Jews to mark first Passover away from Yemen

This year, the 62 Yemeni Jews who resettled in the ultra-orthodox enclave of Monsey, NY, have seen snow for the first time. The Passover festival, which falls on 29 March, will feel quite different: they will not have to bake their own matza, nor slaughter their own Paschal lamb.Via Beliefnet News blog:

MONSEY, N.Y. (RNS) Three thousand years after their enslaved ancestors escaped Egypt, a small band of Jews who fled Yemen last summer have a new perspective on the Passover story, along with everything else in their uprooted lives.

Aided by the State Department and a mix of faith-based and social service agencies, 62 refugees -- more than half of them children -- have safely resettled in this thriving Jewish enclave about 30 miles north of New York City.

Daily struggles range from learning to read -- something most could not do in their native Arabic, let alone English -- to bundling up in donated jackets and boots against the winter cold. Constant concerns about friends and family left behind make them hesitant to share last names and other personal information.

This Passover, a weeklong holiday that starts at sunset on March 29 this year, they will sit down to their Seder meals on chairs instead of cushions, drinking bottled kosher wine instead of homemade concoctions, and munching on square matzo from boxes rather than the flatbread they ground and baked at home.

"Everything is different here," said Hanae, a young woman who struggles to stay upright on the icy walk outside the women's English class, held four days a week in a synagogue basement. "This year, we'll go to the store."

Yemen's Jews, a Diaspora group dating back to the reign of King Solomon, numbered about 50,000 at the turn of the 20th century. The establishment of Israel and the ensuing wave of anti-Semitism that swept through the Middle East prompted most to emigrate 60 years ago.

The impoverished Arab nation's government has tried to protect its dwindling Jewish minority, but in recent years, civil unrest and radical Islam have fueled violence at home and terrorism abroad.

After the murder of a Yemeni rabbi in December 2008, the State Department granted the Yemenite Jews priority immigration status. With this latest migration, along with about 60 people who chose to evacuate to Israel instead, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society estimates fewer than 300 Jews remain in Yemen, reluctant to abandon their homes and displace their families.

"It's difficult for them to get fair prices, because everyone knows they want to leave," said Gideon Aronoff, HIAS president. Some also fear changing their centuries-old way of life, he added.

Those who braved the journey last year have been sheltered by Monsey's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, but some changes were quickly embraced. The women, who arrived wearing veils that revealed only their eyes, now show their whole faces beneath headscarves; the men's traditional side-curls, once tucked into turbans to avoid attracting attention, fall freely.

For the foreseeable future, they rely on government assistance and social services, including medical care, language classes and vocational training.

"They have their prayer books and their clothes, and that's what they had," said Joe Berkofsky, spokesman for The Jewish Federations of North America, which helped settle the refugees. "These people had remained and stuck it out, but finally they had to leave everything behind."

Despite the parallels to the Passover exodus, the Yemenite Jews brush off comparisons to the trials their predecessors endured.

"It was much harder in Egypt, because everyone had to make 400 bricks a day," said Haroun, 44, a father of 10 who drove a school bus back home but hasn't gotten behind the wheel in America yet.

Laboriously learning to sound out words like "cat" and "sat" in a synagogue classroom, he and the other men agreed that, for their children's safety and the educational opportunities America can provide, they have grown accustomed to their strange new circumstances.

Even snow, which thrills their children and annoys their wives, is no big deal, insists Shakar, 60, who had supported his family of 11 by making window frames.

"It snowed once in Yemen, perhaps 50 years ago," he recalled. "Some people were able to save some of it and use it to water their crops later."

But they've braced themselves for a barely recognizable Al Fasah, the Arabic word for Passover. Kosher meat is widely sold in suburban New York, so they won't have to buy live animals and track down a ritual slaughterer; the bitter herb representing the hardship of slavery will be horseradish, rather than a wild plant they picked back home. Having left their heavy, ornamental Seder platters in Yemen, they will arrange the symbolic foods on relatively plain, donated dishes this year.

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Government closes 'Ashkenazi only' school

Photo: JC

The Israeli Education Ministry has stepped up its campaign against schools that segregate Ashkenazi and Sephardi pupils. The Jewish Chronicle reports:

This week, the ministry ordered the closure of a school that had been set up three months ago to cater for 74 Ashkenazi girls in the strictly Orthodox town of Emanuel in the West Bank.

Their parents had taken them out of the local Beit Yaakov girls' school after the Supreme Court ruled that the separate classes in the school for Ashkenazi and Sephardi girls were illegal.

The issue of segregation in the strictly Orthodox education stream, where many schools operate a quota of Sephardi pupils or keep them in separate classes, has been the subject of a number of Supreme Court petitions, and the current Education Minister, Gidon Sa'ar, has taken it upon himself to enforce the court's rulings.

Two weeks ago, the ministry filed a complaint with the police against the parents of the 74 girls, claiming that they were acting in breach of the Compulsory Education Law by sending their daughters to an unauthorised school.

The ministry acted after the Emanuel local council refused to do so itself.

Many strictly-Orthodox parents, especially those belonging to Chasidic groups, want their children to be educated only among children of similar backgrounds.

The main Charedi school network, Chinuch Atzmai, has in some places catered for these parents by having within the schools a "Chasidic stream" and a "general stream".

De facto this means segregation between Ashkenazi and Sephardi pupils.

In towns such as Emanuel, where the local councils which are responsible for implementing the education laws are controlled by Charedi politicians, they have refused to work with the Education Ministry, claiming that the schools are independent, despite the fact that they receive 60 per cent of their funding from the state.

The ministry is now exploring ways in which it can penalise the schools and reduce their funding.

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Land exchanges benefit Arabs disproportionately

Ruth R Wisse injects some desperately-needed context into the current spat between the US and Israel over the expansion of housing in a Jewish suburb in North Jerusalem in this brilliant article in The Wall St Journal, What about an Arab settlement freeze? Arab states have benefitted disproportionately in terms of land and property from the exchange of populations and property between Arabs and Jews, she says. She might have added that formerly Jewish districts of Baghdad and Cairo like Bataween and Zamalek are now Judenrein : (with thanks: Lily)

When she is surrounded by a swirl of conversation she cannot understand, my two-year-old granddaughter turns to me expectantly: "What they talking about, Bubbe?" Right now, I would have to confess to her that the hubbub over 1,600 new housing units in Jerusalem defies rational explanation.

Of the children of Abraham, the descendants of Ishmael currently occupy at least 800 times more land than descendants of Isaac. The 21 states of the Arab League routinely announce plans of building expansion. Saudi Arabia estimates that 555,000 housing units were built over the past several years. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced during a meeting in Baghdad last year that "Some 10,000 units will be built in each province [of Iraq] with 100 square meters per unit" to accommodate citizens whose housing needs have not been met for a long time. Egypt has established 10 new cities since 1996. They are Tenth of Ramadan, Sixth of October, Al Sadat, Al Shurouq, Al Obour, New Damietta, New Beni Sueif, New Assiut, New Luxor, and New Cairo.

In 2006 the Syrian Prime Minister, Mohammad Naji Atri, announced a new five-year development plan that aims to supply 687,000 housing units. Kuwait expects to have a demand for approximately 100,000 private housing units by 2010. Last year Jordan's King Abdullah launched a National Housing Initiative, which aims to build 120,000 properties for low-income Jordanians.

