What the Jewish community in Damascus believes must happen to resolve the current crisis is precisely what other Syrians in this capital city want

Bab Touma Jewish Quarter, Damascus -- Growing up in the small town of Milwaukie, Oregon and until after graduating from high school, I never knew or knowingly met a Jew. Not until my first post-high school job as a swimming instructor and life guard at the Portland Jewish Community
Center, having recently earned an American Red Cross Water Safety Instructor Certification -- something I would recommend to any teenager today. My plan was to teach swimming and lifeguard over the summer at the JCC until the fall, when I planned to head to Boston University.

It was a terrific job. I got to swim laps during work when no one was in the pool, was given free lunches, and learned a lot from the old couple from Poland who handed out towels and looked after the pool dressing rooms. We became good friends. When we were first introduced, I noticed that this inseparable couple walked stooped over, seemed to be in failing health and had what looked like numbers tattooed in blue ink on their right arms. I had no idea what the numbers were for and didn’t want to appear nosy so it wasn't until a couple of weeks later, during lunch one day, that my new friends explained what had happened to them and how they came to be in Oregon. They explained how they had miraculously survived death at a place they called Auschwitz, a word I don’t recall having ever heard.

From not having any Jewish friends in high school, in Boston I soon had mostly Jewish friends and several times was invited for a weekend to Brooklyn, Long Island, Teaneck, New Jersey and other places in the metropolitan New York area. For a hayseed kid from a small town in the Pacific Northwest it was great to have socially-connected and sophisticated Jewish girlfriends, all platonic until I fell deeply in love with Hanna K, an observant ultra-orthodox student from a Newton, Massachusetts family. Hanna, who always covered her head stood out on campus from the
typical Jewish girls from places like the Bronx or Westchester County, NY. Despite our mutual affection, Hanna explained she could never invite me to meet her family who lived just 20 minutes from BU because I was not Jewish and her father was very conservative. Both her parents fled Germany sometime in the 1930’s. I more or less understood, and she taught me a lot about Judaism, and I actually studied Hebrew for a while, at Hanna’s insistence.

Finally I marshaled the courage to visit her father’s real estate investment office which was just opposite the Boston Common and the historic Arlington Steet church within walking distance of Boston University Law School. Much like a nervous a new lawyer appearing before a harsh judge for the first time, I practiced my lines as I walked along. I still remember the speech I hoped to deliver, but close to his office I passed the statute of the William Lloyd Garrison the 19th century editor of the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, and one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society as well as a prominent voice for the Women’s Suffrage movement. I paused to read the words inscribed on the stone at the base of his statue, words still clear to me: “I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD!” They emboldened and gave me renewed courage to face Hanna’s father. 

My petition to Hanna’s very stern father, Abraham, was that I deeply loved his daughter, and that I would try to be for her the best possible husband. I then made what I hoped would be a case-winning appeal: “And sir, I would like you to know that by association, by education, by liberal politics, by philosophy and by choice, I consider myself Jewish and am studying Hebrew and Jewish religious teachings.” It was true and I was sincere.

As Hanna subsequently told me, her father was not at all liberal in his politics, was an atheist and he was not in the least impressed with my presentation. Before rather abruptly showing me the door, he did sort of mumble that he would consider the matter and inform me of his decision. I never heard back from the gentleman. Hanna and I remained inseparable during my last couple of weeks in Boston. But, as happens far too often in life, one loses contact with the dearest of dear friends. I left for a summer job in Washington, DC and then England, and I have no idea where life has led her. To happiness I hope.

During the following years I experienced the intense Zionization among those in the Jewish community I was involved with while working on the Hill in Washington. Being known to be pro-Palestinian, I noticed the increased politicization and polarization among my Jewish friends. Since then, thanks somewhat to the Internet, this fracturing of the Jewish community has only increased, with even some progressive liberal friends getting caught up in the anti-Arab, anti-Islam, neocon-Zionist hate-mongering-nonsense now so endemic in the US.

Against this backdrop, and after years of living in this region with few Jews, recent visits to the Jewish community in Damascus has been a joy and a breadth of fresh air because the ugliness of fascist Zionism and its corrosive effects on Judaism as a philosophy is absent among Jews here. It’s like the old days. I have now met more than half of the 30-40 (depending on whose estimate) Jews remaining in the Bab Toumy Jewish Quarter of Damascus. In 2003, for example, the Jewish population was estimated to be fewer than 100. In 2005, the US State Department estimated the Jewish population at 80 in its annual International Religious Freedom Report for 2008. In May 2012,
it was reported by the State Department that only 22 Jews still lived in Syria, all of them elderly and living in Damascus in a building adjoining the city's only functioning synagogue. This is not true. The remaining Jews live scattered around the Jewish Quarter and generally in family homes they have occupied for many years.

My new, excellent friend Saul, is the last remaining Jewish tailor in Syria. We spend time discussing just about everything but what I particularly like about Saul, and Albert Camero, the head of what’s left of the Jewish community in this battered country, is our discussions of “what went wrong” from the days when Jews and non-Sunnis like Twelver Shiites, Alawites, various Christian denominations, Druze and other heterodox communities lived together in Syria, nearly as family.

Photo: Syria’s only known remaining Jewish tailor, Saul L.

