How a little-known mission to Damascus carried a message of hope months
before Syrian Jews were finally allowed to leave.
Linda Argalgi Sadacka
This is the final installment of our three-part series. In the first two parts, we explored life for Syrian Jews under decades of restriction and the extraordinary efforts that ultimately led to our community’s freedom. Yet one important chapter remained untold.
When I began researching this subject, I did not set out to write a three-part series. I started with a single story – one that had stayed with me for years and one that, the more I thought about it, the less I could understand how it had remained largely unknown for so long.
Over the years, countless accounts have been written about Syrian Jewry: stories of perseverance, faith, persecution, resilience, and ultimately redemption. Many of those stories have rightly become part of our communal memory. They are told and retold because they help to explain who we are and where we came from.
A Different Story
This story was different.
Until recently, I was not aware of a single published account documenting what I had heard.
The story first came to me years ago through my husband. Like many stories that circulate within close-knit communities, it seemed to exist in a strange space between memory and history. The people who had lived through it remembered it. The people connected to it spoke about it. Yet somehow it never appeared to have fully entered the historical record.
What intrigued me was not whether the story was true. I never doubted that. What intrigued me was its absence.
Because if the events occurred as they were remembered, this was not the sort of story that should simply disappear. This was not a private family anecdote or a forgotten footnote tucked away in some obscure archive. It was a story that connected Syrian Jewry, Crown Heights, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, zt”l, and a dramatic chapter in modern Jewish history. It was the kind of story one assumes everybody already knows.
Yet, the more people I spoke with, the more I realized that they did not.
The Story Expands
There was also something almost unbelievable about the story itself. It involved a group of Jewish emissaries traveling through the Middle East, arriving in Damascus dressed as Saudi Arabs, entering one of the most tightly controlled countries in the region, locating the Jewish community, and delivering a message of hope to Jews living under watchful eyes. It sounded less like a communal memory and more like something from a political thriller. Yet, the deeper I investigated, the more I discovered that the story was not only true. It was larger, more layered, and more historically significant than I had originally understood.
Eventually, curiosity turned into research. What began as a decades-old memory led to conversations with eyewitnesses, community members, and individuals connected to the events themselves. Piece by piece, details began to emerge. Some accounts overlapped. Others introduced new questions. Far from simplifying the story, each conversation seemed to make the story larger.
One of the people I spoke with was Rebbetzin Chaya Lipsker of The Shul in Bal Harbour, Florida. Although she had never heard this particular account before, her reaction was telling. Given everything she knew about the Lubavitcher Rebbe and his concern for Jews wherever they lived, she did not find the story implausible. Quite the opposite. We were scheduled to continue the conversation the following day and, hopefully, identify additional sources that might shed light on the events.
Before that could happen, life took an unexpected turn. My father, Shlomo ben Linda, a”h, passed away on the 10th of Sivan. Research was suddenly replaced by funeral arrangements, travel, and shiva. Like so many projects interrupted by life’s more important obligations, the story was placed aside while our family focused on mourning and remembrance.
The Crown Heights Connection
During shiva in Montreal, I spent time with Rebbetzin Raskin, a longtime family friend whose family is widely respected throughout the Chabad-Lubavitch world. We spoke about family, community, and life. The story itself never came up. Only after shiva had ended and I had returned home did I reach out to her regarding my research. Her response surprised me. As it happened, she was in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at that very moment. Within a remarkably short period of time, she was able to connect me with individuals who had access to archival material relating to the events I had been investigating.
For me, the archives were never about proving the story had happened. I had heard the account years earlier from my husband and from others who remembered the events. I had no reason to doubt them. The archives served a different purpose. They allowed the story to move beyond memory and into the historical record. They gave structure, context, and corroboration to something that had lived for decades in the recollections of those who experienced it.
What happened next felt almost providential. After carrying the story for years, after months of research, and after setting it aside during one of the most difficult periods of my life, documentation suddenly appeared. Within a short time of reaching out to Rebbetzin Raskin, archival material from Crown Heights was in my hands. As I began reading through it, I realized something else. The story was bigger than I had originally believed – much bigger.
