News has been popping up on social media that after Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was pushed out of power and forced to flee his country on Sunday, Syrians who poured into his private mansions, looting luxury cars and all manner of fixtures and objects, found a 500-year old Torah scroll in the cellar of one residence. A video attached to the posts appearing on X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and reddit, shows a man in a military uniform unfurling a scroll down the length of a very long conference table. Other military figures look on smiling as photographers get in as close as possible to capture images of the scroll.
Screenshot of video from 2017 Attessia TV Channel Nine in Tunisia
While it’s true that Syria long ago had a thriving Jewish community, and the scroll in the video is indeed an ancient Torah, it wasn’t found at one of Assad’s mansions. In fact, it wasn’t found in Syria at all but down southern coast of the Mediterranean in Tunisia.
Fact-checkers at India Today investigated and identified the video as one taken in 2017 at a press conference put on by Tunisian authorities after they foiled an attempt to smuggle the Torah out of that country. The video was produced by Attessia TV Channel Nine in Tunisia and aired on March 14, 2017.
So while it remains to be seen what kind of artifacts may turn up (or be smuggled out) as Syria regroups from a long civil war and brutal leadership into an unknown future, this 500-year-old Torah isn’t one of them.
Opening image: Stock photo of person opening a scroll. Courtesy of cottonbro studio, Pexels.