Arab populations grow. And neighborhoods expand to house them. What's more, Arab countries benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs that resulted from the Arab wars against Israel. Since 1948 upward of 800,000 Jews abandoned their homes and forfeited their goods in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. In addition to assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, the property deeds of Jews from Arab lands is estimated at a total area of 100,000 square miles, which is five times the size of the state of Israel, and more than Israel would include even if it were to stretch over all the disputed territories of the West Bank.

These preposterous disparities are a result of contrasting political cultures. The Arab League was founded at the same time as Israel with the express aim of undoing the Jewish state's existence. Although much has changed over the ensuing decades, opposition to the Jewish state remains the strongest unifying tool of inter-Arab and Arab-Muslim politics. Trying to eliminate the Jews rather than compete with them has never benefited nations.

It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands. But why should America encourage their hegemonic ambitions? In December the White House issued a statement opposing "new construction in East Jerusalem" without delineating where or what East Jerusalem is.

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The Baghdad Spring never blossomed for Jews

Reuven Snir is a Haifa university professor of Arabic. A Communist, his writings demonstrate hostility typical of a small but vocal coterie of Arab-born radical writers in Israel towards both Zionism and Arab nationalism, and a desperate need to universalise their identity as 'Arab Jews'. Snir hankers for the 'Baghdad Spring', the great cultural dawning of the new multifaith Iraq in the 1920s, in which Jews expected to play a leading role. But as I tried to say in this article , cultural affinities with Muslims and Christians do not guarantee peaceful coexistence. They were not enough to save the Jews. Even the most acculturated Jew, like Snir's hero, the writer Anwar Shaul, found that Iraq had rejected him, and he too was forced to follow the rest of the Jewish community into exile. (With thanks: bh)

The Baghdad Spring of 1920 was not as short as the Prague Spring, but unfortunately it fell short of providing a new point of departure for the people of the Middle East – in my view, one of the great missed opportunities in the history of this part of the world.

The aforementioned Anwar Shā'ul never declared during the 1920s 'I am an Arab Jew' because he had no reason to struggle for his identity: it was self-evident for him, as it was self-evident for many of his Iraqi compatriot poets. When the new state of Iraq was established the Jews had every reason to believe that the local society around them very much desired their full integration.

On 18th July 1921, before his coronation as King of Iraq, the Amir Faysal addressed Jewish community leaders: 'In the terminology of patriotism there is nothing called Jews, Muslims, and Christians. There is simply one thing called Iraq. [...] I ask all the Iraqi children of my homeland to be simply Iraqis. [...] There is no distinction between Muslim, Christian, and Jew.' Sāṭi' al-Ḥuṣrī, Director General of Education in Iraq from 1923 to 1927, argued at the time that 'every person who speaks Arabic is an Arab'.

The new Iraq was built as a new community that invited specific people to join, and the identity of those who decided to join was constructed less out of negativity or difference and more out of positive belonging. There is a necessary link between rhetoric and identity; after all, the question of 'the one and the many' is a problem not only for philosophy but also for rhetoric, which interests itself in the speaker's or writer's capacity to engage an audience, to have an effect on others.

The orator's task, says Kenneth Burke in A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), is consciously to construct this sense of commonality, to create a community, by way of identification. The orator hails his audience into existence, pulling together a community of listeners, by prompting them to identify with a common desire. We saw an excellent illustration of that 'pulling together a community of listeners' in the last American election with Barack Obama, although in that case it was mainly the 'politics of resentment'.

If we refer to all those who joined the new Iraqi community of the 1920s and expressed their desire to take part in building it, we can understand the great change that occurred in the life of those young secular Jewish intellectuals and writers who would later be known as the major figures in Iraqi Jewish literature. This shift was decisive because it involved different singularities: each wanted to belong to the new community without the need to abandon other frames of belonging, whether religious, ethnic, professional etc.

The importance of the new abode, the new community, may be learned from the context of the emergence of the modern Arabic literature of Iraqi Jews, for which we have solid historical documentation.

At the beginning of 1924 the Christian Iraqi writer Yūsuf Rizq Allāh Ghunayma (1885-1950) published a book entitled Nuzhat al-Mushtāq fī Ta'rīkh Yahūd al-'Irāq [The Trip of the Man Filled with Longing into the History of the Jews of Iraq] (published by Matba'at al-Furāt in Baghdad).

While describing the social classes of the Jewish community and the occupations of the Jews, Ghunayma remarked that the Jews of Iraq pursued all occupations, 'but writers and owners of periodicals and newspapers could not be found among them [the Jews]. The reason for this is that the Jew wants to work at what might benefit him, and composing and writing in our midst does not find a market. So in this matter they follow the Latin proverb that says: "Living comes first, before philosophy".'

Only three months after the publication of Ghunayma's book, on 10th April 1924, the first issue of the Arabic journal al-Miṣbāḥ (The Candlestick) came out. The owner, the editor and most of the writers were Jews. The aim of the journal was to be part of mainstream Arabic journalism and culture and to contribute to Iraqi Arab culture with no narrow Jewish agenda at all.

The publication of al-Miṣbāḥ illustrated the great change in the intellectual life of the Jewish community, whose young, educated, secular members started to consider themselves part of the new Iraqi Arab nation and intelligentsia. If I use the language of Ghunayma, the Jews started to speak on 'philosophical matters', namely: on things that have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political fields and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aims is pleasure.

From the outset, the secular Iraqi Jewish young intellectuals were inspired by a cultural vision whose most eloquent dictum was al-dīn li-llāhi wa-l-watan li-l-jamī' ('Religion is for God, the Fatherland is for everyone').

That slogan, which was probably coined by the Copt intellectual Tawfīq Dūs in the Coptic congress in Asyut in 1911, is based on the Arabic translation of Mark 12:17: 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's'; it was inspired by the slogan of the Lebanese-Syrian Christian intellectuals of the nineteenth century: 'Love of the Fatherland is part of the faith'.

It was also the slogan of al-Jinān, the first pan-Arabic periodical, which was founded in Beirut at the beginning of 1870 by Butrus al-Bustānī (1819-1883) and was published until 1886; it was edited by his son Salīm al-Bustānī (1848-1884). Al-Jinān emphasised throughout its issues the need to substitute religious solidarity with national solidarity.

Inspired by the aforementioned Christian intellectuals, the Iraqi Jews who adopted the slogan 'Religion is for God, the Fatherland is for everyone' were encouraged by Koranic verses fostering religious tolerance and cultural pluralism, such as: lā ikrāha fī al-dīn ('There is no compulsion in religion' – Al-Baqara 256) and lakum dīnukum wa-lī dīnī ('You have your path and I have mine – Al-Kāfirūn 6).

When the State of Iraq was created, the secular Iraqi-Jewish intelligentsia rallied as a matter of course behind the efforts to make Iraq a modern nation state for all its citizens – Sunni and Shia Muslims, Kurds and Turkmen, Assyrian and Armenian Christians, Yazidis and Jews alike. The vision and hopes of European Zionists at the time to establish a Jewish nation state in Palestine, as promised in 1917 by the Balfour Declaration, was for the Iraqi Jews a far-off cloud, something totally undesired.

Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson (1884-1940), the Acting Civil Commissioner in Mesopotamia (1918-1920), writes in his personal and historical record:

I discussed the declaration at the time with several members of the Jewish community, with whom we were on friendly terms. They remarked that Palestine was a poor country, and Jerusalem a bad town to live in. Compared with Palestine, Mesopotamia was a Paradise. 'This is the Garden of Eden,' said one; 'it is from this country that Adam was driven forth – give us a good government and we will make this country flourish – for us Mesopotamia is a home, a national home to which the Jews of Bombay and Persia and Turkey will be glad to come. Here shall be liberty and with it opportunity! In Palestine there may be liberty, but there will be no opportunity.' (Wilson 1936, I, 305-306)

In the late Thirties the Jewish educator Ezra Haddād declared that 'we are Arabs before we are Jews'. Ya'qūb Balbūl wrote that 'a Jewish youth in the Arab countries expects from Zionism nothing other than colonialism and domination'. Most of Iraq's Jewish population lived in Baghdad, filling most of the civil service jobs under the British and the early monarchy.

Nissim Rejwan says that, just as it has often been said that New York is a Jewish city, so 'one can safely say the same about Baghdad during the first half of the twentieth century'. The real national vision of the Iraqi Jews, at least the vision of the intellectual secular elite, was Iraqi and Arab – therefore, studies about the pre-1948 relationships between Arabs and Jews seem to use an anachronistic dichotomy which never existed in the Arab lands.

David Semah says: 'The Jews of Iraq never referred to non-Jewish Iraqis as "Arabs", but used the words "Muslim" and "Christian" [...]. When they spoke about "Arabs" (al-'Arab) they had in mind only Bedouins.'

If we return to al-Minbar, the editor was Anwar Shā'ul, and he wrote under the pseudonym Ibn al-Samaw'al, an allusion to the pre-Islamic Jewish poet al-Samaw'al ibn 'Ādiyā', proverbial in Arab history for his loyalty. According to the ancient Arab cultural heritage, al-Samaw'al refused to deliver weapons that had been entrusted to him. Consequently, he witnessed the murder of his own son by the Bedouin chieftain who laid siege to his castle to carry off the weapons that had been left in his charge.

Al-Samaw'al is commemorated in Arab history by the saying Awfā min al-Samaw'al ('more loyal than' or 'as faithful as al-Samaw'al'). The decision to use this pseudonym reflected Shā'ul's Iraqi-Arab vision, which he saw as most appropriate for the emergence of the Iraqi nation.

Anwar Shā'ul's poem 'al-Rabī'' ('Spring'), published in the first issue of al-Miṣbāḥ, illustrated the hope for a new era of national unity far removed from any opportunistic considerations or religious fanaticism.

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The politics of restoring the Maimonides synagogue

Interior of the Maimonides synagogue (photo: Joyce Dallal)

Egypt's Jews were not the only non-Muslims to be persecuted and expelled by Nasser in the 1950s, but by restoring the Maimonides synagogue, the Egyptian government is trying to show that it is not quite the fomenter of media antisemitism that it is, argues Hugh Fitzgerald in Jihadwatch. His article goes on to demonstrate that the main figures in authority, culture minister Farouk Hosni and antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass, each had their own political motives for undertaking the restoration. (With thanks: Eliyahu)

The restoration of this one synagogue connected to Maimonides, once court physician to the Fatimids, was not prompted by some sudden deep realization of the need, culturally and politically, to recognize, at least by allowing this one synagogue to be rebuilt, that for thousands of years Egypt had had Jews living in the land, that the last of them had been finally expelled or driven out by unspeakable insecurity, their lives made intolerable, by Nasser. But let's be fair, for the attacks on Jews in 1941 whipped up by Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and the grandfather of Tariq Ramadan, were not just on Jews alone, but also on Copts. And to continue the fairness theme, when Egyptians attacked non-Muslims in 1952, killing dozens of them, including eleven British citizens, Jews were not singled out.

And to be fair, after the Colonels' coup that toppled fat Farouk and the ancien regime, and then Nasser rid himself of Colonel Naguib and the others and became the Supreme Leader, and decided to seize the property of the many different "non-Egyptian" Egyptians, some of whom were the descendants of families that had lived in Egypt and contributed, for centuries, to the economy, it wasn't only Jews who suffered, but Greeks, and Italians (few may recall that the poets Cavafy and Ungaretti were both born in Alexandria), and others too of those sometimes described in old books as "Levantines" of indeterminate origin. The Egyptian government seized the property of all of these hundreds of thousands of people, accumulated in some cases over the centuries. We can all see how the Egyptian economy started to flourish as soon as those awful "foreigners" were out of the way.

The idea for this synagogue renewal should be obvious: the Egyptian government wanted to pretend that it really was not quite the fomenter of antisemitism (and, not unrelated, anti-Americanism) in its vigilantly monitored media, that it is. It wanted to get some good press, and it wanted as well to do something that might attract tourists. What better idea than to fix up, after centuries of neglect, the synagogue associated with Maimonides, court physician during the Fatimid Dynasty, the one associated with the Kurd Saladin.

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For articles on Hosny's bid for UNESCO leadership see also under Egypt/Israel label

Jews still owed lion's share of lost property

The house on Rehov Graetz

With thanks: bh

In 1948, Munir Katul, now a retired Oregon urologist, lost his house on what is now Rehov Graetz in the German colony in Jerusalem: his is a sad story of displacement resulting from the Arab-Israeli conflict, repeated many times over in the region. The Jerusalem Post waxes lyrical:

Before he left his one-story, stone house for the last time, he looked down at the Persian rug lining the formal living room where he had played with his brother, George, 18 days earlier, as his father, Jibrail, huddled over the console radio, listened to the UN General Assembly vote on the partition of Palestine.

As he walked from the now empty living room, across the colorful tile porch, and passed the green-shuttered windows to the waiting taxi, he studied the pine trees and green gardens around him in the German Colony.

He remembered how he loved to get lost in all that backyard greenery, with his best friend, Leila Itayyim. After school they played tag and hide-and-seek, built dirt castles, raced their pet turtles and helped hisfather tend the garden. He took one last look at his favorite
tree, where he loved to hide high up in the branches to see everything without being seen, and wished he was sitting there instead of leaving.

Two aspects are striking about Munir's story: the first is that his Greek Orthodox parents and grandparents were born in Lebanon and came to Palestine because of the greater economic opportunities, thus giving the lie to the idea that Arabs have always lived in Palestine since 'time immemorial'. Munir's family fled back to Lebanon, yet the component of Munir's identity most important to him today is 'Palestinian'. Even today, aged 72, he chooses to line his hallway with photographs of the house on Rehov Graetz. Is this normal, or has Munir made a fetish of the 'wrong' Israel committed against him? It means that he can never feel at home anywhere else: he is not prepared to abandon his goal of repatriation to his old home in Jerusalem (although, to be fair, he also recognises this might be impractical):

Though it (Lebanon) was the land of his ancestors, everything seemed strange. The Arabic language and dress norms were the same. But below the surface, the customs and behaviors were slightly different. Life in the cosmopolitan city of Beirut was nothing like the warm, friendly, village environment that made Katul feel safe.

