The Jews of Egypt

"If it wasn’t for [President Abdel Fattah] al-Sissi, this would have never been done. A lot of things have changed since he’s taken over."
"I have relatives who left to France, Italy and Israel and they would like to visit the synagogue now."
Yolande Mizrahi,  septuagenarian Jew born and raised in Alexandria

"This is recognition of Egypt’s Jews who were neglected for over sixty years."
"It is recognition that we have always been here and that we have contributed to a lot of things just like any other Egyptian."
"I'm very proud of what my country has done, and it symbolizes living together; today there is no difference between Egyptian Muslim , Christian and Egyptian Jew."
Magda Haroun, a leader of the dwindling Egyptian Jewish community, Cairo

People attend the opening of Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria, Egypt, Friday, Jan. 10, 2020, three years after the Egyptian government started the renovations of the synagogue originally built in 1354. (AP Photo/Hamada Elrasam)

During the pre- and post-Biblical era, Jews lived and prospered in Egypt, as an integral and equal part of the Egyptian population.
"From the time of the post-exilic prophets Judaism developed in three main streams, one flowing from Jerusalem, another from Babylon, the third from Egypt. Alexandria soon took precedence of existing settlements of Jews, and became a great centre of Jewish life. The first Ptolemy, to whom at the dismemberment of Alexander's empire Egypt had fallen, continued to the Jewish settlers the privileges of full citizenship which Alexander had granted them. He increased also the number of Jewish inhabitants, for following his conquest of Palestine (or Coele-Syria, as it was then called), he brought back to his capital a large number of Jewish families and settled thirty thousand Jewish soldiers in garrisons. For the next hundred years the Palestinian and Egyptian Jews were under the same rule, and for the most part the Ptolemies treated them well."
"Under their tolerant sway the Jewish community thrived, and became distinguished in the handicrafts as well as in commerce. Two of the five sections into which Alexandria was divided were almost exclusively occupied by them; these lay in the north-east along the shore and near the royal palace -- a favourable situation for the large commercial enterprises in which they were engaged."
"The Jews had full permission to carry on their religious observances, and besides many smaller places of worship, each marked by its surrounding plantation of trees, they built a great synagogue, of which it is said in the Talmud 'He who has not seen it has not seen the glory of Israel'. It was in the form of a basilica, with a double row of columns, and so vast that an official standing upon a platform had to wave his head-cloth or veil to inform the people at the back of the edifice when to say 'Amen' in response to the Reader. The congregation was seated according to trade-guilds, as was also customary during the Middle Ages; the goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, and weavers had their own places, for the Alexandrian Jews seem to have partially adopted the Egyptian caste-system..."
Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria, Norman Bentwich, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1910

Guests visit the newly renovated Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in the northwestern Egyptian city of Alexandria on January 10, 2020, on the day of its inauguration. (Khaled DESOUKI/AFP)

Alexandria's historic two-storey Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue was in parlous condition, having partially collapsed in 2006.The following year began restoration by the Egyptian Antiquities Department, preventing its total collapse.This is one of two remaining synagogues in Alexandria; many other have long since deteriorated with age and disuse and neglect in a city that once was host to 40,000 Jews up to 1940, descendants of Egyptian Jews who had lived there since antiquity.

This iteration of the synagogue dated only to 1881 to serve Alexandria's large and influential Jewish community. It boasted marble floors and marble, rose-coloured columns in its main hall. It stood on the very site of a much earlier synagogue, dating to 1354 a.d., to attest to its historical antecedents. Fully half of Egypt's Jewish community lived in Alexandria, a historical seat in Egypt of a portion of the Biblical diaspora.

The synagogue, now fully renovated, its opening ceremonies bringing a handful of Egyptian Jews to celebrate its resurrection together, in praise of Egypt's new warmer relationships with the State of  Israel, and the closer recognition of the role of Egyptian Jews in Alexandrian life. A small gathering of Jews, mostly elderly who had been born there and lived in the city all their lives, descendants of the original Jews who had made Alexandria their home.

When the State of Israel declared itself the reborn ancient Judea, its neighbours in the Middle East, the surrounding Arab Muslim states determined to eradicate its presence. Successive conflicts where various Arab states -- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan sent expeditionary armies to destroy the fledgling nation. At the same time, Jews who had lived in Arab countries such as those, as well as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and others expelled their Jews, confiscating their property.

Coptic priests visit Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue. (Khaled DESOUKI/AFP

Ironically, non-Arab, Aryan Persia maintained friendly relations with Israel under the Pahlavi dynasty. Now the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have warmed relations with Israel under the regional threat of Persian ambitions to revisit its controlling past of the Middle East and it is from the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran that the existential threat to Israel emanates,

Egypt and Jordan have long since signed peace agreements with Israel, despite that the Jordanian and Egyptian public retain their distrust of and animosity toward the Jewish state. But it is Egypt, under the reign of former general and now president, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, with whom accommodation has been made between the two countries in their common battle against Islamist fundamentalism and terrorist groups and militias. "If we have Jews, we will build [synagogues] for them", the president said in 2018.

And this is just what has occurred, with the reconstruction of the Maimonides Cairo synagogue which Egypt sponsored in the 2000s. Egypt, mostly emptied of its once-numerous Egyptian-Jewish population in the 1950s, thanks mostly to bloody pogroms under then-President Nasser, has seen many synagogues in Cairo, along with a large Jewish cemetery, go into decay. The restoration of these ancient relics of sites of worship are as much a symbol of Egypt's past as they are of the Jewish presence in Egypt.

Guests visit the newly renovated Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in the northwestern Egyptian city of Alexandria on January 10, 2020, on the day of its inauguration. (Khaled DESOUKI/AFP)

The floor of the restored Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue has left open to public view the archaeological layers of history that lie beneath the edifice. Additional Egyptian Jews vacated Egypt, turning to Israel and migrating to the West in the wake of the 1956 Suez war after the launch of a military offensive against Egypt when Israel, France and Britain stopped Egypt from closing the Suez Canal to shipping traffic, and hostility from Egyptians toward its Jews was intensified.