| In this area you will find collections of Papers, essays, non fiction articles,and scholarly works. that may have been submitted or copied from various sources. If you have an article dealing with our objective you wish to submit please do so. Wish to contribute a new paper or article? Pleace click here |
| ARTICLES | | |
| A COMMON HISTORY by Al-Ahram Weekly | The artefacts and monuments used by Egypt's Jews are part of our national heritage. They tell the story of the Jewish community in Egypt over the centuries." This is how Mohsen Abdel-Rahman Rabi', director of the Department of Jewish Antiquities (DJA) at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, underlines the importance of his responsibility. | |
| THE ABU-ZA'ABAL PRISON | Abu-Za’abal is a complex of prisons located about an hour’s drive from Cairo on the Port Said road, past Heliopolis and about 10 miles from Ismailia. The prison buildings are fairly modern, having been rebuilt after being bombed in 1956. There are separate buildings for common law prisoners; a so called Internment Camp building for prisoners awaiting trial; and a House of Correction, a three story building, used for political prisoners of various kinds. | |
| NASSER'S JEWS 1-2 | This document needs no commentary. It was written in French by an Egyptian Jew from Cairo who was arrested last June 1967, then liberated, deprived of his nationality and expelled ... For obvious reasons, we shall not reveal the author's identity. It so happens that he is a Jew, and he describes here the cruelty which the Egyptians inflict upon the Jews. No matter what the religion, nationality, race or opinions of a man, no matter in what country one deals with the fate of human beings, such treatment is inadmissible. This must be said. It must also be said that, if every country has had its sadistic soldiers and jailers, no one in Egypt has, to our knowledge, raised his voice in public protest against what is going on in his country. | |
| NASSER'S JEWS 3-4 | It began before Akaba/Tiran.
It all began in May before the war, before Akaba/Tiran. At the beginning of May the Jews connected with or employed by the public institutions received a letter sending them on vacation for an unlimited period, and then a second dismissing them. Their bank accounts were blocked.
When with outstretched arms Nasser said during his press conference: "To the Jews we say 'Come'," the Jews were not even concerned that for the first time in fifteen years Nasser had not said "Zionist" or "Israeli" but "Jew." They knew. This time there would be no legal fiction. With Akaba blocked, war must break out. This time they knew they would be arrested as in 1948 and 1956, but it would | |
| Egypt 1753 | The great gaon the Hida (Haim Yosef David Azulai) z"l was born in the holy city of Jerusalem in 1724. From his youth, it was apparent that he was destined for greatness. He studied under great rabbanim; R’ Zerachia ( his father), R’ Yonah Nabon, the saintly Rashash, and R’ Yom Tov Elgazi. At age 17 he published his first monumental work, Shaar Yosef, a commentary on Tractate Horayot. | |
Cairo's Jewish Community Stages Palace Revolt |  In view of recent developments, Bassatine News felt it necessary to produce this special issue to update you with the events of Cairo’s Jewish community during the week August 19-24, 1996. Since it has been partly reported in The Egyptian Gazette we insert the story as it appeared. (see box). The original statutes governing the communal council are based on those of Paris dated 1789. | |
| House of Cicurel |  SOLOMON CICUREL’S widely attended funeral procession crossed the entire city from Giza to the Jewish cemetery of Bassatine beyond Old Cairo. Traffic and normal business life were suspended for the occasion. Understandably, Messrs. Cicurel Establishments were closed all day. The other principal trading and commercial houses - Chemla, Gattegno, Ades, | |
| Breaking Away |  "_Ya khawaga_ Mizrahi", said the Secret Service man over the telephone, "bring your son Maurice to our headquarters at 3 p.m. this afternoon." My father blanched. "But he is only a child", he protested. "Don’t worry", the man said. "Just five minutes for a routine check."... | |
| Egyptian Jewish Identities. | In July 1954, Israeli Military Intelligence ordered an espionage network of Egyptian Jews it had formed three years earlier to launch "Operation Susannah" -- a campaign to fire bomb the main Alexandria post office, the United States Information Agency offices in Cairo and Alexandria, .... | |
Egypt Jewish Heritage is disappearing
| This very important article deals with the state of the property, synagogues, libraries, artifacts, geniza scrolls, graves, and cemeteries of the Jewish community in Egypt at present. During the communal presidential of Yusuf Dane in Cairo until his death in 1988 many synagogues were sold. Presently, his | |
|  Al Ahram Jan 7, 1994 reporting on a ruling by the Egyptian court negating the right of the Jewish community to the Bassatine (jpg. in arabic) | |
| Great Rabbis of the Arab Empire | In 657, when Ali ibn AbuTalib – the fourth Caliph to rule after the death of Mohammed – extended the Muslim conquest into Iraq, he was greeted wholeheartedly by the Jews there, then the most important of the world’s Jewish communities. Ali saw the Jews of Iraq as a natural ally and granted them autonomy. This was the dawn of a new era of Jewish cultural creativity, one | |
| From Gemany to Port Said to Shanghai | When speaking of Jews from Egypt, most people relate to the largest communities of Cairo and Alexandria, very little is known about Port-Said’s. Although it numbered about 600 persons, it witnessed some important events which occurred before and after World War II. | |
