When the head of the five-person Jewish community of Cairo, Magda Haroun, journeyed to New York to take part in the Jewish Africa conference, the author and reporter Lucette Lagnado interviewed her. The upshot was this piece in the Wall St Journal. See my comment below. (With thanks: Viviane, Carol and Gina).
Magda
Haroun likes
to say she
will be the
last Jew left
in Egypt. She
sees it as her
mission to
prepare for
that day,
which is why
she is
obsessed with
preserving the
remnants of
Egyptian
Jewish
culture.
Today, many
younger
Egyptians
don’t know
that, in the
early 20th
century, the
country was
home to some
80,000 Jews,
who lived
alongside
Christians and
Muslims in a
flourishing
multicultural
society.
Ms.
Haroun was
born in 1952,
the year when
King Farouk
was overthrown
and life in
Egypt changed
dramatically.
The Jews of
Egypt had been
departing in
waves since
1948, the year
of Israel’s
creation, when
they suddenly
found
themselves the
object of the
rage that so
many Egyptians
felt over the
new Jewish
state. Still,
Farouk was
viewed by the
Jewish
community as a
protector.
When Colonel
Gamal
Abdel-Nasser
took over, he
made it clear
that Egypt was
only for
Arabs; Jews,
even whose
families had
lived there
for
generations,
didn’t
qualify.
Nasser’s
government
introduced new
edicts that
confiscated or
nationalized
private
businesses.
Jewish-owned
companies were
forced to take
on Arab
managers and
employees. It
became hard
for Jews to
find work, and
financial
uncertainty
helped to fuel
their
departure, as
much as darker
fears of
persecution.
But
Ms. Haroun’s
family refused
to leave. Her
father,
Shehata
Haroun, was a
charismatic
Communist
lawyer with
strongly
anti-Zionist
sentiments. He
did all he
could to stay,
including
offering
denunciations
of Israel and
Zionism.
Still, he was
jailed during
the
anti-Jewish
frenzy that
broke out
during the Six
Day War in
1967, when all
Egyptian
Jewish men
between the
ages of 18 and
60 were
imprisoned,
some for
years.
When
Shehata Haroun
was released,
he could have
left the
country—as
most of the
remaining Jews
did—but he
insisted that
Egypt was his
home. Ms.
Haroun herself
spent some of
her adult life
living abroad,
in Kuwait,
Hong Kong,
Tokyo and
Istanbul. But
like her
father, she
saw Egypt as
her home: “I
always wanted
to return to
Egypt,” she
says.
Today,
there are
fewer than a
dozen Jews
living in
Egypt, by some
estimates—Ms.
Haroun says
only four,
including
herself, are
left in Cairo,
and another
Jewish woman
in her 90s
died this
week. Nobody
really knows
the exact
number, since
so many of the
Jews who
stayed in the
country
married
Muslims or
Christians and
have kept a
low profile.
As they aged
and lost their
spouses, they
became, if
possible, even
more fearful.
But
in recent
years, some
elderly
Egyptians—mostly
widows in
their 80s or
90s—have “come
out” to
reclaim their
Jewish
identities. A
couple of
times a year,
they journey
shyly to the
Gates of
Heaven, the
main synagogue
on Adly
Street, to
attend a
Passover Seder
or a Hanukkah
menorah
lighting. To
survive, they
receive
discreet
financial help
from the Joint
Distribution
Committee, the
New York-based
Jewish relief
organization,
which has
quietly
supported the
last Jews of
the Arab
world, sending
aid to Algeria
and Libya
until there
were no Jews
left to help.
So
when Ms.
Haroun became
president of
the country’s
Jewish
community in
2013, she
assumed the
role with some
trepidation.
The community
still owned
several
properties,
including
schools,
synagogues and
the vast
Bassatine
cemetery. The
synagogues,
many abandoned
decades ago,
were filled
with rubbish
and had
decaying walls
and interiors.
But the
cemetery was
in especially
dire
condition,
vulnerable
both to
squatters and
vandals. After
going to visit
her father’s
grave, Ms.
Haroun found
the area in
disarray,
writing in an
emotional
Facebook post:
“Forgive me,
Shehata
Haroun—forgive
me that your
place of rest
looks like
this.”
To
tackle the
problem, Ms.
Haroun made
use of a
venerable
Jewish
communal
institution:
La Goutte de
Lait, a school
for
impoverished
children
founded in
1918 whose
name means
“the drop of
milk.” Ms.
