The local residents of Beirut say they miss their former Jewish neighbors. But gestures of goodwill haven’t coaxed the remaining Jews out of hiding,Living Shadows in Lebanon,The local residents of Beirut say they miss their former Jewish neighbors. But gestures of goodwill haven’t coaxed the remaining Jews out of hiding
“The Jewish community deserves better” Beirut resident Mara Sultan told a team of CNN reporters. Sultan said that the Jews were once an integral part of the fabric of life and family. “My father grew up with many Jewish friends. They were part of his childhood. Where did they all disappear to?” Photos AFP ImageBank Flash 90
R aymond Sasson a silver merchant who regularly travels the Brooklyn-Beirut route is a native of Lebanon who was two years old when he fled with his parents to the US in 1975 at the beginning of the brutal 15-year Lebanese civil war. Yet in recent years he’s taken to visiting the city of his birth again where he’s acquired friends and business associates among the local population.
On one of these trips a woman who’d heard about Sasson requested a meeting with him via one of these associates. And that’s how he found himself sitting opposite the woman with a large gold crucifix around her neck looking just like so many other Christians who fit seamlessly into Beirut society where Shiite and Sunni Muslims live alongside Maronite Christians and Armenians.
“I wear this ” she told a surprised Sasson gesturing to her necklace “in order to hide my identity. You see I’m also a Jew.” The woman then began naming her relatives names Sasson recognized as pillars of the Lebanese Jewish community back in Brooklyn.
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