Alec Nacamuli
From Exodus to Exodus: Jews from Egypt, Part 2
Alec Nacamuli - From Exodus to Exodus: Jews From Egypt, Part 2
- When we left off on Tuesday afternoon, we had reached 15th of May, 1948, Israel Independence. And as we know, this immediately triggered the concerted attack by virtually all Arab states, the first Arab-Israeli war, the War of Independence. And this of course inevitably led to riots, looting, attacks against Jewish shops, and mass arrests. You should note incidentally that the Egyptian government did not only arrest Jews and people accused of Zionism, but also seized the opportunity to round up a lot of communists and a lot of Muslim brothers. Then in 1949, the Tribunaux Mixtes, those courts that were established specifically to judge foreigners, were abolished so all residents in Egypt became subject to Egyptian law and were judged by Egyptian tribunals. And then between 1948 and 1955, this is where we have the first mass departures. Around 15 to 20,000 Jews left, a lot of them, actually particularly the Zionists, left to Israel, although that was semi-official. They would actually transit via either Cyprus or Marseilles in France. But the majority, let’s say of upper and business class Jews, remained. We should also be aware that at that time the country was in evolution and seething with anger. There was, first of all, the humiliation of the 1948 defeat during the Arab War, the war with Israel. And there was also incredible frustration and anger against the dissolute life of King Farouk, who spent most of his times in European casinos, Monte Carlo, Avignon, et cetera, gambling. And when he was in Egypt, would actually spend most of his time either again gambling in clubs or womanising. He would actually point to women and they would be brought to him. In fact, friends, the daughter of friends of my parents, was actually sort of noticed by Farouk who said at one evening, “Who is this delightful young lady in the green dress?”
And her parents put her on the next plane to Europe. And in 1952, in January 1952, there was an incident at the canal. The British police killed about 40 Egyptian policemen in Ismailia, and this triggered off mass riots and in particularly what is known as the Burning of Cairo. There were attacks on all European buildings. The famous Shepheards Hotel was burned and of course Jewish stores. So if you remember last Tuesday, I showed you a photo of the Cicurel department store in Cairo, and this is what was left of it after the 1952 riots. And then in July 1952, we finally had the military coup by the free officers who toppled King Farouk. They were led by General Naguib, who was more in fact as a figurehead, and you could already see the figures of Nasser and Sadat profiling themselves behind. Farouk was sent in exile. He left from Alexandria. He actually sailed off in his yacht, the royal yacht, the Mahrousa, and he actually settled in Switzerland but continued a dissolute life. He became a bit of a figure of all the sort of scandal magazines. He became incredibly obese and he died in 1965 in Capri in Italy. And what you have here is a photo of General Naguib, who made a point in September 1952, so the first Yom Kippur after the king was exiled, to attend Kol Nidre at the Sha'ar Hashamayim, the main synagogue in Adly Street in Cairo, to reassure the Jewish community and to rekindle the bond and try to reassure them. And it did lull Jews into, let’s face it, a false sense of security. It is perhaps today with hindsight easy to criticise, had we not learned anything from the fate of the German or the Austrian Jews in Europe. But let us not forget that the majority of businesses that Egyptian Jews had were not easily transferable.
My father, for instance, since 1952, would mutter continuously, “This country is no longer for us.” But the family business, which was importing paper, would not necessarily have survived in Europe as most of the Scandinavian or English or French or Austrian paper manufacturers we used to import for already had subsidiaries or representative agents in Europe. And also there was the question of, let’s face it, as I told you, we were leading a very comfortable life and so the cold and damp Paris or London, without any servants, was perhaps not the most attractive of alternatives. Then in 1953, we had the Operation Susannah, also known as the Lavon Affair. This was a plan by the Israeli military intelligence to carry out bombings and sabotage to create unrest in Egypt, to persuade US and Britain that Nasser regime was unreliable, laying the blame on Muslim brothers and communists, and also to incite Jews to immigrate to Israel. So an underground cell had been recruited amongst Egyptian Jews who had helped people immigrate into Israel. This incidentally was already a contradiction to a rule in those days, not to recruit agents amongst the local Jewish community. The plan was to place bombs in public edifices and cinemas. Some went off at the Alexandria Post Office and also at the US Information Agency in Cairo and Alexandria. But very little damage was done and there were no victims. One of the group, Philip Nathanson, which you can see here where my cursor is, was arrested outside the Rio Cinema in Alexandria when his bomb went off prematurely. Others were also rounded up and tortured. Two of them, Max Bineth and Yosef Carmon, committed suicide in prison. And at the trial, Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar were condemned to death and hanged, and “Kaddish” was recited in all synagogues in Egypt.