| HSJE Inaugural | For a number of years, a handful of Jews in the New York City area who had origins in the land of Egypt had privately discussed the possibility of forming a historical society in order to document and preserve the heritage of an illustrious community which once numbered over 80,000 people. Beginning this fall (September 1995) the time proved ripe for the project to pass beyond the realm of mere discussion, into realit.. | |
| House of Yacoub Cattaui The Dynasty |  ON DECEMBER 21, 1950 a landmark auction took place in a large villa on Ibrahim Pasha Naguib Street, Garden City. The event, regarded by many as one of the social and intellectual highlights of the season, consisted of auctioning off the extraordinary library of senator Joseph Aslan Cattaui Pasha (author of Coup d’oeil sur la chronologie de la nation Egyptienne, Plon, Paris,1931), | |
| Victor Stoloff | Mr. Victor Stoloff who’s work in the visual arts has been recognized throughout the world...As producer, director, writer, and editor, Mr. .Victor Stoloff has actively engaged in producing feature motion pictures and television programs throughout the World... | |
| Under my father talis | It is a very meaningful poem to me in that it encapsulates my recollections of a very special time as a young girl going to the Abraham Betesh synagogue in Heliopolis.... | |
| 1977 Man of the Year: Anwar Sadat |  Anwar Sadat: Architect of a New Mideast With one stunning stroke he designed a daring approach to peace He called it "a sacred mission," and history may judge it so. By the trajectory of his 28-minute flight from a base in the Canal Zone to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat changed the course of Middle Eastern events for generations to come. More emphatically than anything that has happened | |
| Problem of identity | More than thirty years ago, I left Egypt to study psychology in the United States. I had been accepted for graduate work at Michigan State University. While I could speak English correctly, being a graduate of the American University at Cairo. I had a foreign accent. Most of the time people I met would ask me about my background.... | |
| Sanctity of the Dead | The Bassatine Jewish cemetery lies between the center of Cairo and the suburb of Maadi. This land then part of the desert was donated in the 9th century by Sultan Ahmed ibn Touloun to the Jewish community of Egypt then represented by Saadia ben Joseph also known as Said al-Fayoumi, an Egyptian Jew who wrote in Arabic and was regarded internationally as the outstanding Jewish literary and political figure in the middle ages. Many celebrities from among the Jews of Egypt are buried there, but it is also a last resting place for thousands of others who, over the centuries, fled to Cairo from European terror and whose graves are a further testimony to Egyptian tolerance and hospitality. | |
| Seder El Tawhid |  A translation from Nahar Misrayim written by Hakham Refael Aharon Ben-Shimeon Alexandria in 1908. Translation by Joseph E. Mosseri. There is an ancient custom here in Egypt that on the night of Rosh Hodesh Nissan they make in the synagogue with lots of people and great pomp Seder El-Tawhid. It is an order of learning... | |
| Great Rabbis of the Muslim empire | In 657, when Ali ibn AbuTalib – the fourth Caliph to rule after the death of Mohammed – extended the Muslim conquest into Iraq, he was greeted wholeheartedly by the Jews there, then the most important of the world’s Jewish communities. Ali saw the Jews of Iraq as a natural ally and granted them autonomy. This was the dawn of a new era of Jewish cultural creativity, one that lasted almost 600 years and was central in the development of Judaism | |
| Egypt: The Search for Identity | I went back to Egypt in 1982, thirty six years after I had left, and in a sense, it was no longer there. The Egypt I had known had an extraordinary, rich, lively and many-layered identity. A brief visit, four years after the Revolution, showed remarkably little change from the time when I had lived there, but now, three rgimes later | |
| I dream of Egypt | Cecile B. DeMille "Ten Commandments" version of the Biblical Exodus, may have overlooked a modern dramatic theme. I am referring to the Second Exodus of some 90,000 Egyptian Jews starting in 1948 through the late 1960’s... | |
| Israel Is Plunged into War | Since Israel's independence in 1948, Arabs and Israelis have been locked in a series of major wars. What were the causes and sad consequences of these armed conflicts? Can a peace formula be found to end this bitter struggle? | |
| Jews of Egypt | "Jews from Egypt". Are not the two terms inconsistent The Jews are they not according to tradition "Those who CAME OUT from the land of Egypt"... | |
| Jewish families in Alexandria | In 1840, at the height of the "Damascus Affair", the blood libel against the Jews of Damascus, Moses Montefiore traveled to the Middle East. Whilst in Alexandria, he convened a meeting of the Jews of that city with a view to the drafting of written statutes for that community. | |
| Jewish communities and communal leaders | JEWISH COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNAL LEADERS IN PROVINCIAL EGYPT IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Haskamat Ketoubot and Marriages in Egypt; | |
| Lost Prophesy | Egyptian Jews belong to a very ancient culture. In biblical times, when Jacob and his family fled from the famine besieging the land of Canaan, Egypt opened its doors. It was in Egypt that the children and grand children of Jacob-Israel multiplied and became a people of twelve tribes.... | |
