Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat on Wednesday approved the registration of the Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation (JHS) – the first Jewish organization to be officially recognized by Syria since it became an independent nation in the 1940s.
Registration will allow JHS to establish offices in Syria, work with local and national government officials, and serve as the government-sanctioned protector of Jewish sites.
Kabawat, the first female minister in Syria’s transitional government, told Fox News Digital on Thursday that Jews “have long been part of Syria’s religious and cultural landscape.”
“Restoring their right to belong, to visit and to live back in their homeland is a natural step toward a more just, tolerant and inclusive society,” she said.
“For decades, Syrian Jews were denied the right to celebrate their own cultural and religious heritage, and today we take a step toward long-term peace, security and stability,” she said.
“We wish the organization success in its efforts to preserve Jewish heritage in Syria, and we look forward to deeper cooperation and a stronger relationship going forward,” her statement concluded.
In a separate statement from her office in Damascus, Kabawat said registering the JHS also “sends a strong message from the Syrian state that we do not discriminate between one religion and another.”
Those words will be music to the ears of President Donald Trump’s administration, which has placed some heavy bets on interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s ability to deliver the inclusive, Western-friendly government he promised after his forces overthrew dictator Bashar Assad in December 2024.
President Trump has personally embraced Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda officer, as a “very strong leader” and a “young, attractive, tough guy” who has a “real shot at pulling it together.” Trump moved quickly to lift as many sanctions against Syria as he could, and urged Congress, the United Nations, and European powers to follow suit.
The leader of the JHS is a Syrian-born American named Henry Hamra, the son of a rabbi who left Syria under the Assad dictatorship in the 1990s. Hamra was photographed meeting with Kabawat in Damascus on Wednesday and praying at a synagogue in the city.
Hamra said his group intends to build an inventory of Jewish-owned property seized under earlier Syrian governments and to return as many of those properties to their rightful owners as possible. The JHS will also restore holy sites, rebuild synagogues, and make them “accessible to all Jews in the world.”
Registering the JHS was a potent symbolic gesture, but the practical work to back it up is reportedly already underway. Restoration activity has been reported at Jewish sites in northern Syria, and on Tuesday a rabbinical delegation from Israel visited two ancient and long-abandoned synagogues in the city of Aleppo, under heavy protection from Syrian security forces.
The JHS said there were once 22 synagogues in Damascus, but most of them have been heavily damaged or destroyed. Only one, the al-Faranj synagogue, remains mostly intact, with a full inventory of sacred works.
“We’re ready to start working on the synagogues and to start getting all the people to come see what we have here: a beautiful place. And we’re ready for everybody to come,” Henry Hamra’s son Joseph told Fox News Digital.
“Being able to regularly travel to Damascus and Aleppo brings me so much joy. Syria was closed off to us for so long. The Assad regime would arrest anyone who even met with a Jew or hosted a Jewish person. Today, Syria is finally back to its people regardless of faith or ethnicity,” Joseph Hamra said.
Even as Sharaa’s government was granting JHS the credentials it needed to get to work, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted to advance a defense bill that includes repeal of the Caesar Act sanctions — the toughest of the sanctions imposed by the United States against Syria under the Assad regime.
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