The Vanished World of Egyptian Jewry

This seeming anomaly was the result of an agreement, arrived at approximately one hundred years earlier, whereby the rulers of Egypt accepted arrangements for all foreigners and their children to derive their legal status from the consul of the country of their origin. This system of foreign protection came to be called the Laws of Capitulations and originated under the Ottomans. Capitulations were treaties of commerce guaranteeing that the interests of foreigners immigrating to Egypt would be safeguarded by their own consuls, and they would not be taxed. However, since this led to a chaotic legal situation, so-called Mixed Courts were established in 1885 to handle litigation between a foreigner and an Egyptian. It is undcrstandable why foreigners living for several generations in Egypt maintained the citizenship of their country of origin. In many instances, Jews were able to obtain foreign citizenship, foreign powers did not mind having a larger representation of persons bearing their own passports. The Capitulations were eliminated in 1937 (in the Treaty of Montreux) and taxation was imposed on foreign businesses. Individual taxation came later.

While my family claimed Italian citizenship, their first language was French. French influence dated back to Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in the latter part of the eighteenth century and to the later establishment of French schools throughout the Middle East, including Egypt. My family was also fluent in Ladino, a type of archaic Spanish which included many French, Turkish, and Hebrew words with Spanish endings. Many of the old-timers wrote Ladino in Hebrew (Rashi) script. This was not a language which was systematically studied like French but was acquired in the home and used with family members and friends of similar background. Most of the Jews in Egypt spoke Arabic at different levels of competence, but very few learned literary Arabic, which required years of study and was not used in common communication. Colloquial Arabic was used primarily with service people, such as maids, waiters, and shopkeepers.

Prior to the arrival in Egypt of foreign Jews during the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a small number of indigenous Jews (Musta'arbin) who had lived in the country for centuries and whose mother tongue was Arabic. They were considered dhimmis, that is, protected people under Islam, a kind of second-class citizenship. Christians were subject to the same status. Dhimmis had to pay heavy taxes called jizya and were exempt from military service,

Prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, Jewish civilians and mercenaries had settled on the island of Elephantine in the Upper Nile and had formed a frontier garrison for the protection of the Pharaohs against outside invaders. In later centuries, following the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, Jews became prominent in Alexandria. The community was strongly Hellenized but maintained its Jewish faith. Its members participated in and contributed to Greek cultural life. This was the time when the Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint) and when Philo wrote his philosophical treatises. Later, under the occupation by the Romans, the enmity between the Jews and Greeks led to a revolt, and the Romans destroyed the Jewish community (115-117 C.E.) The revolt was instigated by Christian Greeks who conducted a number of pogroms. Jewish life in Alexandria subsequently disappeared.

In 640, Egypt was conquered by Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula under the banner of Muhammad, who established a new religion, Islam. Little information about Jews in Egypt in the years between that conquest and the end of the tenth century is available. In 960, the Fatimids (Shi'ite Muslims) conquered the country and a period of relative but inconsistent prosperity followed. The Fatimids relaxed the Laws of Omar, but some rulers were less tolerant than others. The Laws of Omar consisted of a series of acts of degradation, such as wearing signs indicating Jewishness and prohibitions against riding horses and bearing arms. During the Fatimid period there was some intellectual activity until the time when the Mamelukes assumed power (1250). The following centuries saw the social improvement of the Egyptian Jewish community (as recorded in the Geniza documents). A number of Spanish Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula in 1492 alighted in Egypt, but most of them settled in the Ottoman Empire.

One of the illustrious leaders of the Cairo Jewish community was Maimonides (1135-1204), who was born in Cordova, Spain, but fled from the Almohadic (Muslim) persecution. The Mameluke rule was followed by persecution of both Jews and Christians and continued until 1517, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Egypt. Early in their occupation, at the height of their power, the Turks tended to be more tolerant. Most of the finances of Egypt were in the hands of Jews, who were appointed as chelebi (gentlemen). However, the decline of the Turkish Empire, with its wars against Russia, correlates with the decline of the Jewish community. Many chelebi were executed by Turkish governors either because of slander by their entourage or because of jealousy of the Jewish wealth.