Damascus, 1992
To understand why, we must return to Damascus in 1992. At the time, Syrian Jews still lived under intense government scrutiny. The Mukhabarat, Syria’s feared intelligence service, maintained a constant presence, and Jewish life was conducted with a level of caution that is difficult for many of us to fully appreciate today. It was within that environment that an extraordinary scene unfolded.
One day, several unfamiliar men appeared in the Jewish Quarter asking for directions to the synagogue. They were dressed in traditional Saudi Arabian attire, and according to those who remembered the encounter, the men had recently been in Saudi Arabia. Nothing about them seemed familiar, and their presence immediately attracted attention. To understand the reaction they received, one must understand the reality of Jewish life in Syria at the time. For decades, Syrian Jews had learned that vigilance was not optional. The wrong conversation, the wrong visitor, or the wrong question could attract unwanted attention. This was not paranoia; it was self-preservation.
Visitors in Disguise
The appearance of several unfamiliar men dressed as Saudi Arabs and asking questions about the synagogue naturally raised concerns. Who were they? Why were they there? What did they want? Were they genuine visitors, government informants, or something else entirely? In a community that had learned through experience to be careful, suspicion was the natural response. Eventually, the men found what they were looking for and entered the synagogue.
What happened next would be remembered for decades. Once inside, they removed their Saudi-style head coverings. Their peyot and kippot became visible. The strangers standing before them were, by all appearances, Jews. More than that, they immediately joined the prayers and demonstrated complete familiarity with the service. They carried religious books, greetings, and messages from thousands of miles away. They had come from Brooklyn, New York, on a mission connected to the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The reaction inside the synagogue was immediate. Suspicion quickly gave way to astonishment, and astonishment to emotion. For Syrian Jews living under isolation and restriction, the moment was almost unimaginable. Here were Jews from the outside world who had somehow crossed continents, entered Syria, located their community, and arrived carrying a message from a Jewish leader who had not forgotten them.
An Ongoing Relationship
At first, I believed I was investigating a single event: a remarkable story about emissaries who entered Syria in disguise and appeared unexpectedly in a Damascus synagogue. Yet, the deeper I immersed myself in the material from Crown Heights, the more I realized that the visit itself was only one chapter of a much larger story. What emerged from the documents, testimonies, and recollections was not the record of an isolated mission. It was the record of an ongoing relationship.
Again and again, the same names surfaced throughout the material. Rabbi Avraham Hamra, zt”l, the longtime Chief Rabbi of Syria, appeared repeatedly, as did individuals who worked alongside him to sustain Jewish life under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Messages moved between Damascus and Crown Heights. Visitors traveled back and forth. Religious books and materials were delivered. Reports regarding the condition of Syrian Jewry found their way to New York. The deeper I read, the harder it became to maintain my original assumption that I was researching a single dramatic episode. The visit to Damascus was not the beginning of the story. It was evidence of a story already in progress.
One of the valuable voices preserved in the historical record belongs to Saleh Luz, an eyewitness whose recollections help bring the story to life. Through his memories, the account becomes something more than dates and events. He remembered the visitors. He remembered the atmosphere within the community. He remembered the excitement, the surprise, and the emotional impact these encounters had on people who often felt distant from the larger Jewish world. Reading those accounts, one begins to understand why the arrival of the emissaries generated such a powerful reaction. Perhaps what mattered most was the realization that someone cared and had come looking for them.
A Message of Hope
The message itself was not new to me. I had heard it years earlier from my husband, who lived through those events and remembered the purpose behind the visit. According to his recollection, the emissaries did not come merely to distribute religious books or to deliver greetings from abroad. They came carrying something far more powerful: hope. The Lubavitcher Rebbe had communicated that Syrian Jews would soon experience their own redemption – not at some distant point in the future, but soon, by Passover.
To appreciate how astonishing that message sounded, one must place oneself in Damascus in 1992. Generations of Syrian Jews had lived under restrictions that many believed would never fully disappear. Families had learned to live with uncertainty. Hope existed, but it was tempered by experience. Nothing in the political climate suggested that dramatic change was imminent. Nothing suggested that a centuries-old chapter of Jewish history was approaching its conclusion. Nothing suggested that families who had spent years wondering whether they would ever leave would soon be packing their belongings and boarding airplanes. Yet the message was delivered, and the people hearing those words could not possibly have known how close they were to witnessing history.
