Kosher Meals Reappear in Damascus Hotel Kitchen

In a white-tiled hotel kitchen in the heart of Damascus, a chef at the Royal Semiramis rolled roasted red pepper dip into neat balls and spooned hummus into elegant swirls. It was a classic Syrian dinner, but kosher. Plates and serving dishes were stacked behind layers of plastic wrap beneath two signs: “Only for kosher food.

Don’t touch.” The chef, Abd Alrahman Qahwahji, said he fled Syria during the long civil war and had worked in restaurants abroad. The emergence of kosher food in the capital comes amid broader changes since the ouster in late 2024 of Bashar al-Assad. Syria once had a small but vibrant Jewish community, estimated at about 30,000 spread across three large cities, including the old city of Damascus; many left after the state of Israel was established and most of those who remained departed in the early 1990s.

Today, only about half a dozen Syrian Jews remain in Damascus, and visiting Syrian and non-Syrian Jews are creating demand for a kosher restaurant, a kosher butcher and a functioning synagogue.

Syria, Damascus

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