Index of Jewish Surnames in Beirut

[This index is dedicated to the memory of Ambassador Isaac Levanon (1944-2023)]

As with other Jewish communities in the Levant, the the size of the Beirut Jewish commnity during the 20^th century can only be estimated. The Jewish population of the city is believed to have been ~3,000 at the turn of the 20th century.

Following World I, Lebanon achieved independence under the French and as a result the Jewish community of Beirut beame an island of stability. Beirut thereafter attracted Jewish migrants from other regions that remained in Syria, mainly Aleppo and Damascus, and by 1948, the Jewish community of Beirut had grown to an estimated 6,000 individuals.

In the aftermath of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, the Jews of Lebanon emigrated en masse to Israel and the western countries and for all intents and purposes the Jewish community of Beirut ceased to exist.

Although there has been until now no consolidated source containing all Jewish surnames from Beirut, I had the benefit of a number of useful sources in the preparation of this index:

1. The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) [1] contains a searchable index of Beirut’s Jewish cemetery containing 3,200 burial records (although burial in Beirut did not necessarily prove that one was a permanent resident);

2. A recently published book by the late Nagi Gergi Zeidan containing a meticulously composed list of Jewish residents of the city[2]. The list was composed mainly from electoral rolls and tombstones in the Jewish cemetery. The listings are not complete, and require further research. Some Jewish residents did not leave a trace in those documents and it is not clear how long one has to reside in a city to be considered a resident. There was also a small contingent of Ashkenazim in the city;

3. Les Fleurs de l‘Orient[3], curated by Alain Farhi, is an online index of Middle Eastern Jewish families containing genealogical data such as birth, residence and death;

4.   Jews of Lebanon (Juifs du Liban)[4], an English-language Facebook group with almost 800 members from families with most of the Jewish surnames in the city;

5. Lemoreshet Yehudei Suria Ulevanon (The Heritage of The Syrian and Lebanese Jews)[5], a Hebrew language Facebook group with more than 11,000 members whose surnames offer an interesting insight into the intertconnection of Jewish surnames from Syria and Lebanon. 

6. The Jewish Gen Family Finder[6] contains 122 members researching their Beiruti ancestors.

7. The Yad Vashem “Hall of Names”[7] lists several surnames of victims who hailed from Beirut.

8. Geneafrance, a French genealogy website [8] has lists of deceased French citizens according to city/country of birth, including Jews whom were born in Beirut.

As of January 2024, the index included below contains 779 surnames and it is certainly far from being complete. It is hoped that after its publication on social media outlets such as Facebook, additional surnames will surface and be added to future editions of the index.

[1] https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/

[2]  Zeïdan, Nagi Gergi, Juifs du Liban: d’Abraham à nos jours, histoire d’une communauté disparue (Versailles,2020)

[3] https://www.farhi.org/genealogy/index.html

[4]https://www.facebook.com/groups/1654862438093295/

[5] https://www.facebook.com/groups/misham/

[6] https://www.jewishgen.org/jgff/jgffform.php

[7]https://yvng.yadvashem.org/index.html?language=en&s_id=&s_lastName=&s_firstName=&s_place=beirut&s_dateOfBirth=&cluster=true

[8] https://geneafrance.com/?v=LIBAN&i=99205

Index of Jewish Surnames in Beirut