By Ari Z. Zivotofsky and Ari Greenspan PhotoEssay

Jewish Lifein

Egypt

The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, Alexandria, Egypt,1994. The synagogue on Nabi Daniel Street once served

as the central synagogue of Alexandria.

Dr. Greenspan (right) and Rabbi Dr. Zivotofskywith two of the four Egyptian policemen who ac-companied them during their visit to Alexandria.Courtesy of Ari Z. Zivotofsky

ONCE PROUD AND FLOURISHING,

THE JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF EGYPT ARE TODAY

ON THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION. WITH A GENEROUS RESEARCH GRANT FROM THE ORTHODOX UNION,

DR. ARI GREENSPAN AND RABBI DR. ARI Z. ZIVOTOFSKY RECENTLY VISITED THE DWINDLING EGYPTIAN

JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF ALEXANDRIA AND

CAIRO TO OFFER HOPE AND ENCOURAGEMENT

TO THE FEW REMAINING JEWS AND TO

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RICH JEWISH

LIFE THAT ONCE WAS.

54 I JEWISH ACTION Summer 5770/2010

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Summer 5770/2010 JEWISH ACTION I 55

ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT

Jews have lived in Alexandria since 332BCE, shortly after the city was firstfounded. Alexander the Great encour-aged Jews to move there, and they didin great numbers. Indeed, the Talmuddiscusses the massive synagogue ofAlexandria in which those sitting in theback could not hear the cantor, so largewas the synagogue. Centuries later, inMaimonides’ day, Cairo’s Jewish com-munity was a center of Jewish com-merce and scholarship.

Even in modern times, Jewish lifeflourished in Alexandria. Up until the1940s, as many as 80,000 Jews lived inEgypt, significantly contributing to thecountry culturally and economically.But after the birth of Israel in 1948, andin the aftermath of the Arab-Israeliwars, thousands of Jews fled Egypt.The shuls were sold, torn down andbuilt over or locked up. Today, there arefewer than fifty Jews—most of whomare intermarried, elderly and poor—leftin all of Egypt. Insecure and afraid, thefew Jews left are careful not to draw at-tention to themselves.

While making travel arrangementswe discovered that Israel does not existon the Egyptian airline web site. De-spite Egypt’s peace treaty with the Jew-ish State, relations between the twocountries remain tense. The demoniz-ing of Israel and of Jews is common inthe Egyptian press.

A policeman approached us whenwe arrived at the Alexandria airport,and we soon realized that a police es-cort had been arranged for us for the

duration of our stay. With the rise of Is-lamic fundamentalism in the country,we were not ungrateful for the protec-tion. (In fact, the security situation inEgypt is such that all shuls are heavilyguarded at all times.) Interestingly, thelocals we met were consistentlyfriendly and gracious. Throughout ourday-and-a-half stay in Alexandria, fourpolicemen did not leave our side, noteven at 2:00 AM when we went for astroll in the still-bustling souk (market).

Yosef Gaon, the head of the tinyJewish community in Alexandria, gaveus a fascinating tour of what JewishAlexandria was like decades ago.

Today, the sole intact shul inAlexandria is the 150-year-old EliyahuHanavi Sephardic synagogue. One ofthe largest synagogues in the MiddleEast, the magnificent building sitswithin a courtyard that once containedthe Jewish school, the mikvah and thevarious communal offices.

A viable Jewish community needs avariety of institutions, and Alexandriahas at least one very useful one: a well-

The former Bet Din of the Jewish community in Alexandria.Photos, except where noted otherwise, were taken by Shlomo

Taitz, Israel (Beit Hatfutsot Photo Archive).

Dr. Ari Greenspan, a US-trained dentistwith a practice in Jerusalem, is a co-founder of the Ptil Tekhelet Association.He is also a mohel, shochet and sofer, andhas spent more than twenty years collect-ing Jewish traditions from far-flung Jew-ish communities.

