[lebanese_a]

War-shattered place of worship once catered to Lebanon’s 14,000 Jews, but now only a handful remain

by Dima Karam

Special to The Daily Star (Beirut) October 2003


You won’t notice it if you don’t look carefully. But it’s there, standing amid the revamped streets and empty plots of Beirut’s Central District (BCD), alternatively referred to as Downtown or Solidere (after the company in charge of restoration).

The Maghen Abraham Synagogue lies on the main Wadi Abu Jmil Street, a crumbling mystifying witness to a past era when Lebanon’s confessional mosaic seemed to offer the promise of a unique amalgamation of ethnic richness and tolerance. Visible from the highway crossing from Minet al-Hosn to Bab Idriss, it is one of the few remaining unrenovated buildings in the area testifying to the ravages of the Beirut’s civil war past. Above it the Grand Serail, the prime minister’s headquarters, stands tall in its restored glory.

What was a place of worship for the once 14,000-strong Jewish-Lebanese community is now seriously damaged, the only structure still standing being its fragile outer facade. The site looks like a scene from Downtown Beirut in the early 90s, when devastation, neglect and overgrown vegetation were choking the streets. The cream-colored stucco synagogue’s wooden roof is mostly destroyed; any inscription in Hebrew has been painstakingly chiseled off or erased.

What points out the building’s religious allegiance are two remaining stars of David painted in gold on each side of the central columns. The interior of the synagogue closely resembles a church’s structure; a large prayer hall flanked by two arched corridors faces the central holy arch, or Heykal, while stairs at each side lead to a large balcony overlooking the prayer hall. Beautiful turquoise paint remaining on the wall exposes the Mediterranean character of Maghen Abraham.

The synagogue’s land is owned by the Lebanese Jewish Community Council, according to Solidere’s press office. Many Lebanese Jews who still remain in Lebanon don’t like to talk about their community or past, but a spokesperson for the expatriate Jewish-Lebanese group in Paris, Juifs du Liban, (Jews of Lebanon) shed some light on the temple’s history in an e-mail interview.

“The synagogue was built in 1925 thanks to the contributions of a Sasson family member who named the synagogue after his father,” the group explained, adding that Maghen Abraham translates as Abraham’s shield.

“The head of the Jewish community then, Joseph Farhi, financed its interior furnishings, (but) in 1976 the torahs present in the synagogue were transferred to Geneva and entrusted to renowned Jewish-Lebanese banker Edmond Safra, who preserved them in his bank’s coffers. Most of them have since been relocated to Sephardic synagogues in Israel,” Juifs du Liban explained.

The reality of what exactly happened to the synagogue during the civil war is more complex than one might expect. Contrary to the prevailing view that anti-Semitism was the only driving force behind the migration of Arab Jews from their Arab lands, what happened at the Maghen Abraham synagogue lends some support to a view held by some pundits that Israelis had a direct hand in wanting to “facilitate” Jewish-Arab migration to Israel by terrorizing the communities into fleeing their homes.

An article published in the New York Times in 1982 relates how shortly after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in that year, an Israeli shell targeted the Maghen Abraham synagogue, blowing a hole in its roof while some 60 Jewish and Muslim refugees were sleeping there.

The assault came after Israeli artillery had fired from East Beirut and gunboats cruising offshore had been persistently pounding Wadi Abu Jmil, a district well known for being a Jewish quarter, said neighborhood residents.

At the same time, in July 1982, an article in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, said that representatives of the World Zionist Organization had been unable to convince the Jews of West Beirut to emigrate to Israel.

“‘Why should we leave?’ they asked. ‘Here are our homes and our friends,’” said one Lebanese Jew quoted in the report.

Others argue, however, that a heavy PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) presence in Wadi Abu Jmil was the reason for Israeli bombardment. While exact details may never become clear, either way the synagogue suffered at different times throughout the Lebanese civil war, as did many other religious temples of all confessions located in Downtown Beirut. Unlike many of these, Maghen Abraham was never totally destroyed.

Lebanese Jews historically have been an integral part of the Lebanese fabric of confessional communities. Judaism is one of the 18 officially recognized confessions. Lebanese Jews enjoyed the same rights and privileges as other minorities, sharing a minority seat in the Parliament, serving in the army, some even fighting in the 1948 first Arab-Israeli war. Lebanon, argues Kirsten Schulze in her book The Jews of Lebanon: Between Coexistence and Conflict, compared to other Arab states had a more tolerant and liberal attitude toward its own Jews and toward Jewish refugees seeking asylum in Beirut.

Lebanon was the only Arab country in which the number of Jews grew after the establishment of the state of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, with the influx of Syrian and Iraqi Jews growing to number some 14,000. But intensification of the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially after 1967, helped politicize attitudes to Jews, who became increasingly associated with the policies of Israel. This led to an overall decline in the community, many of whom chose to go to Europe and the Americas rather than to Israel.

The civil war and the Israeli invasion escalated this emigration until almost no Jews were left. Today there are about 100 practicing Lebanese Jews remaining in the country.

One middle-aged Lebanese-Jewish woman, still living in Wadi Abu Jmil and known by everyone in the neighborhood, was happy to recall the pre-war days and the synagogue during an interview at her home.

“I was not a very practicing person, but I used to go with my mother and aunts to weddings and celebrations at the synagogue, it was one of the most beautiful ones in the Middle East,” Layla (not her real name) says. Pointing at her living room she continues: “And what was special about it was the chandelier, it was as big as this room and laden with gold.”

“Layla” lives off money her brothers in France send her and her pension. She says she has no contact with the few remaining members of the Jewish community in Lebanon and lives in “isolation.”

But what is to become of the Maghen Abraham synagogue? Juifs du Liban explains that one Jewish-Lebanese family, who did not wish to be identified, is organizing the synagogue’s restoration and has already drawn up plans for its rebuilding, but the necessary funds from different donors have yet to be raised. The synagogue falls inside the reconstruction perimeter of the BCD, so by law the corresponding religious community must assume responsibility for restoration, preserving the original architectural character.

Solidere has granted a delay for the Jewish community to restore the synagogue due to the small number of Jews still living in Lebanon. According to the family cited by Juifs du Liban, Lebanese authorities have been in contact with them to restore the synagogue, but plans are uncertain.