In 1798, Egypt was conquered by Napoleon, and while the French occupation was short-lived (1798-1801), it left a strong imprint on the Westernization of the country. Shortly thereafter, Muhammad Ali, a former Albanian officer in the service of the Turks, took over the reins of power. He ruled the country from 1805-1848 and established his own dynasty; King Faruk was his great-great-grandson. Faruk was forced to abdicate in 1952 after a military coup under the leadership of Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdal Nasser. Muhammad Ali's decision to modernize the country led to an influx of foreigners, who provided the necessary training of his army to defeat, the Turks at a later period. A greater influx took place during the building of the Suez Canal in the 1860s, under Said and later under Khedive Ismail, the grandson of Muhammad Ali. Because of the latter's excessive modernization programs and indebtedness to foreign powers, Egypt was occupied by the British in 1882, and the shares of the Suez Canal were used to pay the debts. This brought greater prosperity to those Jews involved in commerce, banking, and railroads.

At the turn of the century, there were approximately 25,000 Jews living in Egypt, divided into four groups. The first, the indigenous Jews, spoke Arabic and lived in a secluded area in Cairo called Haret el Yahoud (the Jewish quarter). The second group, European Jews of Sephardic origin, were dominant and conducted their businesses of banking, manufacturing, and real estate in French, although many of them also spoke Ladino. This group included Jews from Italy and Corfu, as well as North Africa and the Levant. The third group was relatively small; it consisted of Ashkenazi Jews who had fled the pogroms of Russia and arrived in poverty, but who very shortly were able to participate in the economy of the country. Some had come from Palestine during World War I, forced out of the country by Turkey, Germany's ally. In Cairo they maintained their separate rabbinate; Yiddish was their principal language. In other cities Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews were under one rabbinate. The Sephardic rabbi in Cairo represented all Jewry to the Egyptian government. The fourth group were the Karaites, a sect established in the eighth century, which accepted only the authority of the Bible and rejected rabbinic writings. By 1947, Jews in Egypt reached their highest number. It is estimated that the total was approximately 80,000, 96 percent residing in the two major cities, Cairo (64 percent) and Alexandria (32 percent). In spite of their low numbers in the total population (0.4 percent), their contribution to the economy of the country was considerable.

Most of the Jews in Egypt received their education in foreign schools, primarily French secular schools (Lycees Francais) and schools established by the College des Freres, a Catholic order. Professional training and higher education were obtained abroad. Few Jews of European origin were able to attend the Egyptian universities; since they had not mastered written Arabic, they could not be admitted, in spite of the fact that English and French were widely used, particularly in the sciences, medicine, and law. I myself attended the College des Freres, where almost half the students were Jewish. The language of instruction for all courses was French. Arabic and English were taught as second languages two to three hours a week. There were a number of elementary Jewish communal schools, but only children of modest means attended them. In these schools, too, French was the dominant language, with Hebrew secondary. In Cairo there was also a small afternoon school (Talmud Torah) attached to the main synagogue, teaching Hebrew and Bible. Talmudic academies did not exist. Those seeking further religious education or rabbinical training had to go to the island of Rhodes, which was part of Italy before World War II. The influence of French education had the tendency to detach young Jewish people from their Arab environment.

Life for Egyptian Jews was quite comfortable. Practically all could afford to keep servants and to vacation regularly at the resort beaches in Alexandria and Port Said. There were also recreational clubs like the Union Universelle de la Jeunesse Juive and the Judeo-Espagnole (later changed to Judeo-Egyptienne). I and a group of friends from the College des Freres organized a boys' club called the Jewish Camping Club; we would go on weekend trips to places like the Pyramids, Meadi, Helwan (Spa), Suez, the Mokattam mountains, and the Fayyum oasis south of Cairo. Most Jews, except for those living in the Haret el Yahoud, considered themselves secular Jews. Jewish learning was minimal; bar-mitzvah preparation, for instance, consisted of a few months of instruction by a private tutor.

Most of the large department Egyptian stores were owned by Jews, with names like Cicurel, Oreco, Chemla, Gattegno, Ades, Cohenca, Simon-Artz, Morums, and Benzion. A notable exception was the Sednaoui store, which was owned by Christian immigrants from Syria but whose employees were largely Jewish. Most of these names are still to be found gracing Cairo storefronts, despite the fact that today the Jewish community in Egypt is almost extinct… Read more.