Rabbi Dr. Ari Z. Zivotofsky, a Jewish Ac-tion columnist, is on the faculty of the BrainScience Program at Bar-Ilan University. Heis also a shochet, has a master’s in Jewishhistory, and writes widely on topics of Jew-ish interest.

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stocked and organized Jewish library.It is unfortunately not used much (al-though we greatly enjoyed leafingthrough the tomes), and the Egyptiangovernment prefers that it remainlocked. But there are over a dozenbookcases full of Jewish books includ-ing Gemarot, the Shulchan Aruch andhundreds of books of responsa. How-ever, you will not find books published

within the past fifty years. Everythingin the library is older than that; manyare 150 years old and older. The exis-tence of such an impressive library in-dicates that the kehillah in Alexandriawas once vibrant and learned.

We noticed roll-on stampers usedto designate kosher meat among the ar-tifacts our guide showed us. Not toolong ago, Alexandria had its own

kosher slaughtering house under localrabbinic supervision, but sadly, today,there is no one left in Alexandria tosupport such an enterprise.

We had another capable, if un-usual, guide, in addition to Gaon: AbedAl Nabi, a Muslim from southernEgypt, who has worked for the Jewishcommunity for decades and speaks flu-ent Hebrew. Nabi took us to see themikvah in the community compound,which still exists but is no longer inuse. He also showed us the matzah-making machinery, which is rusty andold, but still in the community’s pos-session. The communal offices includea “court room” where the beit din usedto convene and a large communalschool building, which is today used asa Muslim school. The guided tourthrough the once Jewish buildings ledby a Hebrew-speaking Egyptian wassomewhat surreal.

Sixty sifrei Torah from all the shulsin Alexandria have been collected bythe government and are now housed inthe Eliyahu Hanavi Sephardic syna-gogue. The only other remaining shul

56 I JEWISH ACTION Summer 5770/2010

Entrance to Sha’ar Hashamayim synagogue, Cairo. The site is protected by Egyptian security guards.

Alexandria’s Jewish cemeteries are in vari-ous states of disrepair. Courtesy of Ari Z. Zivotofsky

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Summer 5770/2010 JEWISH ACTION I 57

in town is run down and, although stillguarded by police, appears slated fordestruction. The city has three Jewishcemeteries in various states of disre-pair. Many tombstones are cracked, butthe cemeteries are not entirely neg-lected. Non-Jewish caretakers tend tothe cemeteries and live on the ceme-tery grounds. The vastness of thecemeteries and the magnificence ofmany of the tombstones attest to theimpressive size and affluence of thecommunity that once existed.

During our visit, we heard a fasci-nating story about a Jewish Anussah, orMarrano, who was taken by a Muslimman as a young girl and wed to himagainst her will. Although she had toconvert to Islam, she stubbornly kepther Jewish soul alive for all sixty yearsof her married life. During that time,she could not live a Jewish life andeven her three daughters do not knowthat they are Jewish. However, eversince her husband died, she began at-tending shul. Unfortunately, as shelives among Muslims, she was tooafraid to meet with us.

CAIROWe left Alexandria via train andheaded to Cairo, a filthy, noisy metrop-olis of close to seven million people.Cairo is home to one of the world’soldest Jewish communities. It is notknown exactly when the Jewish com-munity of Cairo was first established,but it was certainly many centuriesago. Currently, no more than a score ofelderly women comprise the CairoJewish community. The majority ofthe city’s Jews were driven outdecades ago by mob violence andstate-sponsored persecution related tothe Israeli-Arab conflict. Many Jewswere evicted or arrested; their bankaccounts were frozen and propertieswere seized. Reverberations fromsome of these seizures are still beingfelt. (An example is the ongoing litiga-tion being handled by Nathan Lewinon behalf of Refael Bigio, an EgyptianJew who is accusing Coca-Cola of ille-gally benefiting from his factory thatwas nationalized in 1962 by Nasser’sregime.) Many other Egyptian Jews

left of their own accord, hoping for abrighter future elsewhere.

