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A historic synagogue creates tension between Egypt’s few remaining Jews and their government
(JTA) — In September, Egyptian authorities re-inaugurated Cairo’s historic Ben Ezra synagogue, which had undergone a year-long renovation. Despite having maintained the synagogue for years, Egypt’s few remaining Jews were conspicuously not invited.
In February, according to a Haaretz report, a genizah — a trove of once disregarded sacred texts — was discovered during excavations in a Cairo Jewish cemetery. But its contents were confiscated by officials despite protests from the Jewish community.
“They refused to wait until a rabbi would attend the excavation,” said Sammy Ibrahim, vice president of the Jewish community’s organization. “We complained but they did nothing. So [the documents] have gone to a store room to rot away.”
The tensions have continued to build. On Tuesday, the Jewish community made use of the synagogue for the first time since it was renovated and reopened for tourists by the Egyptian government. Community leaders toured around a group of professors and alumni donors from Princeton University.
“It’s about showing them that we are still in control of this place,” Ibrahim told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
As Ahmed Issa, Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities, said in September, the 1,200-year-old synagogue “is one of the most important and oldest Jewish temples in Egypt.” It is most famous for having housed the Cairo Genizah.
Ibrahim saw the lack of an invitation in September as a clear slight by the antiquities ministry, and now he’s worried the ministry does not respect the community’s ownership of the site.
When Ibrahim asked the ministry, which currently manages the synagogue, to close the site for tourists and allow the community’s event to be private, they refused, according to Ibrahim.
The restoration of the synagogue was funded by Egypt’s antiquities authority on the direct order of President Abed Fattah El-Sisi, who also tasked the authority to work on three other historic synagogues in Egypt. Those projects have not yet begun, but in 2020, the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria was renovated by the Egyptian government at the cost of about $2.2 million.
In Egypt, the cost of such works would normally fall on the minority community associated with the site, but unlike Coptic Christians, who account for 10% of Egypt’s population, Egypt’s Jews had no such funds. Today, Egypt’s Jewish community numbers under a dozen members, most of whom are elderly.
Recognizing that they had no financial ability to fulfill the antiquities ministry’s request, the community reached out directly to President Sisi, with whom they have maintained good ties, for support.
“We made a complaint to the president and he gave an order that the synagogue should be restored on the expenses of the antiquities [ministry],” Ibrahim said. “So [the ministry] didn’t like this, that we stepped past them and went higher.”
A group affiliated with Princeton University toured the synagogue, Dec. 19, 2023. (Courtesy of Sammy Ibrahim)
Egypt was once home to one of the largest and oldest Jewish communities in the Middle East. By the early 20th century, Egypt was still home to more than 80,000 Jews, including Sephardim, Karaites and an Ashkenazi refugee community which founded a burgeoning Yiddish Theatre scene.
The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 brought an end to that world. Most Egyptian Jews emigrated during the following years, as Arab-Israeli tensions spilled over into antisemitic laws and riots in Egypt.
The Ben Ezra Synagogue’s Cairo Genizah has continued to provide scholars with insights into Jewish life across the world and the ages for more than a century after it was first discovered. The Princeton visit was organized by Marina Rustow, one of the leading scholars on the famous genizah.
Despite the rocky history of the 20th century, and the shooting of two Israeli tourists in Alexandria by an Egyptian policeman after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, Ibrahim stressed that the remaining community feels both safe and comfortable in Egypt.
“We have no fear at all, no fear at all,” he said.
The community’s president, Magda Haroun, made similar points when speaking to the Princeton group on Tuesday.
“So this event was nice because we showed them a demonstration that this is our place,” Ibrahim said.
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The post A historic synagogue creates tension between Egypt’s few remaining Jews and their government appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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