Seeking to Right The Wrong: The Story of The Jewish Refugees
Yemenite Jewish refugees en route to Aden, 1949. Photo: public domain.
3/28/2025, 9:23:00 AM
With the spotlight on the Middle East, including talk of refugees from Gaza, Syria and elsewhere, there is little memory of the tragic story of the Jewish refugees from the Levant. In 1948 there were 856,000 Jews living in ten Arab countries. Today there are fewer than 3300. Only seven Jews remain in Syria, a country that had a Jewish presence dating back to biblical times.
According to Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie, who is Syrian-Lebanese and the Co-President of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), the Syrian Jewish community supposedly dates back to the time of David Hamelech. “David Hamelech built the greatest synagogue there and it’s believed that Jewish people lived there since then,” Rabbi Abadie explains. “That synagogue is still in existence today and has been renovated over the millennium. David Hamelech had conquered that whole area and left a military garrison there to protect the land, building a synagogue for them.”
“The Syrian community was very well-established,” Rabbi Abadie continues. “In the 1200’s, the Rambam writes that Aleppo was an ‘Ir chachamim, gedola be’Torah.” The Jews from Egypt, Morocco and Iraq have also been in their countries long before Muslims existed.”
Everything changed for Jews in Arab countries at the time the State of Israel was established. After the UN General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan on November 29, 1947, aimed at dividing the British Mandate of Palestine in separate states for Jews and Arabs, the Arab League protested and declared “three days of rage” against the Jews in their countries. Arab masses brutalized Jewish communities, resulting in the mass displacement of over 850,000 Jews from lands where they had lived for over 2500 years.
It is this persecution, which directly affected his own family, that motivates Rabbi Abadie to seek redress through JJAC. Descended from a distinguished Sephardic family with Rabbinical lineage dating back to 15th century Spain, Rabbi Abadie is the Founding Rabbi of the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue and served as the former Senior Rabbi of the Jewish Council of the United Arab Emirates from the Abraham Accords in 2020 until after October 7.
Rabbi Abadie grew up in Mexico City and later studied in New York, where he received Rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) and served as the Director of the Jacob E. Safra Institute of Sephardic Studies at Yeshiva University. He graduated with an M.D. from SUNY Downstate Medical Center and did his fellowship in Gastroenterology at Maimonides Medical Center. Rabbi Abadie, who is also a chazzan and a sofer, now splits his time between New York and Florida.
In an interview, he tells me his personal story of suffering and expulsion, one of many amongst Jews from Arab countries. “My parents lived in Aleppo next door to the major synagogue there,” Rabbi Abadie recounts. “On November 30, Arab mobs descended on Jewish neighborhoods and beat Jews, destroyed their property and businesses, looted homes and stores, and wrecked synagogues.”
Rabbi Abadie’s father was downtown on business at the time, but his mother saw exactly what was happening. Enraged Arabs climbed over the fences of synagogues, helped by the Syrian police. They took out Sifrei Torah, Chumashim and siddurim and burned them outside.
“When my mother heard screams from the synagogue next door and saw Arabs climbing into their building, she immediately escaped through the back with my three oldest siblings,” Rabbi Abadie says. “She ran from the house with practically nothing and hid in her parents’ house. From there she escaped to Lebanon, which was then under French Mandate.”
After Rabbi Abadie’s mother fled in 1947, Jews were prohibited from leaving Syria until 1992, when President Hafez al-Assad allowed the Jewish community to emigrate in exchange for millions of dollars in cash. There were Jews who attempted to escape, and many ended up being tortured or murdered. If Jews had to leave the country for medical treatment, they would have to leave their children in the state’s possession as hostages until they returned.
While Rabbi Abadie’s mother and siblings stayed in Lebanon, his father risked his life going back and forth to Syria to maintain his business in Aleppo. “The Syrian border was closed to Jews so my father had to pay off some Arab workers and the train conductor with bakshish. That enabled him to escape back and forth. After nearly two years, a Syrian police officer, whom Rabbi Abadie’s father had paid off, informed him that the authorities were aware of his movements and were coming to arrest him the next day. The punishment he faced was imprisonment and possibly the death penalty.
“My father took his tallit and tefillin and fled to the train station. He left everything behind—home, furniture, business, clothing and property. When he arrived at the station, he told the conductor that it would be his last trip. The conductor could not put him with the passengers, where there were police and military, and instead put him with the animals in the cargo section. He informed my father that there would be an inspection as they crossed both the Syrian and Lebanese borders and warned him to hide and not even breathe during the inspections. ‘If they catch you, both you and I are dead,’ the conductor said.”