The other aspect is that Munir's father convinced himself that sooner or later his home would be caught up in a war zone, although his wife and his Jewish neighbours tried to persuade him to stay. We know that Arabs did choose to stay, and became Israeli citizens:

The neighbors had said a departure was premature. Even his mother, Alice, tried to talk her husband out of leaving. But Munir’s father was adamant.

In other words, the father chose to uproot his family. He did not attempt to sell his home, renting it out to Shell for a year. He probably believed he would return at some point. Perhaps that is why Munir calls himself 'displaced', but not 'a refugee.'

As Jews reclaim properties they lost in 1948, Israelis are busy agonising whether they are morally entitled to do so. Some say that it opens up a can of worms - what is to stop the Palestinians reclaiming their 'right of return' to properties in Israel proper?

Few stop to consider that, even if the Jews manage to recover every last acre of Jewish property in Palestine, they will only have reclaimed a fraction of the property which a million Jews lost in the Arab world. If Palestinians were to claim every last square inch of property they claimed to own in Israel, Jews would still be owed more.

Jews in almost all Arab states had little choice but to leave. They suffered a policy of 'collective punishment', discrimination, harassment and expulsion, that identified them as enemy aliens belonging to the Jewish minority of Palestine, although they lived hundreds of miles from the combat zone.

As Ashley Perry writes:

In fact, according to a newly released study by former CIA and State Department Treasury official titled 'The Palestinian Refugee Issue: Rhetoric vs. Reality' for the Jewish Political Studies Review, the value of assets lost by both refugee populations is incomparable.

Zabludoff uses data from John Measham Berncastle, who undertook the task to calculate the assets of the Palestinian refugees in the early 1950s under the aegis of the newly formed United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP). In today's figures, Zabludoff uses the US Consumer Price Index to calculate that the assets are worth $3.9 billion.

The Jewish refugees, being greater in number and more urban, had assets that total in today's prices almost double that of the Palestinian refugees.

On top of this equation one must remember that Israel returned over 90% of blocked bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other items belonging to Palestinian refugees during the 1950s. This diminishes the UNCCP calculations further.

I'm not saying that Munir should not be entitled to compensation. In theory, Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property Law makes it possible within the framework of a peace treaty to settle all outstanding claims by compensating the claimants. But so is a Jew who lost his property in Baghdad, Tripoli or Alexandria, entitled to compensation - a principle now enshrined in Israeli law, but by no means recognised by Arab states.

Chief rabbi complains at Turkish prevarication

Rabbi Isak Haleva: Chief Rabbi of Turkey or simply Chief Rabbi?

The first serious evidence that Turkey's Islamist government is eroding the rights and freedoms of non-Muslim minorities: the Turkish Chief Rabbi, Isak Haleva, has complained to the government after it stalled for months on authorising elections for a new holder of the office. The Jewish Chronicle of 4 March had the story:

Rabbi Haleva's seven-year term of office expired last autumn, but elections could not be held because of a row between the Turkish authorities and the community over the official title of the post.

The authorities refused, for reasons that were never explained, to allow the next holder of the post to be called "Chief rabbi of Turkey", and insisted instead on simply "Chief rabbi".

A compromise was eventually reached in which the post-holder would be called "Chief rabbi of Turkish Jews", and a letter was sent allowing the Jewish community to go ahead with the election. A vote should take place shortly, with Rabbi Haleva widely expected to win a second term.

Turkey must show the EU that it takes the concerns of minorities seriously

Liberal Turkish paper Milliyet reported that the row was part of a wider governmental strategy to stop non-Muslim communities appointing leaders and force all minority faiths to appoint one joint representative.

Rabbi Haleva made the complaint to the government during a meeting with the Turkish Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis about the problems of non-Muslim communities in the country.

The meeting was also attended by Greek, Armenian and other religious leaders.

Other issues he raised include the legal ban on Jewish and other minority schools admitting students of foreign nationality.

The Jewish High School in Istanbul, like the Greek and Armenian schools, cannot admit students who hold foreign citizenship, including Israelis.

He also asked the government to consider including provisions in the penal code to justify legal action against antisemitic material in the press, a particular problem in some pro-Islamist publications.

The official view over complaints about antisemitic articles in the past has been that there is no legal basis for legal action.

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Conditions deteriorate for Turkish minorities

Egypt finds excuse to cancel Maimonides ceremony

Supreme Antiquities Authority head Zahi Hawass (photo: AFP)

They had stayed away from the official inauguration of the restored Maimonides Synagogue on 7 March on the grounds that it was a 'religious' ceremony. Now Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosny and Antiquities Authority Chief Zahi Hawass have found another excuse to cancel today's second ceremony: Israeli aggression against Muslims and the 'provocative' drinking of 'alcoholic beverages' at the earlier ceremony ( presumably a celebratory Le'haim over a glass of champagne). Ynet News carries this Associated Press report:

Egypt has canceled the inauguration of a restored synagogue citing the Israeli oppression of Muslims in the territories as well as excesses by Jews during an earlier ceremony at the synagogue.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities restored the ruined Ben Maimon synagogue in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter and was set to unveil it to the press Sunday following its rededication a week earlier in a private ceremony.

SCA chief Zahi Hawass said in a statement that the cancellation of ceremony comes following "provocative" activities by Jews at rededication, including drinking alcoholic beverages, as well as "aggression by Israeli authorities" against Muslim sanctuaries.

The synagogue was named after Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, a famous physician, philosopher and Torah scholar who was born in Cordoba, Spain, in 1135. He eventually moved to Cairo, where he died in 1204 and was buried inside the synagogue. The remains of the rabbi, who is known in the West as Moses Maimonides, were later transferred to the Holy Land.

The synagogue was built in an area called Haret al-Yahoud, or "The Jewish Quarter," a reflection of how medieval Cairo was divided up into religious and ethnic neighborhoods. It was declared an antiquity in 1986 due to its historic architecture and religious importance, Hawass said.

The area around the synagogue is now known as el-Gamalia. It used to be a slum filled with garbage-covered dirt streets until the government recently cleaned up the area to attract tourists.

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Haaretz article

AFP article

The Rambam Synagogue: the ultimate miracle?

Video courtesy of Yves Fedida of the Nebi Daniel Association

The inauguration of the restored Maimonides Synagogue and Yeshiva in Cairo on 7 March was a poignant moment for the Nebi Daniel Association, which had worked long and hard to persuade Egypt that its Jewish heritage was worthy of preservation. Here's an extract from Yves Fedida's moving account:

Only yesterday the narrow alleyways were dirty and full of potholes, but as we wound our way today they were paved and asphalted and I could see the minaret of the Rahim mosque overlooking the modest Rab Moshe synagogue next door. Truly symbolic of the tolerance of old, the different ahl el kittab congregational buildings were distant by but a few meters, in this old Mouski district dating back to the founding of old Cairo. It was Sunday 7 March 2010 and I was anxiously on my way to the dedication ceremony of the reconstruction of the Rambam’s Synagogue and the 12th century Yeshiva. Neither the urban surroundings nor the dense security guards were the cause of my anxiety.