Other new Jewish friends in Syria include R. and G. two sisters in their late 70’s who were born in Syria and live in their grandfathers lovely home amidst the now empty mansions and less imposing Jewish homes in the Jewish Quarter. Their residence is next to the former home of Nissim Indibo, the last Rabbi in Damascus who died in 1976. “The sisters” as they are known to this tiny community, invited me to tea in their home adorned with Hebrew tiles on the walls and other Jewish religious artifacts. One day I listened to R. and G. for five hours as they recited their families’ history in Syria and even their current political views. More time with them would have been better, so interesting and charming they are.

 

Photo:  fplamb 3/13. One of the three remaining Synagogues in Damascus’ Jewish Quarter. No longer in use.

A few years ago the American embassy offered Saul and R. and G. visas to America, where over 75,000 Syria Jews live in just New York. Saul showed me his. But like other Jews here, when the subject came up about moving to occupied Palestine or America, they explained they have no interest in leaving their country where, like the Palestinians living in Syria, they are treated the same as any other Syrian, including free education, universal government-paid health care, the full right to work and to own a home. They are Syrian.

What the Jewish community in Damascus believes must happen to resolve the current crisis is precisely what other Syrians in this capital city want. The process leading to peace, noted below, is gleaned from interviews with a cross-section of citizens in the Jewish Quarter and also from conversations with a spectrum of Damascene society ranging from academics, retired and current officials, members of the opposition in Parliament, small business and shop owners, and just random people enjoying the spring weather in the parks and surprisingly packed popular restaurants.

Photo:  fplamb 3/13.  A fairly typical unoccupied Jewish home, one of dozens boarded up in the, in Jewish Quarter of Damascus. Unlike Zionist occupied Palestine, Syria has rejected any absentee occupant law and Jewish homes remain the sole property of the families who own them, irrespective of where they currently live. Consistent with local zoning laws in this historic district, these often magnificent dwellings can be renovated and sold by the former occupants with government permission

I was invited to such a restaurant this week. Into the late evening the place in central Damascus was filled with narguilé smoking, card playing, scrumptious desert eating, laughing and joking young and old people. I was tempted to mount one of the tables and shout to the revelers: “Excuse me
please but haven’t you folks heard there is a civil war going on around here!” The zest for life is strong here—even enveloped as it is, by so much death and unimaginable suffering.
Asking Saul and others in the Jewish Quarter what their views of what the solution is to stop the slaughter, they insist that the government is now basically and finally getting on the right track, yet they yearn for the days of Hafez al Assad and are adamant that, and then tend to believe it will happen, that systemic modernization and liberalization be immediately implemented, ranging from the economy, routing out graft, and expanding civil liberties. They lament the misjudgments that were made during the spring of 2011 following the crimes committed by the regime against the youngsters in Deraa who were brutalized and killed. That an opportunity to nip the uprising in the bud was lost is a fairly common opinion heard in the Jewish community.

The path to internal civil peace for Syria, and likely the region, in the view of Damascene Jews, as well as others in Syria seeking a return to normalcy, emphasize the following points.

• There must be an immediate and real, across the country, cease-fire supported and insisted upon by all the local and international power brokers;

• All manner of humanitarian aid and methods of delivering it across Syria and also to the approximate one million Syrian refugees forced out of Syria by the violence must be immediately organized and supported by all sides without political and military calculations of which side might benefit. The Syrian people will benefit and that outsiders should return to whence they
came is a common expression;

• All parties much commit to saving the endangered cultural heritage and historic sites and support the still existing government institutions, infrastructure and civil services;

• The holding of the 2014 scheduled multi-party presidential elections on time, with international monitoring by groups such as the UN and the Carter Center. Internationally arranged security during the voting must be arranged to avoid the experience of Iraq with respect to voting intimidation and even targeting. In the run-up to the voting and during the campaign period, security must be guaranteed by all sides. Following the elections an immediate national referendum must be held for the citizens to render their verdict on the current constitution

In Syria’s Jewish community there appears to be no interest in the Zionist regime in occupied Palestine. ”Zionism is completely alien to Judaism. It concerns expansionist political goals not religion. ” one gentleman explained. “What we see being done to our Palestinian brothers under occupation by fanatics in the name of religion has much more in common with some of the extreme Jihadists around here than with most Jews” another explained.

One old lady brought out an article translated into Arabic she acquired years ago entitled, "Israel's Flag is Not Mine". It was written by my late friend who I had the honor to work for on his Middle East Perspectives magazine years ago. Alfred M. Lilienthal was the author of “The Zionist Connection” among several other important works and, I was told, has always been popular in
Syria despite the Zionist lobby labeling him “A self-hating Jew” whatever that is supposed to mean. One gentleman, who has lived in the same house on Straight Street for 47 years, explained to me that the label meant the same as the “anti-Semite” smear as applied to non-Jewish critics of Zionism.

“Most Jews in Syria have always agreed with most this man’s views. Zionism and the Zionist regime in Palestine is the enemy of Jews, not our saviors.” she explained.

Saul then injected, “Zionism has caused most of the problems in the area. Our religion is much respected in Syria. We have all lived together without problems for millennia. There were no pogroms or ghettos here. Religion comes from God. Zionism comes from fascism and racism.”

I left the meeting for a tour of one of the three remaining Synagogues in Damascus, the Franji synagogue off Al-Amin Street across from the Talisman Hotel in Bab Touma, and at which Jewish artifacts this week are being collected for preservation in case war comes to the Quarter. Accompanied by Saul and the remarkably fit sisters, R and G, I was reminded of a few words the sometimes profane and often brusque scholar Lilienthal frequently used to sum up his political views on the Middle East:
“Everything for the Jews. Nothing for the Zionists.”

I believe my new friends would agree.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com