“It's quite clear to me that he was trying to recreate the hillside of Haifa with the gardens... It comes from somebody being ripped out from their home.”

Syrian Jewish Playwright Oren Safdie, son of world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie, who designed Habitat 67 along with much of modern Jerusalem, knows loss, regret, and longing. Oren and his father explore their Syrian heritage and their connection to the Jewish state that has developed since Moshe’s father left Aleppo, Syria and moved, in the mid-20th century, to what is modern-day Israel.

Oren also knows that being Jewish is about stepping up. Describing his frustrations with modern anti-Israel sentiments and protests that harken back to 1943, Oren is passionately combating anti-Israel propaganda in theater and academia. 

Abraham Marcus, Associate Professor Emeritus at University of Texas at Austin, joins the conversation with historical insights into Jewish life in Syria dating back to Roman times.

—-

Show notes:

Sign up to receive podcast updates here.

Learn more about the series here.

Song credits: 

Al Fadimem, Bir Demet Yasemen, Fidayda; all by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road

Aleppo Bakkashah 

Pond5: 

• “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837

• “Oud Nation”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Haygaz Yossoulkanian (BMI), IPI#1001905418

• “Arabic (Middle Eastern Music)”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Andrei Skliarov, Item ID #152407112

• “Fields Of Elysium”; Publisher: Mysterylab Music; Composer: Mott Jordan; ID#79549862

• “Middle Eastern Dawn”: Publisher: Victor Romanov, Composer: Victor Romanov; Item ID #202256497

• “Ney Flute Melody 01”: Publisher: Ramazan Yuksel; Composer: Ramazan Yuksel; P.R.O. Track: BMI 00712367557

• “Uruk”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Marcus Bressler; Item ID: 45886699

• “Suspense Middle East” Publisher: Victor Romanov, Composer: Victor Romanov; Item ID: 196056047

___

Episode Transcript:

OREN SAFDIE:  I've sort of wanted to shine a light on North American Jews being hypercritical of Israel.

Because I've spent a lot of time in Israel. And I know what it is. It's not a simple thing. And I think it's very easy for Americans in the comfort of their little brownstones in Brooklyn, and houses in Cambridge to criticize, but these people that live in Israel are really standing the line for them.

MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century.

Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations despite hardship, hostility, and hatred, then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland.

I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East. 

The world has ignored these voices. We will not. 

This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: leaving Aleppo.

MANYA: Playwright and screenwriter Oren Safdie has had just about enough of the anti-Israel sentiments on stage and screen. And what irks him the most is when it comes from Jewish artists and celebrities who have never spent time in the Middle East’s one and only democracy. Remember film director Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the 2024 Academy Awards?

JONATHAN GLAZER: Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the … [APPLAUSE]

MANYA: Yeah, Oren didn’t much appreciate his own Jewishness being hijacked in that moment. Drawing a moral equivalence between the Nazi regime and Israel never really sits well with him.

OREN: I do feel like they're very selective in their criticism of Israel. You know, it's very easy to say, ‘Oh, well, they didn't do that. They don't do this.’ But it's a complicated situation. And to simplify it, is just to me beyond, especially if you're not somebody who has spent a lot of time in Israel.

MANYA: Oren Safdie has penned more than two dozen scripts for stages and screens around the world. His latest film, Lunch Hour, starring Alan Cumming, is filming in Minnesota. 

Meanwhile, The Man Who Saved the Internet with A Sunflower, another script he co-wrote, is on the festival circuit. And his latest play Survival of the Unfit, made its North American debut in the Berkshires this summer, is headed to Broadway.

And by the way, since an early age, Oren Safdie has spent quite a bit of time in Israel. His father Moshe Safdie is the legendary architect behind much of modern Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion International Airport, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum. 

Oren’s grandfather, Leon, emigrated from Syria.

OREN: I'm sort of a synthesis of the two main parts that established Israel because my mother came from Poland, escaped the Holocaust. And my father's family came from Syria. So, I'm a half breed. 

I've never been asked about my Sephardic side, even though that was really the dominant side that I grew up with. Because my mother’s family was quite small. I grew up in Montreal, it was much more in the Syrian tradition for holidays, food, everything like that.

My grandfather was from Aleppo, Syria, and my grandmother was from Manchester, England, but originally from Aleppo. Her family came to Manchester, but two generations before, had been from Aleppo. So, they’re both Halabi Jews. 

MANYA: Halabi refers to a diverse group of Jews from Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world that has gone by several names. The oldest? Haleb. 

Halabi Jews include Mizrahi Jews -- the name for Jews who call the Middle East or North Africa home; and Sephardi Jews, who fled to the region after being expelled from Spain in the 15th Century. 

Jews are believed to have been in what is now Syria since the time of King David and certainly since early Roman times.

ABRAHAM MARCUS: It's a community that starts, as far as we can record, in the Greco-Roman period. And we see the arrival of Islam. So the Jews were really the indigenous people when Arabs arrived.

MANYA: Abraham Marcus, born to parents from Aleppo, is an internationally renowned authority on the city. He served as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. For the past 16 years, he has been working on a book about the history of Aleppo’s Jews that goes well beyond what has been previously published.

As part of his research, he examined thousands of documents from the Syrian national archive and the Ottoman archive in Istanbul. He also did extensive fieldwork on the ground in Aleppo, documenting the synagogues, cemeteries, residential districts, and workplaces. 

MARCUS: One of the synagogues, the famous ancient synagogue of Aleppo, which dates to the 5th Century, meaning it predates the arrival of Arabs. It is a remarkable structure. Unfortunately, what is left of it now is really a skeleton.

MANYA: Abraham is referring to the Great Synagogue or Central Synagogue of Aleppo, which functioned as the main house of worship for the Syrian Jewish community for more than 1,600 years. For 600 of those years, its catacombs safeguarded a medieval manuscript believed to be the oldest, most complete, most accurate text of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Aleppo Codex. The codex was used by Maimonides as a reference for his magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah, or Jewish religious legal code.

In the 7th Century, Aleppo was conquered by Arab Muslims and a Great Mosque was built. For the next four centuries, the Byzantine Empire, Crusaders, and various Muslim rulers fought to gain control of Aleppo and the surrounding region. A savage Mongol invasion, a bout of the Black Death and another invasion took its toll on the city, and its Jews. 

For most of this time, Muslim rulers treated them as dhimmis, or second-class citizens. 

MARCUS: Th