The others were actually condemned to various prison sentences, but were released as part of a prisoner exchange in 1968. This became known as the Lavon Affair in Israel. It forced the resignation of the then Minister of Defence, Pinhas Lavon. But although it was later proven that he himself had not authorised the operation, and I must say the whole background to this is still pretty murky. It is interesting to note that the only woman in the group, which was Marcelle Ninio, she was, as I said, released after the 1967 war as part of an exchange of prisoner. And when she got married, she was given away by Golda Meir. And then of course we come to the Suez Affair. Before we look at it specifically in the Egyptian context, I think it is worthwhile setting it in the global political context at the time. So Egypt then was led by Colonel Nasser, who had ousted Naguib in 1954, and he was striving to establish himself as the leader across the Arab world with his vision of Pan Arab socialism. The Suez Canal was no longer, let’s say, the essential link with the British Empire, but Western Europe still imported 1.2 million barrels of oil a day by tankers through the canal. But the revenues accrued largely to the shareholders of the Suez Canal Company, the Companie du Canal du Suez, very little to actually Egypt. If we look at the United States and the Soviet Union, so United States, it was President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Foreign Secretary John Foster Dulles, and the Soviet Union, Khrushchev and Bulganin. We were then at the height of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, vying for influence in the Middle East.
And the Soviet Union was selling arms to Nasser via Czechoslovakia. In France, we had the socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet, and he hated Egypt who was supporting the FLN in the Algerian War with clandestine armed shipments. And France and Israel at that time were very close. France was delivering the famous Mousquetaire fighters, planes, to Egypt. Eden in the UK was already sick. He was still smarting from the retreat of British troops from the canal in 1952 and he viewed Nasser as a Mussolini and was always saying, “We cannot go back to appeasement and see history repeating itself.” And on top of that, there was another problem is that Dulles and Eden could not stand each other. There was a very strong personal anonymity between these two who could be in the same room. And as for the Egypt-Israel relationship, obviously not at its best after the armistice in 1949. Nasser was constantly supporting fedayeen raids from Gaza, attacking civilian populations and interfering with Israeli ships transiting through the canal. So on 19th of July, 1956, the United States withdrew financial support for the dam that was going to be built in Aswan. They were upset by the fact that Egypt had recognised the people Republic of China, communist China. And so on the 26th of July, Nasser delivered a very long speech in Alexandria. The army had been positioned and when Nasser pronounced Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was the French engineer who had led the construction of the canal, the army seized control of the canal. We should note, however, that shareholders were compensated at the closing price on the Paris Stock Exchange and the canal was closed then to Israeli ships and Egypt also closed the Tiran Straits.
Britain was initially reluctant to include Israel, but plans for the tripartite agreement were finalised at the villa in Sevres near Paris, between the 16th and the 21st of October, where we had President Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Guy Mollet, the French Prime Minister, Christian Pineau, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a British representative. And the plan was as follows: Israel would invade Egypt, it was known as the Operation Kadesh, France and the UK would land in Egypt, known as Operation Musketeer, enforce a ceasefire, separate Egypt and Israel, and seize control of the canal. There was even an ultimate objective to depose Nasser and replace him with a public leader. The original plan was to attack Alexandria, but then they decided to attack Port Said, the head of the canal, which required less troops. And then of course, at this point, world attention was distracted by the Hungarian uprising on the 21st of October and subsequent Russian invasion. So hang on. So if we look at the map of the military operation, you have the sort of Suez Canal here, Cairo, Alexandria. And on the 29th of October, Israel launched an attack by dropping paratroopers, led by future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on the Mitla Pass here. And therefore, as you can see, cutting off the Egyptian supply lines to troops already in the Sinai. And that was combined with land attacks and air attacks from Eilat. The French and the British had concentrated planes and troops in Cypress and Malta and had positioned aircraft carriers and battleships with landing crafts.
On the 30th of October, France and the UK issued an ultimatum to both sides to withdraw 16 kilometres from the canal. Needless to say, that was not respected. So on the 31st of October, France and England dropped paratroopers from Cyprus and Malta on Port Said and Egypt immediately sunk 47 ships loaded with cement to block the canal, therefore stopping the oil flow. And on the 6th of November, British and French troops landed in Port Said, Nasser declared a people’s war, ordering soldiers to wear civilian clothes and distributing weapons to civilians to magnify the propaganda effect that invaders were killing civilians. And Port Said was declared the Martyr City. There was also bombing of military objectives in Cairo and in Alexandria. And as a child, I remember the blackout that was imposed at night. And then of course Israel, in the meantime, was pursuing its advance in the Sinai, capturing Gaza, Sharm el-Sheikh, and taking thousands of prisoners. But international pressure was building up, Khrushchev and the Soviet Union threatened to unleash nuclear weapons over France and the UK, Eisenhower and Secretary of State Foster Dulles told him to calm down but were actually furious with the UK that Eden had not warned them of the attack. And Eisenhower stated, “The United States cannot condemn Soviet invasion of Hungary whilst condoning occupation of Egypt.” And the US supplied economic pressure on the UK, threatening to dump the UK Government bonds and sterling that it held. And America also positioned the Sixth Fleet here between the UK and the French battleships and the Egyptian seashore.
Therefore saying, “If you’re firing on Egypt, you are firing on the United States.” A first ceasefire request was rejected by the United Nation Security Council, thanks to French and UK veto. But for the first time, an emergency meeting of the General Assembly was called, which ordered a cease fire, which became effective on the 7th of November at 2:00 a.m. At the end, the casualties were: UK, 16 dead, France, 10, Israel, 172. The Egyptian figures are not really very sure, there are no official figures, but they’re estimated between 2 and 4,000, including the civilians. And France and Israel eventually withdrew troops on the 22nd of December and were replaced by United Nations troops. What I have here now is I’m going to show you, this is a film that was made by Harif and Sephardi Voices, two organisation dedicated to the preservation of the memory of Jews from the Middle East, which are, I’m going to show you, testimonies of people who lived through that as children. Excuse me.
He came past our block. We were on our way to school. Around him, go around the streets, waving his hands. Before we all started, Nasser was in an open top jeep with troops around him, going around the streets, waving his hands and greeted everybody. He came past our block, we were on our way to school and all the kids from Le Severance ran towards him. And he was shaking their hands, actually shook their hands. Only later on in life, you understand what you’ve done.
To…
With a suitcase and clothes. It’s that. And soon after that, I remember a soldier or some official coming, and he told him that he had to leave. “You have to leave, you will give you 10 days, 10 days to leave. And you have to dispose of all your belongings, your furniture, everything. And you’re only allowed to leave with a suitcase of clothes.” That’s all you could take.
I do remember one day dad coming in and saying, “Well, we’ve now been given notice to be expelled.” And I think we had three weeks to-
Yes.
To leave.
Dirty piece of paper shoved through the letter box with the words, “Expelled” on it.
And one more. And the customs officer took my dolly, it was a baby size doll. And the head was joined to the arms and legs with elastic bands. And I remember he pulled out the head of the doll, looked inside to see if there was anything hidden in it. Of course, there wasn’t. But you know, the elastic never kind of went back properly.
When before we got on the ship, there were some Egyptian guards and my mother had a little kind of pin broach on her suit, which was from my grandmother, and it wasn’t of great value and they snatched it off her and she started to cry.
And it was terrible because everybody was crying. I was sobbing leaving my cousins who I love so much and my uncles and aunts, and we had no idea where we were going. We had no idea whether we would ever see our family again. And we were going to England. We knew nobody in England. So it was really awful. It was quite a dramatic experience, actually.
The only thing I was petrified about was that I would somehow get left behind or that I would somehow let go of my mother’s hand in the throng of people going onto the boat of refugees and get lost. This, I remember that so clearly, clasping her hand and the doll that I managed to take in my other hand, as if my life depended on it.
It happened very late at night. My father turned up because previously he was taken to prison so he was kind of on bail. We all travelled together and we ended up at the top of Suez Canal by the Mediterranean and we all jumped into a barge, big barge, and they covered us in the middle of the night, they covered us with holding over us, Jews from all Egypt, and we crossed through the British battleships on the Mediterranean.
In some way…
So that was the second really mass expulsion between November ‘56 and 1957. 30,000 Jews were expelled or had to leave. They had to leave with one suitcase, 50 pounds. There were searches at departure, which very often were intimate searches. Businesses were nationalised, assets were confiscated. Egyptian nationals were stripped of their nationality. So all those who had acquired British, Egyptian, sorry, nationality, went to keep hold of their businesses in the 1940s were actually stripped of their nationality. They remained stateless and they were given an exit visa without return. I was 13 at the time. My tefillim was postponed, the school was closed, we were confined at home, and any effort from our parents to try and hide from us what was happening was useless. 'Cause the whole conversation revolved entirely around who is going, who is going where, who is going when. We left on the 15th of December, 1956, and I remember probably the last thing I did at home was I was a very avid reader and I had lots of books, you know? In French, Jules Verne and Alexander Dumas, in English Enid Blyton and Captain W. E. Jones, “The Biggles,” and of course “Tan Tan.” And the last thing I did before we left the house was pass my hand over all my books in my library. My mother was in tears, the servants were in tears, we drove to the boat and we got onto the boat and then we had a shock because my father was summoned to the lounge, let’s say, where the Egyptian police had their office and were checking final papers.
But actually he was released literally 5, 10 minutes before the boat sailed off. And we would actually, as a family, on the 15th of December every year celebrate what we called Pesach Sheni, our second Pesach, our second Exodus. But we were actually lucky. As you heard from the interview, a lot of the families were only reunited with the fathers who had been put in prison at the foot of the plane or on the boat. And I even had one of my school friends whose father had a heart attack and died on the boat when he was about to leave, and the body was disembarked with his mother, but they did not allow the children to disembark. So these two kids, 13 and 15, sailed off on their boat on the way to Marseilles, totally alone and not knowing where they were going. Sorry. So then in 1967 we had the Six-Day War. There were at that time 2 or 3,000 Jews remaining. There were again mass arrests and this time, imprisonment, hard labour, a lot of brutality and a lot of abuse and a lot of humiliation. I will not go into too many details in case there are some children listening. By the time of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, there were less than a thousand Jews left. Again, imprisonment, hard labour and expulsion. And then the community, there would have been about 2 or 300 left, and it just gradually declined. And today there are perhaps something like eight Jews remaining in Egypt. So what about how did we resettle? So Jews today are scattered from Egypt, are scattered all over the world. Europe, United States, Canada, Australia, South America. Those who, as we know, arrived in Israel, were integrated but spent very long humiliating years in the famous Mahabharat, the camps for Jews arriving from Arab countries, disinfection with DDT, et cetera. Elsewhere in France, in England, in Switzerland where my family resettled, in the States, in Canada, we were helped by the local Jewish communities. What it really brought on are changes in what I call family structure and parental authority. Fathers for the first time appeared vulnerable, diminished. They were perhaps no longer as respected.
Their word is no longer taken for as absolute law and a lot of them had to accept jobs way below their status and capacity. Others were reduced to living off diminishing capital and pensions. Mothers had to actually do household work themselves, cook, clean, wash, iron, instead of directing servants and cooks and maids. And to a certain extent, as I said, parents were losing their authority. As to before, my father’s mantra was, “This is what it is 'cause this is what I have said.” So obviously children were beginning to rebel against this. And it was in particular, a major change for daughters who resented and escaped parental control over activities and particularly boyfriends. In Egypt, generally speaking, you had to be chaperoned. No more chaperone obviously in Europe, in the US. Daughters refused it, and what’s more, brothers or cousins were certainly not interested. But most of the Egyptian Jews adopted what I call the Arabic expression: What is past is dead. Parents threw themselves into work and rebuilding their lives, a lot of them helped by their fluency in foreign languages and ability to relate to diverse cultures. Kids were focusing on education. We were drilled down on the mantra, “If a Nasser or a Hitler can take the shirt off your back, if unless he puts a bullet through your head, you will still have your assets.” But it was not always easy. A lot of us had to change language. Some who had gone to French schools in Egypt were then into British schools or vice versa. I even had some friends, some of my school friends, who went to Brazil and were actually had to join education in Portuguese. And on the whole, we did well. Most of us got into the best universities, Oxbridge, the Grande Ecole in France, Harvard, which in fact is a reflection on the excellent quality of the education we provided in Egypt. And Jews from Egypt have gained leading positions in science, in medicine, in finance, business and the arts. How today do Jews and Egyptians see each other?
The majority of Jews from Egypt have fond memories. The feelings of bitterness and resentment that haunt Eastern European Jews are rare. And most often you hear the cliche, “We left Egypt but Egypt never left us.” When I went back for the first time to Egypt in 1984, I met some of my parents’ contemporaries and they recollect, they reminisced fondly, of the time they had spent with their Jewish friends. Egyptians I meet today from my generation, let’s say in their 70s or their 80s, they remember their parents talking of Jewish friends. But in spite of the cold peace in Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, you know we do have at least two generations who have been drilled with relentless TV images of pregnant womens being stopped by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints or bleeding babies in Gaza. And Jewish presence has been systematically erased from public consciousness. But at least in Egypt, things are beginning to warm up. Beyond, let’s say, military and intelligence corporation to combat terrorism in Sinai. There is a certain nostalgia of Egypt pre-war, Belle Epoque. There was a film, “The Jews from Egypt,” by an Egyptian director, which held five weeks on general release. As you probably know, during the Ramadan, which actually is now, Egyptian television produces a soap opera which lasts for 30 nights and people watch that while they’re having their Iftar, their evening meal. And there was first a soap on King Farouk. And then later on, about four, five years ago, there was one called: “The Jewish Quarter.” Which was the sort of tear-jerking story of an Egyptian officer who is in love with a beautiful young Jewish girl from the heart of Yahud, but she is expelled and she has to leave. And what is interesting is that the quote, unquote, “Bad people” in the soap, in the film, were not the Jews or the Zionists or even Israel, which was barely mentioned, but the Muslim Brotherhood. And today also there is official textbooks published by the Ministry of Education who talk of the benefits of the peace treaty with photos even of Sadat and Begin who are seated together.
So how do we today preserve the memory and heritage? So in terms of memory, there are oral history projects like Sephardi Voices UK, which you saw those extracts of the clips I showed you after Suez. So these are oral history projects. And we recall testimonies of Jews who have left the Arab countries and the branch in the UK, those who have resettled in the UK. These are interviews which last two to three hours, look at the family background, family religious traditions, and the life in the country of birth. Then the circumstances of departure and then resettlement in the host country, and discussing problems of identity. Then there is obviously the religious and cultural heritage. And here we have a organisation I’m part of, which is known as the Neve Daniel International Association, and we are working with the Egyptian authorities and with the local community there on preserving the religious and cultural heritage. The one issue we are still pursuing is to get access to the archives of the Jewish community in Cairo, Alexander, and in particularly the registers of birth, marriage and death. You might have remembered that on Tuesday I told you that under the Ottoman system of the Millet, the civil registers were divulged to the religious communities so all our birth certificates, marriage certificates of our parents, and death certificates of grandparents also are held by the Jewish communities. However, four or five years ago, the Egyptian authorities seized them and they are deposited at the moment at the National Library in Egypt, the National Archives, and we do not have access to them. Any attempt to try and access them to prove Jewish identity or whatever have been fruitless. So what is left today? There are still about 140 Sifrei Torah in Egypt. Here you have photos of some of them in Cairo.
Here are some of the ones in Alexandria at the Eliahou Hanavi Synagogue. And you will see actually that these here still have the rimonim. And this reminds me that in Egypt, removing the rimonim from the Sifrei Torah was an aliyah that the parents bought for their children. So when the Sifrei Torah were brought out of the ark on the Saturday to read the portion of the week, first, one or two children would go up, remove the rimonim, and then the Sifrei Torah were opened and people were called up for the lecture. And a few years ago with Neve Daniel, we actually brought a sopher, a Sifrei Torah scribe, to Egypt to actually do an inventory, which we were able to do in Cairo. So in Cairo today there are about 45 Sifrei Torah left. Now there are two factors which are important if you are thinking of eventually removing them and bringing them to Europe to give to Jewish communities in Europe or in the United States. First of all, there is the Egyptian law on antiquity. Nothing younger than a hundred years can leave Egypt, even if it has nothing to do with Egypt. Even if you had a Renoit Impressionist painting or a Victorian dining room table, anything younger than a hundred, older than a hundred years, cannot leave. And then we have to look and see how many of these Sifrei Torah, which have not been opened or used for over 50 or 60 years, are still kosher. How many of them are: and would be worth actually restoring? So you can have the statistics here and actually as far as Cairo is concerned, if you look at the ones who are younger than a hundred years and perhaps more than 75% kosher, so it would be realistic to restore them, they’re about two. In Alexandria, as I said, there were over 70 Sifrei Torah, but we have not managed to do the same inventory. Here I’m going to show you some of the synagogues that remain.
Bear in mind that you remember I told you that the Cairo and Alexandria communities operate independently. And as far as preservation of the synagogues, both communities have taken radically different approaches. In Alexandria, there were 12 synagogues. And when the community declined to 200, 250, the community took the decision to sell a lot of the smaller synagogues, which I must be totally honest, did not have great historic interest. And however, to use those funds to maintain the principle synagogue, which I’ll tell you more about the Eliyahu Hanavi. In Cairo, however, the community has not sold any synagogue. They refuse to sell any synagogue. Two or three of them are in good condition and have been restored. Like this is the main Shaar Hashamayim Synagogue in Cairo on Adly Street, which was restored by the Egyptian authorities in 2007 for a centenary. Here you have the interior of the Shaar Hashamayim Synagogue. This is the Ashkenazi Synagogue in Cairo. This is the Karaite Synagogue, the Mussa Dari. Quite a spectacular building. You can see in sort of art deco with sort of lotus flower columns. Note incidentally that there are no benches because Karaites would in fact, like Muslims, pray either standing or kneeling on the floor. But then there are other synagogues which are in total ruin. There are about six or eight synagogues like the Rab Capussi, the Hanan. You go and visit them and you really have the impression that somebody closed the door 60 years ago and nobody’s gone in it.
Also in Cairo is the Rab Moshe, the yeshiva where he taught and his medical consulting rooms. And in November 2007, if you look carefully, you can see there was flooding. There was water from the Nile which was rising up. To its credit and next to it there was a synagogue which was built much later. But that was actually destroyed by an earthquake but the Egyptian authorities chose to renovate it. They did a very interesting work of really researching exactly how it was originally designed and going back to original prints. And you can see here the restoration was completed in March 2010 and we had an inauguration. Then of course we come to the cemeteries. This is the Bassatine Cemetery in Cairo. The first thing you will notice is that there seem to be, although the tombs are in reasonably good condition, there seem to be no tombstones. In 1960, a new street was drilled through in Cairo and where do you go and get marble for shops or restaurants? You go to the Christian and the Jewish cemeteries and you take off the tombstones. So this is why only in Cairo Bassatine Cemetery about 1,400 graves can actually be identified. All of them, majority of them, as you can see are nameless. However, at that time also Bassatine was full of squatters. Also if in Cairo you needed drugs or you wanted a Kalashnikov or weapons or whatever, you would go to Bassatine and you would find whatever you wanted, if you were prepared to pay. And then there was already a work done, led by an organisation, the Historical Society of Jews of Egypt in New York, who managed to avoid and change plans for a motorway which a fly over was supposed to go over it. But then more recently, there’s a organisation in Cairo led by a group of Egyptians, chaired by the President of the Cairo community, not, let’s face it, all of them are halachically Jewish, but most of them have Jewish ancestry, mothers or grandmothers, et cetera.
And there are also a few cops and Muslims who work on it. It’s called: They have taken the if you remember, was a charity which originally looked after disadvantaged children. They have resurrected, broadened the scope, to include sort of preserving the religious and cultural heritage. And with some financing from the United States, an active corporation from an organisation called Atra Kadisha, they have done absolutely fantastic work by cleaning up the cemetery. Before this, that all this was a jungle. And here is an overview of the Chatby Cemetery in Alexandria, which is in relatively good condition. We have not had the same problem as in Cairo. And it’s also interesting because in the cemetery in Alexandria there is a plot which contains the graves of people from the Palestine Mule Corps of the World War I. And here coming back to Alexandria, you can see this is a recent photo. On the left here, this used to be the Jewish schools. You can still see the Hebrew lettering, but it has been leased now to the Egyptian government and it is now a experimental school for girls. And below here you have a photo of the Jewish hospital in Alexandria where most Jews from Alexandria were actually born, including myself. And then we have the main synagogue in Alexandria, the Eliahou Hanavi on Neve Daniel. About five, six years ago, the roof collapsed. So with the Neve Daniel Association we started pressing to have it restored. We actually offered to raise funds from the Jewish Egyptian diaspora or outside Egypt, but no, the Egyptian authorities, the Ministry of Antiquities refused and decided to fund it itself.
And it actually cost them $4 million. If you go back to the figure I mentioned earlier, that represents about $1 million per Jew left today in Alexandria. And the restoration was completed at the end of 2019. This is the exterior today, and here we have the interior. As you can see it’s pretty spectacular. You have columns of Italian marble, rose marble. The synagogue incidentally was originally built in the 1850s, 1860s, and then substantially increased and widened in the 1930s. It is, as you can see, in pure Italian architecture. And also what is interesting is that once they carried out the restoration, they also found remains of a 13th century synagogue below this one. Anyway, this synagogue then was restored at the end of 2019. And this is when with the Neve Daniel Association, we actually decided to reconsecrate the synagogue. So in February 2020, a group of 180 Jews, Jews from Egypt with a lot of them brought their children and grandchildren, we returned to Egypt. And over two days, so on Friday morning, we visited the graves at the cemetery and we said “Kaddish” and remembered the deceased. And in the afternoon, Friday afternoon, we had a: A rededication of the synagogue. So after opposing a mezuzah, we actually brought inside the synagogue six Sifrei Torah under a towelette, replaced them in the ark. And then we held Friday night and Saturday morning service. So what I’m going to do now is I can show you some clips of this event, which still moves me a lot. Sorry. Excuse me.
So you’re going to say, “What now?” Unfortunately or fortunately, this trip happened just before COVID broke out. This was on the 14th of February, two weeks later we were in COVID. Had it been two weeks later, the whole thing had to be abandoned. So there are tourism has not taken up again. Any plans we might have had have been put on ice. So today we are back to a situation where we have these synagogues, but only the names remain. And on with this I would like to stop and if you have any questions, I’m more than happy to answer and I really would like to thank again the Lockdown University for giving me the privilege of talking to you.
[Judi] Thank you, Alec. Would you like me to read some of the questions out?
Yes, please.
Q&A and Comments:
Q - [Judi] So what language did you speak with your parents as a child and later?
A - French.
Q - [Judi] Are there many Torahs left in Egypt? And what can be done to get them out?
A - Any Torahs? Well, this is the problem. There are, as I said, about 70. No more. About 170 in Alexandria and 14 in Cairo. At the moment, as I said, a lot of them fall under this law of antiquities and cannot be taken out legally. There have been some efforts but so far in vain.
Q - [Judi] Okay. I know you may have answered some of these questions already, but I will read them out regardless. Do you know how the expulsion process was carried out? How were the families picked? And was it random or did they pick the influential families first?
A - I think they obviously went to the males. First were the ones who were associated with Zionism or were thought to be associated with Zionism and Israel and all that. Then they obviously went to probably the ones who had largest value of assets which they could seize. It seemed to be pretty random, actually.
Q - [Judi] I have a note, a question from Marvin. “In the good times, how many Jews lived happily in Egypt?”
A - The community peaked at about 85,000 at the end of World War II.
Q - [Judi] Okay. Can you remind us how an Ashkenazi community ended up in Egypt?
A - There were mainly, first of all, there were two main waves of Ashkenazi immigration. One during World War I. There were a lot of Ashkenazi Jews who were in Palestine, who during World War I moved to Egypt. And then of course we had quite a few Ashkenazim from Germany and Austria who came in the ‘30s.
Q - [Judi] Thank you. If there are no Jews left, who actually goes to the synagogues? Or is it just the tourists?
A - Well, first there are in Cairo, they do have services for the expatriate community. So there are some Jewish business people who are there, they’re staff from the Israeli Embassy, and they go to a small synagogue in the residential suburb of Cairo in Maadi. And for the high holidays, they will probably go to the main synagogue. At one point before the COVID, there would be volunteers who would travel from Israel or from France who would go back to Egypt to ensure there was a minyan for the high holidays. But with COVID, obviously this has unfortunately stopped.
