Afghanistan’s Last Jew

Zablon Simintov, 59, is Afghanistan’s last Jew of a kehillah that numbered 40,000 at its peak. Living in the compound of Kabul’s only shul, he is running a restaurant on its premises to prevent it from being seized as an abandoned building.

“I barely go out to the street. Death is close,” he told a reporter recently.

Born in the western city of Herat, he moved to the shul after his home was damaged during the country’s civil war in 1992-1996. He lived in the shul together with another Jew, Yitzchok Levin, who died in 2005.

Simintov shechts his own meat and is helped by donations from abroad and sympathetic locals.

His wife and two daughters moved to Israel years ago.

{Matzav.com}