Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will recount it to thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. (Deuteronomy 32:7)
This organization shall be known as HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF JEWS FROM EGYPT, and not of Egypt or of Egyptian Jews, but FROM EGYPT
Story of Egypt's Jews: Rich, complex, not yet over
AP Photos NY381-383 of April 16
By DONNA BRYSON
Associated Press Writer
04-16-2003 17:15CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ In a fifth-floor office nearest the creaky elevator, behind a door that still bears the name of their late father and law firm's founder, attorneys Magda and Nadia Haroun chat about childhood visits to the synagogue and family seders.
It's tempting to see them, washed in the sepia light of late morning,as relics of an Egyptian Jewish community that once numbered in the tensof thousands but has dwindled to about 100.
It quickly becomes clear, though, the sisters are vibrant parts oftoday. Their conversation ranges over their father's communism andEgyptian nationalism, their own criticism of Israel's treatment ofPalestinians, the nuances of their legal speciality _ patent law.They observed Passover _ with its traditional recital of the story ofMoses leading the Jews out of Egypt _ as they do every year, with afamily gathering Wednesday evening for the traditional meal known as aseder.
Like the Harouns' story, the story of Egypt's Jews is rich and complex.Most Jews left Egypt a half century ago, heading to the United States,Europe, Israel and elsewhere when turmoil over the emergence of theJewish state of Israel made them unwelcome here and across the MiddleEast.
The Haroun sisters still count among their close friends the Muslimsand Christians with whom they went to school as girls, and each grew upto marry Muslims. But much has changed in a generation, says NadiaHaroun. Her daughter was ostracized when she revealed to schoolmatesthat her mother was Jewish.
"She suffered a lot for telling the truth, because the mentality of thepeople has changed," Nadia Haroun said.
The history of Jews in Egypt is a story most people in thisoverwhelmingly Muslim country of more than 69 million barely know.Some look back with nostalgia, saying a spirit of tolerance now lostenabled Jews to contribute significantly to Egypt's cultural andpolitical landscape.
Today, Egyptian media are filled with words and ideas that would beseen as anti-Semitic in most places.
Government officials insist that is an expression not of hatred ofJews, but rather popular anger at Israel. Even though Egypt in 1979became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel,relations have never been warm.
Ali Salem, a Muslim writer and social commentator, sees more to it. Heargues that while Israel cannot be ignored, Egyptians' attitudes towardJews also were shaped by government leaders who thought in military"terms of enemies and friends."
Since Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser led the 1952 overthrow of Egypt'sBritish-backed monarchy, the military has played a central role inpolitics. Liberals like Salem accuse the regime of focusing attention on"the other" _ Israel, Jews, Western imperialists _ to justifyauthoritarian rule.
Add the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt, and the result is acountry in which the government last year helped finance a TV seriesthat treated the anti-Semitic forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"as history.
Joel Beinin, who teaches Middle East history at Stanford University,said that when he researched a book on the Jews of Egypt, he foundgovernment records hard to track down and Jews still here wary oftelling their story for fear of getting mixed up in politics.
"Certainly the history of the Jews in modern Egypt is an enormouslycontentious issue," he said.
Beinin's 1998 book, "The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture,Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora," portrays an EgyptianJewish community so diverse that community seems a misnomer.
Jews from elsewhere in the Arab world started arriving in large numbersin the 19th century in search of economic opportunity.
Polyglot Jews immigrated from across Europe at the turn of the 20thcentury, perhaps fleeing anti-Semitism, to form an element of theurbane, cosmopolitan culture for which Cairo and Alexandria werecelebrated before World War II.
There were other Jews already here. The Karaites, Arabic-speaking Jews,had lived in Egypt for at least 1,000 years and in their dress andconservative outlook resembled their Muslim neighbors. A minority withina minority, Karaites rejected the Talmud and relied only on the Torahfor guidance on how to live as a Jew.
Yoram Meital, head of the Middle East Studies Department at Israel'sBen Gurion University, estimates Egypt's was home to 100,000 Jews whenIsrael was founded in 1948. By then, he says, many Egyptian Jewssupported the creation of a Jewish state, though only half moved toIsrael.
If there were supporters of Israel, there were also Jews like ChehataHaroun. The father of lawyers Nadia and Magda counted himself anEgyptian, not a Jewish, nationalist.
In the 1940s, Haroun, whose family roots are in what is now Syria andLebanon, was a founding member of the Egyptian Communist Party and overthe years was repeatedly arrested and detained. He remained a politicalactivist until the last years of his life.
When Haroun, an outspoken critic of what he saw as Israeli injusticestoward Palestinians, died in 2001 at age 82, he left instructions thatno Israeli rabbi officiate at his funeral. It had been generations sinceEgypt had any rabbis of its own, and the funeral was delayed more than aweek until a rabbi could be brought from France.
"He was convinced until he died that he was an Egyptian citizen ofJewish religion," Magda Haroun said. "He believed nobody can force youto leave your country because of your religion. Many people did leave,but my father was a stubborn man."
His two children sometimes found staying behind difficult. By the1960s, their only relatives in Egypt were each other and their parents.Magda Haroun, 50, said that when she finished high school, she wanted togo abroad to college, but her father insisted she and Nadia, two yearsyounger, attend an Egyptian university before deciding whether to leave.When they graduated, they were rooted.
They were taught never to hide they were Jews, though they say theidentity was mainly a cultural one after their grandfather died whenthey were girls.
By the time he was a father himself, Chehata Haroun may have forgottenthe prayers he learned as a boy. But out of respect for his parents andthen as a family tradition, he marked Jewish holidays with dinners atwhich non-Jewish friends often outnumbered the hosts, his daughtersremember.
The sisters say their children may decide their future is out of Egypt,but they expect to finish their lives here, as their father wished."He gave us an identity," Magda Haroun said. "I see with my relativeswho left _ my cousins, for example, who lived in France _ for a longtime they didn't know who they were. They had this feeling a part ofthem was still here."
The sisters have started going to synagogue again, mostly to socializewith Cairo's other remaining Jews, women of their parents' generationwho gather at the blue-domed Gates of Heaven synagogue on holidays orsimply to chat over lunch. Once the synagogue of the elite, Gates ofHeaven is empty most days, guarded by police for fear of attacks byMuslim militants.
"We are the last of the Jewish community," Magda Haroun said. "But Ithink, like the pharaohs, like the (early Christians), like the Romans,we have been here. It must be marked."