As this great day was drawing near, the question recurred: what’s all this about? What purpose would such restoration and celebration serve other than fodder for tourists? I had read a poem by Emma Lazarus and the following two stanzas had hit a chord:

The weary ones, the sad, the suffering
All found their comfort in the holy place,
And children's gladness and men's gratitude
'Took voice and mingled in the chant of praise.

The funeral and the marriage, now, alas!
We know not which is sadder to recall;
For youth and happiness have followed age,
And green grass lieth gently over all

El lé fat, mat*. Early in 2006, a promise had been made by the Minister of Culture and confirmed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in front of Rabbi Baker, representing the A.J.C, Mrs Carmen Weinstein, President of the Cairo Jewish Community, together with Roger Bilboul, Alec Nacamuli and myself all of the International Nebi Daniel Association. This concerned the restoration of ten synagogues under their Trust. Mrs Weinstein had struggled to achieve this for the previous ten years. Rab Moshe was her top priority. It was after all the most symbolic of places for all Jews from Egypt and a bridge between the antique community and the contemporary one.

Following the expulsion or forced exile of Jews from Egypt, the place had fallen into disrepair despite M. Vatouri’s valiant and generous efforts to restore. The rise in the Nile water table and the 1992 earthquake were the last straw that turned it to the open-air ruin I first discovered in 2006.

Would the SCA achieve complete drainage and waterproof the plot? Could they fully reconstruct and solidify the structure? Ensure financing of the whole $2 million cost? The work had started in 2008 and by August 2009 we felt elated; but would Mrs Weinstein have the strength to steer the project to its expected end? Political difficulties in the region certainly would not be of great help. The facelift celebration of 2007 had already been moving. The absence of any specifically Jewish ritual or prayer apart from blowing the shofar had left a nostalgic void.

How would the Rab Moshe celebration pan out? The place had after all been laden with fervour, innumerable intimate and pressing prayers and was a source of hope and healing for many Jews across the whole of Egypt. An unending chain of numerous individual family events linked this abandoned Yeshiva back to the Jews of our ancient community. My beloved Nona had begged for healing of her mysterious illness by sleeping there one night, praying that in a time-warp Maimonides, the great doctor, would somehow operate a miracle. Since the 13th century countless Jews had gone through the same process. Every Jew from Egypt knows someone who called upon Rab Moshe’s virtual remedies. Even the late King Fouad is supposed to have shed his coat there to absorb the medicine of the Wise man of Fustat and then be healed by donning it again. Was it not purported that he had already tended Saladin’s family and Richard the Lionheart? Tikun Olam.

When you consider Maimonides searched for logic in miracles and disapproved of calling on saints or spirits, he must have turned in his grave to look the other way!

Two Moses drank water from the Nile in the land of Egypt and enlightened the world through their teaching. Biblical Moses reached out to Moses Maimonides who sought to reconcile faith and reason while standing afar from all extremes. On his tomb in Tiberias one can read an extraordinary epitaph «Mi Moshe ad Moshe, lo kam ke Moshe».

However, if Moses the Rambam is at the centre of Jewish thinking, his temporary bare resting-place has remained in the heart of Jews from Egypt, because of their personal family experiences and their imagination. « Rien… ne peut faire oublier l’éclat et le mystère de l’académie souterraine de Maimonide » wrote the late Jacques Hassoun.

When it comes to synagogues in the area, various images spring to mind especially those ransacked, pillaged, sold or squatted, a reflection on human stupidity. Here though, after years of ignoring the history of our community, it was Egypt itself, who through the determination of the Minister of Culture, M. Farouk Hosny and the Secretary General of the SCA, agreed to completely restore, this and other synagogues, far from all extremes.

A miracle? No, time-honoured wisdom of my native country.

*What is past is dead

Egyptian officials stay away from Rambam opening

Iraqi Jew fails to vote despite queuing five hours

An Iraqi-born Jewish pensioner was left disappointed after he was unable to vote as an expatriate in the country's general election last weekend, The Jewish Chronicle reports.

David Sasson wanted to cast his vote in Wembley, north west London, but his hopes were dashed despite twice queuing for more than five hours.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi expats took part in the election, voting over three days at polling stations in 60 cities worldwide.

But on Sunday, Metropolitan police arrested eight people after "spontaneous disorder" broke out when people were told they could not vote due to the volume of people at the centre.

Mr Sasson, 79, was born in Iraq but escaped to Iran in the 1950s. He moved to Britain in the 1970s.

He said: "I went on both Saturday and Sunday and I waited for five to six hours and I couldn't get in.

"There were thousands of people who could not vote. The Iraqi government made a lot of trouble by opening just one centre in London. There should have been more.

"I had my Iraqi documents with me, including my birth certificate. I was disappointed not to vote as the election is important for the whole of the Middle East. A pro-Iran government would be a lot of trouble."

Other polling stations were set up in Birmingham and Manchester.

Preliminary results from the poll were expected to be announced before the end of the week, with none of the political blocs expected to secure a decisive victory.

Read article in full

Syrian stories of separation and escape

Rabbi Elie Abadie MD (photo HSJE)

It was one of the largest ethnic cleansings of modern times, yet the media have largely ignored the mass exodus of Jews from Arab lands. The David Project's Forgotten Refugees film has been trying to remedy this state of affairs, with its poignant stories of discrimination, expulsion and escape. In her comprehensive piece for Community Magazine, Our parents, the refugees, Kelly Jemal Massry recounts stories of Jewish refugees that were not included in the film, such as that of Rabbi Elie Abadie, whose parents fled Syria for Lebanon following the riots of 1947.

Rabbi Elie Abadie of the Safra Synagogue is the child of survivors of the 1947 Syrian riots. The mobs—aided by police the Jews had once trusted—began burning synagogues and sifrei Torot in what became known as the harayik. One day, rioters entered the building in which Rabbi Abadie’s parents lived. Within minutes, Mrs. Abadie heard shrieks of terror. “They were beating Jews, destroying their property, looting stores, ruining businesses,” she recalled.

Escape was risky. Syrian police patrolled the border and imprisoned Jews who were caught trying to cross. Some were daring enough to bribe a well-connected official or walk outside the border where no one would see them. But many of these attempts were unsuccessful, and resulted in death, torture or incarceration. Rabbi Abadie’s parents hid in his grandparents’ house, and a few days later they made separate attempts at escape. His mother obtained a doctor’s permit and took her sons to the Lebanon Mountains, but his father was unsuccessful after several attempts to escape Syria. In one instance, he was caught by a Syrian guard whom he happened to know. The guard said, “The authorities are after you because you’ve tried to escape several times, and I have orders to arrest you. I’m coming back to arrest you tomorrow.”Mr. Abadie understood the hint, and the very next day, with the help of some friends, he boarded the train to Lebanon. A train official with whom he was acquainted hid him in the cargo hold, warning that if he would sneeze or move a muscle they’d both be caught and killed.

His father hid there silent and motionless for hours, his fear intensifying once the train reached the border. The police conducted a thorough search of the cargo. When they came to his wagon, he was certain he’d be discovered. Miraculously, the guard was distracted and moved on to the next wagon.

As soon as the train crossed the border, Rabbi Abadie’s father jumped off the moving train and into a ravine. Somehow, he landed safely, suffering only minor bruises. He began walking through the Lebanese terrain in search of his family, traveling by night so as not to be seen. Eventually, he found his wife and children. They were entirely unaware of his escape, and were stunned when he walked through the door.

