From 'Afghan Scam' to a Sacred Site Rescue: One Email Sparked a Jewish Heritage Comeback

"Hello, my dear—did you get my email?" is how a classic phishing email usually opens. If you reply, "I didn’t—what’s this about?", you’ll get a follow-up like: "I live in Nigeria/Cambodia. A relative of mine shares your last name. I want to give you a million/billion dollars/euros. Please send your details." Hard to believe people still try this. Most of us ignore the minor annoyance and move on.

And that’s exactly what Osnat Gad thought when, twelve years ago, she got an email: "I am Hamaduli from Afghanistan. I want to donate many Afghan lira to renovate holy places. Please get back to me." Jokes aside—holy places and all that... But then, on second thought, Osnat asked herself: This man is writing in the Afghan language; how would he know I can read it? I’m American!

Could there be real information here? In 1959, Osnat left the city of Herat in Afghanistan, together with most of the country’s Jews. Some immigrated to Israel and some to the United States. Osnat’s partner was Shlomo Yakutiel, also of Afghan origin. Since meeting him, she learned more deeply about her heritage. She often heard, with pain, about the deterioration of the holy places of the Jewish community in Herat. When the Jews of Herat left the city, they sadly left behind four large and beautiful synagogues. Two were converted into mosques by the authorities, the third became a school, and the fourth—the Mulla Yoav synagogue—became an Islamic cultural center. On the walls of the Mulla Yoav synagogue, Hebrew verses remain engraved, which sting the eye when you look at photos of it today, surrounded by Muslim visitors, with an Afghan flag flying at its entrance. While the synagogues are in use, the centuries-old Jewish cemetery—with two thousand headstones, and many more unknown graves—is steadily deteriorating. Vegetation splits the stones, the fence has long since disappeared, herders stable their animals on former burial plots, animals gnaw, overturn, dig—and it’s better not to think about it too much...

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have ruled for years—a zealous, extreme regime that allows no activity that isn’t Islamic, certainly nothing "Jewish" or "Zionist." Even if Hamaduli is a real person and not just a scammer, what could he possibly do? If he were wealthy, he wouldn’t be sending emails like this. On the other hand, that message didn’t reach me by accident. In New York’s Afghan community it’s known that I care about the fate of Jewish heritage in Afghanistan, Osnat thought.

Osnat Gad is a well-known and widely respected jewelry designer in the New York community, and it’s possible her name traveled far.

At the end of that second thought, Osnat sent a brief reply to the sender, saying she’d be happy to collaborate. To her surprise, she discovered that yes—there are Muslim residents in Afghanistan who respect Jewish tradition and are interested in restoring and preserving its holy places. Not just Hamaduli, but others as well. The Abdalaz family are the guardians of the Jewish cemetery. The Jewish community used to pay a fixed salary to the family’s grandfather—somewhere close to two hundred years ago. Today, the great-grandson of that grandson wants to guard the graves and restore them. His name is Jalilhamd Abd al-Aziz. He still remembers Jews anxious for the fate of the place, maintaining and tending it. He remembers the last funerals conducted by Jews, and he wants to help with preservation.

As Osnat had suspected, Hamaduli’s "big money" wouldn’t even be enough to buy a rug for the cemetery entrance, but his goodwill was worth far more. Osnat launched a crowdfunding campaign among affluent Jews of Afghan origin. Back then, campaigns like that were innovative, and she was skeptical about the results—but the outcome amazed everyone. They discovered just how much Afghan expats want, and are determined, to preserve their tradition. Funding arrived from different countries and continents. A group of Afghan expats in London also joined the project. But money is only a small part of the story: you need approvals from the Taliban government, and—most critically—none of the Afghan Jewish communities has access to the country; Jews are forbidden to enter. We are considered their enemy; the entire project had to be carried out remotely. U.S. State Department approval was also needed, to operate in an enemy country. A sea of bureaucracy turned into an ocean.

At the time, Osnat was also rebuilding her home, which had been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, and she found herself drafting financing and construction plans—for the house in the United States, and for the home she had left in childhood in Afghanistan. She ran the plans in parallel, and succeeded in a big way. Hamaduli was her man on the ground in Afghanistan and did everything he could to advance the project. The construction work took a full five years, during which a fence was built around the cemetery, forty headstones were restored, and the grounds were cleaned and organized.

As the work progressed, it became clear that the synagogue that had been turned into a school had been deemed at risk of collapse and had long since been vacated. Now its walls lean at an angle. Members of the diaspora community secured funding from a famous Swiss foundation that took upon itself the synagogue’s restoration. It turned out that part of the problem threatening its walls was actually the ancient mikveh, known among the community as "Hammam-e Mousavi." When the mikveh was connected to the water source, it posed no threat, but over the years the source dried up or was pumped out, and sinkholes formed where the old spring once flowed. The Swiss foundation is now renovating both the synagogue and the mikveh. With Hashem’s help, when the Taliban’s evil rule disappears from the world and Jews can visit Afghanistan, they will already see a complete, sound synagogue—and beside it an ancient mikveh—functioning at last.