Historic Syrian-American Jewish Delegation Visits Damascus for the First Time in Over 30 Years

The Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) is honored to facilitate the first Syrian-American Jewish delegation to visit Syria since the fall of the Assad regime. From February 17–20, 2025, Jewish Syrian-Americans returned to their homeland for the first time in over 30 years, marking a historic step toward reestablishing Jewish life in Damascus.

Photo: American-Jewish visitors hold Torah scrolls at a synagogue in the old city of Damascus Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
 

The delegation was led by Rabbi Yosef Hamra, the Rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and the brother of the late Rabbi Avraham Hamra, former Chief Rabbi of Syria. He was accompanied by his son, Henry Hamra, along with other Jewish Americans. Also joining them was Ambassador Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, a Syrian Emergency Task Force Board Member, and a Distinguished Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide.

The delegation visited historical sites central to Jewish communal and religious life in Damascus, including the Eliyahu Hanavi (Jobar) Synagogue—one of the world's oldest synagogues, which was destroyed by the Assad regime. They also walked through the Jewish Quarter, visiting its synagogues and reconnecting with the neighborhood’s long history. Rabbi Hamra had the profound opportunity to visit the resting places of his father and grandfather in a historic Jewish cemetery, which is also the burial site of the famous 16th-century Rabbi, Hayim Vital. Meanwhile, Henry Hamra returned to the Alliance School, where he had studied as a child.

Henry Hamra stated, “It has been my dream to come back to my homeland and it was heartbreaking to see the destruction by the Assad regime of the Jobar synagogue and the entire neighborhood of Jobar. We call on the Trump administration to lift sanctions and give a free Syria a chance to rebuild its cities including mosques, synagogues and churches.”

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