How Egypt’s last Jews will mark Hanukkah, and make sure their culture doesn’t “disappear” with them

Cairo — More than 10 million folks dwell in Egypt’s capital, however solely three of them — all older ladies — are Egyptian Jews. At 70, Magda Haroun is the youngest, and the chief of Cairo’s now nearly extinct native Jewish group.

“Usually, the head of the Jewish community is a rabbi, but there hasn’t been one since the ’60s,” Haroun instructed CBS News on a go to to one among downtown Cairo’s empty synagogues.

There are a complete of 12 Jewish homes of worship throughout the capital — that is 4 for every remaining Jewish resident. 

“I am the keeper,” Haroun instructed CBS News. She has the keys.

Occasionally she invitations Jewish expats and diplomats to attend ceremonies on the synagogue, partly as a approach of accomplishing the variety of males (10) historically required for prayer providers. 

But typically they fall quick, or cannot discover a rabbi to guide the providers. 

“One year we had a woman leading the prayer, which is unorthodox,” she mentioned, including that in her thoughts the transfer was pragmatic: “We have to do it to mark the occasion — you think God won’t accept our prayers?”

After being elected chief of the group in 2013, Haroun gathered the opposite ladies within the synagogue to have a good time Hanukkah. She turned to Google to search for directions to guide the service and tried to learn the prayers.

The ladies introduced some sweets and a menorah and stuffed it with candles as required. But nothing is simple the primary time.

“One of the ladies said, ‘I think we should start from this side,’ another said, ‘no, it’s the other side.’ ‘No, you should light it from the middle,’ a third said,” Haroun recalled of that chaotic first try. “My sister shouted at everyone to please shut up [and said], ‘We are going to light the candles — it doesn’t matter from which side.'”

That was virtually a decade in the past, and Haroun mentioned “after that, we found people who knew how to do it.”

Before the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, there have been round 80,000 Jews in Egypt, however because the battle between Arabs and Israel continued, the numbers declined. War broke out once more in 1956 (referred to as the Suez Crisis, the Sinai War or the Tripartite Aggression), sparking a mass emigration of Jews from Egypt. 

The subsequent battle, in 1967, prompted “the last exodus of Egyptian Jews,” Haroun mentioned.

Right earlier than that battle, her father Chehata Haroun, a lawyer and communist public determine, despatched a letter to Egyptian officers asking to volunteer wherever they wanted him. On June 5, the day the battle began, authorities got here and took him away.

Haroun mentioned she begged to go along with him, as she thought he was going to hitch the battle effort.

“My mother held me back,” she instructed CBS News. “She said: ‘Your father is not going to war. Your father is being arrested because he is a Jew.”

All Jewish males between the age 18 and 60 had been arrested, she mentioned. They got a selection: “You can go to the airport and your family will join you, or you will stay in jail.”

Her father selected to remain. He was launched from jail after 4 months, however different males from the group remained behind bars for a number of years. 

“He was received as a hero when he was released,” she recalled. “All the people in the neighborhood loved him.” 

Haroun nonetheless works from his previous workplace, and on her proper wrist she has a tattoo of the phrase “My father’s daughter,” in Arabic. She mentioned her father knew that she would someday find yourself taking care of Egypt’s Jewish group, as a result of he knew his household would by no means abandon the nation.

The lack of cultural variety within the historic capital metropolis — as soon as one among its defining traits — saddens Haroun. Her family is an ideal instance: Her ex-husband is a Muslim and he or she has two daughters with him, each of whom are Muslim. Her second husband is Catholic. 

“My house in Egypt is the only house where the three religions live under one roof without fighting,” she mentioned with pleasure.

Haroun is frightened that, inside a number of years, there will likely be no Egyptian Jews left within the nation, so she has labored with officers to make sure the nation’s Jewish heritage, together with some main historic websites, will likely be cared for after she’s gone.

“All synagogues now are under the umbrella of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, so they will be protected and not destroyed,” she instructed CBS News. That contains the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest maintained within the Middle East. “We did an inventory of each synagogue, with photographs and numbers, so nothing will disappear, I hope.”

She additionally works intently with the Drop of Milk Foundation, a century-old group that goals to protect Jewish heritage in Egypt, which just lately, with the assist of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, restored a portion of the Jewish Cemetery of Basatin, the second-oldest Jewish cemetery on the planet. 

Haroun instructed CBS News she was doing it for her tradition, and for her father, whom she mentioned taught her an “unconditional love” for each her religion and her nation.

“I owe him that I have an identity,” she mentioned. “I am an Egyptian Jew, and nothing will change this.”

And as for the plans to have a good time Hanukkah, which begins at sunset on Sunday: “We will celebrate it on the 19th since/because no one will come on the 18th because of the World Cup finals,” she mentioned with amusing.