Syrian Jews are Jews who live in the region of the modern state of Syria, and their descendants born outside Syria. Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: from the Jews who inhabited the region of today's Syria from ancient times, and sometimes classified as Mizrahi Jews ; and from the Sephardi Jews who fled to Syria after the Alhambra Decree forced the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
A Jewish family in Damascus, pictured in their ancient Damascene home, in Ottoman Syria, 1901
Jewish pupils in the Maimonides school in 'Amārah al Juwwānīyah, in the historic Maison Lisbona in Damascus. The photo was taken shortly before the exodus of most of the remaining Syrian Jewish community in 1992
Chief Rabbi Jacob Saul Dwek, Hakham Bashi of Aleppo, Syria, 1907.
Syrian Jews worship in Ades Synagogue. Renowned as a center for Syrian Hazzanut (Syrian Jewish liturgical singing), Ades is one of only two synagogues in the world that maintains the ancient Syrian Jewish tradition of Baqashot, the marathon Kabbalistic singing held in the early hours of Shabbat morning to welcome the sunrise over winter months.
Mizrahi Jews, also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) or Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי) and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach, are a grouping of Jewish communities that lived in the Muslim world.
Mizrahi Jews
The Westerners street in Jerusalem, Israel; coined after the Maghrebi Jews
Children in a Jewish school in Baghdad, 1959
Jewish Departure and Expulsion Memorial from Arab Lands and Iran on the Sherover Promenade, Jerusalem