Some good news from Lebanon

Restoration of Beirut’s only synagogue will be completed in October and religious services will be held there in 2011 for the first time in more than three decades, the leader of the country’s Jewish community said.
...
The Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Wadi Abou Jmil, the city’s historic Jewish quarter, opened in 1926 and once hosted a thriving community that has been eroded by decades of civil war. Prospects for stability have improved since elections a year ago were won by the pro-Western coalition of Saad Hariri, which formed a national unity government with rival Hezbollah and the Muslim group’s Christian allies.
...
About 100 Jews now live permanently in Lebanon, while there are some 1,900 living abroad who still own property in the country and visit regularly, according to Arazi, who owns a food-machinery business. In the mid-1960s, there were as many as 22,000 Lebanese Jews, he said.

Read the whole article