Tag: Egyptian Israelis

‘I feel at home’, Egyptian professor tells Israeli Jews

It was a historic moment. For the first time since the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty was signed, an Egyptian professor has joined the Israeli academy.

Levana Zamir (second from left) with Professor Abdel Malek (centre, in black)

On 27 October 2022, Professor Kamal Abdel Malek from Alexandria addressed the Association of Egyptian Jews in Israel, whose President is Levana Zamir. After being given a warm welcome, Professor Abdel Malek lectured on the subject “The Pyramids and The Star of David – by an Egyptian in Israel.”

The lecture took place before a packed house at the Heritage Center of Egyptian Jewry in Tel Aviv.”I feel at home with all of you here !” Professor Abdel Malek exclaimed after chatting briefly with the audience. “I feel like I am meeting family relatives I have not seen for a long time…”

Professor Abdel Malek is teaching at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for one semester.   Eminent Israeli professors, experts on the history Jews of Egypt, attended the lecture. They included  the 2022 Israel Prize Laureate and Tel Aviv University Professor Shimon Shamir,  Professor Elie Podeh of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Professor Itzhak Reiter, President of The Middle East and Islamic Studies Association of Israel, Dr Eyal Sagi and Dr Eran Goldenberg of Haifa University.

The  Ambassador of Israel to Egypt, Amira Oron, whose mother was born in Egypt, was also present. In less than two years she has managed to drive forward many important Israel-Egypt projects, including this academic one.

Professor Kamal Abdel Malek is an  expert in Arabic literature. His speciality is “Encounters between Israelis and Egyptians, in Literature and Cinema.” This is a special course he is teaching with Professor Elie Podeh, Head of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University, whose main fields of interest are modern Egypt, inter-Arab relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict and education and culture in the Middle East.

Professor Elie Podeh stressed what a historic event this occasion was – the first time an Egyptian professor has joined the Israeli Academy since the peace treaty was signed. Professor Shimon Shamir remembered the first time he met Professor Kamal Abdel Malek 43 years ago, when he came to Israel just after the treaty was signed in 1979, to join the Hebrew University as an undergraduate for a one-year program. He studied Hebrew, history, politics, Judaism and Jewish art. He had never returned since, and completed his graduate studies at McGill University in Canada where he received his PhD  in Arabic and Islamic Studies in 1992.

As well as being a researcher and a professor of Arabic literature, Kamal Abdel Malek is a supporter of Israel and of peace.  Before coming to Israel last month he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. Today he lectures at universities around the world, including in Dubai on the topic of Arab-Jewish encounters in literature and the arts. He has authored many books and articles, among them “Arab-Jewish Encounters in Contemporary Palestinian Literature and Film (2005)”. He has  won prestigious excellence awards for education and research.

To close this moving event, Levana Zamir said: “we have to remember what happened during the mid-twentieth century to the Jewish community in Egypt, but now our time to love has come”.  She concluded by reading a beautiful poem,  titled  “Ya Masr el-Habiba’. It was written in Arabic by her mother Esther Vidal-Mosser on the day that President Anwar Sadat came to Jerusalem on 19 November 1977.

Esther Webman, scholar of Arab antisemitism, has died

The sudden death of Dr Esther Webman has been announced in Tel Aviv.


Egyptian-born Dr. Esther Webman was a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism in Tel Aviv University.  She was the Principal Investigator for the Program for the Study of Jews in the Middle East and the author, with Meir Litvak, of From Empathy to Denial: Arab responses to the Holocaust.

 
David Hirsh, lecturer in sociology at Goldsmith’s College, writes: 

 “Esti was a friend, and a scholar of antisemitism. She was a core colleague in the European Sociological Association Research Network 31 on Ethnic Relations, Racism and Antisemitism, and had given papers at a number of its meetings and conferences over the years.

Esti was a Tel Avivian and an Israeli. She had been born in Egypt and was fluent in Arabic. She was driven out of Egypt with her family, when she was a child, because she was Jewish.
Her work focused on antisemitism in ‘the Arab World’ and Islamist antisemitism. She wrote, with Meir Litvak, ‘From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust’ as well as many other articles and papers on related topics.

