(JTA) — Even as tensions between Israel and Syria ramped up in recent days, a small group of Syrian Jews recently celebrated a milestone that once seemed unthinkable: a return visit to their home country.

Thousands of Jews left Syria in 1992, when they were allowed to emigrate. The visit by a small delegation of U.S.-based Syrian Jewish religious figures last week was their first time back since then.

Over the past decades, the number of Jews in Syria decreased from about five thousand to seven elderly individuals.

For the first time in three decades, Rabbi Joseph Hamra and his son Henry read from a Torah scroll in a synagogue in the heart of Syria's capital Damascus, carefully passing their thumbs over the handwritten text as if still in awe they were back home.

After decades of exile, a group of American Jews with deep roots in Damascus has returned to Syria to rediscover their long-lost heritage. Organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force, the four-day visit took participants on a moving tour of historic synagogues,