Syrian Jewish Community in North America
Avoiding compulsory military service under the Ottoman Empire and seeking economic opportunity, Syrian Jews started leaving their country and arriving in New York City around 1908. Most of the Syrian Jewish community in Metro New York are descendants of those who arrived between 1908 and 1924. The majority of the diaspora was primarily from Aleppo, although a minority hailed from Damascus. Many people within the Lebanese and Egyptian Jewish communities are also of Syrian descent and tend to assimilate into the larger Syrian Jewish community. The Suez Crisis in 1956 sparked Egyptian Jewish emigration and retaliation against Jews in Lebanon due to the 1967 Six-Day War incited Lebanese Jews to leave for New York. When Syria lifted a travel ban in 1992 on its remaining Jewish citizens, almost all of them left for New York City.
Today, the Metro New York Syrian Jewish community numbers around 75,000 people, with areas around Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn and Deal, NJ having the largest concentrations. Small Syrian Jewish communities can also be found in Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Detroit. They speak English, Levantine Arabic, and sometimes have knowledge of rabbinical Hebrew.
In the early twentieth century, when America’s educational policies focused on assimilating and “Americanizing” immigrants into an idealized “melting pot,” the Syrian Jewish community in New York City took measures to ensure that they would retain their ethnic, cultural, and religious identity. In 1935, a takkanah, or rabbinical edict, was signed by several leading Syrian rabbis, declaring that Syrian Jews could marry neither non-Jews nor those who had converted to Judaism solely for the purpose of marriage. Since then, the edict has been reaffirmed in 1946, 1972, 1984, and again in 2006. The edict has also been strengthened so that Syrian Jews are now forbidden to marry any convert to Judaism, even if other Orthodox rabbis have validated the conversion. Intermarriage with non-Syrian Jews is at a very low rate, and even contact with non-Jews is minimal. While most immigrant groups in the last century have lost their ethnic identity through subsequent generations, the measures taken by the Syrian Jewish community have actually strengthened ethnic and religious identity through each generation, creating a more cohesive community today than the one that first arrived in America!
Religious Life
The Syrian Jewish community are Mizrahi, which are Jewish people descended from communities in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Mizrahi are labeled as Sephardic Jews as well, which is associated with Jewish people exiled from the Iberian peninsula. Whether they come from Morocco, Syria, or Iran, Sephardic Jewish people have similar religious customs. The Syrian Jewish community is typically more Orthodox and religiously observant than other Sephardi, and the trend has been for the community to become more Orthodox with each subsequent generation. There are dozens of yeshivas that have been started to educate their children, and there are around 80 Syrian-Jewish synagogues in Metro New York.
These are the Syrian Jewish communities in North America most in need of gospel witness
| People Group | Metropolitan Area | Population Size | Concentrated Area | Priority Score |
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Helpful resources for sharing Jesus with the Syrian Jewish community
| Resource | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Lumo - Gospel of John | Video series about Jesus in North Levantine Arabic. |  |
| JESUS Film | JESUS film video in Levantine Arabic. |  |
| Audio Bible in North Levantine Arabic | Listen to an audio version of the Bible in North Levantine (Shami) Arabic. |  |
| Top 40 Messianic Prophecies | These passages from the Jewish Scriptures find their fulfillment in the life of Jesus. In English. |  |