The Jewish Community of Sidon

TZIDON

Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a toponymic (derived from a geographic name of a town, city, region or country). Surnames that are based on place names do not always testify to direct origin from that place, but may indicate an indirect relation between the name-bearer or his ancestors and the place, such as birthplace, temporary residence, trade, or family-relatives.

This name is derived from Tzidon, the Hebrew name of the city of Sidon in Lebanon. Tzidon is mentioned in the Bible. This name belongs to a group of modern Hebrew surnames adopted in the 20th century by Jewish immigrants or their descendants as part of shaping their new Israeli identity and as an expression of their connection to the Land of Israel.

Distinguished bearers of the family name Tzidon include the Romanian-born Israeli Air Force commander and politician Yoash Tzidon (1926-2015), born Yoash Chatto.

The Halevi family home during Hanukkah,
Sidon, Lebanon, 1982
Two of the family members are reflected in the mirror
Photo: Micha Bar-Am, Israel
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot)

Hanukkah lamp.
Sidon, Lebanon, 1966
In the background a relief of a Menorah
Photo: Ida Cowen, New York
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot,
courtesy of Ida Cowen, New York)

Inside the synagogue in the Sidon Casbah. Lebanon 1982
Photo: Micha Bar-Am.
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot)

Moshe ben Solomon Boshal (17th century), rabbi, born in Sidon, Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Empire). He was taken to Safed by his father when he was 12. There he studied under distinguished rabbis but various calamitous events forced him to leave when he was 25 and he became rabbi in Rhodes, Greece. His long experience in weekly preaching was the basis of his book Yismah Moshe which contains several sermons for every Sabbath and holiday reading.

Beirut

Arabic: بيروت‎  French: Beyrouth

Capital of Lebanon

Beirut is the largest city in Lebanon, and also the country’s main seaport. It is also one of the oldest cities in the world.

This item includes attached files with maps of the former main Jewish residential district before 1948, along with the names of the prominent Jewish families that lived in the area.

 

21^ST CENTURY

Restoration of the Magen Avraham synagogue, which was damaged during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), began in May of 2009.

The Jewish cemetery of Beirut is located near Sodeco Square. It was slightly damaged during the Civil War. The cemetery has continued to serve the Jews of Lebanon.

In 2012 Nada Abdelsamad produced a documentary about the Jews of Lebanon, Lebanon’s Jews: Loyalty to Whom? The documentary featured interviews with Jews from Beirut and other areas in Lebanon, as well as of their former neighbors.

In 2004, one registered Jewish voter showed up at the polling booth during the municipal elections.

 

HISTORY

Jews were living in Beirut and the vicinity from the 2^nd century BCE. The chronicle of Joshua the Stylite mentions the existence of a synagogue in Beirut at the beginning of the 6^th century. According to Abiathar b. Elijah (late 11th century), Beirut and Gebal (Byblos) were subject to the Palestinian Gaonite (the main Talmudic academy and legal body of the Jewish community in Palestine, c. 9^th-11^th centuries).

By the time of the Crusader conquest (1100) Beirut was home to 35 Jewish families; when the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela visited around 1170 he counted 50 Jewish households. In addition to the city’s permanent Jewish residents, Jews also frequently visited Beirut on their way to Eretz Yisrael.

According to the Jewish kabbalist and student of Nachmanides, Isaac b. Samuel of Acre many Jews were killed during the Muslim conquest of the city in 1291. Another student f Nachmanides who stopped in Beirut at the beginning of the 14^th century did not note the presence of any Jews in the city. An anonymous pupil of the Italian rabbi Obadiah b. Abraham Bartenura wrote in a 1495 letter that "at Baroto (Beirut) there are no Jews, and I do not know the reason, because the Ishmaelites at Baroto are better than all the other people of the kingdom and are very well-disposed toward the Jews."

Beirut’s Jewish community was renewed after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and in 1521 Moses Basola found 12 Jewish families from Sicily living in the city. During Basola’s stay, he also noted that Beirut’s Jews were particularly interested in the activities of David Reubeni, whom a Jewish merchant had encountered in Gaza. Abraham Castro was in charge of customs during this period.

David d'Beth Hillel, who visited Syria in 1824, observed that "there are [in Beirut] some 15 families [of] Jewish merchants, natives of the country who speak Arabic and have a small synagogue, their customs resembling those of the Jews of Palestine." The writer and poet Ludwig August von Frankl visited Beirut in 1856 and found 500 Sephardi Jews living there, most of whom worked as merchants and porters. Jews also began arriving in Beirut from Damascus, Smyrna, Aleppo, Constantinople, and even Russia.

