— Zvika Klein (@ZvikaKlein) August 17, 2021
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However, he has recently stated in a report to WION, “I will not leave my home. If I had left, there would have been no one to maintain the synagogue.”
His wife and their two daughters have lived in Israel since 1998, but Simantov has stayed in Afghanistan to tend to the long synagogue, located in Kabul.
In a 2007 interview, Simantov stated that he doesn’t speak Hebrew, and didn’t have plans to move to Israel.
“Go to Israel? What business do I have there?”
Simantov prays daily and keeps kosher, slaughtering the animals himself. He was given permission by the closet rabbi, of Tashkent, Uzbekistan to do so.
Yitzhak Levi, the penultimate Jew in Afghanistan, died in 2005. The two famously did not get along.
“I don’t talk to him, he’s the devil,” Simantov told The New York Times in 2002. “A dog is better than him.”
Simantov believes the Torah will resurface.