Within this crowded city, one canstill find a number of synagogues. Wevisited the oldest and most famoussynagogue in Cairo: the Ben EzraSynagogue, thought to date back to882, located in the Fustat area of Cop-tic Cairo, the old Jewish neighbor-hood. Today no services are heldthere. The Rambam used to pray andhold court in this shul, andin 1896 the famous “CairoGenizah,” one of the mostvaluable troves of historicaldocuments ever discovered,was found in its women’sgallery.

For the better part of thetwentieth century, the build-ing was left to deteriorate.However, in 1983, followingthe Camp David Accords, theEgyptian government real-ized the historical value ofthe shul and began to restoreit, down to its marble pillarsand ceiling painted in mutedgreens and reds—a projectthat took more than ten years

to complete. The mikvah in the base-ment is still in a terrible state of disre-pair. The restoration of the women’sgallery is in progress, and visitors arenot allowed in. However, the presidentof the Cairo Jewish community, Car-men Weinstein, graciously arrangedfor us to visit the women’s gallery andsee the entrance to the “attic” wherethe genizah was found.

While we were there, many groups

The Teva (detail), Sha’ar HashamayimSynagogue, Cairo.

The Egyptian Jewish Heritage Library. Cairo.The portrait of president Hosni Mubarak, is displayed

in the library, which is located in the Sha’arHashamayim synagogue.

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58 I JEWISH ACTION Summer 5770/2010

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of tourists—mostly Asian and Euro-pean—flowed in and out. Interestingly,we did not see any Jewish, Americanor Israeli tourist groups.

In recent years, the Egyptian gov-ernment has come to accept that pre-serving the country’s rich Jewishheritage and religious sites is its re-sponsibility since the tiny Jewish com-munity there lacks the funds to do so.A yeshivah and shul known as “RavMoshe,” one of Cairo’s most historicsynagogues, and the grand-lookingKaraite synagogue of Cairo were re-cently restored by the Egyptian gov-ernment and rededicated. Thegovernment pledged to restore sixmore synagogues in the next twoyears. There are several other shuls inCairo, but most are dilapidated andclosed to the public. The one excep-tion is the Sha’ar Hashamayim syna-gogue, also known as the Adli StreetSynagogue, founded more than onehundred years ago. A structure of graystone, the synagogue has carpetedfloors and gold-painted walls. In the

1940s, upper-class Jews would fill itspews on Shabbat. On a recent Shabbat,it was empty. On rare occasions, suchas when the Israeli embassy makes arequest, minyanim are held there. Thegovernment uses it for all Jewish“functions” and thus it was there thatIsraeli POWs were paraded in the af-termath of the Yom Kippur War. Thispast February, a makeshift bomb wasthrown at the historic shul, but fortu-nately it failed to detonate.

Kosher food is not available inCairo. The Jewish school ceased func-

tioning over fifty years ago, and wewere told that it is dangerous to visitthe Jewish cemetery—not a promisingfuture for a Jewish community.

What is left of this once-grand Jew-ish community? Books. There are threesignificant Jewish libraries in Cairo.Books from many of the now-de-stroyed shuls were collected and in1989, a 7,000-book library was estab-lished. In 1997, a 3,000-volume librarywas inaugurated next to the Ben EzraSynagogue, and a smaller library existsnext to the large Karaite synagogue. g

The Ashkenazi Synagogue, Cairo.

Summer 5770/2010 JEWISH ACTION I 59

The Orthodox Union Familywill pay tribute to the

historic contributions of

Dr. Bernard Lander zt”l

at the

15th AnnualBen Zakkai Honor Society

National Scholarship Reception

Sunday, January 30, 2011

We will also present our inductees and honorees, and celebrate a half century of sustained involvement with NCSY by four 1961 NCSY’ers:

RIVKAH & (RABBI) ZEV LEFF

Ezra Ben-Zion Lightman Memorial Award

VIVIAN & DAVID LUCHINS

Sarah Rivkah & Dr. Bernard Lander Memorial Award

For more information, call 212.613.8350

or email grossmane@ou.org

For more information, call 212.613.8350

or email grossmane@ou.org

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