With thanks: Nagi
Maghen Avraham: newly restored
The massive blast that devastated the port area of Beirut appears to have done extensive damage to the city’s synagogue, Maghen Avraham, according to one source.
Although Lebanon no longer has a Jewish community to speak of, the synagogue was restored and reopened in 2015. It has yet to hold a service.
It was in 2008 that Isaac Arazi, the leader of Lebanon’s Jewish Community Council, first initiated a project to restore the synagogue, which was bombed during the Lebanese civil war. The Lebanese Jewish diaspora — including the Safras, a prominent banking family — led the fundraising drive. Non-Jewish Lebanese also made contributions. Solidere SAL, a real estate firm set up by the Hariris, a Sunni family prominently involved in politics, pledged $150,000, an amount it also offered to other religious groups restoring places of worship in the area. In total, the restoration cost between $4 million and $5 million.
Point of No Return will update this post as soon as more details of the damage suffered by the synagogue are known.
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