DAMASCUS, Syria – At this hour, even the garbage pickers have abandoned the street. Their donkeys have carried off the spoils of the night to the shantytowns that climb that dusty hillsides.

An hour before dawn, on The Street Called Straight, nothing stirs but four homeless dogs, like wraiths in the wan glow of the house lamps, and four sweating men in a bakery lit orange by the oven fires.

In the darkness, without the shouts and the blat of the horns from the trucks that scrape the walls as they bull through the crush by day, the centuries crowd together here in an unaffected jumble.

The main street of Old Damascus, bisecting the walled city from the markets to the eastern gate, has suffered many conquerors and borne a dozen names. These days, Madhat Pasha, the name the Turks imposed, is still officially used.

But The Street Called Straight is the name that stuck through most of its 4,000 years. So it was when the Romans came. They called the street Via Recta and built at its midpoint their marble arch of triumph.

At that arch is a side street leading into a maze of alleys and pathways overhung with sagging second-story rooms that blot out the moonlight and bounce back the sound of heels on the worn stone pavements.

Around a plate-glass corner, and under a Moorish arch, and through a Turkish portal so narrow that only one person can pass, suddenly there is a stream of light shining onto the tiles from under a carved wooden door. From within comes the sound of a chant from 15 men, a chant as old as The Street Called Straight:

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one."

Inside, in the synagogue of marble and gilt, the old men stroll the mosaic floor, their prayerbooks held open as a matter of form while they rapidly chant the Hebrew prayers. But their eyes are not on the printed words; they have seen them so many times before.

They are scanning the new arrivals, greeting each man with a smile and a nod. As a page is turned or a prayer completed, they shake hands or kiss and say in the Arabic they use every day: "A jasmine morning to you."

These are the Jews of Damascus, and it is a special morning for them. It is the morning of Pesach, the holiday of deliverance from bondage.

As the men murmur their prayers in the ancient way, rocking and bowing toward the Torah scrolls, the ages crowd into a jumble again.

For they celebrate the dawn 3,000 years ago – when Damascus was still fairly young – when, on this day, at this hour, Moses led the Jews into the Sinai and toward the land of Israel.

As the first light streaks the high windows and the birds let out a raucous song, the Jews of Damascus join in a prayer written when the Roman arch of triumph was new. Yet for them, it is today's prayer, perhaps more than any other:

"Le shanah habbah b'Yerushalayim."  Next year in Jerusalem.

There are about 4,500 Jews left in Syria, the remnant of a society 10 times that size.

The majority live in the "Quarter" in Damascus. Less than 1,000 live in the coastal city of Aleppo in the north, and a few hundred in Kamishli, a small town near the Turkish border.

The Jews lived here for 2,000 years as one of several religious minorities. But in 1948, with the creation of Israel, everything changed.

As Syria became the most militant of the Arab states bordering Israel, the Jews here altered in the eyes of the government and the overwhelming Muslim majority from a religious minority to the enemy within.

In years past, there were arrests and restrictive laws and allegations of torture. Several Jews were killed. The exodus has continued intermittently for the last 30 years.