Magen Abraham's Last Days - Solidere Destroying Beirut's Heritage

History

The Maghen Abraham Synagogue lies on the main Wadi Abu Jmil Street, a crumbling mystifying witness to a past era when Lebanon’s confessional mosaic seemed to offer the promise of a unique amalgamation of ethnic richness and tolerance. Visible from the highway crossing from Minet al-Hosn to Bab Idriss, it is one of the few remaining unrenovated buildings in the area testifying to the ravages of the Beirut’s civil war past. Above it the Grand Serail, the prime minister’s headquarters, stands tall in its restored glory.

What was a place of worship for the once 14,000-strong Jewish-Lebanese community is now seriously damaged, the only structure still standing being its fragile outer facade. The site looks like a scene from Downtown Beirut in the early 90s, when devastation, neglect and overgrown vegetation were choking the streets. The cream-colored stucco synagogue’s wooden roof is mostly destroyed; any inscription in Hebrew has been painstakingly chiseled off or erased.

What points out the building’s religious allegiance are two remaining stars of David painted in gold on each side of the central columns. The interior of the synagogue closely resembles a church’s structure; a large prayer hall flanked by two arched corridors faces the central holy arch, or Heykal, while stairs at each side lead to a large balcony overlooking the prayer hall. Beautiful turquoise paint remaining on the wall exposes the Mediterranean character of Maghen Abraham.

What happened at the Maghen Abraham synagogue lends support to the view that Israelis had a direct hand in “facilitating” Jewish-Arab migration to Israel by terrorizing the communities into fleeing their homes.

An article published in the New York Times in 1982 relates how shortly after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in that year, an Israeli shell targeted the Maghen Abraham synagogue, blowing a hole in its roof while some 60 Jewish and Muslim refugees were sleeping there.

The assault came after Israeli artillery had fired from East Beirut and gunboats cruising offshore had been persistently pounding Wadi Abu Jmil, a district well known for being a Jewish quarter, said neighborhood residents.

At the same time, in July 1982, an article in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, said that representatives of the World Zionist Organization had been unable to convince the Jews of West Beirut to emigrate to Israel.

“‘Why should we leave?’ they asked. ‘Here are our homes and our friends,’” said one Lebanese Jew quoted in the report.

The synagogue suffered at different times throughout the Lebanese civil war, as did many other religious temples of all confessions located in Downtown Beirut. Unlike many of these, Maghen Abraham was never totally destroyed.

Lebanese Jews historically have been an integral part of the Lebanese fabric of confessional communities. Judaism is one of the 18 officially recognized confessions. Lebanese Jews enjoyed the same rights and privileges as other minorities, sharing a minority seat in the Parliament, serving in the army, some even fighting in the 1948 first Arab-Israeli war.

Lebanon was the only Arab country in which the number of Jews grew after the establishment of the state of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, with the influx of Syrian and Iraqi Jews growing to number some 14,000.