The history of the Lebanese Jewish community is different from that of the rest of the Middle East. In 1920, it became the only Jewish community to have its rights protected by the country's laws, and Jews felt as much Lebanese as their Christian or Muslim counterparts. It was the only nation where the Jewish population grew after the creation of Israel, but after the establishment of a large contingent of Palestinian refugees, the Jews saw their lives enter a process of irreversible deterioration.
Antique
It is believed that the Jewish presence in Phoenicia, as the region that is now Lebanon was then called, dates back to biblical times and that in the 2nd century BCE there were Jews settled near Beirut. In the period of the Hashmonaim, there were Jewish communities in villages and hamlets in the Lebanese mountains and on Mount Hermon.
The Jews were still there when Rome conquered Phoenicia in 64 BCE. Under Roman rule, a period of great prosperity began. The ports of Beirut, Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre became trading posts for imports from Syria, Persia, and India, from which regional goods prized in Rome, such as cedar wood, perfumes, jewelry, and wines, were exported.
Beirut was the destination of the Roman general Titus after he captured Jerusalem in 70 CE and crushed the First Jewish War. Titus took thousands of Jewish prisoners with him and, during the games he sponsored in the city, ordered the killing of many of them. To escape the Roman forces, many farmers from Judea and Galilee sought refuge in villages at the foot of Mount Hermon. They did not consider themselves to be living in the Diaspora, since the biblical border of the Land of Israel extends as far south as Saida. According to several historians, there have always been Jews living in this region.
With the division of the Roman Empire at the end of the 4th century, Phoenicia became part of the Eastern Roman Empire – or Byzantine Empire. The region came to be called Mount Lebanon or Lebanon. In the following century, the inhabitants of the region adopted the teachings of the Syrian Christian monk, Saint Maron. Maronite Christians became one of the largest and most important ethnoreligious groups in Lebanon.
Islamic conquest
In the 7th century, Lebanon became part of the Islamic Empire. Arab armies took control of the coast, but not Mount Hermon. They also failed to convert the majority of the population to Islam, and had little success in converting the Maronites or the Jews who lived there.
Under Islamic rule, the situation of the Jews improved significantly, although there were still some restrictions, particularly during the rule of the Umayyad dynasty (635–755). There is specific mention of the Jewish presence in the region that is now Lebanon in the work of the 9th-century Arab historian Ahmad Ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri, who wrote about the Arab wars and conquests from the 7th century onwards. He even mentions that Caliph Mu'awiya promoted the settlement of Jews in Tripoli (661–680). It is known that in 922 there was also a Jewish community in Baalbek.
During the Crusades, the area was the main route for Crusaders to Jerusalem. In 1110, when Beirut fell to Christians, there were 35 Jewish families living in the city, many of whom were massacred by the Crusaders. Beirut became a Crusader outpost, and trade flourished between the city and Italian ports.
Information about the Jews living in Lebanon in the 12th century and the cities where they lived is found in the travelogues of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. “In the city of Gebal (ancient Byblos) there were about 150 Jews... In Beirut... only 50. In Saida (Sidon), a large city, there were about 20... Ten miles from Saida lived a people who were at war with the men of Sidon; they were called Druze... They lived in the mountains... and their borders extended towards Mount Hermon... There were no Jews among them, but... the people were favorable to the Jews.”
The region of present-day Lebanon was caught up in the struggles between Christians and Muslims for control of the Holy Land, which changed hands repeatedly. When Beirut finally returned to Muslim control in 1291, there was a synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in the city.
In the Middle Ages, Lebanon was a transit point for Jews from Europe going to Eretz Israel. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, several Sephardim settled in Beirut. Rabbi Moses Basola, on his journey to the Land of Israel, visited Beirut in 1512 and reported that 12 families from Sicily lived there.
Under the Ottoman Empire
In 1516, the Ottoman Turks conquered Lebanon, which became part of Ottoman Syria. The inclusion of Mount Lebanon into the Ottoman Empire had important repercussions for the predominantly Druze-Maronite region. Both groups maintained good relations with the Jews until the mid-19th century.
During the 16th century, there were 1.535 Jews living in the cities of Tripoli and Beirut. There were also Jews in Saida, Tyre, and Hasbaya, at the foot of Mount Hermon and in the Shouf mountain region. Jews settled in several villages, including Deir-al-Qamr, the administrative and political center of the Mansif district, where 19 Jewish families lived in the early 80th century.
