Afghanistan’s last Jew leaves after Taliban takeover

By MUHAMMAD FAROOQ and JOSEPH KRAUSS
Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The last member of Afghanistan’s Jewish community has left the country. Zebulon Simentov, who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher and prayed in Hebrew, endured decades of war as the country’s centuries-old Jewish community rapidly dwindled. But the Taliban takeover last month seems to have been the last straw. An Israeli-American businessman who runs a security group that organized the evacuation told The Associated Press that Simentov and 29 of his neighbors, nearly all of them women and children, have been taken to a “neighboring country.” The group was reaching out to U.S. and Israeli authorities to find a permanent home for Simentov, whose estranged wife and children live in Israel.