What Happened to the Jews of Aleppo, Syria ?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

                                     A Jewish Wedding in Aleppo  1914

According to the book of Samuel and Psalm 60, Aram Soba, the Biblical name for Aleppo, was part of the extended area of Israel.   Aleppo covered a huge area at this time.  Aleppo's history goes back to King David's day  of 1010-970 BCE.  The Jewish community here was one of the oldest in the world.  

When the United Nations declared a Partition Plan for Palestine in November 1947, the Middle East went wild.  Severe anti-Jewish pogroms took place with many casualties across the whole Arab world.  The most violent happened in Aden and Syria.  The violence caused a severe increase in a Jewish exodus, with the Aleppo Jewish community declining.  The rioters in Aleppo burned the city's Jewish quarter and killed 75 people.  After the pogrom, the city[s Jewish population had left.  

In 1948, there were about 30,000 Jews in Syria.  That's not many when you realize that in 2011 the population of Syria was as high as 22,505,000.  The Syrian government placed severe restrictions on Jews who might choose to escape.  This included emigration.  

Over the next decades, many Jews managed to escape, and the work of supporters, especially Judy Feld Carr, who helped smuggle Jews out of Syria, brought their plight to the attention of the world and raised awareness of their situation.  

After the Madrid Conference of 1991, the USA pressured Syria's government to ease its restrictions on Jews.  By Passover  1992, the government of Syria began granting exit visas to Jews on condition that they would not go to Israel.  4,000 Jews were living in Damascus called in Arabic "Yehud ash-sham) and Aleppo and Qamishli.  Most Jews had made it to the USA and some to Israel already. A few family had chosen to emigrate to France and Turkey.   There is a large Syrian Jewish community living in South Brooklyn, New York.  A few remained in Damascus.  There was a final airlift by Israel  that took place in 1994.  They took these few to Tel Aviv.  

"The Syrian Jewish community in New York originally consisted of two groups, Jews from Aleppo and Jews from Damascus, Syria. At first the convergence of the two groups was not easy. The Aleppan Jews thought of themselves as more knowledgeable, largely due to their history in Syria as a center of Jewish learning. The Aleppans, or Halabis , followed the traditions of Aram Soba . The Damascene Jews or shammies , prayed in a different house of worship, although in Brooklyn the two groups lived side by side and socialized."

By 2004, the Syrian government tried to establish relations with the emigrants, and a delegation of about 12 Syrian Jews  came back and visited Syria in the Spring.  

The surname of Halabi means Aleppo.  It denotes an origin from Aleppo (Halab), Syria, or people who traded with Aleppo residents.  A number of different families from different religions used that surname. Muslims, Jews, Christians or Druze might be carrying this surname.  

Some of the Muslims with the surname of Halabi have migrated away to cities in Western Saudi Arabia such as Jeddah, Madinah and Makkah.  Many Halabi Christians have migrated to the USA, England and other European countries.  Druze al-Halabi are found in Lebanon,  Israel, Canada and the USA among other countries.  Halepovich is a variant of the name which is used among slavic Muslims in the Balkans.  

Najeeb Halaby is the Syrian father of Queen Noor of Jordan who was born as Lisa Najeeb Halaby.  Lisa Elhalabi is the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration of the USA and the CEO and chairman of Pan Am.  

ALEPPO in arabic is called. Ḥalab; the Jews of Aleppo called it  Aram-Ẓoba or Aram Ẓova), It was the second-largest city in Syria and the center of northern Syria.  The legend has it that Abraham pastured his sheep on the mountain of Aleppo and distributed their milk (ḥalav) to the poor on its slopes.   Jews settled in Aleppo during the Greek period and remained there during the Roman days.  "The community seems to have had close contacts with Palestine, and heads of Palestinian yeshivot (schools that studied the Torah) visited Aleppo." Judea and Samaria were called Palestine after 135CE by the Romans.  "At the beginning of the 16^th century exiles from Spain started to arrive in Aleppo, among them outstanding rabbis. " It was the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 that drove out the Jews from Spain and then from their refuge, Portugal and caused them to flee to Syria.  

In Aleppo is the Al-Hayyat mosque.  It used to be a synagogue dating from the 6th century.  Benjamin of Tudela found 1,500 Jews living there in 1170 CE.  Before 1914 there were 14,000 Jews living in Aleppo.  The Jewish quarter contained many ancient synagogues with the oldest being the Mustaribaha which was destroyed in 1947's riots.  The main part of this synagogue dated back to the 4th century.  

