By Katia Khodr | Staff Writer
Lebanese Jewish leader and Rabbi Isaac Arazi, who dedicated most of his life to the dwindling Jewish community in Lebanon, passed away on December 27th, 2023 at 80 years old. Devoted to his community and religion, Rabbi Arazi managed to revive the Maghen Abraham Synagogue in the Jewish district of Wadi Abu Jamil in Downtown Beirut, a synagogue that the IDF previously destroyed during the Lebanese Civil War. The Maghen Abraham Synagogue is one of the last places of worship for Lebanese Jews today and a prominent Jewish landmark in the region.
The Lebanese Jewish Community mourns the loss of a leader, a guiding force, and a backbone to an endangered community of now less than 30 members. Their depleting demographic has hitherto been exposed to considerable vulnerability and uncertainty in a region under consistent Israeli threats and bombardment for over five decades.
The term ‘anti-Semitist’ has been widely adopted as an adjective for those who object to the Zionist ideology, which advocates for the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish state, hence associating it with anti-Zionism. The conflation and equation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism has been an adopted policy and talking point perpetrated by the Israeli government that seeks to de-legitimize the critics of Israel and its occupation and treatment of the Palestinian people. The portrayal and propagation of the notion that all Jewish people are supporters of Israel and its occupation has indeed put the Jewish minorities of the region under public scrutiny. Lebanon’s sectarian societal divisions and consociational politics, in addition to the country and the region’s prevailing high-tension political climate and the domination of political parties based on religious ideologies, have exposed Jewish populations to microaggressions and stigmatization. In the case of Lebanon has manifested in the near absence of Lebanon’s Jewish community, which currently stands at only 30 members.
In 1948, the Lebanese Jewish community embraced over 20,000 Jews, with Judiasim being one of the 18 recognized sects by the Lebanese Republic. By the time the late Rabbi Azari came to his position as a prominent figure of the Jewish community, Jewish immigration from Lebanon had upsurged as Zionism grew in the region, with the majority leaving in 1967. More recently, the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 and 1976 witnessed its most aggressive battles in central Beirut, which consequently devastated Jewish neighborhoods, including homes, local businesses, and the infamous Maghen Abraham Synagogue.
The vulnerability of the Jewish community in Lebanon remains a subject of concern in the present geopolitical landscape. As support for the already fragile foundation of the Jewish community diminishes with the death of Rabbi Arazi, Lebanon faces the imminent risk of losing a longstanding indigenous demographic, thereby marking the potential extinction of the Jewish community within its borders.