The chief rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in Israel has penned an extraordinary letter to the new leader of Syria, congratulating him on his victory in ousting the Assad dictatorship and encouraging him to preserve the heritage sites of the country’s historic Jewish community.
“For thousands of years, the Jewish community in Syria, despite being a small minority, has been an integral part of the rich and diverse fabric of the Syrian people,” Rabbi Binyamin Hamra wrote to Ahmed al-Sharaa in the letter that is expected to be delivered via intermediaries this week.
“Throughout Syria are historical sites, ancient synagogues, and tombs of great Jewish leaders, which constitute cultural and religious heritage for Jews throughout the world,” he wrote.
Hamra’s father, Rabbi Avraham Hamra, served as the last chief rabbi of Syria from 1972 to 1992 before leaving for Israel via New York.
“The Jews of Syria and the heritage of Syrian Jewry were always a significant part of our home,” Binyamin Hamra told JNS on Monday from his home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon. The 39-year-old Hamra immigrated to Israel with his father at the age of 10 from Brooklyn, N.Y., after spending most of the first decade of his life in Damascus.
“My childhood was a very important part of my life,” he said, noting the difficulty of growing up in a hostile country where you can unintentionally make a misstep.
Hamra said that he was spurred to write the letter to the new leader of Syria by the memory of his father, who died in Israel in 2021, and the stories he imbibed during his two decades as chief rabbi in Syria.
After leaving the country, his father helped Syrian Jewish community members get exit visas. The Assad regime’s condition for granting them was that émigrés not move to Israel. The elderly rabbi shuttled back and forth between New York and Syria between 1992 and 1994.
Today, only nine Jews remain in Syria, with the youngest one in her mid-70s, Hamra said.
The new Syrian leader, whose forces swiftly deposed Bashar Assad last month, set up a branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria in 2012 during the civil war against the regime, prompting Washington to put a $10 million bounty on him. It was lifted in December even as Israeli officials remain wary.
The undated one-page letter, which is written in Arabic and has both English and Hebrew versions, is addressed to the honorable Supreme Commander of the Headquarters for the Liberation of Al-Sham, Mr. Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. A copy of the letter was shared with JNS.
Hamra stressed the importance of renovating the synagogue and Cave of Elijah the Prophet in the Jobar suburb of Damascus, which was destroyed during the course of the civil war.
“Its destruction caused great sorrow to millions of Jews and Muslims around the world,” he wrote. “The restoration of the cave will be a great act of great kindness and symbolize the unity of peoples and their respect for a common heritage.”
Hamra told JNS that he is unsure how things will work out in Syria. “We need to be careful and see how things progress there, but we see some desire for dialogue,” he said.
In the meantime, he dreams of visiting his childhood home one day and praying at the Jewish heritage sites there.
How did he become “Chief Rabbi”??????