 She worked at the Kantor Centre at Tel Aviv University.
In 1968, in the period following the Six Day War, Esti was the highest ranking woman in Israel intelligence, she told me. She was a pioneer, a glass-ceiling breaker of great courage.”

President’s message features Egyptian-Jewish memories

Levana Zamir, president of the Association of Jews from Egypt in Israel, was one of the participants in a message broadcast by the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, on the occasion of the state’s 72nd independence celebration.

The president and all the participants wished the country a very Happy Independence Day.’We have no other country’, he said.

Then a 10-year-old child, Mrs Zamir said she could not forget the great joy her family felt on the day of the UN vote on Partition in November 1947. Her father was listening in secret to the radio and the family brimmed with excitement as the votes were announced: Yes -No-Yes-Yes. But as soon as the vote was passed, no Jew could utter the world Israel: their lips were sealed – until they were thrown out of Egypt.

She recalled her enormous excitement on seeing the IDF Independence Day parade, in which women soldiers marched.

To watch video, click here

How one Israeli rediscovered his Egyptian roots

When he was growing up, lecturer Haim Netanel took very little interest in his Egyptian roots. Now he is  on a journey to rediscover them. Interesting piece in Israel Hayom: ((With thanks: Lily, Boruch, Imre)

“I knew my parents were from Egypt, but I didn’t take pride in it, or hide it. We adhered to ‘Israeli-ness.’ When my father arrived in Israel, he was very successful financially. At the age of 25, he owned an apartment in north Tel Aviv. He integrated immediately into the Ashkenazi bureaucracy that ruled the country. His boss was from Austria, and they’d speak French to each other.

 “The Egyptian-ness stayed at home on my mother’s side, too: Arabic movies on TV, and the food. But outside, we were all Israelis. They left Egypt boxed up, within the family. When my dad would listen to [the singer] Umm Kulthum on the radio I’d say, ‘Turn off that wailing.’ It wasn’t Israeli. Later on, after he died, when I fell in love with the subject of Egypt, I was in the car and put on a CD of ‘Enta Omri,‘ [one of Umm Kulthum’s best-known songs], and I started singing in Arabic and I connected to the music. I imagined my father smiling in victory and saying, ‘Wailing, huh?’ The circle was closed as far as I was concerned.

Haim Netanel (Yossi Zeliger)

When his father, Ezra Netanel Wahaba, died 12 years ago, Haim set out on a journey to research the history of the Jewish community in Egypt, both in the Land of the Nile and in Israel. He published his work in his book, Am I an Egyptian?

“I was curious to know where the Egyptian Jews came from, what their lives were like, how they put down roots here in Israel.

Stories about Egypt always interested me, even though I got them in bits and pieces. My mother is still alive. I heard stories from her, too, as well as from uncles and aunts on her side and my father’s side. My dad made aliyah in 1949, when the country was a year old and King Farouk still ruled Egypt,” he says.

“That was a different kind of ‘Exodus’ that what my mother’s family experienced. They left in January 1957, two months after Operation Kadesh, under [Gamal Abdel] Nasser. The position of Jews in Egypt was getting worse. In the public sphere, they were personally attacked, and Jewish shops were nationalized. Their possibilities of making a living were restricted and they felt that time was running out and they had to leave. Jews began to abandon Egypt.

 My father and his family were harassed after the War of Independence, but under King Farouk the situation was much better. At that time, envoys of the Jewish Agency were in Egypt and they encouraged the Jews to make aliyah, so the family decided to.”

 The story of Egyptian Jewry is different from that of most Jewish communities in Arab countries. It was not a community that could boast ancient roots, like those in Iraq, Syria, Morocco, or Tunisia.

