The Afghan Jewish community is ancient, dating back at least 2,500 years. A century ago, there were thousands of Jews living in the mountainous country, mostly clustered in the two cities of Kabul and Herat, until persecutions began in 1933. At the end of World War II, there were still 5,000 Jews living in the country, but almost all of them fled by the 1960s, with most emigrating to Israel.
When the Afghan synagogues in which the scrolls were housed closed in the early 1950s, the cousins’ grandfather and family patriarch, Rahamim Shamash, transported the Torahs to two Afghan synagogues: Neve Yerushalayim and Yeshua V’Rahamim in southern Tel Aviv, where many Afghani Jews first relocated, said family member and historian Dr. Ofir Haivri.
But the two southern Tel Aviv synagogues eventually closed their doors when the Afghani immigrants moved to other areas in Israel. Zina Abraham, Hannah and Ronald’s first cousin, succeeded in finding both Torah scrolls in storage in a synagogue in Holon, Israel.
One of the Torahs was Donated to The Even Chen Synagogue in Bangkok
Upon gaining ownership of the Torahs, Abraham refurbished one of them, which she then donated to the Even Chen synagogue in Bangkok, Thailand, where her husband Yehudah and his brother Mayer established businesses, organized services and built a mikvah.
She left the other Torah in the trusted care of Hannah Zion. who along with her brother Ronald Abram moved to Hong Kong decades ago to maintain their father’s trading business after he passed away. Zion then had the letters of the Torah fixed under the steady hand of a New York sofer before she and her brother, who were both born in Afghanistan and spent the lion’s share of their childhood in New York, acquired a cylindrical-shaped Sephardic Torah case that holds the Torah upright.
The siblings say they found inspiration for their communal work through their father. During Israel’s early years, when antisemitism in Afghanistan was raging, he helped fund the travel of Afghani Jews to Israel. He was also an adviser to the King of Afghanistan on Jewish affairs. Their mother also helped support, with help from neighbors and friends, the three Afghani yeshivahs that existed while she lived there.
Approximately 200 people, including family members who pray regularly at Chabad of Hong Kong, celebrated the gift of the Torah last month. The siblings dedicated it to the memory of their parents, Shimon and Siporah Abram; their brother, Shmuel Abram; and Hannah’s grandson, Yehoshua Nathan Zion.
