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The foundation intends to protect and restore Jewish religious sites so they can be visited by Jews from around the world.
By Shula Rosen
Syrian officials approved the first license for a Jewish-Syrian organization on Wednesday, marking a rare public gesture toward the country’s near-vanished Jewish community and signaling a shift in how the post-Assad authorities aim to handle property claims dating back decades, AFP reported.
The authorization was announced after Social Affairs and Labor Minister Hind Kabawat met with Henry Hamra, president of the newly recognized Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation.
Kabawat said the decision reflects a wider policy aimed at treating all Syrians equally as the country rebuilds. “This is a strong message from the Syrian state that we do not discriminate between one religion and another… Syria helps all Syrian men and women of every religion and sect who want to build our new state,” she told AFP.
Hamra, who left Syria for the United States in the 1990s with his father, Yusuf Hamra—the last known rabbi to depart the country under the previous regime—plans for the organization to document Jewish-owned properties and pursue the return of real estate seized under earlier governments.
He said the foundation intends to protect and restore Jewish religious sites so they can be visited by Jews from around the world.
Photographs circulated by Syrian Emergency Task Force head Mouaz Moustafa showed Hamra meeting Kabawat in Damascus, while AFP images captured him praying with his son at Damascus’s al-Franj Synagogue. The pair previously visited the same synagogue in February.
Monitoring groups reported parallel activity in northern Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a separate delegation, which included two unnamed Israeli rabbis, toured synagogues in Aleppo that have been closed for decades.
SOHR said the visit, conducted under heavy security, focused on evaluating Jewish communal assets. According to the group, Aleppo’s governor pledged assistance in returning stolen property to its rightful owners.
Aleppo was once home to the famed Aleppo Codex, a 10th-century Hebrew Bible manuscript kept for centuries in the city’s central synagogue until it disappeared during riots in 1947. Parts of the damaged manuscript were later smuggled to Israel and are now held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Syrian Jewish life, once numbering around 5,000 people, collapsed after the lifting of exit restrictions in 1992. Moustafa said activists have already identified dozens of confiscated homes. The new authorities, who recently marked one year since Bashar al-Assad’s fall, have permitted several Jewish groups to enter the country, including a delegation to Damascus in September approved by the Foreign Ministry.
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