The Old Jewish Cemetery of Saida

By Nagi George Zeidan

On Wednesday 16th May 2018, I visited the old Jewish cemetery of Saida after first having received permission from the authority in charge of the ruins in the town. In fact, the cemetery in question is at present under the care of the Lebanese Ministry of Culture. A demand has been presented by the legal representative of the Jewish community in Lebanon, Attorney Bassem Hout, for the cemetery to be restored to its original owners.

This former burial ground lies just in front of the present-day Jewish cemetery of Saida, from which it is separated by a high road leading to the south of the country. When the Israeli army left Saida in February of 1985, the Lebanese Government laid its hands on several square yards of land belonging to the two cemeteries in order to widen the road, which afterward became a highway. On a map of 1835, one can clearly see that this route was then a track of sand two yards wide at the most, which was used by the local inhabitants with their animals. From a 1960 postcard, one can see that this pathway was still no larger. The new plot of land for the cemetery was bought in 1868, from which time it was used by the Jews of Saida to bury their dead. There is no known source for the exact date of the purchase of the old cemetery by the Jewish community of Saida, but it was certainly before 1772.

One thing is beyond dispute, namely that in this old Jewish cemetery of Saida there are hundreds of Jewish tombs from before 1868, date of the purchase of the plot for the new cemetery. They lie under sand nearly a foot thick covering the monuments.

The old Jewish cemetery is still under the authority of the Lebanese Ministry of Culture. It has now become a depository for the rubble remaining from the Roman tombs which have been moved to another site, one in South Lebanon.

I personally possess a number of names of Jews of Saida, even those of rabbis buried between 1772 and 1868. In February 2016 when I cleaned up the present Jewish cemetery of Saida, I discover similar tombs with inscriptions dating from 1869. This leads one to think that the tombs of the old Jewish piece of land are in a similar condition.