Two blood libels were levied against the Jewish community during the second half of the 19^th century, one in 1862 and another in 1890, both of which led to Christian attacks in the Jewish Quarter. Order was finally restored in 1890 by the Turkish authorities, and the rioters were arrested.

Community institutions during the late 19^th century included a synagogue and 12 batei midrash. In 1878 the Alliance Israelite Universelle opened a school for girls; a school for boys followed a year later. A crafts school for girls, also under the auspices of the Alliance, opened in 1897. There were 271 students enrolled in the boys’ school and 218 enrolled in the girls’ school in 1901.

In 1880 there were about 1,000 Jews living in Beirut. By 1889 that number had grown to 1,500. Beirut’s Jewish population between 1892 and 1906 was 3,000, and between 1907 and 1910 their numbers grew to 5,000.

Beirut’s Jewish population grew after World War I (1914-1918), particularly after Beirut was established as the new capital of Lebanon. The community came to be regarded as the most highly organized in Lebanon and Syria. The main synagogue, Magen Avraham, was the center of the community’s institutions, which included the Alliance schools, the congregational schools, a B'nai B'rith lodge, and a Maccabi club.

Most of Beirut’s Jews were middle class. By the 20^th century the Jews were no longer confined to a special quarter, but the poorer Jews tended to live on the streets that had once been part of the Jewish Quarter. Nonetheless, the former Jewish Quarter still played a significant role in the public imagination; after the establishment of the State of Israel (1948), anti-Jewish demonstrations were held, and mobs descended on the Jewish Quarter (the mobs were eventually dispersed by the Christian community).

The establishment of the State of Israel compelled Beirut’s Jewish community to make a number of changes. The newspaper Al-Alam Al-Israeili (The Israelite World) changed its name to Et Al-Salam (Peace). The Jewish community was also required to contribute a sum of money to the Arab League fund. In general, however, the Jewish community continued to live peacefully. Indeed, during Israel’s War of Independence (1948), the internal unrest in Lebanon during the ‘50s, and the Six-Day War (1967), the Lebanese authorities ordered the police to protect the Jewish Quarter in Wadi Abu Jamil. Additionally, wealthier Jews living among Christians and Muslims in the new suburbs were unharmed.

In contrast to many other Arab countries, Jewish life in Lebanon continued as usual after Israel’s establishment and through the subsequent wars. Indeed, after the establishment of Israel Lebanon’s Jewish population grew, as Syrian and Iraqi refugees began arriving after being expelled from their countries. Nonetheless, the community could still be subject to violence. In 1950 a bomb was planted by Muslim nationalists underneath the Alliance school building, causing it to collapse. The government also closed the Jewish Scouts and the Maccabi sports organization in 1953.

Nonetheless, the Alliance continued its work, and administered three other institutions. The organization’s educational programs enrolled 950 pupils in 1965. Additionally, 250 students attended the Talmud Torah, while the religious school Ozar HaTorah had 80 students.

During the 1950s and ‘60s, the community council, which was made up of nine members, was elected biennially. The council’s bikkur holim was responsible for medical treatment for the poor, as well as for their hospitalization if they were not Lebanese citizens. The council derived its income from the arikha (assessment) tax, which was paid by all men, as well as from endowments and synagogues. During this period most of Beirut’s Jews worked as merchants or as employees of trading and financial companies.

On the eve of the Lebanese Civil War, there were approximately 1,000 Jews living in Beirut, out of a total Lebanese Jewish population of about 1,800.

 

LEBANESE CIVIL WAR (1975-1990)

After the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, the Jews of Beirut, along with the city’s other minority populations, found themselves caught in the crossfire; many of Beirut’s Jews also lived near the border separating the city’s Christian and Muslim sectors. Jewish homes, businesses, and institutional buildings sustained extensive damage during the fighting. The Magen Avraham synagogue was among the buildings that was damaged during the war. As a result of the chaos and violence of the war, Lebanon’s Jews began leaving the country. By 1982 there were approximately 250 Jews remaining in Beirut, 150 in the western section, and 100 in the eastern section.

After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, as well as the disorder that reigned after the Israeli withdrawal, the Jewish community of Beirut began to be targeted by radical Shia factions. 11 prominent members of the community, including the head of the community, Isaac Sasson, were kidnapped over a 3-year period (1984-1987); four bodies of the kidnapped victims were later recovered, while the fate of the rest has remained unknown. By the early 1990s the Jewish community in Beirut dropped to fewer than 100 members.

Lebanon

لبنان‎ / Lubnan
الجمهورية اللبنانية / al-Jumhūrīyah al-Lubnānīyah - Republic of Lebanon

A country in the Middle East on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

21st Century

There are no Jews in Lebanon.

