STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This story illustrates a changing Middle East. Used to be that Middle Eastern nations, overwhelmingly Muslim nations, had populations of Jews. That's what used to be. In recent decades, many Jews fled to Israel or the United States. Now, after the revolution in Syria, a Syrian Jewish leader has returned to Damascus. NPR's Jane Arraf went along.
YUSUF HAMRA: Wow, wow, wow.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: It's been more than 30 years since a rabbi walked into this synagogue. Rabbi Yusuf Hamra and his son Henry stepped through the doors of the Franj synagogue and back in time.
Y HAMRA: Ugh.
ARRAF: It was 1992.
Y HAMRA: Oh.
ARRAF: Rabbi Hamra led prayers here for the last time before almost all of Syria's Jews emigrated.
HENRY HAMRA: I remember my father, the last day that we - before we left here, he was praying, crying when he was praying the last prayer over here.
ARRAF: His son Henry is a cantor, a vocalist who leads Jewish prayers. He was 13 when the family left, along with tens of thousands of others, finally allowed by the Syrian regime to emigrate. The temple was renovated in the 1960s on the same site where synagogue had stood for 600 years.
YUSUF HAMRA AND HENRY HAMRA: (Praying in non-English language).
ARRAF: Rabbi Hamra climbs the ornate wooden pulpit to once again say prayers. Up until a few decades ago, this was a center of Jewish life in Damascus. There were not just religious services here but weddings, celebrations, funerals. What they're hoping to do is restore not just this building, but the Jewish community around it.
YUSUF HAMRA AND HENRY HAMRA: (Praying in non-English language).
ARRAF: There are dusty velvet pews pushed against walls with peeling paint. A pile of prayer books hundreds of years old are moldering under a prayer shawl. The delegation stops at the Jewish cemetery, where graves were relocated and tombstones damaged when a highway was built through it decades ago. All Syrians lived under repression during the former regime, but Jews faced even more restrictions. Jewish officials say there are now only seven Jews remaining in Syria. Rabbi Hamra says prayers over the graves.
Y HAMRA: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: It's a controversial visit in the U.S., even in the Syrian Jewish community, mostly because Syria's new leader was once a member of al-Qaida. Rabbi Asher Lopatin from Detroit isn't Syrian, but he's joined them in solidarity. The delegation is calling on the U.S. to lift sanctions imposed on the previous Syrian regime.
ASHER LOPATIN: You know, there's a big Jewish influence in the new administration. And so if the Syrian Jews have some connections, they'll have a voice in the administration, and they do, and I think it will resonate.
ARRAF: In this land, where Judaism flourished since Roman times, there are wonders.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR OPENING)
Y HAMRA: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: They enter a small concrete shrine holding the tomb of an influential figure in kabbalah, a mystical branch of Judaism.
Y HAMRA: Yeah, right here. See? Right here has the name.
ARRAF: It's the grave of Rabbi Chaim Vital, who died 400 years ago.
(LAUGHTER)
ARRAF: As they walk through streets still known as the Jewish quarter in modern Damascus, the delegation members wear kippahs, religious head coverings, and to hide them, baseball caps on top for safety. But everyone we meet on their three-day visit to Damascus is welcoming.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
H HAMRA: Sit down.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: In the narrow streets, the Hamras have run into neighbors from 30 years ago. All of the residents of his former neighborhood, most of them Muslim, many of them Palestinian, say they hope Syrian Jews will come back. And the Syrian government does as well.
MOUSSA AL-AMR: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: In the courtyard of Syria's national museum, which contains Jewish artifacts, Moussa Al-Amr (ph), an adviser to the Syrian president, tells them this is their home, that the government will help restore property and citizenship. On their last full day in Damascus, the delegation returns to the Franj synagogue.
Y HAMRA: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: They'd hoped to be able to hold, for the first time in decades, a prayer service. It requires 10 Jewish males. Even with some of the resident Syrian Jews, there still weren't enough.
Y HAMRA: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: But Rabbi Hamra and the rest said other prayers.
Y HAMRA: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: After 30 years in Brooklyn, the rabbi is still more comfortable in Arabic than in English. His son calls him baba, Arabic for dad. When I ask how he feels coming back, the rabbi says exactly what every Syrian finally able to return has told me.
Y HAMRA: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: Is there anything more beautiful than your home?
Jane Arraf, NPR 瓜神app, Damascus. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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