The first major influx of Jews into Lebanon occurred in the early 18th century, with the arrival of Sephardim from Europe and other parts of the Middle East. They settled mainly in the Shouf Mountains, where they were welcomed by the Druze, who were also victims of Sunni Arab intolerance.
During the reign of Bashir II (1778–1841), the Jews of the Shouf, known for their courage and bravery, including the beauty of their women, experienced a period of prosperity. Like the Druze, they devoted themselves primarily to agriculture, especially the cultivation of vineyards and olive trees, as well as the production of olive oil and silk. The Shouf community maintained a cemetery, schools, and synagogues, and soon after settling in the mountains, they planted a small cedar forest in the village near Deir-al-Qamr, so that the Third Temple in Jerusalem could be rebuilt with their wood.
Another wave of Sephardic Jews, the fringe, coming mainly from Italy, France and Austria, arrived in Lebanon in the middle of the same century. They settled in Beirut, which had become an important silk export center. The fringe They took up residence in a neighborhood known as Haret el Yahud, the Jewish Quarter. Many mistakenly believe that Wadi Abu Jamil was the old Jewish quarter of Beirut, but it was not until around 1869 that they began to settle in the area, which at the time was outside the city walls.
According to the accounts of Rabbi David d'Bet Hillel, who visited Beirut around 1824, and Rabbi Moses Farhi in 1830, 15 Jewish families lived in the city. In their accounts, they describe the Jewish quarter with its narrow streets and thick-walled houses, the bustling trade and the small but well-kept synagogue with lemon trees in the garden.
From the last decades of the 18th century, and even more so after Mohamed Ali Pasha conquered Ottoman Syria in 1831, Beirut entered a period of growth. The Jews, who for the most part worked in commerce or port activities, experienced a period of prosperity. By 1840 there were already more than 500 Jews living in Beirut.
The 18th century marked the arrival of European Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In fierce economic competition with the Jews, they introduced a Christian anti-Semitism into the Middle East. The first accusations of ritual murder appeared in Rhodes, Damascus and Aleppo.
For the Jews living in the Shouf Mountains, the year 1840 marked the beginning of a very difficult period. They were accused of ritual murder, and the region was the scene of the first conflicts between Druze and Maronites. A civil war broke out two decades later, in 1860, culminating in the massacre of a thousand Christians by the Druze. One of the results of the conflict was the creation of a new Ottoman statute, “the Regulation”, which came into force in 1864, institutionalizing the political system that has characterized Lebanon ever since.
The years of fighting led to the exodus of a portion of the population from the Shouf Mountains. Some of the Jews who left the region settled in Saida and Hasbaya, but the majority settled in Beirut.
In 1886, the city became the capital of the province, which included the Syrian coast and what was then Ottoman Palestine. From the end of the 19th century onwards, the number of Jews in Beirut increased. In 1880, there were about 1.000; in 1889, there were 1.500. Even after the Christian attack on the Jewish quarter in 1862 and the new accusations of blood libels in 1890, the city's Jewish community grew, beginning to settle in Wadi Abu Jamil.
In 1869, the first primary school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle was opened in Beirut. The impact of the Alliance cannot be underestimated, as it shaped a Francophile identity among Lebanese Jews.
20st century
At the turn of the 20th century, Jews confidently linked their future to the emerging modern state of Lebanon. In the Lebanese Civil Constitution of 1911, the Ottoman government recognized Jews as one of 23 religious groups living in Lebanon, with the same rights as others. In the first decade of the 1900s, Jews from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Greece settled in Lebanon, increasing the Lebanese Jewish population to about 5. Most lived in Saida and Beirut, a bustling city known as “the Paris of the Middle East.”
With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the League of Nations handed over the mandate over Lebanon and Syria to France in 1. On September 1920 of the same year, the French High Commission proclaimed the creation of the Greater Lebanon and later the Lebanese Republic. The constitution of the new state guaranteed each minority freedom of religion, the right to legislate on civil matters, and to have its own educational system. The Jews of Lebanon became the only Jewish community in the Middle East to have their rights protected by the country's law. Most Lebanese, including Jews, speak of the French Mandate as a “Golden Age.” Despite maintaining an apolitical stance, Jews felt as much Lebanese as their Christian or Muslim counterparts.
