Relics of old Afghanistan reveal Jewish past

By Golnar Motevalli
HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Behind a parade of old mud brick shops, through narrow winding alleys, a tiny door opens onto a sundrenched courtyard, where school children giggle and play alongside the ghosts of Afghanistan's Jewish past.
The Yu Aw is one of four synagogues in the old quarter of Herat city in west Afghanistan, which after decades of abandonment and neglect, has been restored to provide desperately-needed space for an infant school.
When Israel was founded in 1948, the estimated 280 Jewish families that lived in Herat began leaving. Today, there are no Jews left in the city and only one left in the entire country, the last remnant of a community that dates back some 2,500 years.
"Before this was a community center and school it was a synagogue for the Jewish families who lived in the area," said Fatemeh Nezary, a teacher and supervisor of the school.
"The children don't know, they are too young to understand right now," she said, pointing toward her small class of doe-eyed five-year old girls and boys.
The Herat synagogue, over a century old, is comprised of a modest stone courtyard framed by a series of small rooms including a main prayer room which still has a raised platform where the torah would have been read.
Parts of the prayer room's high ceilings are decorated in painted Persian-style floral patterns and motifs.
The "mikvah," an echoey underground chamber underneath the courtyard, has also been restored. Decades of rubbish was gutted from its cavity to reveal a natural pool of water which is thought to have been used for bathing rituals.
"Wherever possible we try and put back the elements. We can't put back what we don't find, some of the buildings have been stripped," said Jolyon Leslie, a South African architect who leads restoration projects in Herat's old city on behalf of the Agha Khan Trust for Culture.
"What we're trying to do is protect as many old historical monuments as possible. Whether it's a mosque whether it's an ex-synagogue like this or whether it's a hamam, to try and put them in public use," Leslie said.
"It's important that Heratis understand for future generations that this was a very rich society in the sense of its religious diversity and it's pluralism," he added.
Where Jewish prayers once rang out, now Afghan children chant nursery rhymes. The platform where the torah would have been read is left undisturbed to bask in warm sunshine which floods through wide, arched bay windows.
"There's a huge shortage of classes in this part of the city and some 60,000 people (here) and some 20,000 of those are children ... we really wanted to invest both in protecting the historic monument but also in having a new use," Leslie said.
"It's a mixture of conservation and social development."
Three other synagogues in the same neighborhood are being renovated. Two will also be used as schools for children living in the neighborhood. The third is now a mosque for the residents who live in a cluster of simple, centuries-old abodes. Continued...
Source: Reuters