Syrian Jews and allies seek a place in the country’s future...

Syria Direct ^ | April 2026 | Ananya Natchukuri

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As the sun sets on a Friday evening, preparations for Shabbat are in full swing in South Brooklyn...

Inside one of the few grocery stores still open, a man who left Damascus in the 1990s greets one of his regular customers in Syrian Arabic as a Hebrew song plays in the background. The pair part ways with a “Shabbat Shalom.”

These Brooklyn streets—home to the largest Syrian Jewish community outside of Israel, with an estimated 75,000 members—echo the spirit of the once-bustling centers of Jewish life in Damascus and Aleppo.

Today, Syria’s historic Jewish quarters are a dimmer scene. Only six Jews reportedly remain in the country, too few for the quorum required for communal worship under Jewish law. Ancient synagogues sit largely shuttered or in ruins: some abandoned in the wake of anti-Jewish violence in the years surrounding the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel, others damaged and destroyed during more than a decade of civil war.

But the toppling of the Assad regime in December 2024 opened space for a new chapter to be written in Syria, one that Syrian Jews in the diaspora, and their allies, aim to be a part of. In the end of the war and the new government’s stated commitment to welcoming all Syrians and building international friendships, they see an opportunity to right historic wrongs and bring Jewish life in Syria back from the brink...

Within the Jewish community engaging with Syria, one particularly thorny question—whether and how Israel fits into the picture—has opened a fault line.

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TOPICS: Judaism; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics
KEYWORDS: arabs; brooklyn; damascus; israel; jews; mizrahi; mizrahijews; nyc; rabbi; syria; syrianjews

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Election posters of Henry Hamra, a Syrian American parliamentary candidate and son of the last rabbi to leave Damascus in the 1990s.

Murals at an ancient synagogue in Dura-Europos, Syria.