The community is cited in Responsa literature from the same period, indicating it had communal institutions such as a beth din and synagogue.

Rabbi Joseph Schwartz provides additional context, estimating the community at 80 householders mostly engaged in trade, also leasing lands for iron production and owning vineyards and olive plantations.

The community's demise came during the 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon, leading to their displacement and the eventual sale of their synagogue in 1893.

[17] In 1911, Jews from Italy, Greece, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and Iran moved to Beirut, expanding the community there with more than 5,000 additional members.

[19] Until 1908, the Jewish population in Beirut grew by migration from the Syrian interior and from other Ottoman cities like İzmir, Salonica, Istanbul, and Baghdad.

Commercial growth in the thriving port-city, consular protection, and relative safety and stability in Beirut all accounted for the Jewish migration.

During this period, the community lacked some of the fundamental institutions such as communal statutes, elected council, welfare and taxation mechanisms.

Its founder, influenced by the Ottoman reforms and by local cultural trends, aspired to create a modern yet Jewish school.

The French mandate rulers adopted local political traditions of power-sharing and recognized the autonomy of the various religious communities.

French authorities at the time discouraged expressions of Zionism (which they saw as a tool of their British rival), and the community was mostly apathetic to it.

He said that after 1929, the Jews "started to fear from (sic) anything having any connection with Zionism and ceased to hold meetings and collect money."

[citation needed] The Maccabi organization was recognized officially by Lebanese authorities and was an active center for Jewish cultural affairs in Beirut and Saida.

The Maccabi taught Hebrew language and Jewish history, and was the focus point of the small Zionist movement in the country.

During the riots, some Muslim nationalists and editors of a major Greek-Orthodox newspaper (both of whom saw the fate of the emerging Lebanese state as one within a broader Arab context) sought to incite the disturbances in Lebanon, where until that point most ethno-religious groups were aloof to the forecoming conflict in Palestine.

It also seemed to have an effect on the cryptic response given by Interior Minister Habib Abou Chahla to Joseph Farhi when, on behalf of the Jewish community, he requested that they receive a seat in the newly expanded Lebanese Parliament.

[21] Lebanon was the only Arab country whose Jewish population increased after the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, reaching around 10,000 people.

[22] However, after the Lebanon Crisis of 1958, many Lebanese Jews left the country, especially for Israel, France, United States, Canada and Latin America (mostly to Brazil).

Most of the 1,800 remaining Lebanese Jews migrated in 1976, fearing that the growing Syrian presence in Lebanon would restrict their freedom to emigrate.

[24] Beginning in 1975 and 1976, Jews began to leave their original neighborhood of Wadi Abu Jamil for Christian areas.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Jews largely lived in relative harmony in their environment, though the last rabbi remaining in Lebanon left the country in 1977.

During the Israeli Army's advance toward Beirut, Yasser Arafat assigned Palestinian gunmen to stand guard at the Maghen Abraham Synagogue, an important symbol of the community, located near Parliament.

Isaac Sasson, a leader of the Lebanese Jewish community, was kidnapped at gunpoint March 31, 1985, on his way from the Beirut International Airport, after a trip to Abu Dhabi.

Cohen, Tarrab, and Srour were killed by their captors, a Shiite Muslim group called The Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, which is believed to have been part of or had links to Hezbollah.

[30] Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO, order the militants to protect the Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Beirut.

[33] Solidere agreed to provide funds for the renovation because political officials believed it would portray Lebanon as an open society tolerant of Judaism.

[35] The self-declared head of the Jewish Community Council, Isaac Arazi, who left Lebanon in 1983,[36][37] eventually came forward but refused to show his face on camera in a television interview, fearing that his business would suffer if clients knew they had been dealing with a Jew.