Rescuers: Kabul’s last Jewish holdout eyes Israel
JERUSALEM — The man known as the last Jew of Kabul could be heading to Israel after agreeing to grant his estranged wife a religious divorce in a Zoom call — a precondition for smooth entry to the Holy Land.
Zebulon Simentov, who fled Afghanistan last month after the Taliban takeover, landed Sunday in Turkey on what his rescuers say is a final stop before traveling to Israel, perhaps as soon as this week.
It caps a weekslong odyssey that included an escape from his homeland and a videoconference divorce procedure meant to ensure he will not run into trouble with Israeli authorities.
Under Jewish religious law, a husband must agree to grant his wife a divorce, something he had refused to do for many years. Facing the prospect of legal action in Israel, where his ex-wife lives, Simentov, after resisting for years, agreed to the divorce last month in a Zoom call supervised by Australian rabbinical authorities.
Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, whose nonprofit group Tzedek Association funded the journey, said Simentov had spent the past few weeks living quietly in Pakistan, an Islamic country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
He said his group had looked into bringing Simentov to the U.S. but decided that Israel was a better destination both because of difficulties in arranging a U.S. entry visa and because Simentov has many relatives, including five siblings and two daughters, already in Israel.
Simentov, who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher and prayed in Hebrew, endured decades of war as the country’s centuries-old Jewish community dwindled. But the Taliban takeover in August seems to have been the last straw.