Syria permits Jewish group to begin work on returning seized assets, restoring holy sites

Son of Syrian rabbi meets with social affairs minister in Damascus, tours father’s former synagogue; two Israeli rabbis reportedly visit closed synagogues in Aleppo

Syrian authorities on Wednesday granted a license to a Jewish-Syrian organization that plans to work to return properties confiscated under previous governments and restore Jewish holy sites, one of its founders said.

“This is a strong message from the Syrian state that we do not discriminate between one religion and another… Syria helps all Syrian men and women of every religion and sect who want to build our new state,” Syria’s Social Affairs and Labor Minister Hind Kabawat told AFP, announcing the authorization granted to the Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation.

The president of the Foundation is Henry Hamra, who fled from Syria to the US in the 1990s with his father, Yusuf Hamra, reportedly the last rabbi to leave Syria, amid restrictions placed on it by the deposed Assad regime.

Henry Hamra, who ran unsuccessfully in Syria’s legislative elections in October, said the group will “work on making an inventory of Jewish properties and returning those confiscated during the previous regime, as well as protecting, caring for and restoring holy sites so that they are accessible to all Jews in the world.”

Hamra met with Kabawat in Damascus on Wednesday, according to photos published by Mouaz Moustafa, head of the former Syrian opposition group Syrian Emergency Task Force.

Photos published by AFP also showed Hamra praying with his son Joseph at Damascus’s al-Franj Synagogue, which he previously visited in February with his father, the synagogue’s former rabbi.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a Jewish group, including two unnamed Israeli rabbis, also visited two synagogues in northwestern Syria’s Aleppo that had closed decades ago.

SOHR published footage from the visit showing the group in front of the entrance to a synagogue. According to SOHR, the visit took place under heavy protection by authorities.

The visit “aimed to inspect the assets of Syrian-Jewish people” and came amid “a religious-cultural event with the participation of an association that operates in north Syria,” SOHR said, without naming the association. During the visit, Aleppo’s governor promised the group to help restore stolen Syrian Jewish property to its owners, SOHR reported.

The city lent its name to the Aleppo Codex — a 10th-century manuscript of the Hebrew bible renowned for its precision — which was housed in Aleppo’s central synagogue for some six centuries until 1947, when it was lost during an antisemitic riot sparked by the UN resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab.

The remains of the badly damaged codex were salvaged by the synagogue’s rabbi at the time; in 1958, a Syrian Jewish refugee brought them to Israel, where they are displayed at the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Syria’s centuries-old Jewish community was able to practice their religion under former president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, but was prevented from leaving the country until 1992.

After that, their numbers plummeted from around 5,000 at the time to just a handful now.

“We have counted dozens of Jewish-owned houses that were confiscated by the Bashar al-Assad regime,” said Moustafa.

Syria’s new authorities, who this week celebrated the first anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s downfall, have made overtures toward the country’s dwindling, storied Jewish community, including by letting in Jewish groups. One group that visited Damascus in September, with the express approval of Syria’s Foreign Ministry, included The Times of Israel Editor David Horovitz.