Beirut, Lebanon – The ruined main synagogue in central Beirut is due to be renovated, after an agreement between various religious denominations and permission from the Lebanese government, planning authorities and even Hezbollah. Several dozen Jews still living in Lebanon will fund the project, along with others in the Diaspora.
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Renovations will include mending the gaping hole in the Magen Avraham synagogue’s roof and repairing the chandeliers that once hung from it. The Torah ark and prayer benches will also be refurbished to their former states.
The job will be funded by a $200,000-donation from private donors, as well as $150,000 from Solidere, a construction firm tasked with rebuilding central Beirut from the destruction of the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War. The company is privately owned by the family of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister assassinated in 2005.
The project received the green light after political officials and community leaders became convinced it could show that Lebanon is an open country, tolerant of many faiths including Judaism.
Solidere’s reconstruction contract stipulates that any places of worship must not be razed, but remain under the ownership of the religious community it serves, people involved in the renovation told Haaretz.
Lebanon’s Jewish community is one of the country’s 17 officially recognized faiths. The several dozen people in its remaining Jewish community hold few religious activities other than prayer services during the High Holidays. Many Jewish residents are in middle age or older, and affluent.
The Jewish community never served as a target for anyone in Lebanon. All the Jews who left the country did so of their own free will. We’re not talking about renewing prayer in the synagogue, but only about renovation as a symbol of the great diversity of Lebanon and the history of the community,” one source said.
Yitzhak Levanon, a Herzliya-based writer and translator who studied at the American University in Beirut in the late 1920s and early 1930s, told Haaretz: “The story of the Jews in Lebanon is over. It cannot be returned.”
Since it was built in Moroccan style in the 1920s, the synagogue has served as a focal point for Lebanese Jewry.
Levanon said the Wadi Abu Jamil area once held eight synagogues, and Magen Avraham was by far the largest. But over the years the community dwindled due to emigration, including to Israel, and the synagogue was seriously damaged in fighting between Muslim and Christian forces during the civil war. Looters stripped the building of its Torah ark and prayer benches, and even gutted its electrical system.
I am totally amazed by this story!
They are rebuilding a shul in Lebanon with the approval of Hezbolah?!
Unbelieveable!
Means nothing, many shuls still in Iran and Yaman
Its Interesting but I’m not impresst, cause for years arabs had very good relations with their Jewish neighbo. in muslim countries like Moroco,iraq,turkey,syria,and more. Since the Zionist established the state of Israel, unfortoatly they brought a lot of anger upon us Jews, should Hashem save us of all the danger they cause us!
One more place for them to hide rocket launchers.
Will Hizbullah put its money where its mouth is and contribute some dough toward the shul’s reconstruction? Yeah, I did not think so…
Do you keep two days or one day of Yom Tov there??? Maybe someone could open up a yeshiva there? Where is NK when you need them to do something constructive?? They are always to busy defaming other Jews that they are missing a good opportunity to actually build something in what may be E”Y….
Maybe they can make Achmydeadheadhurts the guest of honor at the shul dinner.
Algerian Muslims saved my mother’s extended family from the Nazis. Turkish Muslims saved another branch of my family during WWII. I am grateful to the Lebanese people for restoring our beautiful synagogue. I would not be shocked if we are not begging the Lebanese government and people for refuge in the not too distant future. The Muslim people know our history better than we do. Anytime the Christians turn on us, they turn on them next. Anytime they turn on them, they turn on us next. It’s unbelievable to me to see so many Jews joining the Crusades against Islam; we haven’t learned a thing from history.
Don’t be so impressed. The Germans also preserved the shuls in Prague, to have a museum for the dead Jews, so that future generations would learn about this nation that used to exist, ch”v.