MIDDLE EAST : New Exodus: Damascus to Brooklyn : Syria’s small Jewish community is heading for America as restrictions on emigration are lifted.

Salim Kada was stowing the last of the children’s clothing he hadn’t managed to sell, tidying up his accounts and preparing to shut his tiny Oriental Shop for good when a visitor asked him how long his family has lived in Damascus.

Kada shrugged. “Well, my father was born here,” the 60-year-old replied. “My grandfather was born here. His grandfather was born here. And yes, I believe even his grandfather was born here. This is all I know. Thousands of years, I’m told.”

Some would say that since the time of King David, the Kadas and several thousand Jewish families like them have lived in the heart of the nation that for four decades has headed the list of Israel’s worst enemies.

But not any longer.

Last Sunday, a few days after the conversation in the shop, Kada and his wife left for America, where they planned to join their 10 children in Brooklyn. Their move completes the transplant of the Kada family’s roots and lays the foundation for an uncertain future.

When Kada left Syria for good, he was part of what is becoming a modern-day exodus of one of the last Jewish communities in the Arab world.

In the seven months since Syria’s authoritarian president, Hafez Assad, agreed to permit free travel--even emigration--for Syria’s small, centuries-old Jewish community after decades of restrictions and intermittent persecution, their departures have exceeded even the wildest estimates of their chief rabbi.

“Yes, it is already more than half now,” said Rabbi Avraham Hamra, who negotiated the lifting of restrictions during an April meeting with Assad.

Of the 4,000 Jews who were living in Syria at that time--most of them in the ancient Jewish Quarter of this capital--more than 2,400 already have left. More than 250 plan to leave this month, and most of the rest have applications pending for exit visas, the rabbi said.

In the months since the April 13 session that he calls “our historic meeting,” Hamra said, the enrollment at his religious school has decreased to 225 pupils from 750 last spring. Several of the city’s synagogues have closed after their congregations dropped beneath the biblically mandated minimum of 10. And Hamra is beginning to contemplate seriously the day the number of Jewish faithful in Syria will drop to zero and he, too, will leave to join his children in America.

The rabbi--long considered a member of Syria’s political Establishment--insisted that the Syrian Jews are not fleeing the harsh regime of Assad, a staunch Arab nationalist and avowed enemy of Israel and Zionism. Rather, he said, his congregation merely is seeking new opportunities abroad. The destination of most of them is a section of Brooklyn where, according to Hamra, Syrian Jews put down roots when they fled Turkish persecution at the start of the 20th Century and where they now number more than 30,000.

Asked about government assertions that many members of his congregation have returned to Syria after finding few job prospects in America, Hamra said only about 110 have returned.

Brooklyn’s prospects are a major concern of men like Salim Kada, whose clothing factory and shop all but ceased to function after his children left.

“I will see the life there, how it goes. If I’m happy, I will return only to sell my shop and go there for good. But I feel very good about leaving here now. After all, my children have left. I would like to live what is left of my life with them.”

Fineman, Nicosia bureau chief, was recently in Damascus.