In 1926, the Beirut community opened the much larger Magen Avraham Synagogue in the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood. In addition to this, there were ten other smaller synagogues, including the Kahal Reuven, the Spanish Synagogue, and the Eddy Synagogue. In the educational field, two years later, the Talmud Torah Selim Tarrab school was opened in a building behind the Magen Avraham. Ten years later, the number of students reached 290. In 1935, the Alliance Israélite Universelle had 673 students in Beirut.
Estimates of the Lebanese Jewish population during the French Mandate vary greatly, depending on the source and the research basis of different historians. While the Jewish Encyclopedia estimates that in 1929 their number had reached 5, the 1932 census records 3.588 Jews in Lebanon, of whom 3.060 were in Beirut. Whatever its actual size, the community in Beirut was wealthy, active, and the best organized in Lebanon and Syria, living in peace and maintaining good commercial and friendly relations with the other minorities.
However, the conflicts between Jews and Muslims in British Palestine had repercussions in Lebanon. The Hebron massacre, perpetrated by Arabs against Jews in 1929, contributed to a change in attitudes in Lebanon, both among Jews and among certain Muslim groups who began to incite conflict. The climate in Eretz Israel became even more tense in 1936, when Islamic mobs, instigated by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, attacked the Jews, spreading violence. Lebanon was not immune to the violence. That year, the Jews of Saida were attacked by Muslims.
The situation became more tense in October 1937, when Haj Amin el-Husseini, hunted by the British, took refuge in a village near Beirut. A fierce anti-Semite, a Hitler sympathizer and one of the voices of radical Islam, the Mufti incited violence against Jews. The situation calmed down when, in 1939, he moved to Iraq.
Tensions between Muslims and Jews led to closer relations between the latter and Maronite Christians, mainly the Lebanese Phalanges.
With Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Lebanon became a transit point for Jews seeking to travel to British Palestine. In 1935, the leaders of the Lebanese Jewish community obtained permission from the French authorities to allow Jewish refugees to enter the country.
The situation of the Jews began to change after the defeat of France by Nazi Germany in June 1940. Under the terms of the armistice, the Vichy regime was established in southern France, subservient to the Third Reich. Lebanon, a French colony, found itself subject to the authority of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. The Jewish community appealed to the authorities to stop enforcing the anti-Semitic laws enacted by Vichy. At first, no action was taken against the Jews, but when the High Commissioner was replaced by one loyal to Vichy, the French authorities began to act in conjunction with the Gestapo. However, the Lebanese authorities categorically refused to implement any discriminatory laws against their citizens. Jews in transit, however, were interned in detention camps in the Lebanese mountains.
In June 1941, British and Free French troops occupied Lebanon. General Charles de Gaulle proclaimed the independence of Lebanon, granting rights to Jews. However, this independence was not achieved until November 1943, with the establishment of a National Pact. Lebanon became a democracy with multiple ethnicities and religions. Political representation was divided between Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims.
Republic of Lebanon
In 1946, the Allied forces left the country, and Lebanon became de facto independent. The newly created state became a parliamentary democracy. The presidency was held by Maronite Christians, while the post of prime minister was held by Sunnis. Jews, Catholics and other minorities were given a minority seat in parliament.
The intensification of conflicts in British-mandated Palestine eventually had repercussions in Lebanon. In November 1945, the Jewish community in Tripoli was attacked and 12 Jews were killed.
When the United Nations passed a resolution in November 1947 to partition Palestine, the Jews of Beirut celebrated the event. Tensions in the city grew tense after bombs were exploded near Wadi Abu Jamil in early December. In January 1948, Jews and Jewish property became targets of violence by Muslims. The day after the Proclamation of Independence of the State of Israel, bombs were dropped on neighborhoods where Jews lived.
Anti-Jewish demonstrations took place throughout the country. In Beirut, a crowd armed with bricks and incendiary grenades headed to the Wadi Abu Jamil area, but were blocked at the entrance to the neighborhood by Lebanese police and Lebanese Phalange militias. The Saida community was the hardest hit.
