Posted By  richards on March 31, 2013    
				
				  From its peak in the aftermath of the  Second World War, when the Jews in Egypt numbered around 80,000,  the community collapsed. Today there are no more than a few dozen  remaining. All are over 50 years old. Most are women who married  Muslims or Christians, meaning their children have been raised as  non-Jews and that the community will probably die out within a  generation.
    Now a documentary chronicling their experiences has been    released in Egyptian cinemas. Billed as the first film of this    kind to be allowed out on general release, Jews of Egypt    presents an account of a community whose 20th-century fortunes,    once so buoyant, suddenly came crashing down.  
    In the early years of Nasser's nationalist revolution, the    Jewish presence in Egypt disintegrated. Rabbi Andrew Baker, an    American trying to establish a fund to preserve Egypt's Jewish    monuments, said it is possible to question whether there was    any future left for Jews in Egypt. He added that the remnants    are possessed by a "schizophrenic" outlook on their position in    society.  
    On one hand they are proud of a legacy that stretches back    3,000 years to the time of Ramses II, but on the other they    live a precarious existence in a country weaned on decades of    antipathy towards Israel  which has fought four wars with    Egypt since 1948. "They know that Jews are associated with    Israel," he said. "My sense is they feel it might encourage    popular anger if they are too open about their religion."  
    It was not always like this. The great Jewish scholar    Maimonides was once physician to Saladin, the medieval foe of    King Richard the Lionheart. More recently, in the early 20th    century, King Fouad recruited two Jewish scions of the famous    Qattawi family to be his finance minister and speech writer.    His playboy son, Farouk, meanwhile, employed them in a rather    less august context; his mistress and his card-table chums were    Jewish.  
    Anti-Semitic sentiment had been fuelled at times by the growth    of the Muslim Brotherhood and a rising tide of nationalism. But    after the creation of Israel in 1948, the mood started turning    very sour. Following the Suez crisis of 1956, when Israel    helped Britain and France invade Egypt to reclaim the Suez    Canal and topple Nasser, the government ordered a wave of    expulsions. The nation's wealthier Jews had often been    implacably opposed to Israel, but about a fifth of the    country's Jewry  more than 15,000 refugees  eventually    emigrated east to the new Jewish state.  
    Today the Jews of Egypt live in a climate of anti-Zionism which    often boils over into outright anti-Semitism. "When Israel came    to existence, people didn't feel comfortable dealing with    Jews," said Egyptian author Ahmed Towfik. "Many mixed the    concept of Zionism and Judaism."  
    The government has carried out high-profile restoration    projects on Egypt's synagogues over the years, yet some among    the Egyptian diaspora complain of official ambivalence. Cairo's    famous Bassatine cemetery, allotted to Jews in the 9th century,    is now partially submerged by sewage.  
    Yves Fedida was among the tens of thousands of Egyptian Jews    compelled to leave the country during the wave of anti-Zionism    that followed the creation of Israel in 1948. As a Jewish    schoolboy in Hendon, north London, he sat down at his bedroom    desk in the spring of 1959 and began writing a letter. He did    not expect a reply  his missive, after all, was addressed to    Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian demagogue, Britain's arch-nemesis    in the Middle East, and the man responsible for expelling the    14-year-old from his homeland. "I think I addressed it to the    Presidential Palace," Mr Fedida told The Independent on    Sunday. "Nowadays it would have to go through national    security and would take about five years to get there."  
    Mr Fedida received a reply from Nasser after just a month. The    Egyptian President wrote that with "great pleasure" he was    granting him temporary permission to return to Alexandria and    see his mother, who had been allowed to stay. The letter,    signed in blue ink, ended with the revolutionary autocrat    expressing his "best wishes for your happiness, and sincere    admiration for your filial sentiment". Mr Fedida was permitted    to return for only nine months  yet he was one of the lucky    ones. Now 67, he runs a foundation dedicated to preserving    Egypt's Jewish heritage. "You say the word Jew now and    everybody freezes," he said. "You are automatically a spy or a    bloodthirsty conspirator. It's a crazy, crazy situation."  
See the rest here:
Exodus: Fall of the Jews in Egypt
				
Category: Jewish American Heritage Month |  
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