Stories of separation and reunion were not uncommon during those tumultuous times. Families were never allowed to leave the country together, as stray family members were seen as insurance that the deserter would return. For one man, his family’s decision to leave Syria in the seventies in favor of a more progressive country—namely the United States—meant a year and a half separation from his mother. He and his father ventured ahead, while his mother, brother and sister remained behind in Syria, awaiting nothing short of a miracle. He was just seven years old while this upheaval was taking place and was painfully uncertain of what was going on—if his mother would ever come, if they would have to return, or if his family would just remain separated forever. Finally, after enormous bribes were paid, connections tapped, and begging levied, his mother was allowed out of Syria.

In 1992, under pressure from many fronts, Bill Clinton issued a mandate requiring the release of the rest of the Syrian Jews as part of a deal with President Assad. Many migrated to the United States, Israel, and other friendly countries.

Read article in full

New law creates 3 million stakeholders in peace

From Nathan Jeffay of The Forward, the first real comment piece, Jews displaced from Arab countries finally recognized, to be published since the passing of the Knesset bill requiring compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab countries was passed on 22 February. The piece says that all Israel's Zionist parties supported the new law. Some Israelis, however, voice doubts about linking Palestinian and Jewish refugees, based on the myth that the Palestinians can be exonerated from responsibility for the plight of Jewish refugees. This view is not supported by the facts: the Mufti of Jerusalem played a key role in dragging the Arab League into conflict with the Jewish state, and for decades actively incited violence and antisemitism against Jewish citizens of Arab countries.

"The plight of the estimated 856,000 Jews who were forced to leave Arab countries after the establishment of the State of Israel has played a minimal role so far in negotiations for Middle East peace. But on February 22, the Knesset adopted a law under which any Israeli government entering into peace talks must use those talks to advance a compensation claim for those who became Israeli citizens.

The impact on the Middle East peace process is unclear. But according to the law’s supporters, its implications for Jews from Arab countries is substantial.

“This is a historic decision that will make peace in the Middle East about justice for everyone,” said Isaac Devash, the lobbyist who brought the various communities together around the legislative proposal and then took it to the Knesset. Devash, a Tel Aviv businessman and child of Libyan Jews, is a volunteer with the New York-based group Justice for Jews From Arab Countries.

Supporters of the new law say that its passage also shows that Israel today is more accepting of Sephardic discourse than it has been in the past. It illustrates “that we suffered as well as the Jews from Europe, and this is important,” Nachum Gilboa, a leader of the representative council for Libyan Jewry, told the Forward.

The United Nations estimates that, upon the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, 726,000 Palestinians became refugees. JJAC estimates that at the same time, Arab states displaced 856,000 Jewish citizens, in many cases seizing their personal and communal assets. Around two-thirds settled in Israel, and the rest went elsewhere, mostly to France, the United States and Canada. There is no agreed-upon estimate of the assets these Jews lost, though Sidney Zabludoff, a former CIA and Treasury Department official, used data on Palestinian losses to extrapolate some $6 billion in lost Jewish assets.

Until the new law passed, members of the displaced communities had more success in the Diaspora political arena than in Israel. In April 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution urging that every reference to Palestinian refugees raised in international forums be matched by a similarly explicit reference to the uprooting of Jewish communities from Arab countries.

Some Israelis have voiced reservations about efforts to advance the cause of displaced Jews from Arab countries. On the right, critics argued that talking about them as refugees undercut the Zionist case that those who settled in Israel were in fact returning to their own homeland. On the left, there has been concern that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are complicated enough without factoring in a situation for which Palestinians themselves are not responsible, and that doing so could hold back the chances of peace.

Some critics have warned that Palestinians could use the issue to demand quid pro quo compensation of their own.

Gadi Baltiansky, an expert on the peace process, said that the law created an “artificial” connection between the Palestine refugee problem and that of Jews from Arab lands. The issue of Jews from Arab lands should “not be part of the Israeli-Palestinian process,” which must be bilateral, said Baltiansky, director general of the Geneva Initiative, which produces detailed proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

But Devash managed to secure broad consensus for the law in the Knesset. The proposal’s sponsor was lawmaker Nissim Ze’ev of the right-wing and Hareidi-oriented Shas party, whose main followers are Jews from Arab countries and their descendents. All Zionist parties, including Labor and Meretz on the left, supported the measure.

Still, the law’s diverse backers seem to have different views on the outcome of the process. Ze’ev has said that he is open to the idea of the displacement of Palestinians and Jews being classified retroactively as a “population exchange.” Mor Bitan, spokeswoman for Meretz leader Haim Oron, said that her party opposes this course but believes it’s a moral imperative that Jews from Arab lands have their grievances addressed. Meretz “does not think that it will be a barrier to the peace process,” Bitan said.

Devash views the law as the missing link in the peace process. Back in 2000, President Clinton mooted the idea of establishing an international fund to compensate both Palestinian and Jewish refugees. Devash wants to see such a fund established, and wants Israel, Arab countries and international donors such as the United States to contribute to it.

“It creates in Israel a huge pool of stakeholders in the peace process,” he said. “Now you have 2 million to 3 million Israelis who are going to be stakeholders in the process and 4.5 million Palestinian refugees who are also stakeholders.”

Devash wants to see Israel adopt the Saudi Initiative, produced by Saudi Arabia and agreed to unanimously by other Arab League members in 2007. The plan would normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world in return for a withdrawal by Israel to pre-1967 borders and a “just settlement” for Palestinian refugees. Devash’s hope is that the new law will lead to Israel demanding the international fund. This would “help make the Saudi Initiative an initiative that can be accepted by the population of Israel,” he said.

Ada Aharoni, another child of uprooted Jews, considered this hope farfetched. Aharoni, a former Haifa University academic and author of several books on Jews from Arab Lands, said that given the poor economic situation in many Arab countries, any demand for compensation would be “like taking money from a beggar.” But she believed that simply raising the profile of what happened will become a “tool for peace” as Palestinians realize that Jews also suffered in 1948."

Read article in full

Jews displaced from Arab countries finally recognised - Haaretz (with thanks: Lily)

Egypt will bear costs of restoring Jewish heritage

What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine: Egypt is restoring Jewish antiquities because they are Egyptian. While it is good news that money from the Egyptian national coffers will fund the salvaging of synagogues from neglect and disrepair, the government's policy seems to put paid to the hope that Egyptian Jews will have rights to artefacts and documents which once belonged to the Jewish community. Fair article by AP picked up by Haaretz: (with thanks: Lily)

Egypt will shoulder the costs of restoring the country's Jewish houses of worship said the culture minister Tuesday, two days after a historic synagogue in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter was rededicated in a private ceremony.

Farouk Hosny said in a statement that his ministry views Jewish sites as much a part of Egypt's culture as Muslim mosques or Coptic churches and the restorations would not require any foreign funding.

On Sunday, the Ben Maimon synagogue, named after the 12th century rabbi and intellectual Maimonides, was rededicated in a ceremony including half a dozen Egyptian Jewish families that long ago fled the country.

Hosny committed his ministry to restoring all 11 synagogues across Egypt, three of which have already been renovated. The best-known synagogue that of Ben Ezra, is located in Cairo's Christian quarter near a number of old churches and was restored years ago.

