JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

eirut
Jews frequently visited Beirut on their way to Ereẓ Israel, but a
pupil of *Nahmanides who stopped there at the beginning of
the 14th century did not note the presence of Jews in the city.
An anonymous pupil of Obadiah *Bertinoro wrote in a letter
(1495) “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.” However Jews settled again in Beirut
after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Moses *Basola, who
visited the city in 1521, found 12 Jewish families from Sicily.
Abraham Castro was in charge of customs. During Basola’s
stay in the city, the activity of David *Reuveni, whom a Jewish
merchant encountered at Gaza, excited the Jews. *David
d’Beth Hillel, who visited Syria in 1824, relates “There are
[in Beirut] some 15 families [of] Jewish merchants, natives
of the country [i.e., the place] who speak Arabic and have a
small synagogue, their customs resembling those of the Jews
of Palestine.”
In 1856 Ludwig August *Frankl stated that he found in
Beirut 500 Sephardi Jews, mostly merchants and porters. In
the course of time other Jews moved to Beirut from Damascus,
Smyrna, Aleppo, Constantinople, and ultimately also from
Russia. In 1878 the *Alliance Israélite opened a girls’ school
and the following year, one for boys. In 1901, 271 pupils were
studying at the latter, and 218 at the former. In 1897 the Alliance
opened a crafts school for girls.
In 1862 and in 1890 blood libels resulted in Christian
attacks on the Jewish quarter. In 1890 order was restored by
the Turkish authorities and the rioters were arrested. At that
time Beirut contained a synagogue and 12 batei midrash. After
World War I the Jewish population grew in Beirut, the newly
established capital of *Lebanon.
The community was regarded as the most highly organized
in Lebanon and Syria. The principal synagogue Magen
Avraham was the center of the communal institutions, which
included the schools of the Alliance and of the congregation,
the B’nai B’rith Lodge, and the Maccabi Club.
The Jews of the city belonged mostly to the middle class,
and the overwhelming majority of them engaged in commerce.
They were not concentrated in special quarters, but
the poorer Jews resided in streets formerly part of the Jewish
quarter in Wadi Abu Jamil. When the State of Israel was established,
the Lebanese security forces were ordered to protect
the Jewish quarter, and when an anti-Jewish demonstration
was held and infuriated mobs advanced on the Jewish quarter,
members of the Maronite Christian Phalanges dispersed
the demonstrators. The Jewish paper al-ʿAlam al-Israili (“The
Israelite World”) changed its name to al-Salam (“Peace”).
The Jewish community was compelled to contribute a sum of
money to the fund of the Arab League but in general the Jews
were not mistreated.
In 1880 there were about 1,000 Jews in Beirut; in 1889,
1,500; between 1892 and 1906 there were 3,000; between 1907
and 1910 their number reached 5,000.
[Simon Marcus]
From 1948
The number of Jews rose from 5,000 in 1948 to 9,000 in 1958,
as a result of the immigration of Syrian Jews to Lebanon. However,
the numbers were subsequently depleted, especially from
1967; and in 1969 only about 2,500 were left. By 1970 the community
had decreased to about 1,000–1,800.
Until the 1975–90 conflict (see *Lebanon), the Jewish
community in Beirut, like the rest of the Jews living in the
country, was considered to be an integral part of Lebanon’s
multiethnic society. During periods of crisis, such as the 1948
War, the first Lebanese civil war in 1958, and the 1967 War, the
Lebanese authorities ordered the security forces to protect
the Jewish quarter in Wadi Abu Jamil. The wealthy Jews living
in new suburbs among members of other faiths were also
unharmed. In contrast to other Arab countries, Jewish life in
Lebanon continued almost normally: Jews were not discriminated
against or arrested by the government in an arbitrary
manner, and their property was not confiscated. In 1950 extremist
Arab nationalists place a bomb beneath the *Alliance
Israélite Universelle school building, causing it to collapse.
The Alliance administered three other institutions, in which
950 pupils studied in 1965. In addition, 250 pupils attended
the talmud torah and 80 studied at the Oẓar ha-Torah religious
school. The Jewish scouts and Maccabi sports organization
were closed by the government in 1953. The community
council, which had nine members, was elected biennially.
The Bikkur Ḥolim committee of the council was responsible
for medical treatment of the poor, and their hospitalization if
they were not Lebanese citizens. Its income derived from the
Arikha (assessment) tax, paid by all males, as well as from endowments
and from synagogues. Most Beirut Jews were merchants
or employees of trading and financial enterprises.
[Hayyim J. Cohen]
During the early stages of Lebanon’s second civil war
(1975–90), the Jews in Beirut, like members of other minorities
who resided in the Lebanese capital (e.g., Armenians and
Kurds), found themselves caught in the crossfire between local
and foreign forces that battled for control of the city and
its neighborhoods. The proximity of the Jewish quarter to the
“Green Line” separating Beirut’s Christian and Muslim sectors
exacerbated its inhabitants’ insecurity. In the course of
the fighting, many Jewish homes and businesses were damaged,
as were their communal institutions, most notably
the Magen Avraham synagogue (the building itself, which
was reportedly hit by an Israeli shell in 1982, was, however,
not destroyed). Jewish communal life was further disrupted
when the local rabbi left the country in 1978. Meanwhile, impoverished
Shiʿi Muslims, who had been driven from their
homes by the war, began to settle in the Jewish quarter. The
continued violence and chaos in Beirut encouraged most of
the Lebanese Jews, whose number on the eve of the war was
estimated at about 1,800 (of these, more than a thousand resided
in Beirut) to leave the country, whereas others moved
to safer areas in and around the capital. From 1975 on most
270 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3