Death ends feud of Kabul's last Jews

Declan Walsh in Kabul
Sunday May 8, 2005
The Observer

For Years Afghanistan's last two Jews carried on a bitter feud. From the Taliban tyranny to the American occupation, Ishaq Levin and Zablon Simintov squabbled and plotted against one another in Kabul's Flower Street synagogue.

The only thing they could agree on was their mutual loathing. Now fate has decided the fight. On a chilly morning, Levin, in his 70s, was found dead in his ramshackle apartment. The Red Cross flew his remains to Israel, leaving just Simintov, a 45-year-old carpet seller, the last Jew in a Muslim country. And an unforgiving one. 'The old man was crazy,' said Simintov, screwing a finger against his temple.

The row is an inauspicious coda to the proud history of Afghanistan's 800-year-old Jewish community. The population swelled to 40,000 at the turn of the 19th century as Persian Jews fled from forced conversions in neighbouring Iran. The numbers plummeted after Israel was established in 1948, and again after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

By the time the Taliban seized power in the mid-1990s only Levin and Simintov, the quarrelsome, tragi-absurd 'Odd Couple', remained.

The pair lived at opposite ends of the synagogue, refusing to speak except to exchange curses. Both were jailed and tortured by the Taliban. Each accused the other of betrayal.

'They beat me with cables and a Kalashnikov,' said Simintov. 'Ishaq paid them to put me in there. He told them I was a spy.'

Levin, when alive, made almost identical accusations.

The acrimony first erupted in 1998 when, according to Simintov, Jewish elders told him to bring the elderly Levin to Israel. Levin refused to go, and each man accused the other of wanting to sell the synagogue. The rift deepened when the Taliban took their Torah Scrolls, a lambskin containing Jewish law. When Levin died, police suspected Simintov of murder until a post-mortem examination showed natural causes.

Now Simintov is alone in this two-storey complex of empty rooms. His carpet shop long gone, he lives in penury, asking visitors for whisky and phone cards. Down the hall, tattered religious texts are piled in a cupboard and thick dust coats the altar along with globs of excrement from birds which nest in the light fittings.

Levin's apartment is directly underneath. It has been sealed by police but through paint-splattered windows can be seen broken furniture, clothes spilling from a chest, and stacks of useless banknotes from the former regime piled on the carpet.

He would join his wife and daughters, who left for Israel six years ago, he said. But soon the issue of the synagogue ownership will be reopened, when Levin's son arrives from Israel to collect his father's belongings. In Kabul's soaring property market, the building is worth several million dollars.

Simintov has appealed to Israel to fund its rehabilitation, but as he is the last Jew standing in Afghanistan it is unclear for what purpose.

To me, this is extraordinary. Like a Kafka or Elias Canetti story: two ancient men, the last of a race, surrounded by mortal enemies, the last embers of a society in collapse, fight each other in the ruins of a dicrepit temple.

Wow. Just when you think humankind has done its best... it comes up with some crazy metaphorical meta-allegorical shit to follow. Reality? Fiction? Reality always wins hands down.

In a way, that's heartening.