For years, Zebulon Simentov had introduced himself as the last Jew of Afghanistan, the last surviving member of a centuries-old community. He demanded interviews from media and held court in Kabul’s last remaining synagogue. Following the Taliban’s takeover of power, he fled to Istanbul last month.
It now emerges that he was not the last Jew in the country.
Tova Moradi, Simentov’s distant cousin, was born and brought up in Kabul and stayed there until last week, more than a month after Simentov left in September. Moradi, her children and nearly two dozen grandchildren escaped the nation in recent weeks, aided by an Israeli assistance organisation, activists and major Jewish philanthropists.
‘I loved my country, I loved it very much, but I had to leave because my children were in danger,’ Moradi said while answering the media from her accommodations in the Albanian town of Golem, whose beachside resorts have been converted into makeshift dwellings for 2,000 Afghan refugees.
Moradi, who is 83 years old, was born in Kabul to a Jewish family as one of the ten children. She ran away from home at the age of 16 and married a Muslim man. She never converted to Islam, kept some Jewish practises and it was no secret that she was Jewish in her community.
Despite disagreements over her decision to marry outside the faith, Moradi claimed that she had maintained contact with some of her family members over the years. In the 1960s and 1980s, her parents and siblings escaped from Afghanistan. Her parents are buried at Jerusalem’s Har Menuhot cemetery, and many of her surviving siblings and descendants still live in Israel.
But she hadn’t spoken to several of her sisters in almost a half-century, until this week.
Moradi tried to keep a low profile throughout the first period of Taliban control, from 1996 until the US-led invasion in 2001. She put her life in danger by hiding Rabbi Isaak Levi, one of the few remaining Afghan Jews, from the Taliban.
Levi and Simentov lived together for years in Kabul’s dilapidated synagogue, but they detested each other and fought frequently. The Taliban typically ignored them, but during one such debate, they intervened, capturing, assaulting and seizing the synagogue’s old Torah scroll, which went missing after the Taliban were thrown from power.
Moradi explained that Isaak Levi came to her house and she concealed him for a month, with the help of her grandson. When the Taliban came seeking for him, they said he was a Muslim. She planned to move the rabbi out of the country, but his health deteriorated, and he died in 2005.
Simentov stated that he was relieved to get rid of him. Levi’s ashes were flown to Israel for burial, and Moradi preserved his old passport as a keepsake.
Moradi and her family feared for their lives when the Taliban took over Afghanistan a second time, in August, just weeks before the United States ended its pull-out after 20 years of war.
After decades of conflict, the Taliban has sworn to restore peace and security to the country. But the extremist Islamic State group targets everyone who do not embrace its extreme ideology, including the Taliban, which will be a hinderance for the restoration of peace.
Moradi’s daughter, Khorshid, stated that a relative had met an Orthodox Jewish businessman named Joseph Friedberg in Toronto several years ago. After the fall of Kabul, she raced into Friedberg and asked for assistance. Friedberg stated that he contacted IsraAid, a non-governmental humanitarian group in Israel.
When IsraAid learned about Moradi and her family, CEO Yotam Polizer said that the organisation, which has provided relief after disasters such as the Japanese tsunami in 2011 and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, had already successfully extracted the Afghan women’s cycling team and dozens of other Afghan people from the country.
He said that the two-month-long effort to get them out was aided by Afghan diplomats abroad, the office of Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Jewish businessmen, including Israeli-Kazakh billionaire Alexander Mashkevich and Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, who used contacts in Israel, Albania, Canada and Tajikistan to help facilitate the family’s escape.
Mashkevich stated that he engaged all of his pals because it was extremely challenging.
The Israeli president’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Khorshid remarked that they were so thankful that they were safe. Khorshid remembered the nights when the family did not sleep for months since the Taliban captured Kabul.
Moradi and six of her relatives are already in Albania, while another 25 relatives arrived in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, earlier this week. They are hoping to obtain passage to Canada in order to reunite with her children who live there.
She expressed her hopes that she would be able to visit Israel, see her siblings and pray at her parents’ graves in Jerusalem. Her Israeli family could not be reached for comment.
Adams, an Israeli-Canadian businessman, claimed that he had approached Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office and Canada’s immigration minister on Moradi’s behalf to get permits for the family. However, preparations were impeded by the Canadian election held in September.
Adams added that they were in close communication and were attempting to describe their issue with the proper level of seriousness, to the Canadian government to procure permits to the family of the last Jew.
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