Posted on 01/27/2005 9:00:07 AM PST by mnehring
...The Taliban was ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001. The fact that both remaining Jews survived the Taliban's five-year reign is something of a miracle. Taliban authorities, determined to stamp out practices they considered un-Islamic, outlawed music, whipped men who failed to grow long beards and demolished two enormous Buddha statues that were carved into a cliff 13 centuries ago. Kabul's synagogue, an unassuming, white-washed building that was erected around a small courtyard on Flower Street 40 years ago, may have escaped a similar fate because it was so modest, and also because it was deserted and in disrepair when the militia came to power after a four-year civil war that virtually destroyed Kabul. Still, in 1998, after Levin and Simintov were released from their first detention, they found the Taliban had ransacked the synagogue for almost all items of value it still contained, including a silver pointer and four tiny silver bells. A few months later, a Taliban commander confiscated its last, most precious treasure: a handwritten Torah scroll that Simintov estimates was about 400 years old. Simintov blames Levin for that loss. The two men had been friendly acquaintances long before Simintov returned from Turkmenistan. Simintov, whose apartment was destroyed during the civil war, moved into the synagogue, and Levin, already living there as a caretaker, initially welcomed him. But Simintov said they fell out within a month, after he offered to help Levin move to Israel. "I thought it was too cold for him to stay in Kabul. But he got very angry about that. He was very old and just not right in the head," Simintov said. The two also quarreled about Levin's work as a fortuneteller and maker of amulets for Afghan women. "This is against our religion," Simintov said. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"BOTH" remaining Jews?
I think one of them died last week. Now there is one Jew left in Afghanistan as far as I know.
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