Preserving Syria’s Jobar Synagogue through Photographs

Damaged by mortar fire in 2013, and subsequently looted, the ancient synagogue in the Damascus suburb of Jobar may not have much of a future. Photographs exist, however, from 2009 and 2010 and—thanks to the Diarna project—these photographs are being preserved online along with pictures of many other synagogues, destroyed or in danger, throughout the Middle East. Rose Kaplan writes (slideshow included):

According to [local tradition], the synagogue is said to mark the location where Elijah anointed his disciple Elisha, although historical data suggest that multiple structures have existed there since antiquity. The Romanian Jewish traveler and historian Israël Joseph Benjamin visited the site in the mid-19th century and wrote that the original structure had been destroyed by the Roman emperor Titus; [he also noted the existence of] a second synagogue, supposedly rebuilt in the 1st century by Rabbi Eleazar ben Arakh and destroyed in the 16th century. . . .

Damascus Jews continued praying at the synagogue through the 1950s, making the long trek to Jobar for Shabbat prayers or for the Jewish holidays, or as a sort of pilgrimage. Many Jews had left Syria after the Holocaust, and again after the establishment of the state of Israel, and regular usage of the synagogue dwindled. However, it remained under the control of the Syrian Jewish community—Jews from Damascus installed caretakers in the synagogue to maintain the space, look after its Torah scrolls, show it to visitors, etc.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Jewish World, Mizrahi Jewry, Synagogues, Syria, Syrian civil war, Syrian Jewry

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF