History of the Jews in Syria

Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: those who inhabited Syria from early times and the Sephardim who fled to Syria after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492 AD). There were large communities in Aleppo, Damascus, and Qamishli for centuries. In the early 20th century, a large percentage of Syrian Jews immigrated to the U.S., Central and South America and Israel. The largest Syrian-Jewish community is located in Israel and is estimated at 80,000.

Following the Syrian Civil War and rise of ISIL, the majority of the remaining Jews of Syria have fled to neighboring Israel. In November 2015, it was reported that only 18 Syrian Jews remain in the entire country.

The tradition of the community ascribes its founding to the time of King David (1000 BC), whose general Joab occupied the area of Syria described in the Bible as Aram Zoba: this name is taken by later tradition as referring to Aleppo. (Modern scholarship locates Aram Zoba in Lebanon and the far south of Syria: the identification with Aleppo is not found in rabbinic literature prior to the 11th century.) Whether or not Jewish settlement goes back to a time as early as King David, both Aleppo and Damascus certainly had Jewish communities early in the Christian era.

In Roman times about 10,000 Jews lived at Damascus, governed by an ethnarch.Paul of Tarsus succeeded, after a first rebuff, in converting many of the Jews of Damascus to Christianity (49 AD). This irritated the Jewish ethnarch to such a degree that he attempted to arrest Paul; and the latter's friends only saved his life by lowering him in a basket out of a window built in the wall of the city. Many Jews were murdered by the pagan inhabitants upon the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War. Later, Damascus, as the coins show, obtained the title of metropolis; and under Alexander Severus, when the city was a Christian colony, it became the seat of a bishop, who enjoyed a rank next to that of the Patriarch of Antioch. In the fifth century, under the rule of the Byzantine Empire, being the Talmudic time, Jews were living at Damascus; for the rabbi Rafram bar Pappa went to pray in the synagogue of Jobar.

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