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LEVANT
42
he dilapidated structureof the Magen Avraham syna-gogue is nearly all that re-mains of the Jewish presencein Lebanon. A once vibrantcommunity that numbered inthetensofthousands is now almostnon-existent. The few Jews that re-main in Lebanon live as discreetly aspossible. A new project to raise $1million, launched by the Lebanese Jewish Community Council to re-store the Magen Avraham synagoguein downtown Beirut, holds the possi-bility of bringing back the communi-ty’s presence. Those behind the reno-vation plan want to reestablish Ma-gen Avraham as a functioning syna-gogue, and they’ve raised hopes thatan overt Jewish presence in Beirutand the Mount Lebanon environs —which has Jewish history that maystretch back as far as 3,000 years —can emerge again.The Magen Avraham synagogue—the name means “Abraham’s
T
Shield” —was built in 1926 in whatwas the Jewish quarter of Wadi Abu Jamil in downtown Beirut. Thegrandness of the synagogue plansmeant that a great deal of moneyneeded to be raised. The Lebanese Jewish Community Council, just afterWorld War I, managed to raise somefunds for its construction, but it wasconsiderably less that what was need-ed for the ambitious project.While the community kept a verydistinct Lebanese identity, the majori-ty werealso partof the transnationalSephardi Jewish community. TheSephardi Jews originally came fromthe Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Por-tugal) and North Africa and, despitetheir early geographical dispersal,kept a distinct identity and liturgyseparate from the Jews of Eastern Eu-ropean descent, the Ashkenazi, andthe Jews who remained in the MiddleEast, called Mizrahi Jews. Thus, theLebanese Jews used this Sephradi Jewish network to raise funds for thesynagogue. The community appealedto Moise Abraham Sassoon from Cal-cutta, who donated money towardthe completion of the Magen Avra-ham synagogue, while the land wasdonated by Raphael Levy Stambouli.Sassoon would dedicate the syna-gogue to his father.The synagogue was designed byarchitect Bindo Manham and wasbuilt in the imposing symmetricalstyle of the Renaissance. When com-pleted the synagogue would be de-clared the grandest in the Middle Eastand secured Wadi Abu Jamil as thefocal point for the Lebanese Jewishcommunity. Jacques Baghdadi, whogrew up in Wadi Abu Jamil and leftwhen he was 18 (in 1970) to the Unit-ed States, described to E
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what it was like living in the Jewishquarter of Beirut.“It was very cliquey; it was likeliving in one big family,” he said. “Wehad two schools and everyone wentto the two schools… so it was a verycocooned area and I have very fondmemories of the community there.”
The wider community
Despite the fact that the Jewishcommunity was “cocooned” in WadiAbu Jamil, there is a historical Jewishpresence in other areas of Beirut aswell. One noticeable trace of theonce thriving community is the BethElamen cemeteryjust off Sodecosquare that, similar to the synagogue,is in disrepair and overgrown withtrees and weeds. According toGeorges Zeidan, who wrote an arti-cle on the history of the Jewish ceme-tery in Beirut in French, entitled“Histoire du Cimetière Juif à Bey-routh,” the first Jew was buried inthe cemetery in 1829. Now thegravestones lie in tatters.
The Jewish community also had apresence in other parts of Lebanon.“The first significant wave of Jewsto Lebanon came in 1710 when a sig-nificant number of Andalusian Jewsfled from the Spanish inquisition tothe safety of the Chouf mountains,”Kirsten Schulze wrote in her book“The Jews of Lebanon: Between Co-existence and Conflict.”
The Jewish revival
Lebanon
Rebuilding Beirut’s Magen Avraham synagogue
July 2009
 
