JEWS OF EGYPT
50.00 €
DANIEL FISHMAN
With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, commercial traffic no longer had to circumnavigate Africa but naturally took the shortest route through Egypt. The country’s prospects appeared excellent, and consequently hundreds of thousands of Europeans relocated there. Among them were many Jews, adding to those who had been there since the time of the Pyramids and to the community established over the centuries. From that time on until 1956, the Egyptian Jewish community reached its apogee, making its contribution in all the different spheres of the country’s life: in the economy and work, in education and the training of the ruling class, in newspapers and the various book publishing ventures, in politics, cinema, theatre, music, in sports and even in animated cartoons. The community itself, whose composition, trends, organization, demographics, movements and associations, synagogues, rabbis and leading figures, as well as customs and traditions, are reconstructed here, is shown in its vibrant collective life and also through the personal stories of prominent figures in Egyptian national life. A history made all the more vivid and approachable thanks to a wide-ranging, mostly previously unpublished selection of photographs.