Wadi Abu Jamil is the former Jewish quarter in Beirut, Lebanon, located in the city's central district.
Wadi Abu Jamil is the former Jewish quarter in Beirut, Lebanon, located in the city's central district.
Formerly known as Wadi al-Yahoud (meaning "Valley of the Jews"), [1] the quarter was the center of the Lebanese Jewish community, with Beirut's largest and most important synagogue, the Maghen Abraham Synagogue, located there. The neighborhood was home to Lebanon's centuries-old Jewish community and also for the more recent Jewish refugees from Syria and Iraq.
Emigration from the community began in earnest after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. During the 1982 Lebanon War, Yasir Arafat's PLO forces took over much of the neighborhood, which was located along the dividing line between the two sides of the Lebanese Civil War. During the war, Israeli bombardment damaged the Magen Abraham Synagogue.
The area today is home to around 29 Lebanese Jews, mostly elderly.[ citation needed ]
Renovation of the Maghen Abraham Synagogue began in the summer of 2009. [2] Funding for the renovation includes donations from the Lebanese Jewish Community Council and Jewish Lebanese living overseas. Isaac Arazi, the leader of the Jewish community in Lebanon has managed to raise $40,000 from private donors. [3] Renovation is estimated to cost between $1 million and $1.5 million. [2] Solidere, the Lebanese joint-stock company responsible for much of Central Beirut’s reconstruction, has donated $150,000 toward the renovation effort. [3] Lebanese architect Nabil Gholam has played an important role in the redevelopment planning process.
Bukharan Jews, in modern times called Bukharian Jews, are an ethnoreligious Jewish sub-group of Central Asia that historically spoke Bukharian, a Judeo-Tajik dialect of the Tajik language, in turn a variety of the Persian language. Their name comes from the former Central Asian Emirate of Bukhara, which once had a sizable Jewish population. Bukharan Jews are of Persian-Jewish ethnicity, along with the Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and the Mountain Jews, all of whom fall under the category of Mizrahi Jews.
The persecution of Jews has been a major event in Jewish history prompting shifting waves of refugees and the formation of diaspora communities. As early as 605 BCE, Jews who lived in the Neo-Babylonian Empire were persecuted and deported. Antisemitism was also practiced by the governments of many different empires and the adherents of many different religions (Christianity), and it was also widespread in many different regions of the world.
The Abraham Avinu Synagogue is a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Hebron, Palestine. Built by Hakham Malkiel Ashkenazi in 1540, its domed structure represented the physical center of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Hebron. The synagogue became the spiritual hub of the Jewish community there and a major center for the study of Kabbalah. It was restored in 1738 and enlarged in 1864; the synagogue stood empty since the 1929 Hebron massacre, was destroyed after 1948, was rebuilt in 1977 and has been open ever since.
Syrian Jews are Jews who live in the region of the modern state of Syria, and their descendants born outside Syria. Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: from the Jews who inhabited the region of today's Syria from ancient times, and sometimes classified as Mizrahi Jews ; and from the Sephardi Jews who fled to Syria after the Alhambra Decree forced the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
Syrian Jews had predominantly two origins: those who inhabited Syria from early times and the Sephardim who fled to Syria after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in 1492 CE. There were large Jewish communities in Aleppo, Damascus, and Qamishli for centuries. In the early 20th century, a large percentage of Syrian Jews immigrated to Palestine, the U.S. and Latin America. The largest Syrian-Jewish community is now located in Israel and is estimated to number 80,000.
The Maghen Abraham Synagogue is one of the main synagogues in Lebanon.
The history of the Jews in Lebanon encompasses the presence of Jews in present-day Lebanon stretching back to biblical times. While Jews have been present in Lebanon since ancient times, their numbers had dwindled during the Muslim era. Through the medieval ages, Jewish people often faced persecution, but retained their religious and cultural identity.
Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, is home to two hippodromes, a historic one from the Roman era and a modern one that was built in the late 19th century.
The Deir el Qamar Synagogue, in Deir el Qamar, a village in south-central Lebanon, is the oldest synagogue in Mount Lebanon. The synagogue was built in the 17th century, during the Ottoman era in Lebanon, to serve the local Jewish population, some of whom were part of the immediate entourage of Fakhr al-Din II. The building is in good condition.
Congregation Maghen Abraham in Montreal is a Sephardi Jewish Lebanese community located in the district of St-Kévin in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Lebanon is an eastern Mediterranean country that has the most religiously diverse society within the Middle East, comprising 18 recognized religious sects. The religions are Islam and Christianity. The Druze comprise around 5% of Lebanon's population.
The Bukharan Quarter, also HaBukharim Quarter or Bukharim Quarter, is a neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem, Israel. The neighborhood was established by Bukharan Jews of the Old Yishuv. The neighborhood also anchored communities from modern-day Afghanistan and the Iranian city of Meshad. It belonged to the early Jewish neighborhoods built outside the Old City of Jerusalem as part of a process which began in the 1850s. Today most of the residents are Haredi Jews.
This article deals in more detail with some of the notable synagogues of Jerusalem that do not have their own page as yet.
Jews comprise approximately 16% of New York City's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel and the world's largest metropolitan Jewish community. As of 2020, just over 1.3 million Jews lived in the five boroughs of New York City, and over 1.912 million Jews lived in New York-Newark-Jersey City overall.
The Beth Elamen Jewish cemetery, is the only Jewish graveyard in Lebanon's capital Beirut.
Zaki Cohen born in 1829 in Aleppo in the Ottoman Empire, was a Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community in Beirut, Lebanon and a playwright. In 1874, he founded Beirut's first modern Jewish school, called Tiferet Yisrael in Hebrew and al-Madrasa al-Waṭaniyya al-Isrāʾīliyya in Arabic, where he served as director. The school continued to operate until 1899, when it was superseded by College Alliance Israelite Universelle of Beirut. Cohen died in Alexandria in 1904.
The Zion Plovdiv Synagogue is a synagogue in the city of Plovdiv located in Bulgaria. This synagogue is one of the only 2 synagogues that remain active to this day in Bulgaria.
The Sidon synagogue is one of the oldest synagogues in the world. It is located in the old city of Sidon in the Jewish neighborhood or quarter known colloquially as ḥarat al-yahūd.
The hippodrome of Berytus was a circus in the Roman colony of Berytus. It is one of two hippodromes in Beirut.
Shulamit "Shula" Kishik-Cohen was an Israeli spy who worked to smuggle Jews from Arab countries into Israel. She was noted for her missions in Lebanon and work for the Mossad.