September 2009

Faisal and Musa are drinking tea, laughing, and reminiscing about old times in Musa’s antique shop in Old Damascus.  Musa has just returned from America, where he now lives, and one of the first things he did after catching up with his relatives was to invite Faisal to his family’s house for dinner.  That was last night, and the two of them are still giggling about their memories. Faisal is Palestinian, and Musa Jewish.

During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Syria’s new ruler, Emir Faisal told US President Woodrow Wilson that the Syrians refused any kind of foreign mandate, be it French or British, on Syrian land recently liberated from the Ottoman Empire. He presented him with a petition from the Grand Mufti of Damascus and the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, and the Chief Rabi of the Syrian capital, calling for the full and unconditional independence of Syria.

Even though most of Syria’s Jews have never seen their home country, they haven’t lost touch with their roots.

“You can never forget,” says Joey Allaham, a Syrian Jew who left Damascus with his parents at the age of 18 in 1992, the year a nearly 45-year travel ban was lifted on Jews. “The Syrian customs never left – even for people who left Syria a hundred years ago. We still eat the same things; we’re still Syrian. There’s nothing missing.”

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Politics: Syria-US relations progressing, but disparities remain