Jews in Egypt: Backstory

By permission of Joel Beinin, author of The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, in which photo appears.

Only a very small Jewish community remains in Egypt today. But its restored architectural remnants – the Ibn Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo, the Maimonides synagogue in Cairo’s old Jewish Quarter, the Karaite synagogue in Cairo’s ‘Abbasiyya district, the Sha‘ar Hashamayim (Gate of Heaven) synagogue on ‘Adli Street in Cairo, and the tomb of Rabbi Ya‘kov Abu Hatzeira in Damanhur are evidence of a community with a long history in Egypt.

Ancient History

The Jewish connection to Egypt begins with the stories of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses in the Hebrew Bible. They are central elements of the Jewish tradition regardless of their historical status. The earliest historical evidence of a Jewish community in Egypt dates to about 650 BCE. A garrison of Jewish soldiers on Elephantine Island near Aswan fought in the Nubian campaign of Pharaoh Psamtik II. During the Ptolemaic era a very large number of Jews settled in Alexandria and the surrounding regions, and eventually throughout Egypt. Egypt’s Jews, like the Christians, faced religious persecution and high taxes in the late Byzantine era. Therefore, they cooperated with the Muslim conquest of the country in 641 CE. According to a document attributed to ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, there were then 40,000 Jews in Alexandria.

The Muslim Era

In the Tulunid era (863-905), a strong Karaite Jewish community was established in Egypt. The Karaites do not accept the Talmud as the definitive source of Jewish religious law and interpretation of the Bible. Those who do accept the authority of the Talmud are known as Rabbanites.

There was a large and active Karaite community in the Tulunid and Fatimid (969-1171) periods. Yet, by the 1940s there were only about 5,000 Karaites in Egypt. Elsewhere Karaites were considered heretics. But in Egypt they were considered by all to be Jews.

During the Fatimid period – except for the reign of Caliph Hakim (996-1020) – both Rabbanite and Karaite Jews prospered. The great scholar and physician Maimonides settled in Fustat in 1166 and became a physician to the family of Salah al-Din (Saladin). The Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492. Some of them eventually settled in Egypt. Many Spanish-Ottoman Jews came to Egypt from Izmir, Aleppo, and other Ottoman regions in the 1860s and beyond, seeking economic opportunities created by the cotton boom and the construction of the Suez Canal. Ashkenazi (German or Eastern European) Jews first came to Egypt in the late 19th century seeking refuge from persecution in Tsarist Russia. They settled mainly in the Darb al-Barabira quarter of Cairo. According to the 1898 census, there were 25,200 Jews out of Egypt’s total population of 9,734,405. By the 1940s the number of Jews grew to about 75,000.

Details from the facade of the neo-Pharonic Sha‘ar Hashamayim (Gate of Heaven) Synagogue in Cairo. The building is currently guarded by the Egyptian army and photos are not allowed.

Modern History

By the 20th century the Egyptian Jewish community was very diverse. Some Jews were completely Arabized. Others were educated in French and spoke it at home. A prominent minority were very wealthy and belonged to Egypt’s cosmopolitan elite. They had business alliances with many of Egypt’s prominent business families. For example, Muhammad Mahmud Khalil Bey was called by his friends “Muhammad Mosseri” because of his close ties with the wealthy Jewish Mosseri family.

Jews who lived in Cairo’s Rabbanite or Karaite Jewish quarter or the port district of Alexandria were as poor as their Muslim neighbors and shared their culture and lifestyle. This is evident in Maurice Shammas’s collection of short stories in Arabic – al-Shaykh Shabtay wa-hikayat min harat al-yahud (Sheikh Shabtai and Stories from the Jewish Quarter). This precious document is unfortunately very difficult to find.

Many consider the period between the two 20th century Egyptian revolutions - 1919 and 1952 – as a golden age for Egyptian Jews. Elite Jews – like the President of Cairo’s Sephardic Jewish community, Yusuf ‘Aslan Qattawi Pasha (1861–1942) – were well-integrated into the political, economic, and social life of the country. Alice Suarès Qattawi was first lady-in-waiting to Queens Farida and Nazli. Salvator Cicurel, chairman of the board of the Cicurel department store chain, was captain of Egypt’s 1928 Olympic fencing team, a member of the Cairo Jewish Community Council, and council president from 1946 to 1957.

While the integration of well-known elites was the most visible, there were similarly warm relationships in most sectors of urban Egyptian society. There were, however, no Jewish peasants. There were prominent Jewish supporters of the Wafd (Léon Castro and Félix Benzakein). There was also a substantial Jewish presence in the Egyptian communist movement. This has been the subject of intense debate. The controversy should be framed by two realities that are often forgotten: 1) Only a minority of Jewish youth were communists. Most, like their parents, were apolitical. 2) Only a minority of Egyptian communists were Jews.

Zionism was not a prominent factor in the Jewish community. Even in the 1940s, only about 10% of Egyptian Jews were active Zionists. Qattawi Pasha, his son René who succeeded him as head of the Jewish community, and Chief Rabbi Haim Nahum, who came from Istanbul in 1924 and served the community until he died in 1960, all strongly and publicly opposed Zionism. In 1936 René Qattawi supported the establishment of the “Association of Egyptian Jewish Youth” whose slogan was “Egypt is my homeland. Arabic is my language.”

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 did not bode well for Egyptian Jews. But it did not put a dramatic end to the community. About 24,400 Jews left Egypt from 1948 to 1951, leaving about 50,000 in Egypt. Two later events were the key factors in the demise of Egyptian Jewry.

In 1954 Egyptian Jews who had been recruited and trained by Israeli military intelligence were arrested soon after they carried out an amateurish campaign of bombings in cinemas, the Alexandria post office, the US Information Service library, and the Cairo train station. Two of the group – Musa (Moshe) Marzuq and Sami (Shmu’el) ‘Azar were executed in January 1955. This affair, known as “Operation Susanah,” raised questions about the loyalty of Egypt’s Jews. Many Egyptians believed that Israel’s attack on Egyptian bases in the Gaza Strip on February 28, which killed about 40 people, was in retaliation for the executions. Gamal Abdel Nasser later told the Eric Rouleau, the French (originally Egyptian Jewish) correspondent for Le Monde that this raid convinced him that peace with Israel was impossible.

The Gaza raid was a key event in the countdown to the 1956 tripartite aggression against Egypt. Following the Israeli-French-British attack, over half of Egypt’s remaining Jews left the country. While only British and French citizens were expelled, the others were in various ways pressured to leave. Thus, between 1919 and 1956, many Egyptians who once saw Egyptian Jews as a national asset came to regard them as a fifth column.

The story of Egyptian Jews after 1956 is a tale of decline. Almost all the Jewish institutions were closed. More Jews continued to leave. By 1967 there were perhaps 5,000 Jews left in Egypt. The 1967 war was another blow to the Jewish community. All males between 17 and 60 were incarcerated, including people like Shehata Harun who had a long, public history of militant opposition to Zionism. Some were held for three years.

The last Jewish wedding in Egypt was conducted in 1984. A small and diminishing number of individuals remained after that. But in many respects this marked the end of Jews as a community in Egypt.

by Joel Beinin
August 2010