Clement Setton, chairman of the council, and Raphael Bilbul, secretary of the council of the Jewish community. Alexandria, Egypt 1979. Photo: Micha Bar-Am, Israel. (The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot)

Jews in Egypt – Spring 1979

Photographed by Micha Bar Am, Israel [CLOSED]

“Like every other Jew, I see myself as though I was personally a part of the Exodus from Egypt. But despite the Biblical prohibition never to return, I went back in the spring of 1979.

In contrast to my first visit, when I went to record history-in-the-making, on this occasion, I went out of personal motivation and on behalf of Beit Hatfutsot to photograph the current situation of the Egyptian Jewish community.

Jews were already living in Egypt in ancient times. Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and his sons: they all went down to Egypt in times of famine and drought. Throughout the ages, Jews arrived in Egypt from many directions – fugitives from wars in the Land of Israel, refugees from Medieval Spain, survivors of pogroms in Russia, and exiles from Jaffa and Tel Aviv during World War I.

In the spring of 1979, I found a shrunken community, a shadow of a glorious past: empty synagogues, vanishing communal institutions, and huge cemeteries being encroached upon by frantic development and desert.

I was in Egypt during a period of uncertainty regarding the outcome of the peace talks. The Jews, out of bitter experience, were reserved and concerned. The picture I received of the community was not entirely clear and unequivocal. Even the statistics given to me by the official representatives of the Cairo and Alexandria communities were only approximations. They spoke of a total of about 300 Jews in both communities combined (apart from 60 members of the Karaite community in Cairo). The average age is high; about two-thirds are women – most of them widows – and altogether there are only about a dozen children.

Not all the Jews living in Egypt today keep in regular touch with the traditional community institutions. Some usually keep their Jewish identities hidden; on the rare occasion, they appear at a Jewish function – and then return to their anonymity.

This exhibition does not claim to present a historic survey or comprehensive documentation of a community. This is the picture as I saw it, the picture seen by a visitor intrigued by the sources of the vitality of an ancient neighboring community.”

Micha Bar Am,

Photographer, Israel