For the first time in over a decade, the sound of tefillos once again echoed in the central shul of Damascus, Syria. The poignant moment marked a rare revival of Jewish presence in a city that once held a thriving kehilla, now reduced to just a handful of elderly Yidden.

Moshe Klein, a noted researcher of Jewish heritage who has been active in diplomatic efforts to preserve batei knesses and cemeteries around the world, together with New York businessman Dov Bleich, undertook a three-day visit to Damascus. Despite ongoing reports of Israeli airstrikes in the region, the two visited the city’s historic Jewish quarter, davened together with one of the last remaining Jews in Damascus, R’ Bachur Siman-Tov, and toured the ancient Jewish cemetery. There, they recited tefillos at the kever of the mekubal Rav Chaim Vital zt”l, the foremost talmid of the Arizal, whose resting place was recently desecrated by vandals searching for imagined treasures.

Locals, Klein reported, reacted with surprise and curiosity upon seeing Jews wearing yarmulkas openly on the streets. “They greeted us with ‘Shalom,’” he recounted, adding that many expressed longing for peace and wondered aloud why Israel was bombing them.

While many of Damascus’s Jewish heritage sites remain shuttered or under government control, heritage advocates remain hopeful that, in time, these makomos kedoshim will once again be open to Yidden seeking to connect with their storied past.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)