“Egyptian Jewry was made up of immigrants,” Netanel explains. “Only a few of them had roots in Egypt that went back a few generations. Most arrived from different places: Syrian traders from Aleppo, who acclimated into Egyptian society very quickly because they spoke Arabic; Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe – there was an Ashkenazi synagogue in Cairo – there were Jews from all around the Mediterranean: Turkey, Greece, Italy, and France; and also Jews who had come from Aden in Yemen, which was a British colony, who were on their way to the Land of Israel and wound up staying a generation or two in Egypt.”

 “There were differences not only between these groups, but between the Jewish communities in Cairo and Alexandria. The former, in its songs and customs, was much more similar to that which had arrived from Syria. The latter was mostly made up of Greek and Ashkenazi Jews. What united the community were its leaders. The community enjoyed total religious autonomy. Cultural life centered around the synagogue. In the Jewish neighborhoods of Cairo, there were synagogues for nearly every cultural group.

 Each preserved its own heritage.There was something else that distinguished the Jews from the rest of the Egyptians: “When the British controlled Egypt and had control of people’s lifestyles, they allowed the Egyptians to settle the matter of citizenship. The Jews gave up Egyptian citizenship willingly. Most of them held citizenship in other countries and it wasn’t urgent for them to be Egyptian citizens, which would have required them to serve in the military and fulfill other obligations. They preferred to isolate themselves. Later on, when some of them sought citizenship, the Egyptians made it difficult for them. Even those who had been born in Egypt weren’t given Egyptian citizenship.”

 

“The initial refusal of citizenship was heavily exploited by the authorities later on. Nasser, in particular, used it. The attacks started with riots that targeted Jews during the War of Independence, and the Arabs’ defeat caused the Egyptians to feel immense anger toward their Jewish neighbors. Because the Jews weren’t citizens, anything could be done to them and they could always be portrayed as outsiders. They were called ‘Zionist,’ even though a lot of them weren’t.”

Read article in full

Egyptian-Jewish leader calls for refugee compensation fund

During her November whirlwind tour of the UK, Levana Zamir, head of the Coalition of organisations of Jews from Arab countries in Israel, was interviewed by Sandy Rashty for the Jewish Chronicle. Mrs Zamir used the occasion to reiterate her support for  an International Fund to compensate Jewish and Arab refugees as a tool for peace.

An Egyptian-born Jewish activist has called for greater recognition of Jews from Arab countries, saying that compensation for those forced to flee their homes could help bring peace to the region.

 Levana Zamir with her family on their recent visit to Egypt

Levana Zamir, who fled her home in Cairo in 1948 aged 10, is now working with Israeli authorities to increase international awareness of the issue.

 “I have been working on this for 20 years, going to the Knesset and asking for recognition,” she said.

“And it’s not only me; we are all working together — the Iraqi Jews, the Syrian Jews, the Libyan and Yemenite. Now that we have recognition of [our story] in Israel and all over the world, now we want an international fund to be established for Arab and Jewish refugees.”

 She added at first, the government of Israel did not want them to feel like refugees: “They did not want us to ask them for compensation. Even when Egypt and Israel had a peace agreement, Israel did not ask Egypt for our money. It says a lot.”

Read article in full

Video clip of Levana’s talk to students at UCL

Levana Zamir’s interview on BBC Arabic

Levana Zamir’s visit to Egypt

Levana Zamir returns to Cairo for New Year celebrations

It was certainly one of the more unusual celebrations of the Jewish New Year: foreign diplomats and other distinguished guests gathered on 29 September in the Adly synagogue, Cairo, to hear ‘prayers’ led by Eden Goldberger, the wife of Thomas, the US Charge d’Affaires. 


Mrs Eden Goldberger addressing distinguished guests at the Rosh Hashana celebration in the Adly synagogue, Cairo

The Jewish community in Cairo has not had formal services since the death in 2013 of Carmen Weinstein, former community president.  Now led by Magda Haroun, it  comprises just five elderly women.

This year, the event was all the more remarkable for the presence of one guest: Levana Zamir, president of the organisation representing Jews from Egypt in Israel, and the Israeli umbrella group representing associations of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries.

