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Jul 1, 2010

Beirut shul to reopen

Beirut's synagogue will soon be up and running once again. That's right - a shul in Lebanon.

From Bloomberg.com...

Restoration of Beirut’s only synagogue will be completed in October and religious services will be held there in 2011 for the first time in more than three decades, the leader of the country’s Jewish community said.

“We started from zero with this project and now we hope with the restoration we will be able to once again rebuild a community in Lebanon,” Isaac Arazi, 67, said June 24 in an interview in Beirut.

The Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Wadi Abou Jmil, the city’s historic Jewish quarter, opened in 1926 and once hosted a thriving community that has been eroded by decades of civil war. Prospects for stability have improved since elections a year ago were won by the pro-Western coalition of Saad Hariri, which formed a national unity government with rival Hezbollah and the Muslim group’s Christian allies.

The synagogue’s restoration has so far cost $700,000 and the final bill is expected to reach $1.2 million, Arazi said. Most of the financing has come from Lebanese Jews outside the country, while Christians and Muslims have also contributed.

About 100 Jews now live permanently in Lebanon, while there are some 1,900 living abroad who still own property in the country and visit regularly, according to Arazi, who owns a food-machinery business. In the mid-1960s, there were as many as 22,000 Lebanese Jews, he said.
[...]
Jews began to flee Lebanon, emigrating to Europe as well as North and South America, after sectarian fighting broke out in the 1970s among the nation’s Christian, Muslim and Druze factions. The last religious service at Maghen Abraham was held around the middle of that decade.

When it opens again early next year, the synagogue will have seating for 600 men and 300 women. Religious artifacts such as the Torah and other books and items required for services will be brought from Turkey and Syria, and the synagogue will seek to appoint a rabbi familiar with Middle Eastern and North African Sephardic Jewish rituals from the region, possibly from Yemen, Egypt or Turkey, Arazi said.

The community has also begun to repair the Jewish cemetery in Beirut, where about 4,500 Jews are buried, at a cost of about $200,000, and there are also plans to restore defunct synagogues elsewhere in the country, including one in Bhamdoun, a town 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the capital.

In an interview in 2008, Fouad Siniora, prime minister at the time, said the synagogue “is a religious place of worship and its restoration is welcome.”


Way to go!

3 comments:

  1. Very nice, but... Beirut is only about 120K from the Israel border. A couple hours' drive. It's so important to eke out a Jewish presence there rather than move to Israel?

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is excellent and goes with your previous article. All those who "hate the zionists" can demonstrate to us how to live under Arab authority by moving to Beirut and using the newly rebuilt shul!

    It's just a simple drive up the road and through Hizbollah territory, no problem!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Shul reopening is being welcomed by Lebanese community.Most of Lebanese Jewish left to Israel after the invasion of 1982. The left few where obliged to live under hidden identity to escape Muslims rage after Israel withdrawal. Most Lebanese Muslims or Christians have lived with Jewish and dealt with them since they played an important economical role in Lebanon especially Beirut. The new generation in Lebanon know well that jewish were part of lebnaese society pre-1982 so its not suprising to see lebanese welcoming the shul reopenning as they are a diverse society themselves with muslims, and christians of different sectors , and also Druze. I hope to see more Lebanese origin Jews returning to Lebanon and practicing their rights. It really help in solving the crisis in middle east, by turning the struggle from a religious based to a struggle on occupied land where both muslims and jews should find a way to live and tolerate each other. We can take south Africa as an example. The hatred was big but it require strong hurt people to do the peace.

    ReplyDelete

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