- Population
- 31,500
- Location
- Holon and Bat Yam, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem (Nachlaot), Kiryat Tivon, Ashkelon and other towns
Syrian Jews in Israel, about 31,500 people by their own or their father's birthplace and many more by older descent, are the families of Aleppo and Damascus who came in the Ottoman and Mandate years, after the riots of 1947, and by secret escapes until the 1990s. Aleppo Jews founded Jerusalem's Ades synagogue in 1901, where the all-night winter baqashot hymns, sung to Arab melodies, still draw worshippers; later arrivals settled in Holon, Bat Yam and Kiryat Tivon. They speak Hebrew today, keep the Aleppo and Damascus rites and their own heritage centres, and take pride in the Aleppo Codex, the ancient Bible their community guarded for six centuries and smuggled to Israel. The Halabi and Shami communities still keep separate associations.