Resource: http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/07/modern-day-female-moses-judith-feld.html
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-happened-to-jews-of-damascus-syria.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-had-happened-to-jewish-syrians.html
http://genealogy.familyedcation.com/surname-origin/halabi@ixzz2thCmJfAC
http://genealogy.familyeducation.com/surname-origin/halabi
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0001_0_00732.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia  "Aleppo"
http://www.jewishgen.org/sefardsig/aleppojews.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Jews

Norwegians, Swedes and Why Their Attitudes Have Worsened Toward Jews

Nadene Goldfoot
My maternal grandmother, Augusta Johansson-Gustafson, was born in Sweden in 1870 and came to the states when she was 18 years old in 1888.  She always said, "Oh, those Norwegians!".    I never knew why she didn't respect them.  Now our family has members from both countries.  We follow our father's religion, Judaism,  and it's discouraging to see the change in attitude in these two countries from the time of World War II.
Norway
Before the 19th Century, Jews couldn't even enter Norway without a "Letter of Protection," because the Danish limited the amount of Jews entering the country.  In 1840 this changed when a poet, Henrik Wergelang, argued for Jews to be allowed to enter and got the Parliament to agree.  650 Jews were admitted by 1891 when emancipation took place.  They lived in Oslo and Trondheim.  By 1920 there was a whopping 1,456 Jews in Norway.  In 1940 Norway was invaded by Germany and found 1,800 Jews living there with all but 200 being Norwegian citizens.

Norway's army surrendered and they had a collaborationist government led by Vidkun Quisling.  The Nazis demanded anti-Jewish laws which were implemented quickly so that by 1942, 770 Jews were sent to Nazi concentration camps.  760 were killed in death camps, but the underground had smuggling out 930 Jews across to the Swedish border. After the war, 800 Jews had survived and they, with displaced persons, were invited back by the Norwegian government. By 1996 Norway thought about restitution of Jewish property that had been confiscated by the Quisling regime.

Today there is one rabbi in all of Norway who is at the synagogue in Oslo.  Norway doesn't allow the koshering of meat, so it is imported from Denmark.  There is a 2nd synagogue in Trondheim and is the most northern synagogue in the world.  I have met online a Norwegian Jewish girl whose family didn't know they were Jewish.  She wound up going to Israel to find out about her religion more.  It was a result of the family escaping from the Holocaust and winding up in Norway.

Today there is a lot of anti-Semitism going on in Norway.  Their Center Party just proposed a law against male circumcision, a Jewish practice for baby boys at the age of 8 days.  If this law passes, they will be the first country to do so.  Just such a proposal was made in San Francisco, California recently  and was not passed.  In 1814 Norway had "The Jewish Clause" in their constitution which excluded Jews from the country.  This had gone on till it was repealed in 1851.


 The country has also taken in many Muslims, and wherever both groups reside causes lots of sparking hatred. Most of the anti-Semitic acts going on are committed by Muslims.  Muslim children are taught this hatred and it's showing up in the schools.  In 2009, 39 % of primary-school students in Oslo came from  immigrant families.   The latest event is about bullying a Jewish boy in school for the past several years which has resulted in his tormentors burning him on the neck with a burning-hot coin at an Oslo secondary school barbeque.  Why?  The boy's father is an Israeli, and this ticked off the students in their hatred for our tiny country.

 Though the country declares that they have a zero tolerance for bullying, nothing was done about this incident. Other Jewish students have been assaulted in their schools and teachers are known to just look the other way.  Their media plays a major role in reinforcing anti-Semitism.  For example only one media in Norway reported the burned student, and that was a Christian, Israel-friendly daily newspaper.  The political left shows a hatred for Jews.
Sweden
Jews living in Sweden are descendants of World War II refugees and Holocaust survivors who came after the war.  They also have Jewish refugees who fled Hungary in 1956 and others who left Poland in 1968.  Recently, Jews went there from the former Soviet Union instead of immigrating to Israel.  Stockholm has 3 synagogues and 2 rabbis.  One synagogue was built in 1870.  Gothenburg and Malmo also have a synagogue.  Here also, kosher meat must be imported from Denmark which is bought in Stockholm and Malmo.

Malmo has recently had an influx of Muslims, and the city has become a hotbed of attacks on Jews. There are only 760 Jews but 45,000 Muslims of Palestinian, Iraqi, Somali and even Yugoslavian heritage in this city of 293,900.   It has become so bad that many of these  Jews have had to move out of the city as they feared for their life.  Marcus Eilenberg, 32 year old attorney is taking his family and moving to Israel now.  The mayor is siding with the new population and has done nothing to stop the situation.  It really is a disgrace.  I even attempted to write some comments in an English newspaper online and was horrified by what people were saying and believing.

Both countries have their cultural elite whose attitude towards the Muslim influx seems to be that when their leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, their response is to join them in their rantings, calling this "solidarity."

Resource: http://www.jonathan5742.com/Right_Wing_Zionist_Homepage_Scandinavia
http://frontpagemag.com   Jew-Hatred in Norway by Bruce Bawer
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/05/viciousanti-semitism-in-malmo-sweden.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/search?q=Malmo%2CSweden
http://forward.com/articles/129233/for-jews-swedish-city-is-a-place-to-move-away-f/