Deir al-Qamar

Arabic: دير القمر

A village in the Lebanese mountains

21^ST CENTURY

The Deir al-Qamar Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in Mount Lebanon. The synagogue has remained standing as of 2016, in good condition, though it is not open to the public.

 

HISTORY

Deir al-Qamar’s Jewish community was considered to be an original local community: descendants of Jews who had not been exiled from the Land of Israel.

During the 19^TH century, Jews lived in the village in a separate quarter, the Harat al-Yahad. The sole communal institution was the synagogue, which had been built during the 17^th century, and the local Jews depended on the Jewish community of Beirut to provide them with various religious services. In 1845 there were about 80 Jewish families living in Deir al-Qamar.

The Jews of Deir al-Qamar were well-integrated within the region, both socially and economically. Popular trades included agriculture, breeding sheep and silkworms, commerce, soap manufacturing, and extracting iron from ore deposits.

Deir al-Qamar’s Jews also dressed like the rest of the mountain inhabitants. Haim Joshua Shwartz described the community in his book Tevuot HaAretz, which was published in Jerusalem in 1845, noting that the local Jews were ”strong people, men of value, peasants, like the other mountain people. Their daughters are shepherdesses of sheep, with spears and with bows and arrows to ward off beasts of prey and ambushers.”

All of the Jewish settlements in Lebanon, including Deir al-Qamar, were dependent on their Druze neighbors. The two communities generally worked together and had a friendly relationship, and the Druze often protected the Jews. Between 1820 and 1830 the Jews fought valiantly on the side of the Druze during their war against the Christian Maronites. Notable Jewish warriors included Musa Shaban, his brother Abu Hasan, and Shmuel Barukh. However, following the renewed fighting between the Druze and the Maronites in 1860, the Druze left the Deir al-Qamar region, and most of the area’s Jews left with them. The majority moved to Aley or Sidon.

By the 1940s there were still some Jews remaining at Deir al-Qamar, under the protection of the Maronite Phalangists. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, almost all of the remaining Jews moved to Beirut; one 75-year old Jewish woman was living in Deir al-Qamar in 1948.

Hasbaya

Arabic: حاصبيا‎

A town in Lebanon. Hasbaya is located on the foot of Mount Hermon.

HISTORY

Jews were living in Hasbaya by the second half of the 14^th century. Community members included Elia ben Abraham ben Moshe ben Shmuel Halevi ben Hasban, and Shmuel ben Abraham Halevi Hasbanni. During this period Hasbaya’s Jewish community flourished, and it became known as an area where Hebrew books and manuscripts were copied.

Jews who lived in Hasbaya during the 16^th and 17^th centuries generally worked in agriculture. Rabbi Yom-Tov Zahalon of Safed lived in the town during this time, and was a prominent figure within the community. The head of the community was referred to as “sheikh.”

During the Ottoman period (16^th century-1918), the Jews of Hasbaya were under the protection of the Druze emirs of the House of Shahab, who were the rulers of the region. In exchange for the protection and cooperation that they received from the Druze, the Jews helped them in their clashes with other local rulers.

Most of the Jews of Hasbaya were members of the Hasbanni family; the Zerahiah family was another prominant local family. All of them worked mainly in agriculture, breeding cattle and sheep, in trade, and in peddling.

In the middle of the 19^th century Hasbaya’s Jewish population was approximately 100.

Hasbaya’s Jews lived in the Jewish Quarter (Harthial-Yahud), which was located in the old center of town, on the slope west of the fortress of the Shahabs. There was one synagogue, and a cemetery located in another village approximately 1 mile (2km) away across the Hasbanni River. Among those buried in the cemetery is Nabi Rubbil (I.L. Reuven); his grave served as pilgrimage site for both Jews and Druze. The grave was located in a valley, near a burial site for babies and the synagogue.

The Jews of Hasbaya began to emigrate in the middle of the 19^th century, mainly to Beirut, Sidon and Peki’in in the Land of Israel. Though Baron Rothschild tried to assist the community, and donated funds in 1888 for the synagogue’s upkeep and for a Hebrew teacher, his efforts were ultimately not successful and the Jews continued to move. At the end of the 19^th century the Hasbanni and Zerahiah families, who were involved with the silk industry in Hasbaya, moved to Rosh Pina in Palestine to work at a silk factory there.

By 1911 only 3 Jewish families remained in Hasbaya. The community was finally dissolved in 1919, after the death of the kosher butcher, Haim Hasbanni. In the wake of Hasbanni’s death, his sons immigrated to Damascus and the United States, and the Torah scrolls were moved to Sidon.