Leader of Lebanon’s tiny Jewish community dies at 80

Isaac Arazi oversaw the restoration of Beirut’s Magen Avraham synagogue.

The restored Magen Avraham Synagogue in the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood of Beirut, seen in 2016. (Omarali85/Wikimedia Commons)

By Andrew Silow-Carroll December 27, 2023

(JTA) — Isaac Arazi, who as former president of Lebanon’s tiny Jewish community led the rehabilitation of Beirut’s abandoned Magen Avraham synagogue, died Tuesday. He was 80.

A lawyer for the community, which numbers less than 30, confirmed his death to Agence France-Presse.

Arazi headed the Lebanese Jewish Community Council, which represented the remnant of the estimated 22,000 Jews who lived in Lebanon before the civil war that lasted from 1975-1989. Terrorists targeted Jews for kidnapping and murder during the war; 11 were killed or went missing.

Arazi led efforts to restore Magen Avraham, situated in the city’s old Jewish quarter, beginning in 2008. The plans were delayed by the global financial crisis, but renovations were completed by 2010. The synagogue was damaged by a catastrophic port blast in the Lebanese capital in 2019, and reopened a year later following extensive renovations underwritten by donors abroad.

Arazi had grand plans for the synagogue, but was realistic about restoring Jewish life in a country riven by strife and antagonistic toward Israel and Jews. “You need to be at least 10 people to celebrate Shabbat. But most of them live abroad. And those that live here are too afraid to vote,” he told a reporter in 2011.

The synagogue’s last rabbi fled the country in 1977, and the last rabbi in Lebanon left in 1995.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor in chief of the New York Jewish Week and senior editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He previously served as JTA’s editor in chief and as editor in chief and CEO of the New Jersey Jewish News.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO