A CALL TO JEWS FROM EGYPT EVERYWHERE

Please sign the following petition to the President of Egypt and forward it to as many Jews from Egypt as you know. Our objective is very simple. We want to salvage our heritage before it's too late. We want our children and grandchildren to know us better. We want to get back our life-cycle records, our genealogical records, our holy and secular books, our artifacts, our Torah scrolls -- all the bits and pieces of our lost world that are still accessible. The letter below is polite and to the point. It will be mailed in a few weeks, once we collect enough signatures. United, we have a chance of succeeding. Please help.

President Hosni Mubarak

Kasr El Gomhoury

Cairo, Egypt

Your Excellency,

We, the members of the Historical Society of Jews From Egypt (HSJE), with the backing of the international community of Jews from Egypt, have often written to you concerning our Jewish artifacts still in Egypt. These are very dear to us, and constitute our cultural heritage. Unfortunately, we have not yet received a response from you.

We sincerely hope this plea will be answered soon, and that we will have the great pleasure of your kind help and cooperation. We have very good memories of Egypt and of the Egyptian people and culture. We look forward to renewing the warm relationship with the Egyptian people we had in the past when we were living in Egypt. Many of us who have returned to visit have been overwhelmed by the traditional Egyptian hospitality.

As you can imagine, the Torah scrolls (Sefarim), the religious and secular books, the community records located at the Rabbinates (Cairo and Alexandria), and our entire cultural heritage left in Egypt, from the time of our ancestors to the present, are all very dear to us. The fact that they are not accessible to us, or to scholars who would study them for posterity, gives us much sorrow. 

We have a suggestion that we hope you will kindly consider: Transfer these Jewish artifacts to an academic institution in New York, where they would be accessible to all. Scholars from all over the world would then be able to study the documents. This action would also give great comfort to the families who originally donated these items to be used in a synagogue on a perpetual basis. Naturally, we are ready to pay for their transfer. We suggest to leave two Torah scrolls in each synagogue for tourists who might wish to worship there on the Sabbath and holidays.

Last but not least, the renewal of the warm relationship between the Jews from Egypt and the Egyptian people could be a model for the future. It would allow many young Jews in the Diaspora to appreciate their historical connection to Egypt. It would also hasten friendly and peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews in the entire Middle East.

Attached please find petitions collected from our compatriots the Jews From Egypt concerning this matter.

May G-D bless you and bless Egypt, and may peace reign throughout the land, InShaAllah.