Q - [Judi] Someone is asking, “Who maintains the synagogues?”
A - The local communities. So if you remember in Alexandria, the community had sold a lot of the smaller synagogues so that built up some capital. They also get some rental from some income, rental income, from buildings like the school which they lease to the Egyptian government. They also had some office space which they rent out in office buildings. And the financial situation is actually better in Alexandria than in Cairo.
Q - [Judi] Um… Why is the Egyptian authority interested in restoring the synagogues?
A - It’s a good question. It’s been asked. I think there’s a definite effort to show that they are beginning to internationalise, they are beginning to rediscover their history. They’re beginning to. I think a lot of it perhaps, let’s be honest, is to curry favour with the United States, which is still the largest provider of foreign aid.
Q- [Judi] While I’m scrolling through, a lot of people have asked how they can get copies of the recordings. If you send an email to info@lockdownuniversity.org, you’ll be able to get a copy of the talk. What happened to the Jewish community in Port Said?
A - There was quite a strong Jewish community in Port Said. They’ve all left. To the best of anybody’s knowledge, I don’t think there is a Jew left in Port Said. There were also communities in cities like Tanta, in the Nile Delta, sort of halfway between Cairo, Alexandria, and they today are totally extinct. So really, if I say there are eight Jews or people who recognise themselves as Jewish in Egypt today, they are between Cairo and Alex.
Q - [Judi] I have another question here. “Is it unsafe to identify as Jewish?” We have somebody who’s going to be visiting Egypt in a couple of weeks time and they want to know.
A - Well, first of all, when we went there, we had that trip to each Egypt, 180 of us, there was very, very strong security provided by the police. Whether I would actually walk around with kippah and pious and towelette, I’m not so sure.
Q - [Judi] Thank you. Why do the Egyptians not allow the records of past Jews to be examined?
A - I wish I knew. We’ve been trying to get access to these records, which for most of us are sole proof of not only religious but civilian identity for 15 years now. I think that we once had a meeting with the Foreign Minister under Mubarak, and he told us that they were reluctant to let them go because they didn’t want them to be used as a basis for compensation and claims. Which is not really a valid argument because those records do not contain anything, what I would call like a document of title. If I wanted to prove that a building or a hotel belonged to my family, I would not find anything there. You know, I would need to go to get a land registry, to get a document of title. All these are sort of register of birth, marriage and death.
Q - [Judi] I have a message here from Ari. He says, “My friend David Antibee grandfather was the Chief Rabbi in Cairo and was buried in Cairo. However, his remains are still in Cairo and the Egyptian government refused to send his remains to Israel. Why is that?”
A - There have been some people who have taken the remains of their family back to Israel or out of Egypt. But I really don’t know why this at the moment is not possible.
Q - [Judi] And I have someone asking, “Is there any way to find out?” She wants to find out it if her grandfather is buried in Alexandria Cemetery. Is there any way for her to try and find this out?
A - With difficulty. Because the registers of those registers, which were there was also amongst these archive a register, a chronological register, of burials. So if you knew more or less the date of the burial of your grandfather or whatever, they would look it up and say, “Yes, he is buried in there are three Alexandria cemeteries. Cemetery number two, Kisma plot number so and so, row so and so.” But if you don’t have those registers, unless you want to sort of walk around and look at every grave, it is really not easy.
Q - [Judi] And I will ask another question. What do you feel about Egypt now? Do you still have good feelings for Egypt?
A - I personally do, yes. I do not carry any resentment. No.
[Judi] Thank you. All right. So just quickly just cast my eye over the last few. There’s a lot of thank yous. “Thank you so much. I found the talk, so moving and informative.” That’s from Rhonda. So we have a lot of thank you messages and interesting talk and moving presentation. Thank you so much. And on that note, I will say thank you and thank you to everybody who joined us today.
Well, thank you Wendy.
[Judi] And hopefully we’ll see you back soon.
Soon. Absolutely.
[Judi] Fabulous. Fantastic. Thank you, everybody, and thank you, Alec again. Thank you. Bye-bye.