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.”

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