The ceremony at the Ben Maimon synagogue was closed to media but attendees said it was an emotional event, especially for the Egyptian-Jewish families invited, many of whom now live in Europe.

"There were some lectures on the Jewish sites in Egypt and the temple. It was nice, emotional and nostalgic," said Raymond Stock, an American close to the Jewish community in Cairo who attended the three-day event.

A group of about 11 Hassidic Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis also came to Cairo from the United States and Israel sang at the event.

Egypt's Jewish community, which dates back millennia and at its peak in the 1940s numbered around 80,000, is down to several dozen, almost all of them elderly. The rest were driven out decades ago by mob violence and persecution tied in large part to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Egypt and Israel fought a war every decade from the 1940s to the 1970s until the 1979 peace treaty was signed.

Despite that treaty, Egyptian sentiment remains deeply unfriendly to Israel, and anti-Semitic stereotypes still occasionally appear in the Egyptian media.

Read article in full

AP article
Torah scroll, property of Egypt (photo: Nebi Daniel Association)

The government continues its politicisation of Egypt's Jewish heritage, using it as a bargaining point with Israel. In this MEMRI clip from February the Antiquities chief Zaki Hawass makes it clear that he will not open a Jewish Museum until 'the Palestinians get their rights'.

The erasure of Jewish history and heritage

The Arab and Muslim outcry against Israel's proposed restoration of Jewish heritage sites in Hebron is symptomatic of a campaign to deny and erase Jewish history and heritage in the region as a whole. Read my guest post on CiFwatch.

The rebuilt Hurva synagogue in the old city of Jerusalem (With thanks: Eliyahu)

Rising from the ashes like a phoenix, the rebuilt Hurva synagogue is about to be inaugurated in Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter.

The synagogue, restored to 19th century magnificence with its finely carved wooden pillars, gilt ornamentation and frescoes of Jerusalem, is a rare symbol of the revival of Jewish life after Israel’s post-1967 reunification of the city. The synagogue was razed to the ground in 1948, dynamited by the Transjordanian Arab Legion, along with scores of other synagogues. The old city was depopulated of thousands of its Jewish inhabitants, their homes looted, the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives desecrated and its tombstones used for latrines and as paving stones.

However, when Jubilation1 pointed out the destruction of the synagogues on the Jeremy Sharon thread, her comment was summarily deleted.

It is not clear to what exactly the moderator objected – was it Jubilation’s reference to Jerusalem’s destroyed Jewish past ? Or was it her cautionary remark: If you can’t learn from history you deserve to have it repeated”?

In case it was the former, the Guardian is not alone in suffering from a pre-1967 amnesia – blotting out Jewish ties to what is now know as ‘occupied Arab land’. When demonstrators protest against the eviction of Arab residents from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in so-called ‘Arab East Jerusalem’, the media routinely fail to disclose that Jews expelled in 1948 still held the title deeds to these homes. The rights of the ‘indigenous’ Arabs rights invariably trump Jewish rights in the eyes of the Left. The media will not tell you that acres of land in ‘Arab East Jerusalem’ is the property of the JNF, that Kalandia refugee camp was built on Jewish property (or, for that matter, that Jews owned acres of land in the Golan Heights and in Jordan).

In case the phrase ‘if you can’t learn from history you deserve to have it repeated’ offended the moderator, Jubilation1 was simply stating a fact. She might well have been thinking of Joseph’s tomb near Nablus, which the Palestinians reduced to a pile of smouldering rubble in 2000 before turning it into a mosque and painting its dome green. Clearly, Israelis have learned from history that unless they assume responsibility for the restoration and preservation of sites important to Jewish heritage, they cannot rely on Arab and Muslim authorities to do it for them.

As Jeremy Sharon remarks, the Palestinian campaign against Israel’s efforts to preserve and maintain sites holy to Jews is part of a larger campaign of delegitimisation. There is a relentless campaign afoot to erase the Jewish presence not just in Palestine, but all over the Arab world, whose extensive Jewish history predates Islam by 1,000 years. Last month, it was shocking to learn that the Iraqi authorities were erasing Hebrew inscriptions at the shrine of Ezekiel, south of Baghdad as a prelude to turning the shrine into a mosque. The six Jews left in Iraq cannot singlehandedly be expected to prevent the inexorable Islamification of traditional Jewish holy sites. Certainly the UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova, who was quick to express her concern at Israel’s proposed restoration of Rachel’s tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, has had nothing to say about irreversible changes to Ezekiel’s tomb.

David Harris of the American Jewish Committee has identified a ‘troubling pattern of trying to deny or extinguish a Jewish presence deeper into the region’. The western media are accomplices in this campaign: a seasoned Middle Eastern affairs journalist had been surprised to discover that Harris’s wife had, as a Jew, been forcibly expelled from her native Libya. The journalist had no idea that Jews had ever lived in Libya nor that every trace of the millenarian Jewish presence had been obliterated almost overnight. So un-newsworthy was the story at the time, that the New York Times, Harris says, devoted exactly two tiny news briefs in 1967 to the end of the Libyan Jewish community.

Harris finds it hard to explain the lack of media interest. Perhaps the media did not want the extra complication of the exodus of a million Jews from Arab countries to cloud their simplistic explanation of who the bad guys are in this conflict.

The erasure of Jewish history and heritage goes hand-in-hand with the fabrication of a novel Islamic history. Yasser Arafat, echoed by the Palestinian media, mosques and schools, had pioneered the idea that the Palestinians were the descendants of the ancient Canaanites or Jebusites. Not only did Arafat deny any Jewish tie with Temple Mount, he oversaw its desecration in the late 1990s and 2000 when the Waqf, which controls the site, dug up priceless archealogical artefacts.

In 2000, after hundreds of years of revering the site known as Rachel’s Tomb, Muslims began calling it the Bilal ibn Rabah mosque. Bilal ibn Rabah was an Ethiopian slave who served in the house of the prophet Muhammad as the first muezzin and then became a fighter in the Muslim wars. The Palestinian Authority claimed that, according to Islamic tradition, Muslim conquerors named the mosque erected at Rachel’s Tomb after Bilal ibn Rabah.

Yet another attempt by Muslims to disassociate their religion from its Jewish roots.

Read post and comments

Crossposted at Solomonia

Jews in the Holy land? What Jews? Via Solomonia

Egyptian officials stay away from Rambam opening

Culture minister Farouk Hosny and head of the Antiquities Authority Zaki Hawass stayed away from the inaugural ceremony of the restored Rambam synagogue in Cairo yesterday, on the grounds that it was purely religious, AFP reports:

CAIRO — The 19th-century synagogue of Maimonides in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter reopened Sunday after a nearly two-year restoration by Egyptian authorities, participants at the opening told AFP.

They said some 150 people attended the opening, including Yitzhak Levanon and Margaret Scobey, the ambassadors of Israel and the United States respectively.

About a dozen rabbis from Israel and abroad also were at the ceremony.

"When I first set foot here only five years ago, the synagogue was in ruins and its roof opened to the sky", said Rabbi Andrew Baker of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Baker praised Egyptian authorities for recognising that Jewish religious sites are also an integral part of Egyptian heritage and Egyptian culture, and for leading the restoration project, the AJC said in a statement.

