The Jewish Community of Aleppo: A Centuries-Old History

This text is from the book “Aleppo Jewry Through the Generations,” published in 1993 by the Aram Tzova Heritage Center. Authored by the late Avraham Cohen-Tawil.

This article was written between the years 1987-1993.

The Jewish community of Aleppo was established as early as the 7th century CE, when Jewish merchants and artisans settled there to live and earn their livelihood. Over the centuries since, it grew and flourished, in both quantity and quality, in “Kemah=flour” and “Torah,” that is, in practical life and spiritual life.

The history of the Jewish community of Aleppo also knew periods of decline and low points, during which various invaders assaulted them, and the property of the community’s Jews became spoil. The surrounding residents of the city of Aleppo also, from time to time, brought their heavy hand upon them. However, from a perspective surveying the entire span of hundreds of years of the Aleppo community, a clear line of ascent and progress is distinctly felt.

And now (1987), some 1,300 years after the establishment of the Jewish community of Aleppo began, a process of collapse has accompanied the community’s life, due to the political upheavals in our region in recent generations, and especially in the generation in which the Zionist movement crystallized and the State of Israel was established. In this generation, severe restrictions were imposed on the Jews of Aleppo, and among these restrictions was the prevention of their exit from within the borders of Syria (*).

Thus, the Jewish community of Aleppo, in the city of Aleppo, “a city and mother from ancient times,” has become obsolete. However, we do not come to erect a tombstone for the Jewish community of Aleppo, but rather to reveal its hidden lights and make them the inheritance of the many, and especially the inheritance of the Aleppo communities, with their children and youth, located throughout Israel and dispersed in the Diaspora.

Throughout Israel are communities of Aleppo immigrants and their descendants, who conduct their lives in the spirit and tradition of the values of the Aleppo community as they were in the city of Aleppo.

In the Diaspora are Jewish communities from Aleppo and their descendants – spiritually worthy, whose roots are planted in the heritage values of Aleppo, and materially flourishing – in these places: in Europe, Milan and Manchester; in North America, New York and Deal, New Jersey; in Central America, Mexico City and Panama; in South America, São Paulo and Buenos Aires. Each of these communities is a complete Aleppo community, albeit in miniature .

Today’s Jewish communities of Aleppo are characterized not only by the fact that they draw their spirit and tradition from their connection to the heritage and values of the original Aleppo community, but also by their strong connection to Judaism and to the renewed Zionism. They see Zionism as the realization of Judaism.

These connections – the connection to the Aleppo heritage and the connection to Zionism – assure us that just as these communities have achieved social cohesion and material wealth, so too will they achieve full identification with the renewed Israel and a spiritual creation worthy of its name.

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(*) Editor’s Note: As the book went to press, Hafez al-Assad, President of Syria, under international pressure, was forced to permit the exit of the Jews of Aleppo from their city and from within Syria. Waves of emigrants are now in full swing.