As many of you know, I have never converted to Judaism. Being raised in a large Irish Catholic family I have always felt conflicted about casting off my roots and my own religious upbringing for my husband’s. Yet I have fully embraced Daniel’s religion and been extremely involved in my children’s Jewish upbringing. That journey, in itself, has led me to experience a relationship with Judaism that is one of the most rewarding in my life. I don’t feel any need for the moment to make it official because it spiritually lives in my soul.
Moving to Egypt as an American family with Jewish children six months ago-- where we now know there are less than a few dozen native Jews in the entire country-- has not always been easy for us. We were part of a loving, and accepting, interfaith community in a reformed synagogue in London, where for a while I even served on the hospitality committee.
The children attend a school here that is nearly 90 percent Egyptian and have had to be very discreet about their background, as the diplomatic ties with Israel are very tense right now, despite thirty-years of peace. We are nearly certain our children are the only Jewish children in their school. When one friend of Harriet's found out, she said to her, "You know you are probably the only Jew in the whole school." (There are 700 kids there.) Harriet answered, "Actually, there are two more," meaning her siblings.
Certain good friends at their school now know they are Jewish and are very curious about their religious background and open in discussing their views with them as they have never met a Jew before. To that end, the children have had their own small diplomatic role here, letting a select group of Egypt’s next generation get to know some Jews personally. Some of their new friends even attended our holiday party, complete with lit Menorahs.
Since moving here, we have also become involved with the Jewish Community of Cairo, which is a very small group indeed, and where we seem to be one of the few, if not only, Western families involved. As I posted earlier, when we attended Rosh Hashana services in a suburb of Cairo, there were initially not enough attendants to form a “minyan,” a group of ten adult male Jews necessary to have a service, requiring them to pull some security men from the Israeli Embassy nearby.
Similarly, when we went to Simcha Torah services at the Shaar Hashamain synagogue in downtown Cairo (to your left), a group visiting from Israel was there, providing the numbers needed for the service to take place. When we attended a candle lighting at the Israeli Embassy in December, our kids were just three of a handful of non-embassy kids there.
However, this week, a lovely event took place here, which brought a lot of Jews to Cairo. The Egyptian government recently finished a two-year restoration of the Maimonides Synagogue in the old Jewish Quarter of Cairo—a very appreciated gesture in these difficult times diplomatically. To celebrate, a delegation of Rabbis from Israel (and one from America), as well as some of the last remaining Jews in Egypt and a group of Egyptian Jews now living in other parts of the world, all traveled to Cairo for the three-day celebration. The delegation was probably fifty strong, and included the wife of the first Israeli Ambassador who was posted here after peace was first established by Anwar Sadat and Manachem Begin in 1978.
I have included a picture of the new synagogue on the top of this post. It is beautiful. There were tears in many guests’ eyes as they roamed the synagogue before the festivities began, which included singing and dancing. In attendance was the new Ambassador to Egypt from Israel, Yitzhak Levanon, as well as the U.S. Ambassador, Margaret Scobey.
The 19th century synagogue was named after a 12th century Jewish scholar, physician and philosopher, who fled persecution in Spain for Egypt and was briefly buried here when he died in 1204. The synagogue was built over the site of his grave before his remains were moved to what is now Israel. Even before this renovation, when there was no roof and only collapsing walls, Jews would travel here from all over the world to sleep in its basement, as the site is known to have healing powers.
There were dinners and lectures and many festivities, which meant there were numerous occasions to hear these old Jewish stories of Cairo. Then yesterday, we had another synagogue visit, this time to a Karaite Synagogue here, which is set to be restored but has not been opened for decades, I believe. The Karaites were, and continue to be, a sect of Judaism which closely follows the Torah and rejects the post-biblical traditions of the Talmud and latter Rabinic works. They were quite a large sect in Cairo—14,000 strong in 1947 (though there were many more than ten times that number of what I will refer to as traditional Jews here and in Alexandria at the same time.) Both Jewish sects worked closely together though they practiced separately.
In that synagogue, which is still dusty and decrepit, there was a wall of wooden lockers (see pictures just above). It was their tradition to remove all shoes before entering. They would then worship on their knees on rugs laid out in the sanctuary, much like the Muslims. In the lockers, I saw there were still old Kippahs and prayer books, though no services have taken place there in nearly forty years. One woman stood up and said she was the last Karaite Jew in Egypt. She recounted coming there with her family as a child, but was too overcome to speak to the group.
I also had the honor to speak to a few of the remaining Jews in Alexandria, women in their seventies and late sixties, who remained there and help maintain the synagogue in Alexandria and the Jewish cemeteries there. They invited us to come and visit, which we surely will. In addition, I met a woman who fled Alexandria at 17 with her husband of two days in 1956. Their parents married them in a synagogue with no electricity just before they departed Egypt following the Suez Crisis. This way the young couple could end up in the same place for their new life, which in their case was England, where she still lives. Though she had been back to visit often, her friend had not been back to Egypt in 55-years and cried as she thanked Carmen Weinstein, the head of the Jewish Community in Cairo, for working with the Egyptian government to make this happen and for organizing all the events surrounding the Maimonides Synagogue opening. It made me wish I had encouraged the wife of our Rabbi in London, Renee, to come for the events, as she was born in Egypt and had to flee with her family at a very young age.
For me, as an enormous fan of the book, “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit,” by Lucette Lagnado, a Wall Street Journal reporter, who wrote a moving memoir about her family’s exodus from Cairo, I was quite overcome when I learned she was in the synagogue and I could actually meet her. (She is incredibly nice!) She came to Cairo for the opening event, as well as for the launch of her book in Arabic, her father’s native language, which was particularly moving for her as was the synagogue’s restoration since when she was a child and very ill, her mother brought her there and spent the night with her in the synagogue in hopes of a cure. We attended her book signing last night, and Harriet, who wrote her college essay about her book, was able to get a copy of her essay to Lucette. I hope she will find it inspiring to see how a young Jewish woman is living in Cairo now, fifty years after she left.
To say security was tight would be an understatement. At both synagogue events there were sharp shooters on the tops of buildings as far as the eye could see, streets blocked off, and a phalanx of Egyptian police guarding the buildings. Their extreme effort to protect everyone was greatly appreciated by our group, though one could not help but feel disturbed that such a large security force was deemed necessary. The new synagogue has no plans to hold services, there are not enough Jews in Egypt to attend, but will hopefully be enjoyed by many visitors of different faiths. We almost felt tempted to move Charles’s Bar Mitzvah from London to Cairo, just so a service could take place there and the community would have their first Bar Mitzvah in years (apparently years ago the Canadian Ambassador had his son's celebration here.)
A separate opening is taking place later this month for the Egyptian authorities. They chose not to be in attendance at the Jewish event, saying it was a religious ceremony.
