2 - The Jewish Population of Syria

Summary

THOUGH various difficulties confront the historian attempting to arrive at an accurate depiction of Jewish life in nineteenth-century Syria, a broad picture can be drawn of a largely urban pattern of settlement, concentrated in two main, distinct centres: Damascus and Aleppo. This part of the book examines the Jewish population's geographical distribution and demography, the defining characteristics of Jewish social identity and stratification, the role of Jews in the local economy, the nature of the Jewish leadership and the communal administration, and Jewish education, both traditional and modern, comparing and contrasting the two main communities and their individual responses to change during the Tanzimat era.

The Geographical Distribution of Settlement: Central and Satellite Communities

The distribution of Jewish settlement in Syria was not influenced by the dictates of the Muslim majority, which regarded the presence of the small Jewish minority as natural. Though unable to own land, Jews were not legally barred from settlement in any rural or urban areas in Syria, and it was internal Jewish considerations—primarily related to security, economic opportunity, and social and religious requirements—that determined the largely urban character of Syrian Jewish settlement and its concentration in the main centres of Aleppo and Damascus. Compared to rural areas and outlying towns, which were more vulnerable to attack by robbers or local militias, these cities, with their gubernatorial seats and military barracks, provided a greater degree of personal safety. The predominance of urban settlement also reflected the extremely limited involvement of Jews in agriculture, in consequence of the Islamic ban on Jewish landowning. Moreover, as way stations in east–west trade and important commercial centres, Damascus and Aleppo offered Jews a variety of commercial and financial opportunities. Finally, Syrian Jews typically sought to live in a supportive Jewish environment with a full range of communal services, such as a prayer quorum (minyan), a ritual bath, kosher food, a talmud torah (school), and a cemetery; nowhere in Syria do we find isolated settlements of single Jewish families, or even groups too small to provide a quorum within a non-Jewish setting. There were, however, smaller satellite communities in the towns surrounding Aleppo and Damascus, and these for the most part relied on the mother communities to meet their religious needs—for decisions on halakhic questions, for spiritual leadership, and for the provision of Jewish functionaries.