their natural setting and create a new kind of Israeli Jew.

Ben Gurion said: “We do not want the Israelis to be Arabs. It is our duty to fight against the spirit of the Levant that ruins individuals and societies.”

But the spirit of the Levant gave the Jews a voice. After all it was in Beirut, not in the Yishuv (Palestinian Jewry), and certainly not in Europe, that a biblical play called The Sacrifice of Isaac was performed in the 19th century. One night in 1883, the characters of Abraham, his wife Sara, and Hagar, the bondmaid, stood together on stage with his son Isaac, ancestor of the Jews, and Ismail, ancestor of the Arabs.
(c) 2003 THE DAILY STAR, BEIRUT, LEBANON.
Date: 09/10/2003
Publication: Daily Star

Lital Levy, is an American Post-Doctoral researcher of Iraqi-Jewish descent. She is completing her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley; her thesis is the participating of mashriqi Arab Jews in the modern Arabic and Hebrew renaissance movements i.e. Nahada and Haskalah. She is concurrently pursuing a Post-Doctorate degree at Harvard University.

Peace and greetings to all the viewers,
I am a doctoral student in the U.S. researching the role of Arab Jews in
the nahda (the modern Arabic literary renaissance) and I am looking for
information about the following Beiruti Jews who played a role in this
movement:

• Esther Azhari Moyal (and her husband Shim’on Moyal and son ‘Abdallah
Nadim Moyal)

• Rabbi Zaki Kuhin (Cohen), founder of Tifereth Israel/ al-Madrasa
al-Isra’iliya al-Wataniya, and his son, the writer Selim Zaki Kuhin
(Cohen)

• The writer Selim Eliahu Mann (also a publisher and the founder of the
newspaper al-’Alam al-Isra’ili

I have a very small amount of information about the Kuhins and Mann, and
there are considerable gaps in my knowledge of the Moyals. If you are a
descendant of one of these Beiruti Jews or if you know of a
descendant, please contact me! I am also interested in learning about any
other Jews from Lebanon or Syria who took part in the nahda, especially in
the late 19th century. Very little has been recorded about the history of
Jews in the modern Arabic movement. Your knowledge is very valuable.
Thank you!

Contact Information:
Lital Levy
Harvard Society of Fellows
78 Mt. Auburn St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
lital@berkeley.edu or llevy@fas.harvard.edu

Video of a delegation visiting a Jewish cometary in Beirut:

“…simply proving there is still a community, just very low profile”- tour guide.

BEIRUT: Lebanon will not be driven back to civil war. That is the solemn oath taken by activists displaying for the first time the rusty bus that was full of Palestinian civilians when it came under attack in Ain al-Roummaneh in 1975, sparking the country’s 15-year strife. The bus, an oxidized shell, was on display on Friday for the 32nd anniversary of the war’s outbreak at a time when many fear that divided Lebanon may plunge back into violence.

“This is the outcome of civil wars,” said Sami Hamdan, owner of the old Dodge bus as he knocked on the reddish brown metal of the decaying vehicle.

“People get killed, everyone loses and everything gets destroyed. All that’s left will be a rusty carcass,” said Hamdan, who is now 61 years old.

Lebanon erupted into bloodshed on April 13, 1975, when Christian militiamen machine-gunned the bus carrying Palestinian civilians in Beirut’s eastern suburb, hours after gunfight killed a group of Christians outside a nearby church.

Twenty-seven passengers on board were killed and the Civil War began.

Although most Lebanese have never seen the Ain al-Roummaneh bus up close, it has become the symbol of the outbreak of the war through Hayat Karanouh’s famous black-and-white photograph.

On Friday, the public had the opportunity to see the real thing at the Beirut racetrack. Normally, it is kept in a small Southern Lebanese village, “probably too far for most people to visit it” says an organizer of Friday’s April 13 Civil War remembrance event.

Hamdan bought the bus 25 years ago from its original owner, Abu Rida, who was behind the wheel when it was attacked on that fateful April day.

Abu Rida was slightly wounded during the attack, but his life was saved when he ducked down and hid under the bodies of the victims. He later repaired the vehicle and drove it again briefly before selling it to Hamdan.

“When I met the original owner, I asked him how much he wanted to sell the bus for. He told me to take it for free; he just wanted to get rid of it.”

“I bought his bus because it was notorious. I also wanted a new bus because my own had been hit by a shell that killed three children and wounded 17 others,” Hamdan said.

Paola Eid says that the “I Love Life” campaign has been trying to negotiate with Hamdan to purchase the Ain al-Roummaneh bus, on behalf of the Culture Ministry.

Eid says that if they could purchase the bus, it would go on public display “maybe in a museum or UNESCO, where there are wide spaces.”

Hamdan does not want to sell the wrecked bus, however, because “he is too attached to it,” explained Eid.

Indeed in 1983, when the bus was attacked again, Hamdan saw the symbolic importance of his treasure. “I didn’t have the money to fix it. I had my own house destroyed and considered selling the bus because I really needed money to fix it, but I couldn’t part with it.

“We want to say that the Lebanese will not allow another civil war to break out, and we want to warn new generations of the atrocity and absurdity of wars,” Hamdan said, adding that the organizers had asked him to bring the bus to the capital so it could be put on show for the anniversary.

“I am a living martyr of Lebanon’s wars - that’s why I want to warn people not to do it again. I have been wounded and kidnapped. In the Israeli attack last year the whole building where I lived was destroyed,” he said.

“In January, my bus was destroyed and transformed into a barricade,” during street battles between the government and opposition militants which took a confessional turn and sparked fears of a return to civil strife.

“I am a Shiite, but I respect all religions. I am against confessionalism and I hate all our leaders and politicians because they are all liars,” he said.

His ultimate dream?

“I want to put all our leaders on a bus and drive them to a remote place where they treat disabled people because they all need therapy,” Hamdan said. “They are sick. They constantly seek blood, violence and money.”
Daily Star Beirut

Saturday, April 14, 2007 8:30AM EST
102,3 FM

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