The Syrian government announced on Wednesday, 10 December, that it has granted an official license to the first organization dedicated to protecting the country’s Jewish heritage, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The press office at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor told Enab Baladi that the organization specializes in preserving Syrian Jewish heritage, and that it will soon be formally announced on the ministry’s official channels.
Social Affairs Minister Hind Kabawat told the agency that recognizing the “Syrian Jewish Heritage Organization” sends a message that the state “does not discriminate between one religion and another”, adding that the current government “supports all Syrian men and women of every confession who wish to take part in building the new state”.
The organization, founded by several members of the Syrian Jewish diaspora abroad, aims, according to Syrian American rabbi Henry Hamra, to survey Jewish property and follow up on the restitution of assets confiscated under the former regime, in addition to protecting Jewish shrines and synagogues and restoring them so they are open to visits “for all Jews around the world”.
Damascus has seen visits this year by delegations of Syrian Jews, the first of which took place in February with the participation of Henry Hamra and his father, Yusuf Hamra, the chief rabbi of Syrian Jews in New York, who left Syria in 1992 after former president Hafez al-Assad lifted the travel ban imposed on Jewish residents.
Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, also met a delegation from the Jewish community on 22 September in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The Jewish presence in Syria dates back centuries before Christ. However, the Arab Israeli conflict and the tensions that accompanied it, followed by restrictions imposed by Hafez al-Assad’s regime on the movement of Jews and a ban on their travel until 1992, reduced their numbers from around 5,000 people to only a handful of individuals.
For his part, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Mouaz Moustafa, told AFP that they have counted dozens of homes belonging to Jewish owners that were seized during the rule of ousted president Bashar al-Assad, stressing that work to document these properties is ongoing as part of a legal process to restore them to their owners.
The head of the Mosaic Jewish community in Syria, Bakhour Chamntoub, had previously told Enab Baladi that Jewish homes in the al-Amin neighborhood of Damascus were “violated” by factions, which seized around 30 houses whose owners are Jews living abroad in the United States and Europe.
Chamntoub attempted to contact the official then responsible for allocating the houses, Youssef Hamdan, who told him that the seizure decision could not be reversed, prompting Chamntoub to begin reaching out to the government to have the seizures reviewed.