Levana Zamir was given a warm welcome as she attended the Adly synagogue with her daughter and grandchildren at the invitation of the Cairo Jewish Community and the Drop of Milk Association, which is currently cataloguing and restoring Jewish artefacts. She was also honoured with a tour of the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria, which is being repaired by the Egyptian authorities at a cost of $5.6 million.



Levana Zamir with Mr Abdel Nabi, General manager of the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue (left) and Roberto Marini, president of the Jewish Community of Alexandria. 

In a sense, Levana Zamir’s visit represents a new beginning: Since taking over as head of Cairo’s Jews, Magda Haroun has vowed not to have any dealings with ‘Zionists’. Yet the two women were seen getting along famously.

Cairo-born Levana had not visited Egypt since 2008, when 45 Egyptian Jews from Israel were forced to cut short their ‘roots’ trip and cancel a conference after scaremongering by the Egyptian media that they were coming back to reclaim their property.

Since the signing of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty,  Levana Zamir had made nine trips to her country of birth.

Roughly half the Jews expelled from Egypt now live in Israel.

Levana Zamir with Cairo community leader Magda Haroun: getting along famously? 



To see a video made by Keisar Zamir, Levana’s grandson, recording the highlights of their trip, click here

Egyptian Jews visit Golan memorials to Eli Cohen

With thanks: Levana

Fifty-two years to the day (on 18 May 1965), the Israeli spy Eli Cohen was hanged in Marjeh Square, Damascus, Syria.

He was only 40, and had left an anguished wife, Nadia, and three children back in Israel while he fulfilled his mission, penetrating the highest echelons of the Syrian regime. His body was never returned to his family and his exact place of burial is unknown.

The intelligence that Cohen gathered in Syria between 1962-65 was probably the single most important factor in bringing about Israel’s victory during the Six Day War. For instance, he collected intelligence on the Syrian fortifications
there.

Feigning sympathy for the soldiers exposed to the sun, Cohen had
trees planted at every position. The trees were used as targeting
markers by the Israeli military during the war and enabled Israel to capture the Golan Heights in two days with relative ease.

The Association of Jews from Egypt dedicated the first day of their Congress last week to a tour of the Golan Heights in memory of the Egyptian-born spy of Aleppan origin who came to Israel in 1956. Delegates followed the Eli Cohen Route. There are seven monuments dedicated to him on the Golan Heights. The Heights were then in Syria and following the Six Day War were annexed by Israel. 

Here and hereare two 30-second videos of the Golan Heights tour.

Egyptian Jews resettled refugees from Nazi Germany 

More about Eli Cohen

Egypt revokes IDF spokeswoman’s citizenship

Born as Rouleen
Abdullah in Alexandria, Dina Ovadia didn’t know she was Jewish
until the age of 15. She moved to Jerusalem with her family, but angered
Cairo when she joined the ‘occupation’ army. Now she has been stripped of her Egyptian citizenship. Ynet News reports:

Egypt’s Prime
Minister Sherif Ismail has decided to revoke the Egyptian citizenship of
22-year-old Dina Ovadia from Jerusalem because she moved to Israel and
joined the IDF.

 When she was 15, an incident happened that turned her life upside
down. “I was at home with my mother and brothers, and all of a sudden
bearded thugs stormed into our apartment,” she told the IDF journal.
“They were Salafists, radical Muslims. They fired into the air and
warned us to leave Egypt immediately.

Dina Ovadia

Dina Ovadia

“In all the commotion I heard them call our apartment ‘Bayt
al-Yahud’ and I didn’t understand what they were talking about. Only
after they left, my grandfather sat us, his three grandchildren, for a
talk and told us we were Jewish.

“It was hard for me to comprehend this, because at school we were taught to hate the Jews.” 

The family left Egypt in a hurry and found a home in Jerusalem.

Ovadia joined the IDF and served in the IDF Spokesman’s Unit.
Shortly before her release, she was even recognized by the unit as an
exceptional soldier.

After receiving the prize, she was interviewed for the IDF journal and filmed a video of herself telling her life’s story.
“My biggest dream,” she said in the video, “is to visit Egypt
wearing uniform, tell them my truth about Israel, and declare: I’m
Jewish, and I’m proud of it.”