For nearly 2,500 years, Jews had lived in Syria. Empires rose and fell around them. Kingdoms disappeared. Governments changed. Borders shifted. Yet, the Jews remained. Generation after generation, century after century, they maintained a continuous presence that stretched back to antiquity. Few could have imagined that they were living through the final chapter of that extraordinary story. Yet, history was already beginning to move. Within months, events began unfolding with astonishing speed. The gates that had remained closed for so long began to open, and families who had spent years wondering whether they would ever be allowed to leave suddenly found themselves confronting a reality they had scarcely dared to imagine.
A Surgeon’s Story
For me, the significance of that message was never merely historical. Long before I saw a single archival document, I had a personal connection to the story, as my husband’s life was intertwined with this chapter of history.
Before coming to the United States, my husband was a surgeon in Syria. As discussions surrounding the future of Syrian Jewry intensified and the possibility of emigration slowly began to emerge, he was repeatedly told that whatever freedoms might eventually be granted to others would not apply to him. The explanation was always the same. The Syrian government had invested in his education. He had benefited from the state’s universities. A person in his position, he was told, owed a debt that could never truly be repaid. Others might leave, but not him.
His family refused to accept that answer. His mother, like so many determined Syrian Jewish mothers before her, persisted relentlessly. Day after day she returned to government offices. Requests were submitted. Appeals were made. Hope rose and fell. Promises appeared and disappeared. Like countless other Syrian Jewish families, they lived in a state of uncertainty, never knowing whether the next conversation would bring disappointment or opportunity. Then, unexpectedly, everything changed. The permission arrived. After years of being told that the door would remain closed, it suddenly opened.
The disbelief was so profound that my husband refused to take any chances. He boarded the very first flight permitted to leave Syria, departing before other members of his family and leaving behind everything familiar because no one knew whether the opportunity would ever come again. Years later, when he told me the story, what struck me most was the sense that even the people living through those events could scarcely comprehend what was happening. For years they had spoken about leaving; now they were packing. For years they had imagined freedom; now they were boarding airplanes. For years the future had seemed sealed shut; now possibilities were opening before them.
Redemption Repeated
For my husband, redemption was not an abstract concept discussed around a table. It was the first flight out of Syria. In America, his life would take a new direction. The surgeon from Syria would eventually become the pediatrician so many families know today. But that future began with a moment no one in his family could take for granted: permission granted, a seat on the first plane, and the understanding that history had shifted beneath their feet.
Looking back now, it is difficult not to think about the timing. Months earlier, emissaries had entered Damascus carrying a message that seemed almost impossible to believe. Now, events were unfolding with a speed that few could have imagined. For thousands of years, Jews have gathered around the seder table and retold the story of a people who believed they might never leave Egypt, a people trapped by circumstances they did not control and unable to see the future awaiting them. Then history changed. In 1992, Syrian Jews experienced something that must have felt strikingly familiar. For generations they had lived with restrictions, wondered whether things would ever be different, and adapted to realities they did not choose. Then, almost suddenly, the gates opened.
Today, little remains of the Jewish Damascus that existed in 1992 beyond its buildings and memories. The community that once filled it has dispersed across the globe. Its descendants live in Brooklyn, Deal, Miami, Montreal, Panama, Israel, and countless other places. They are no longer a hidden community living behind barriers. They are woven into the fabric of Jewish life. They are our rabbis, our teachers, our doctors, our business leaders, our philanthropists, our neighbors, and our friends.
The Pieces Come Together
For years, I found myself asking the same question. How could a story of this magnitude have remained largely untold? How could a story connecting Damascus and Crown Heights, Syrian Jewry and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, disappear almost entirely from public memory? Perhaps the answer is that history does not always announce itself. Sometimes it unfolds quietly. Sometimes it survives only in the memories of those who witnessed it. And sometimes it waits decades for the missing pieces to come together.
That, ultimately, is what makes this story so remarkable. Not only that emissaries entered Syria. Not only that they carried a message of hope. But that more than thirty years later, eyewitness testimony, family memories, and archival records all point to the same conclusion: the Jews of Syria were never forgotten. And when redemption finally came in 1992, many remembered a message that had arrived months earlier in a Damascus synagogue. Redemption was coming. By Passover. Against all expectations, it did.