Connection between Biblical Israel, Syria Runs Deep
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Closing ThoughtsOpinion

Connection between Biblical Israel, Syria Runs Deep

Rabbi Baroff recounts the historical links between the Israelites and ancient Syria.

Rabbi Richard Baroff
Rabbi Richard Baroff

We all remember from school that the two most ancient of the world’s civilizations are Egypt and Mesopotamia. In fact, Syria, which is in between the two river valley civilizations, is just as old. The three cultures — Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt — defined the Fertile Crescent, seminal to our study of the origins of much of human history. Abraham and Sarah traveled just that path, in their case moving east to west, through the Fertile Crescent, from the Mesopotamian Ur of the Chaldees down into Egypt, before settling in the Land of Israel.

Abraham and Sarah passed through Aram, roughly what became Syria, as they travelled that fateful path. At that time, approximately 38 centuries ago, Aleppo and Damascus were already standing as towns. Aramaic (the language of Aram) would become — after Hebrew — the second language of the Jews, the first language of the Christians, and of many other peoples. The Aramaic alphabet would become the original writing system for almost all the alphabets of Asia. Eventually, it would be this Aramaic alphabet that would replace the older Paleo-Hebrew letters as the new Hebrew writing system for the Torah, the Jewish Bible, the Mishnah and Talmud, the siddur/machzor (prayerbook) much other rabbinic literature, and modern Hebrew today.

The Torah itself refers to the patriarch Jacob as a “wandering Aramean.” This could also refer to Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham. The matriarchs, Rebekah (wife of Isaac), Rachel and Leah (wives of Jacob) were themselves Aramean. The connections between the Biblical Israel and Syria were long lasting and very deep. The Torah teaches us that Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, was from the Aramean town Damascus. According to tradition, Eliezer was the servant sent by the elderly Abraham to Aram/Syria to obtain a wife for his son, Isaac, from Abraham’s kinsmen.

King David, hundreds of years later, was very much involved in Syrian politics. The Jewish communities of Aleppo, Antioch and Damascus go back thousands of years. Syria, like Eretz Yisrael and the Levant, in general, was the subject of many invasions: in the Bible — including the Babylonians, Egyptians and Persians; after Biblical times — the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottoman Turks and others controlled the country. Syria became largely Christian and then Muslim –always containing Jewish communities that were sometimes thriving, sometimes struggling.

In the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire could not survive the First World War. The French received the mandate of the League of Nations to control Syria, which ended after World War II. With the United Nations’ partition plan, which preceded the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947, the Syrian Jews were attacked, even suffering pogroms. Syria became the implacable foe of the State of Israel from its inception to the present — joining the wars in 1948, 1967, 1973 and supporting terrorism of both the left (P.L.O.) and the right (Hezbollah) against the Jewish State. The Assads, both father and son, made common cause with revolutionary Iran against the West.

Now the dictatorial Assads are gone. The future of Syria is far from secure. Some of the rebel groups are, for us, as Americans and Jews, certainly suspect. But there is a real possibility that the future for Syria, after 13 years of civil strife, might be brighter; also that Israel, after more than 75 years of Syrian hostility, may finally have a neighbor to the east who is not an implacable enemy. The rapid changes in the Middle East which we are seeing this year represent both a great challenge but also, hopefully, a great opportunity for peace. May it be so.

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