Ovadia’s interview and video caused outrage in Cairo, which
reached its climax on Monday when the well-known TV personality Ahmed
Moussa attacked “the country of the Zionist murderers” on air, and
revealed that the Egyptian prime minister decided to revoke Ovadia’s
citizenship.
“This is the first time in history that an Egyptian woman serves
in the occupation army,” said Moussa, who failed to mention Ovadia was
Jewish.
Ovadia, who was released from the IDF a year and a half ago, is
currently studying international relations at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. 

“It’s shocking, and a low blow, but I don’t want to stoop to
their level,” she said on Monday. “As far as I’m concerned, they should
know I’m first and foremost a proud Jew and Israeli, and only then an
Egyptian. Every additional word I say will be twisted in Egypt and used
against me.” 

Read article in full 

Dina Ovadia’s amazing exodus from Egypt

Egyptian historian to open Jerusalem exhibition

 Painting by Camille Fox of a Jewish wedding at the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria

The Egyptian Muslim historian Maged Farag will fly in to Israel to open on Tuesday 5 May an exhibition of paintings recalling the heyday of the Jewish community of Egypt.

Entitled, Celebration of a Golden era, the exhibition consists of paintings by Camille Fox, an Egyptian Jewess now living in Australia. It will run until 5 June at the Centre of North African Jewish heritage in Jerusalem.

Mr Farag’s visit concludes the three-day International Congress of Jews from Egypt, whose main focus is the preservation of Jewish holy sites in Egypt. The visit would have been inconceivable two years ago under the Mubarak regime, which ‘froze’ the relationship between Egypt and Israel despite the signing of the 1979 peace treaty.

 For Arabic speakers, here is a recent TV interview given by Mrs Levana Zamir, chairman of the Egypt-Israel Friendship association in Israel.

Here is Lucy Aharish interviewing Levana Zamirin English about the ‘cold peace’ between Egypt and Israel.

A Jewish sense of ‘deja vu’ about Egypt

No more letters from Cairo….Levana Zamir is cut off from her Egyptian friends (Maariv)

Egyptian Jews in Israel are glued to their TV screens, anxiously following events on the Cairo street. But they have a feeling they have seen it all before, Levana Zamir tells Akhikam Moshe David in the Israeli daily Maariv. Translation from the Hebrew:

The recent images of riots in Egypt are ‘deja vu’ for the Jews from Egypt in Israel, reviving sights of the streets and smells of Cairo, which can never be again what it once was. For Levana Zamir who today lives in Tel Aviv, the recent events did not come as asurprise. It is like closing a circle: She and her Vidal family suffered the anger and rage of the Egyptian population in the late Forties, now directed against wealthy Egyptians and the government.

Since Thursday she has been glued to the TV, trying to identify her remaining friends in Egypt and looking in disbelief at what is happening in her native country.

“All these days, I was thinking how proud I am of the Egyptian people,” she says. “I have friends in Egypt, but I cannot ‘phone them or send them an email, because it could do harm to them. Even in normal times Egyptian censorship makes it hard, and it certainly does now”, says Zamir, who is President of The International Organization of Jews from Egypt, and of The Israel-Egypt Friendship Association.

“When I see the flames and the looting, it is impossible not to recall what they did to the Jews. The Egyptian population in its poverty and anger lashed out at us in 1952, burning and looting Jewish businesses. Today it is doing the same thing to the Egyptian elite,” she explains. “Only this time, the hatred against Jews has been replaced by hatred against rich Egyptians”.

The Jewish community in Egypt is almost non-existent. Only a few remain. The Egyptian authorities are careful to preserve the ancient synagogues, mainly as archaeological relics. The police have stopped guarding those synagogues, and in Cairo they have been replaced by military guards. But there is still anxiety and concern lest the Great Eliahu Hanavi Synagogue, symbol of the once glorious Jewish Community of Alexandria, fall into the hands of looters.

Maariv, 31 January 2011

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This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, of the Middle East and North Africa, documenting the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution.

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