Afghanistan’s last Jew leaves the country
Hebrew manuscripts indicate a thriving Jewish community 1,000 years ago
The last member of Afghanistan’s Jewish community has left the country. Zebulon Simentov, who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher and prayed in Hebrew, endured decades of war as the country’s centuriesold Jewish community rapidly dwindled. But the Taliban takeover last month seems to have been the last straw.
Moti Kahana, an IsraeliAmerican businessman who runs a private security group that organised the evacuation, said that 62-year-old Simentov and 29 of his neighbours, nearly all of them women and children, have been taken to a “neighbouring country.’’
Kahana said Simentov, who had lived under Taliban rule before, was not worried about them. But Kahana warned
him that he was at risk of being kidnapped or killed by the far more radical Daesh group. He said Simentov’s neighbours also pressed him to leave, so that their children could join him on the bus out.
Israel’s Kan public broadcaster aired footage of the evacuation, showing a bus full of people travelling across what appeared to be Afghanistan, with all the faces blurred except
for Simentov’s. They joined an exodus of thousands of Afghans who have fled since the Taliban came to power. The US and its allies organised a massive airlift in the closing days of the war, but officials acknowledged that up to 200 American citizens, as well as thousands of Afghans who had aided the war effort, were left behind.
Kahana said his group is reaching out to US and Israeli authorities to find a home for Simentov, whose estranged wife and children live in Israel.
Hebrew manuscripts found in caves in northern Afghanistan indicate a thriving Jewish community existed there at least 1,000 years ago. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan was home to some 40,000 Jews, who had fled forced conversion in neighbouring Iran.