Despite these events, Beirut's Jewish community grew due to the influx of Jews from Syria and Iraq. In 1947, after the Aleppo Pogrom, many of the city's Jews fled to Beirut.
Lebanon was one of the countries that, after Israel's Declaration of Independence in May 1948, declared war on the newly created state, but its participation in the conflict was minimal. In March 1949, with the signing of the armistice between Israel and Lebanon, life for the Jews seemed to have returned to normal. However, with the arrival of Palestinian refugees, a new sociopolitical reality emerged that would have dramatic consequences for the Jews and for Lebanon itself. A first wave of more than 100 Palestinians entered the country, challenging the confessional system based on demographic contingents. This Muslim “avalanche” constituted a threat to the status quo political and Maronite hegemony.
Jewish Community after the Establishment of Israel
For the Jewish population of Lebanon, the first Arab-Israeli war did not have disastrous effects, as in other Muslim countries. The authorities did not take away any of their rights and protected them against extremist Arabs. However, there were changes: government funding for Jewish schools and charitable institutions was suspended, and the Maccabi movement was accused of Zionist activities and of sending young people illegally to Eretz Israel, was declared illegal.
The government's more tolerant attitude towards Jews meant that Lebanon was the only state in the Middle East where the Jewish population grew after the creation of Israel, as Jews from other Arab countries sought asylum in its territory. In 1948, there were about 5.200 Jews living in Lebanon, and in 1951, about 9 – of whom more than 2 were Syrians. The integration of the new arrivals was relatively easy.
With the growth of the community, a geographical expansion of the Jewish bourgeoisie began, which began to leave the vicinity of the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood, moving to Kantari, Georges Picot, des Français and Agripa streets, among others.
In 1950, the Alliance school was hit by a bomb, but relations between the Jewish community and the other Lebanese minorities, including the Muslims, remained friendly. The Jews still believed that there would be a Jewish future in Lebanon...
The conflict between Christians and Muslims
However, the Cold War divided Lebanon: on one side, pro-Western and pro-US Christians, represented by the then Maronite Christian president Camille Chamoun; on the other, Arab and Muslim nationalists, more sympathetic to Egyptian Nasserism.
In 1957 and 1958, two events had an impact on the political situation in Lebanon. In 1957, the pro-Western government of Camille Chamoun adopted the Eisenhower Doctrine. The following year, Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic as a first step towards a “pan-Arab nation.” In 1958, during the last months of President Chamoun’s term, an insurrection broke out, instigated by Lebanese Muslims who wanted to make Lebanon a member of the United Arab Republic. Chamoun requested assistance, and 5 U.S. Marines were briefly sent to Beirut on July 15.
An unavoidable crisis took hold of the country and led to an armed conflict between Christians and Muslims. The Jewish community was not directly affected; Jewish property was protected by the Lebanese Phalanges and the national armed forces.
At the time, Beirut's Jewish community, the largest in the country, was at its peak, with the number of Jews ranging from 9 to 15, depending on the source. However, the escalation of the conflict between Maronite Christians and Muslims led many Jews to leave Lebanon. Nevertheless, Lebanese Judaism remained thriving.
When the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and the Arab countries in June 1967, the Lebanese authorities did not involve their army in the conflict. An even larger contingent of Palestinian refugees settled in Lebanon, and Palestinian guerrillas (fedayeen) began to launch attacks on Israel from the Lebanese border. Tensions reached a peak and Lebanese of all ethnicities began to leave the country. It is estimated that more than 2 Jews left Lebanon after 1967. Despite the exodus, the Jewish community still maintained a relatively high profile, but a series of restrictions began to be imposed on non-Lebanese Jews. As a result, Syrian Jews who still lived in Beirut emigrated. By 1969, there were fewer than 2.500 Jews living in Lebanon.
The relationship between them and the other Lebanese communities entered a process of irreversible deterioration. Violent fighting broke out in 1969 between the Lebanese army, under the Maronite-controlled government, and Palestinian guerrillas. At the end of the year, an agreement was reached, the “Cairo Agreement”, which granted the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) autonomy over Palestinian refugee camps and access routes to northern Israel, in exchange for the PLO's recognition of Lebanese sovereignty. Jews and Maronites saw this agreement as a capitulation by the Lebanese government to the Palestinians, who had the support of other Arab countries, anxious to keep the Palestinian problem away from their territory.