It took 12 hours to travel from Aleppo to Beirut and the train arrived at the Syrian border at night. “The guard opened up the door and looked everywhere with his flashlight. Just as the light was about to shine on my father’s legs, the conductor distracted the guard with some noise. The conductor then closed the door, leaving it slightly open so that my father could escape. Once the train started moving, my father opened the door wide and jumped. He walked for a few hours until he reached my mother’s house.”
Rabbi Abadie was born in Lebanon, which gained official independence in 1952. While it was relatively peaceful compared to Syria, the status of Syrian Jews remained that of refugees, and Jews still felt persecuted and endangered. After Black September in 1970, Palestinians were expelled from Jordan, and the PLO and Arafat came to Lebanon. Jews began to flee.
“One day in 1971, a picture of my father, who was a rabbi and a Chaver of the Bet Din in Lebanon, appeared in a magazine and on mosques in big posters, together with two other rabbis. An accompanying caption described the three rabbis as Zionist agents who aided the State of Israel and helped Jews to escape there. Essentially, it was a target for their assassination. We had to escape once more. With relatives in Mexico, we were able to immigrate there and leave behind a life and history of thousands of years in the Levant.”
Rabbi Abadie’s story is sadly not unique. “What happened in Syria was similar to what happened in the ten other Arab countries with Jewish populations, although in different ways. Syria, for example, chose to imprison the Jews. Egypt expelled their Jews but kept some of them imprisoned first. Iraq expelled their Jews, only after mistreating them and killing some. Each country persecuted the Jews, depending on how their leader saw fit to punish them for the establishment of the State of Israel.”
The persecution and expulsion of Jews in these Arab countries and Iran have been documented through research by JJAC. Rabbi Abadie, who has worked with JJAC since its inception in 2002, says that the documentation includes the historical and financial analysis of the displaced Jewish communities. The detailed reports of Syria and Iraq are now available to the public through JJAC’s website, and the rest will be forthcoming.
JJAC’s report on Syrian Jews also specifies the persecution Jews suffered under Islamic rule, ranging from living as dhimmis, second class citizens who had to pay a fee to their Islamic rulers, to the blood libels of the 1800’s. I ask Rabbi Abadie to explain how, despite such discrimination, Syrian Jews were able to amass vast amounts of wealth, becoming powerful money lenders and businessmen.
“They knew how to work the system,” Rabbi Abadie answers. “If the Jews gave the authorities respect and obeyed them, they usually left them alone unless the leader was an antisemite. If you look at the history of Muslim conquests, from the year 635 until today, the Islamic population is at the mercy of its leader. If the leader of the country is a benevolent leader, everyone lived well, including Jews. If he was not, the Jews suffered first. It went in cycles. Some leaders liked the Jews and thought they brought blessing. They knew that Jews were good businessmen, so they gave them freedom to do business. Of course, the Jews gave them money too, and that helps a lot.”
Rabbi Abadie traces this Muslim approach to shortly after the start of Islam. “We believe that the Muslim prophet Mohamad learned by the Jews and had good relations with them until he wanted to convert them. When the Jews refused, his followers massacred 400-500 of them and many more after that. Umar, who succeeded Mohamad to become the second caliph, established the Treaty of Umar. It recognized the Jewish people as People of the Book and did not force them to convert. However, they had to live as dhimmis – second class citizens.”
As dhimmis, Jews were autonomous and independent religiously. They were able to adjudicate cases in the bet din and not have to go to a Muslim court. The government respected the decision of the bet din and would even enforce its decisions. Then again, as Rabbi Abadie reminds me, “it all depended on who the leader was.”
How did persecution of Jews living under Muslim rule compare to that under Christian rule? Rabbi Abadie replies that the persecution of Jews was greater in Christendom than in Islam because the Christian animosity was a religious animosity. “Christians believed that once Christianity existed, Judaism cannot exist. That’s what they call the replacement theory – they came to replace the Jews and the New Testament came to replace the Tanach. That’s why Christians persecuted and killed Jews. As long as the church was ruling, and it ruled for almost 1500 years, Jews were at their mercy. With Muslims, it wasn’t a religious animosity. It was more of who was the bechor – Yishmael or Yitzchak? In Islam there was no theological argument or replacement.”
I point to the irony of today, where Jews are more tolerated in secular Christian countries whereas the religious component seems to motivate Islamist antisemitism. Rabbi Abadie concurs. “Yes, the Islamists are not a new phenomenon. There was a movement like that in the 1200’s known as Al Mohads. The Al Mohads were what ISIS is today. They were fanatic Islamists who wanted to convert everyone to Islam – Jews and non-Jews. That’s one of the reasons why the Rambam escaped from Spain to Morocco to Egypt, because they had reached all the way to Spain and were terrorizing even their own non-Islamist Muslims. For many centuries these Islamists didn’t exist, but they resurfaced 100 years ago with the Muslim Brotherhood. They interpret the Koran literally and very strictly.”