July 2009
44
The disappearance
A gradual exodus of Jews beganwith the internal strife in Lebanon in1958. Jacques Baghdadi, a Lebanese Jew who left the country in 1970, de-scribed to E
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how tensions in-creased after the Six Day War.“We never felt the threat like inSyria and Iraq. We never felt op-pressed, but after the Six Day Waryou felt in the air a certain botheringfeeling,” he said. “Even though wewere born Lebanese, you felt notwelcome… so [the Lebanese Jewishcommunity] left… and it was like asixth [sense]; sure enough the civilwar broke [out].”The decisive moment was the Is-raeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, which was effec-tively the beginning of the end of the Jewish presence in Lebanon. RobertFisk, a British foreign correspondentwho lived in Beirut during the civilwar, wrote in his book “Pity the Na-tion,” that “incredibly, the Israelishells even blew part of the roof off the city’s synagogue in Wadi Abu Jamil, where the remnants of Beirut’stiny Jewish community still lived…The last 10 families to worship therepadlocked the door after the Israelishells came through the roof.”The Israeli invasion of 1982 leftthe Lebanese Jewish community par-ticularly exposed to the vicious vio-lence that would occur post-invasion.Wadi Abu Jamil was the scene of fierce fighting, and was first occupiedby the Palestine Liberation Organiza-tion and then the Amal Movement.The Amal logo is still on the walls of the synagogue to this day, along withtorn pictures of the late Amal leaderMusa Sadr. Former Associated Pressbureau chief Terry Anderson, whowas kidnapped in 1985 and held forsix years, was reportedly taken intothe Wadi Abu Jamil area.Between 1984 and 1987, 11 lead-ing members of the Jewish communi-ty were kidnapped and killed by amilitant Shiite Islamic organizationcalled “Organization of the Op-pressed of the Earth,” according toSchulze and news reports from thetime. The terminal decline of the com-munity began, as did the under-ground nature of the remaining Jews.Fred Kanter, whose great-grandfa-ther was a rabbi at the AllianceSchool in Beirut (a Jewish school sys-tem founded and funded by the Roth-schild family), articulated the fear of those few Jews who did remain.“I was in touch with a young Jew-ish man in Beirut who photographedthe gravestone of my grandfather,”Kanter told E
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by email.“When a Jewish friend went to visitBeirut, he was afraid to be seen meet-ing a Jewish person from the West.”E
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contacted a numberof Jews still residing in Lebanon,but none were willing to talk aboutthe community, even anonymously.Of those that have left the coun-try, many in the Lebanese Jewishcommunity have maintained a strongcohesion. Jacques Baghdadi said thatdespite leaving Lebanon nearly 40years ago, he is still in contact withthe Lebanese Jews who he grew upwith in Wadi Abu Jamil.“We see each other in syna-gogues… there are two big syna-gogues [in Brooklyn] that are espe-cially for Lebanese Jews… theLebanese by nature are very clannishpeople and we hang out with allLebanese — Christians or Muslims —it doesn’t matter here.”A testament to the strength of Lebanese Jewish identity is theMaghan Avraham synagogue inMontreal that was set up by Lebanese Jewish immigrants.The Internet, and particularly so-cial networking sites like Facebook,have also enabled Lebanese Jews tomaintain contact. Most recently, theofficial Lebanese Jewish CommunityCouncil website (www.thejewsofle-banonproject.org) has been launchedthat now gives an official public faceto the community. The website wasalso set up to help raise funds for re-constuction of the Magen Avrahamsynagogue.
Community revival
“Those who don’t have a pastdon’t have a future,” Isaac Arazi,president of the Lebanese JewishCommunity Council, is quoted assaying on the website’s welcome page— ostensibly linking the renovationof the Magen Avraham synagogue tothe reconstruction of a Jewish pres-ence in the country.“It pains me immensely that Ihave to pass by [Magen Avraham]every day without being able to en-ter,” wrote one anonymous Lebanese
LEVANT
“IT PAINS ME T
 
HAT I HAVE TO PASS BY MAGENAVRAHAM EVERY DAY WITHOU
 
T BEING ABLE TO EN
 
TER”
 
A panoramic look at the inside of Beirut’s Magen Avraham synagogue
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