The last Jew in Afghanistan ALONE ON FLOWER STREET: He survived Soviets, Taliban - and outlasted even his despised peer

Zebulon Simentov in his living room on the second floor of Kabul's Flower St. synagogue. Jason Motlagh / Special to The Chronicle Zebulon Simentov in his living room on the second floor of Kabul's Flower St. synagogue. Jason Motlagh / Special to The Chronicle Photo: Jason Motlagh Photo: Jason Motlagh Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close The last Jew in Afghanistan 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

The first question Zebulon Simentov asked his uninvited guest, eyes wide open: "Are you Jewish?" There was a tinge of disappointment when the reply came back negative, but the last Jew in Afghanistan didn't miss a beat.

"Humanity is one, religion doesn't matter," he said.

Moments later, a Muslim friend entered the room, unfurled a prayer rug and bowed toward Mecca. On a nearby table, an open box of Manischewitz matzo sat next to an empty whiskey bottle.

Locals refer to Simentov, 47, simply as "the Jew."

Born in the western city of Herat, he dons a yarmulke with the traditional loose pajama-like shalwar kameez and swears "half of Kabul" knows him - though probably not for the reasons he believes.

The only other Jew in Afghanistan, Yitzhak Levin, died in 2005. The pair had lived together in a shabby synagogue on Flower Street throughout the Soviet invasion, a civil war and the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban government, but grew to hate each other. They held separate services, had vicious shouting matches neighbors could hear a block away, and when valuable Torah scrolls went missing, each blamed the other.

They also denounced each other to the Taliban as spies for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, prompting Taliban police to beat them with rifle butts and jail them on occasion.

Simentov says the fight broke out nearly a decade ago when Jewish elders told him to take Levin - more than 20 years his senior - to Israel. Levin would not budge, and each man accused the other of wanting to sell the synagogue for profit. Simentov is the legal owner and plans to refurbish the 42-year-old building.

The feud was so intense that Afghan police suspected Simentov of murdering Levin when he died, until a post-mortem examination proved that he had died from diabetes.

Simentov now lives alone in the crumbling two-story building, where wrought-iron railings emblazoned with the Star of David need a fresh coat of blue paint and the courtyard garden is overgrown with vegetation.

Even though no one comes to worship these days, Simentov says he prays daily and keeps kosher. Since there are no trained individuals in slaughtering animals by kosher rules, the rabbi of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, has given Simentov the authority to do so.

This was not always the case, Simentov said, giving a visitor a history lesson about the Jewish community in Afghanistan, which traces its beginnings to exiles from Assyria in 720 B.C. and Babylonia in 560 B.C.

In the 10th century, the Karaite historian Yaphet ben Heli de Basra, cited that the "Land of the East" (Afghanistan, Iran and southern Central Asia) had Jewish inhabitants. El-Idrisi, the Muslim geographer (1099-1166), mentioned Kabul's thriving Jewish community in one of his many tomes. The city was a major hub on the trade routes between Central Asia and India, and Jewish merchants were considered to be among the business elite. They lived in a separate quarter, known as the Mahall-i-Jehudiyeh, that is long gone.

By the late 19th century, the Jewish community across Afghanistan reached 40,000 after thousands of Persian Jews arrived to avoid forced conversions in neighboring Iran. While Hebrew was spoken in synagogue and religious studies, most spoke the nation's major language of Dari.

By the mid-20th century, about 5,000 Jews remained, but most emigrated to Israel after its creation in 1948. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan drove out nearly all the rest. By the end of the Soviet war in 1989, some 20 Jewish families remained in Kabul, each of which soon moved away, mostly to Israel, where some 10,000 are said to be still living.

Oddly, Simentov said he preferred the communist period and even the Taliban to the current government of President Hamid Karzai, which he calls a "mafia regime." He says he had been a successful carpet and antiques dealer until a state customs official confiscated $40,000 worth of his goods on what he calls bogus grounds, leaving him with nothing but the synagogue. He gets by, he says, with donations from Jewish groups abroad and sympathetic Muslim families.

Although Simentov's wife and two daughters left for Israel years ago, he has no plans to join them any time soon. He is concerned there may be a property dispute with Levin's son, who lives in Israel. He believes the synagogue is worth a hefty sum for its central location in one of the capital's main commercial districts.

"Go to Israel? What business do I have there?" he said, noting that he doesn't speak Hebrew. "Why should I leave?"

In the courtyard below, Shirgul Amiri, 20, watered a bed of roses. He said he comes to the synagogue a couple days a week at his parents' request to keep Simentov company, acknowledging that the older man is in a grumpy mood more often than not.

"He drinks a lot and is very impatient," the young man laughed. "But if you had brought a bottle of whiskey, he would have been in heaven."