The Concordian

Issue date: 2/14/07 Section: News

Media Credit: thejewsoflebanon.org Aaron-Micaël Beydoun is as passionate about restoring Beirut's Maghen Abraham Synagogue as he is about restoring its Jewish community.

Media Credit: thejewsoflebanon.org

Aaron-Micaël Beydoun is trying to raise awareness about Jews in Lebanon and with the help of a website he is trying to stop the segregation of this tiny minority. A Muslim of Lebanese descent, he founded thejewsoflebanon.org shortly after discovering, to his surprise, that there actually was a Jewish community still living in Lebanon.

"Let the Jews of Lebanon live," said Beydoun to a group of 50 people gathered at Concordia University last Thursday. At an event sponsored by Hillel Concordia and Hillel Centre to promote a better understanding of the Jewish-Lebanese question, the 21-year-old said his mission is to help Jews of Lebanon realize "that they are not alone in their country." With his website, he helps Jewish Lebanese communicate with fellow Jews living all around the world.

As a Muslim, it seemed to Beydoun that it was an oxymoron that Jews were living in Lebanon at all, he said. Curious, he spent nine months researching the population and developing a website. Through this website, he hoped to raise awareness and restore the Jewish presence in Lebanon and especially in Beirut.

"We can all live together," he said. Currently a member of the Lebanese American Chamber of Commerce and a contributing journalist for an alternative magazine in Beirut, Beydoun also started a non-governmental organization to help needy Jewish Lebanese through monetary assistance and to take part in projects such as renovating Beirut's great synagogue.

Beydoun's project attracted the attention of a mainstream Israeli newspaper and after the article was published, his website drew a larger audience, according to Samuel Konig, Hillel Montreal's Social Outreach Chair. Konig said they organized the conference to educate Concordia students about Judaism and the Sefaradi heritage.

Although Beydoun advocates religious freedom for Jewish Lebanese, he doesn't believe the "Lebanese are ready for an open [Jewish] Lebanese community." According to him, there is still work to be done to educate the Lebanese population to better accept the Jews and to integrate them in society.

Beydoun said the violence directed toward Jews must stop. The young man said the Lebanese youth is tired of sectarianism, "a cancer" as he called it. "The society is still sick of this mentality," he said. Beydoun added that the Lebanese youth does not want to continue on the path their parents and grand-parents paved before them.

If Beydoun was surprised that there was a Jewish community still present in Lebanon, it is because Jews cannot openly practice their religion in the country. Because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Jews of Lebanon are segregated by the Arab population. Beydoun stressed the importance of the nonpolitical mission of his organization.

Another difficulty is that the Jewish population can't actually be counted because most of them are afraid to speak up, according to Beydoun. It is commonly accepted that there are 50 to 100 Jews living in Lebanon, but Beydoun said the number is likely to be much higher. As the crowd discussed the issue, audience member Sophie Rutman, who said she had fled Lebanon for Canada in 1967, recalled that there were up to 100,000 Jews living in Lebanon when she left. This allegation was denied by several crowd members who all had their own numbers. Rutman added, "[Jews] got out because there was no way for [them] to continue living there."

The second topic of discussion at the event was the history of Sepharadi Jews. The chairperson of Spanish Language studies at Université de Montréal, Oro Anahory-Librowicz, said that culture must be preserved through a dynamic process. She explained that Sepharadi Jews are descendants of Spanish Jews who were expelled by the King of Spain. They settled in the Ottoman Empire, in Turkey and Lebanon.

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