With the ongoing threat of Islamists today and turmoil in the Middle East, especially after October 7, I wonder how realistic it is for JJAC to expect any kind of restitution from Arab countries. Rabbi Abadie agrees it is an uphill battle. “First, we aim for education. Second, for recognition by those Arab countries that ‘chatanu, avinu, pashanu’. Eventually, for restitution, because there was a solid community, history, tradition, and culture in those lands for 1400 years if not more.”
When I ask if there been any success thus far, Rabbi Abadie describes how Egypt established a law several years ago enabling any Jew with a deed to their property to come and claim it. “There was a case around ten years ago that either Pepsi or Coca Cola had a factory on land owned by a Jew. The Jew sued them in Egyptian courts and he won. The company had to pay him money for it. There may have been two or three other cases, but none in any other countries.”
In 2008, Rabbi Abadie, through JJAC, successfully lobbied Congress, and the House unanimously adopted HRes 185. This resolution affirms that all victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict must be treated with equality, including Jewish, Christian and other refugees from countries in the Middle East. Focused on the context of peace talks, the resolution seems to have stalled since then. But Rabbi Abadie maintains that it was adopted by some European countries too. “It is an understanding that if there any resolution to the so-called Palestinian refugees, there has to be a resolution for the Jewish refugees.”
In addition, Israel passed a law in 2014 making each November 30 a day commemorating the deportation of Jews from Arab and Iranian lands. This involves educational programming and diplomatic events aimed at increasing international awareness of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran and their right to compensation.
With most Arab lands bereft of any meaningful Jewish population, there is still a sizeable Jewish community in Iran. Their numbers are estimated to be between 5,000 to 8,000.
“Iran did not persecute their Jews until after the Shah was overthrown in 1979,” Rabbi Abadie says. “Over 125 thousand Iranian Jews also suffered and had to escape, leaving much of their property behind. If Jews want to leave now, they have been able to do so. Some of them live there because they want to. They are used to it and don’t want to go to a new country and learn a new language. Others cannot go anywhere because they don’t have the means. But, of course, the Jews are being observed and coached to speak against Israel. That’s the only way they can survive, and you cannot accept anything they say as the truth.”
When I question Rabbi Abadie about the Muslim countries that signed the Abraham Accords, which include the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, he is more optimistic. “We have had the listening ears of the Abraham Accords signatories and they were very sympathetic about our history. They agreed that there was an injustice. The question is whether we can get them to take that next step of redress and restitution. For that we will have to wait and see what future negotiations will produce. I do believe that with President Trump’s administration, things will move much farther ahead.”
He also waxes nostalgic about the time he spent in the UAE and described the circumstances that led to his departure. “The years that I was there were wonderful years. I was welcomed with practically a red carpet into the halls of government, academia, even in mosques – to speak, teach and coexist. Antisemitism there is outlawed. If anyone insults a Jew he is fined $250,000 and up to five years in prison. If it’s a foreigner he is deported right away, even if he works there and has residency there. The same goes for insulting anybody’s religion. I saw it in action when a tourist insulted a Jew. The police instantly arrested him, went to his room, packed him and deported him. We were very well cared for, protected and cherished.”
After October 7, the UAE government was very concerned about terrorist attacks against the Jewish community. The instructed Jews to close places of worship, not to wear Jewish paraphernalia outdoors, and not to make too much noise.
“For the first three years we were dancing in the streets, walking with tzitzit and kippah. We made a Chanukah party in the plaza and many locals celebrated with us. After October 7, I had to close my synagogue, which was the community synagogue. The minyanim in the hotels all had to close. You could only make a minyan quietly in your house but you could not invite strangers or tourists to be a part of it. All invitations for me to speak – at universities, gatherings, Ramadan dinners, and even in mosques – ceased to come.”
The authorities were worried for Rabbi Abadie’s safety. “My face was very well known. I would walk in the streets and people would recognize me. ‘Oh, you’re the Chacham of the Yahud’, they would say. But then there were no minyanim, no Jewish life, no activities, no interaction with the rest of the population on a public level. Their fear was sadly justified by the subsequent murder of the Chabad Rabbi Kogan hy’d.”
While no longer living in an Arab land, Rabbi Abadie continues to advocate for the Jews who were forced out of their homes, most with only the clothing on their backs. Whether or not these Jewish refugees will ultimately gain restitution, Rabbi Abadie insists on righting the wrong by telling their story and expecting the world to listen.