The man who claims to have been the last Jew in Afghanistan finally arrived in Israel last week under the auspices of the Jewish Agency, after spending three years in Istanbul. He is understood to have gone first to Holon, outside Tel Aviv, and is now settling in Ashdod.
Zebulon Simantov, 72, was rescued from Kabul in September 2021 by the American-Israeli businessman and philanthropist, Moti Kahana, along with 30 Afghan neighbours.
The group first went to a safe house in Islamabad, Pakistan, before Simantov decided to go to Turkey rather than Israel.
The Afghan-born Simantov was the self-appointed curator of the dilapidated synagogue in Kabul’s Flower Street, where he lived in a certain amount of grandiose squalor, charging foreign journalists for interviews and glorying in his “victory” over his former rival for the title of last Jew, Isaak Levi.
Outside of Kabul synagogue where Zebulun Simantov lived Pic Emran Feroz for Foreign Policy
Famously, the pair squabbled so much over ownership of the land on which the synagogue stood that they were first imprisoned by the Taliban, and then ejected from prison because of the constant verbal battles.
But Levi died in 2005, leaving Simantov king of the castle. His wife and daughters had emigrated to Israel — where his five siblings also lived — years before, but for a long time Simantov refused to grant his wife a get, or Jewish divorce.
When the Taliban, which had ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, took over the country for a second time in August 2021, Simantov insisted that he had “protected” status as the last Jew and kept telling anyone who asked that he would not move.
But Moti Kahana told him that he faced a gruesome end, not from the Taliban, but from Al-Qaeda and Isis. With reluctance, Simantov agreed to leave.
Once in Islamabad, Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Turkey and director of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, facilitated a Zoom get in order for Simantov to give his wife a kosher divorce. Kahana said he had spent “two weeks of being a shrink, a psychiatrist, talking to him like 10 times a day, and his neighbour at the same time to translate,” in order to persuade the recalcitrant Simantov to go through with the get.
Originally the plan was for the Afghani to stay only temporarily in Turkey, but he decided he liked living in Istanbul and rejected attempts to persuade him to move to Israel.
Finally, however, it seems to have been ill-health which triggered his move. Moti Kahana told Jewish News that Simantov was now in a wheelchair and was finding it increasingly difficult to live in Turkey.
Israel’s Walla News reported that Simantov’s brother Benjamin had received a call from another sibling. He said: “My younger brother called me on Thursday around 9-10 pm and said, ‘Mazaltov, your brother is in Israel’. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. By Saturday night, we were already on our way to see him at the place where he’s staying in southern Israel.”
Now Kahana says he hopes to fulfil his promise to Simantov to take him to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
