Expatriate Syrian Jews contemplate visiting a changing country

Trump's surprise lifting of sanctions against Syria in the wake of new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa’s efforts to stabilise the country was watched closely by Syrian Jews who long for a chance to revisit the country of their youth.

Although many say they felt like hostages in Syria until Hafez al-Assad opened the gates for them to emigrate in 1992, the idea of returning to visit is now appealing for the first time.

“It’s a pitiful state, without an economy and without electricity. People are very poor and it will take time for things to improve,” said Natan Haswa, 57, a Tel Aviv area physician who had a clinic in Damascus.

“But if there is a connection with Syria and the possibility of entering without fear it would mean a chance to visit the neighbourhood, the synagogues and Damascus, a big city, with good food that is only two hours away, I would be among the first to visit."

While Haswa notes that Syria is a "wounded country" that will take time to emerge, some Jews are already returning to see the places they left.

A group of American Jews, mostly of Syrian origin, travelled to Damascus in late February and visited synagogues and a cemetery in the Jewish quarter. They came away impressed by how welcoming Syrians were. “The people in Syria want the Jews to return to Syria," Asher Lopatin, a rabbi from the Detroit area, told Israel's Kan public broadcaster.

Syrian Jews interviewed for this article are pinning hopes on al-Sharaa, who swept to power late last year through a stunning ouster of long-time dictator Bashar Assad, to show a positive attitude to Syrian Jewish heritage. The thinking is that to distance himself from his past association with al-Qaeda extremism, it might be useful for him to project that he is open to contact with Jews with roots in Syria.

But it is an open question how far al-Sharaa will go while Israel is occupying more Syrian territory and conducting airstrikes with the stated aim of preventing the war-torn country from becoming a staging ground for attacks.

Syria's Jewish population, which numbered about 5,000 in 1992, is today just seven persons, the youngest among them 76, according to Rabbi Binyamin Hamra, rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in Israel, which is based mostly in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon.

Binyamin Hamra, the son of the chief rabbi of Syria under the regime of Hafez al-Assad, Avraham Hamra, sent a letter to al-Sharaa recently. “God has granted you the leadership of Syria so that you can take Syria to a better place. I am sure that under your leadership Syria will be a multicultural, tolerant and inclusive country where every religious group can live in peace and safety,” Hamra wrote.

The rabbi urged protection of the remaining Jews and of holy sites and called for the restoration of a sacred site destroyed during the civil war, the synagogue and cave of Elijah at Jobar, near Damascus.

Hamra told The Jewish Independent that “there has been a very good response from the authorities in Syria.” But he said he could not elaborate. Hamra says that the total of 20 synagogues in Damascus, Aleppo and Qamishli have been preserved.

The sense of nostalgia for Syria is a bit surprising coming from people who felt themselves confined and on the receiving end of antisemitism when they actually lived there. While being watched closely by Syrian intelligence and suspected of having ties to Israel, they were also protected by the Assad regime from attack by Palestinian groups, according to Moshe Maoz, an emeritus Middle East scholar at the Hebrew University and author of a biography of Hafez al-Assad.

“We were hostages. We couldn’t leave the country,” Haswa recalled. “If you wanted to fly out, you needed permission from the security services and they wouldn’t let you go.”

“You gradually felt that you don’t belong to the Syrian people, that they oppress you and don’t give you freedom and that the economic and social situation oppresses you,” he said.

Haswa was able to go to university since the regime had started allowing Jews to do that in 1977. But he says Jews faced antisemitism there, in schools and on the job. “You speak the same language but if they know you are Jewish, they make trouble or don’t promote you or they look upon you as a collaborator with Israel. For them, you are a foreigner.”

“Intelligence follows you and they want to know who you are speaking with,” he said.

On the other hand, there was a strong attachment to the Jewish community. “It was an established, tightly knit community. We all lived in the Jewish quarter. We were there for a thousand years. The school was 400 years old. We were Sephardim, we had come from Spain.”

Jack Blanga, now the head of the Israel Accountants Association, was imprisoned as a two-year-old with the rest of his family in 1980 when they were caught trying to escape to Turkey in the hopes of reaching Israel. Ten years later, they made another attempt-and succeeded.

“Life in Damascus was very hard,” he recalled. “Living next to the intelligence was complicated. You could get a slap on the way to synagogue or school. It’s a ghetto with constant fear.”

“In geography class our maps said Palestine, not Israel.”

Blanga is convinced that Assad did not let the Jews leave because he viewed them as a bargaining chip for getting the occupied Golan Heights back from Israel.

But he added: “The memories are mixed. It’s not as if you only remember them hitting you. You’re in a place you want to get away from but on the other hand you have a life there with birthdays, holidays and sabbaths. It’s the places where you grew up and where your grandparents are buried. It’s only natural that you want to visit the place where you grew up and where your family is from.”

Blanga says he is optimistic al-Sharaa will allow Syrian Jews to make family roots visits despite the current tensions with Israel. “We think of the delicacies of Damascus,” he recalls.

He wants to see the Joba synagogue restored and Torah scrolls brought there. He also hopes that it will become possible to bring the remains of Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who penetrated the Syrian ruling establishment but was caught and publicly hanged in 1965, back to Israel for burial.

Assad decided to allow the Jews to emigrate in 1992, albeit without taking their money and without going to Israel. Many stayed in the US for a year or two and then made aliya, like the Hamra family. Maoz says Assad’s decision has to be understood in the context of a more positive atmosphere between Israel and Syria at the time, when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister and the Madrid peace process launched after the Gulf war was underway.

Binyamin Hamra and Haswa, the Syrian-born physician, also give credit to Avraham Hamra, the chief rabbi, who had managed to cultivate ties with Hafez al-Assad. When Assad was running for a rigged re-election in 1992, Hamra organised a show of support for him in the streets by the Jewish community, complete with signs of solidarity in Hebrew and Arabic. According to Haswa, who was among the demonstrators, signs said “we love you” and “we are part of the Syrian people.”

Binyamin Hamra believes this was a wise move by his father. “He knew he had to make this effort for the community. Later, when my father met with Assad, he caught him by the beard and told him, ‘I will never forget this beard. I won’t forget that you turned out the community in my honor’.”

Binyamin Hamra says he envisions Syrian Jews being able to visit Syria just as Moroccan Jews can go on roots trips to Morocco. “This is what I think and I expect to happen,” he says.

But Maoz believes things are not that simple. “Al-Sharaa’s attitude would be positive but it depends also on the attitude of Israel, and Israel is not very forthcoming. It is occupying more Syrian land. Al-Sharaa wants peace with Israel but Israel is not responding in kind so I think it’s too early to think about it.”

But Maoz does not rule out al-Sharaa making a gesture, such as receiving a Syrian Jewish delegation or making a statement. “He may do this to show Jews and Israel he is a liberal leader because in Israel there is deep suspicion that he hasn’t abandoned his jihadist attitude and some of his colleagues are still calling for the conquest of Jerusalem.”