Haroun
inserted a new
clause in its
bylaws
suggesting
that since
there are no
longer any
Jewish
children in
Egypt to
educate, La
Goutte de Lait
would instead
devote itself
to restoring
and preserving
Jewish
institutions
throughout
Cairo.
This
Pied Piper of
Jewish Cairo
has also
enlisted a
group of
Egyptian
Muslims and
Christians to
help in her
efforts. Some,
like Samy
Ibrahim, Ms.
Haroun’s chief
of staff, have
Jewish
relatives.
(Mr. Ibrahim’s
father, an
avowed
Communist who
converted to
Islam, managed
to remain in
Egypt against
the odds, and
still lives in
downtown
Cairo.) Femony
Okasha, whose
grandmother
was Jewish, is
another active
volunteer. “It
is important
that people
remember how
we all
coexisted
harmoniously
in Egypt,” she
says. Her work
with Ms.
Haroun is
about
emphasizing
“values of
tolerance and
respect.”
The
group’s first
goal has been
to repair the
dozen or so
Cairo
synagogues
that are still
viable and
turn some of
them into
cultural
centers to
attract Muslim
and
Christian—and
Jewish—visitors. With American grant money, an Egyptian design firm
prepared
detailed
architectural
drawings of
Cairo’s dozen
synagogues as
a first step
toward
refurbishing
them.
Proclamation by US Rabbis forbidding Egyptian synagogues from being used as social clubs or cultural centres (HSJE)
Another
goal of La
Goutte du Lait
is to create a
library to
house several
thousand
Hebrew books
that were
abandoned when
the Jews left
Egypt. And of
course there
is the
cemetery.
“Every day
there are
squatters,”
Ms. Haroun
says. “I want
to build a
wall to
safeguard it.”
Ms. Haroun has
turned beyond
Egypt for
support. She
spoke in New
York last week
at the
American
Sephardi
Federation to
make the case
for rescuing
Egypt’s Jewish
institutions.
Ms.
Haroun has
also been
working with
an Israeli
scholar, Yoram
Meital, to
survey and
analyze these
properties.
Dr. Meital, a
professor of
Middle Eastern
Studies at
Ben-Gurion
University,
has been
chronicling
what he calls
“a very
significant
attitudinal
shift within
Egyptian
society,” the
realization
that Egypt
suffered from
the departure
of its Jews.
Recently, a
group of young
people from
the once
heavily Jewish
neighborhood
of Daher
advertised an
evening at the
local
synagogue,
Temple Hanan,
which has been
closed for
decades.
Organizers
expected 25
people to
respond.
Instead, 5,000
Egyptians
clamored to
come.
This
embrace of the
Jewish past is
part of a
far-reaching
nostalgia for
a time that
most Egyptians
have only
heard about
from their
parents and
older
relatives—the
“golden age”
of the early
20th century,
when Cairo was
a diverse,
world-class
city. The
wider movement
includes
efforts to
restore some
areas of
Cairo’s
downtown,
which once
boasted grand
cafes, cinemas
and department
stores, many
of which were
Jewish-owned.
To
be sure, the
anti-Semitism
that Egyptian
authorities
helped to fuel
over decades
is far from
gone. But
after years of
hostility and
estrangement
and war, many
Muslim
citizens want
to reconnect
with their
former Jewish
neighbors.
“People say to
me, ‘We miss
the Jews,’”
Prof. Meital
says.
—Ms.
Lagnado is a
reporter for
the Wall
Street
Journal. She
is at work on
a book, “And
Then There
Were None,”
about what
became of the
Jews of the
Arab
countries, to
be published
by
Nextbook/Schocken.
Write
to Lucette
Lagnado at lucette.lagnado@wsj.com
Read article in full
Read article in full
*Point of No Return comments:
with all but a handful of Egypt's 80,000 - 100, 000 Jews driven out,
talk of coexistence and respect between religions sounds a little
hollow. The article fails to make clear that 10 of 12 synagogues in
Cairo have been designated as Heritage sites under the aegis of the
Egyptian ministry of Culture, as Egypt has rejected all offers of partnership with outside Jewish bodies.
It seems that a group of interested Egyptians, some with Jewish links,
have been enlisted in order to legitimise turning the remaining two synagogues into
'cultural centres'. (The US-based Historical Society of Jews from Egypt,
supported by rabbis, has already voiced vehement objections
to using a synagogue for purposes other than what it was intended.)
Possibly under duress, Magda Haroun has been acting as an agent of the
Egyptian government, facilitating the seizure of communal registers and doing nothing to advance demands from exiled Jews for access to their records.
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