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
Letter to Osama el Baz
August 13, 1996
Honorable Osama El Baz
Vice President of the Arab Republic of Egypt.
Cairo Egypt.
Honorable Osama El. Baz.
Please Accept my warmest greetings and sincere blessings from our entire community for your kind and sincere invitation to me, as representative advocate for our community, to travel to Egypt in October in order to pick up the majority of our communities Torahs, Prayer and Study books and memorial lanterns which were donated to our community by our forefathers over the last 150 years. I would like to make you aware that these artifacts are located in various cities in Egypt including Alexandria and Cairo and some of these artifacts are located in government storage, having been confiscated when some in the community left with these Sefer Torah. Your generosity wisdom and kindness in this gesture will never be forgotten and will serve to strengthen the relations between our communities and the government of Egypt.. Thank you in advance for this grand gesture.
In your visit, you offered to help me to negotiate with the minister of culture in Egypt to take control of all of the magnificent Synagogues and cemeteries in Egypt, granting them the status of landmark edifices so that they can enjoy the protection which such structures receive for the benefit of posterity and the tourists who will surely flood Egypt once they witness the generosity and compassion which the Egyptian government manifests in these wise and beneficent gestures towards the Jewish communities.
Also it would be a great service for the entire Jewish community if you could help us in efforts to obtain the Rabbinate records of Birth, Death and Marriage of the People who lived in Egypt, so that Egyptian Jews can have clear records of their ancestry.
With these humanitarian acts of generosity, you will receive the blessings and the prayers of our entire community and we will be forever in your debt for these kindness. I know that there are many business people within our community are willing to invest in and /or produce goods in their home country of Egypt as well as being eager to visit their birth place in Egypt (as you witnessed the love and desire of my father to do so), Certainly with these gestures of brotherhood which you have offered, the hearts of all peoples will be moved to respond in kind.
I sincerely hope and pray the almighty Allah, our common God, will let the blessed waters of peace and prosperity flow throughout the great Republic of Egypt, refreshing the people of Egypt with the blessing which only the almighty can provide.
Respectfully yours
Clement Soffer