For its part, the PLO used its new privileges to establish an effective “mini-state” in southern Lebanon and intensify its attacks on settlements in northern Israel. Further aggravating the situation, Lebanon received an influx of armed Palestinian militants, including Yasser Arafat and his Fatah movement, who were fleeing Jordanian repression in the 1970s.
The establishment of militant Palestinian organizations in Jordan became a major problem for the Hashemite government between 1967 and 1971. Groups within the PLO began calling for the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. An armed conflict broke out between Jordan and the PLO, known as “Black September”. The Jordanian army attacked the Palestinian settlements and expelled them. More than 100 Palestinians fled to Lebanon, where the Palestinian population already numbered 240. Tensions between the Christian and Muslim communities over the distribution of political power increased even further and eventually led to the outbreak of civil war in 1975. The consequences of the PLO’s arrival in Lebanon continue to have a negative effect today.
In December 1970, a bomb exploded at the Talmud Torah Selim Tarrab. The government issued a public apology to the community. Nevertheless, many Jewish institutions were closed. Only the Alliance school and the Magen Avraham synagogue remained in operation.
Jewish life comes to an end
The final downfall of the Jewish community in Lebanon would come with the Lebanese Civil War, from 1975 to 1990 – a war that pitted different political-religious groups against each other and practically destroyed Lebanon – leaving around 120 dead.
Beirut’s Jewish Quarter was at the center of the dividing line between the Christian forces and their opponents—a Muslim coalition of Sunnis, Shiites, and Palestinians. Many Jews sought refuge in the Magen Avraham synagogue. Almost the entire community temporarily moved to Bhamdoun.
For the first time in Lebanese history, Jewish life was in serious danger, as the Jews found themselves in the midst of an ethnically divided society in the midst of a civil war. The Jewish exodus continued, and by 1975, there were fewer than a thousand Jews left in the country.
The escalating conflict between the PLO and Israel led Israeli forces to invade Lebanon in response to Fatah attacks on Israel in March 1978. Israeli forces withdrew later that year, leaving a border strip as a buffer protective, a buffer zone protecting them against PLO cross-border attacks.
Meanwhile, developments in Iran also had a significant impact on Lebanon. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, transforming the country into a Shia Islamic theocratic republic under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini. In the early 1980s, 500 militants from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps founded Hezbollah, with the aim of promoting the radical Shia Islam of the Iranian ayatollahs and waging war against Western influence in Lebanon and the region.
The Jewish community in Lebanon was also affected by these events. By 1980, only 200 to 300 Jews remained in the country from the once thriving Lebanese Jewish community. The situation deteriorated further in 1982, when, following another invasion of Lebanon by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Lebanese civil war entered a new phase. Israel's goal was to put an end to the PLO's terrorist attacks by destroying the organization's military infrastructure in Lebanon and undermining it as a political entity.
In parallel, a group of Lebanese Shia clerics founded the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, based in the predominantly Shia areas of the Bekaa Valley, southern Lebanon, and southern Beirut. Hezbollah coordinated its efforts closely with Iran and follows the radical Shia Islamic theology developed by Ayatollah Khomeini. Throughout the 1980s, Hezbollah carried out increasingly sophisticated attacks against Israel and actively participated in the Lebanese civil war.
For the Islamic militias, all Jews were considered Zionist spies and enemies. Eleven Jews were kidnapped and murdered. Others, who were in danger, were rescued during the night from the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood by the Lebanese Phalanges and transferred to the Christian enclave. With the growing danger, there was no longer any possibility of Jewish life in the country.
With the end of the civil war, Hezbollah was one of the few militia groups that remained unarmed. Its members hold seats in the Lebanese parliament and were granted veto power in 2008. In addition, a national unity government was formed, in which Hezbollah has one minister and controls eleven of the thirty existing seats. The new cabinet approved a proposal that ensures the party’s existence as an armed organization and guarantees its right to “liberate or reclaim lands occupied” by Israel (the Shebaa farms and the Kafarshuba hills).
Today, numerous Western countries consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization – including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Argentina, Australia, Israel, Canada and the Netherlands – as do Arab countries such as the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The European Union has only added Hezbollah’s armed wing to the list of terrorist organizations.
