This year, as we celebrate Passover in isolation, Haim Netanel remembers with longing the Passover seders he celebrated decades ago at the home of his maternal grandfather, Charles Shaul Hamawi.
"We would gather on holiday eves, and the seder took on a special meaning. They would add all sorts of customs to it, Arabic melodies and words. There's a ceremony in which the matza is taken aside for afikoman, wrapped in a kind of cloth, and they put it on a shoulder and say, 'Their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders, the people of Israel did as Moses had told them.' Those present would say in Arabic to the person carrying the matza: 'Where do you come from?' and he answers, 'From Egypt.' And 'Where are you going?' 'To Jerusalem.'"
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
"Then they wave the matza around the head and say, 'Next year in Jerusalem.' In addition, there were all sorts of jokes and riddles about the words of the Haggada, and they'd eat Egyptian foods – coconut jam with rosewater, and more. Today, we do a more modern seder but we always try to maintain the special character – in the songs, in the food."
Netanel, who lectures on Jewish history and a unique interpretation of the Torah, was born in Tel Aviv in 1961 to Egyptian parents who made aliyah in the first decade of Israel's existence as a state. When he was young, like many first-generation Israelis, his took little interest in his parents' cultural legacy.
"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 'Etna 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."
Ingathering of the exiles in Egypt
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.
"If disputes arose, they were never turned over to the Egyptian authorities. Everything would be handled by community institutions."
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."
Q: Did that make it easier for the Egyptian rulers to characterize the Jews as a group of foreigners who could be tossed out of the country?
"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."
"There were two schools of thought among Egyptian Jews: Zionism and anti-Zionism. And the Zionist school of thought was split between the secular and religious approaches. The anti-Zionists included a lot of religious Jews, who saw Egypt as the 'mother of the world,' and they would still be there if they hadn't been kicked out. Then there were the non-religious, who were willing to trade Egypt for any other Diaspora community. These included the communists, some of whom converted to Islam so they could stay in Egypt. Most of them were elderly who stayed in Egypt after the big emigration."
Q: Despite being 'foreign,' it was a community that made a great contribution to Egyptian society – in culture, in film, in song, in trade, and in banking.
"It was a very educated Jewry. The wealthy members had large businesses and land. The biggest businesses belonged to Jews … they did well and contributed to Egyptian society as a whole. They were called 'hawanat,' "sirs," like the British. The Jewish traders had a very special vocabulary. They spoke in code when they were around Arabs, so they wouldn't be understood. That dialect included words in biblical Hebrew and Arabic."
"There is a very well-known story about Layla Murad, one of the most famous singers in Egypt. She was a Jew who converted to Islam, surely causing pain to her family. There were other famous musicians who arrived in Israel, like Albert Mughrabi, a singer and actor who didn't have too much success in Israel, and of course Zozo Mussa, who was the lead violinist in Abdel Halim Hafez's Diamond Orchestra. He was forced to leave Egypt because he held a French passport. In Israel, he became the director of Israel Radio's Arabic music orchestra."
Q: About half of the Egyptian Jewish community, which at its peak numbered 100,000, made aliyah. The rest went to the US, France, England, and even as far as Australia. How do they live with the knowledge that soon there will be no Jews left in Egypt?
"Basically, there already aren't any Jews left in Egypt," Netanel clarifies. "There are a few old women who converted to Islam or Christianity. The head of community in Cairo, Magda Haroun, was born to a Jewish mother and married a gentile. She protects the community property and makes a living from it. Egyptians rent the homes of the community for their own use, for modest amounts. The few synagogues left in Egypt belong to the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
"The Egyptians see Israel and Judaism as two totally separate things. Now they are realizing that they should preserve the Jewish heritage in Egypt, and have started to refurbish the synagogues. The jewel in the crown was when renovations to the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria were finished. It's one of the most beautiful [synagogues] in the Middle East. [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah] el-Sissi has taken charge of the matter."
"Egyptian Jews long for the Egypt of bygone days. The close ties can be seen in the many Facebook groups [devoted to] among other things, Egyptian food and music. A lot of them have visited Egypt, but they know that Egypt is no longer what it used to be. Because it was a community that came from different places, it also broke apart in all directions, unlike the Moroccans or the Iraqis or the Libyans. The ones who came to Israel integrated and became Israelis who had been born in Egypt, without leaving a trail of ethnicity. After [Anwar] Sadat's visit and the peace treaty [between Israel and Egypt], many of them went to Egypt to revisit the landscapes of their childhood.
"My mom wanted to go. She remembered one of their neighbors, who were like family, saying during Operation Kadesh that she had 'a big knife ready for the Jews.' My dad brought her down to earth. When Sadat visited Israel, the immigrants from Egypt felt a sense of pride in being Egyptian mixed with a feeling of victory over those who had ousted them from Egypt forever – and now, their president was coming to the Jewish state with his hand extended in peace. They saw that as the Egyptians admitting they had been wrong about how they'd treated the Jews."