Egyptian officials were absent from the ceremony, and Culture Minister Faruq Hosni explained that was because Sunday's opening was a purely religious ceremony.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief, said that a more formal opening on March 14 would be attended by Egyptian officials.

Egypt is happy to tout its Pharaonic antiquities, but authorities remain more discrete when it comes to restoration of ancient Jewish sites.

Egypt restored diplomatic ties with Israel in 1979 (in fact it was 1980, a year after the peace treaty was signed - ed), but many in the predominantly Muslim country remain opposed to better cultural ties with the Jewish state.

Egypt began restoration of its Jewish sites several years ago.

Egypt's Jewish population, which numbered in the tens of thousands and enjoyed complete religious freedom, began a mass exodus after Egypt and several other Arab countries fought a war in 1948 with the new state of Israel. (note the active voice: it would not do to say that the Jews were expelled - ed)

Only a few dozen Jews still remain in Egypt.

Read article in full

Al-Masri al yom report (inexplicably illustrated with a video of the Adda synagogue)

Lubavitch News (inexplicably illustrated with a photograph of Nebi Daniel, Alexandria)

******************************

Yediot Aharonot was the only news medium allowed to cover the ceremony. Here's an exclusive report by Smadar Peri (with thanks for her translation into French: Levana)

Apres des années de dévastation, la rénovation de la synagogue Maimonide au Caire.

Une Synagogue ressuscitée:

Ceux qui ont vu les ruines ne pouvaient pas ne pas s'émouvoir face a cette nouvelle vue.

"Ce qui arrive ici, c'est un miracle, comme si la Torah a été donnée une seconde fois».

Carmen Weinstein (82), dans une robe de fête bleue, ne pouvait cacher son émotion: L'ancienne synagogue du Caire Rambam, qui pendant des années était dévastée, fut inaugurée hier, solennellement et royalement. Derrière ce projet important se trouve le gouvernement Egyptien.

En Egypte comme en Egypte, et les choses étaient hier un peu lentes lors de la cérémonie: Les rafraîchissements pour 150 invités ont tarde à venir, et les discours étaient trop longs, mais quand une douzaine de Jeunes HABAD firent irruption avec une danse endiablée au son de l'accordéon, chantant "Osseh Shalom Bimromav", et -- «David Melekh Israël", même les gardes de sécurité et les soldats sentirent que c'est un moment spécial.

Des centaines de soldats furent déployés hier au petit matin le long des ruelles de l'ancien "quartier juif" pour l'inauguration de la synagogue restaurée du Caire.
"C'est un miracle ce qui s'est passé ici aujourd'hui. Comme si la Torah était donnée une seconde fois", a déclaré le maire d'Eilat Joseph Hecht, et des larmes coulaient des yeux des personnes présentes. Carmen Weinstein, président de la communauté juive du Caire, une communauté qui va en s'effaçant (seulement huit femmes et un homme sont venus hier), marchait en s'aidant d'une canne. D'abord, elle a remercié le ministre de la Culture Egyptien, Farouk Hosni (qui s'oppose ouvertement à des relations avec Israël), le ministre des antiquités Zahi Hawass (qui attaqua Israël hier dans un article, en raison des conflits graves sur le Mont du Temple) et enfin, le Président égyptien Hosni Moubarak, qui subi en ce moment une intervention chirurgicale en Allemagne.

Hier, c'était en effet un moment à l'échelle historique, mais pour les Juifs seulement. N'étaient présents que des juifs et une poignée d'invites d'Israël. Ceci n'était qu'une répétition générale pour la cérémonie énorme qui se tiendra la semaine prochaine ici, à Haret el Yahud "quartier juif" qui a aussi subi un face lift.

Pendant un an et demi, le Conseil Suprême des Antiquités en Egypte, oeuvrait a restaurer cette Synagogue, tout en gardant un profil le plus bas possible, pour ne pas exciter la rue hostile à Israël et aux Juifs. Un résultat étonnant: une rénovation spectaculaire dans sa beauté, et il n'y a pas de mots pour décrire le nouveau look de l'endroit. Ceux qui avaient visité la synagogue de Maimonide, avaient vu la structure du toit sale et négligée, à la merci des pluies, vents et dangers météorologiques, des tas d'ordures entassées dans l'encerclement de la synagogue à côté de meubles brisés. Maintenant, tout est neuf et brillant. L'Egypte n'a pas épargné son argent.

"Nous avons été très chanceux», m'a dit hier le rabbin Andrew Baker de l'American Jewish Committee, qui faisait la navette entre Jérusalem au Caire depuis cinq ans. "Il y a deux ans, le ministre égyptien de la Culture qui brimait le rôle de Secrétaire général a l'Unesco, avait décidé d'améliorer son image parmi les Juifs et les Israéliens. Finalement, il donna ordre de prendre d'assaut la synagogue de Maimonide pour sa restauration, et m'avait fait promettre de garder le secret des travaux de rénovation jusqu'à la cérémonie d'ouverture". Aucun représentant des médias n'a assisté à la cérémonie, à l'exception du journal Yedioth Ahronoth israélien.

Ainsi, le gouvernement égyptien a investi 2 millions de dollars pour la construction d'une salle de prière magnifique et impressionnante, la section des femmes et la salle d'étude. Selon les croyances locales, un patient qui y séjourne durant la nuit, guérirait de ses maladies. On dit même que le roi d'Égypte, Fouad, avait passé une nuit dans la synagogue, et tous ses maux avaient disparu. Depuis, de nombreux Juifs et musulmans venaient ici pour retrouver leur santé auprès de Maimonide, le rabbin Moshé Ben Maimon, le plus grand rabbin de toutes les générations, un des plus grands philosophes et médecin.

Il était venu au Vieux Caire de l'Espagne, en passant par l'Afrique du Nord et y vécut jusqu'à sa mort en 1204. Ici, dans l'emplacement de l'ancienne synagogue du quartier juif, il avait prié et écrit ses œuvres.

A l'apogée de sa gloire, la communauté juive comptait 80.000 personnes. Ce qui en reste, est une poignée de juifs, la superbe synagogue rénovée, entourée par des vagues d'hostilité et un quartier misérable.

Left shows blindspot on Jewish rights in Jerusalem

Naomi Chazan of Meretz and veteran leftist Uri Avnery at Saturday's protest

Another demonstration took place over the weekend against Jews moving into Sheikh Jarrah, that area of East Jerusalem known to Jews as Shimon Hatzadik. Palestinians and much of the media claim it is 'Arab'. The controversy over property rights concerns this blog because the underlying assumption is that Arab rights trump Jewish rights: nobody seems to care that Jews were forcibly evicted from land and property in East Jerusalem before 1948, nor does anyone worry about Jewish property seized in Arab countries. The Jews are the 'interlopers', while the Arabs are 'indigenous'. A proper reading of history shows that nothing could be further than the truth. Karni Eldad writing in Haaretz says Jews have had to buy their property in Jerusalem twice over :

"In 1948, scores of families were expelled from their homes in Jerusalem. The city was divided and squatters took over their houses and built on their properties. These refugees prayed to return to the homes they purchased legally in the 1920s and 1930s.

"In 1967, legal proceedings began for the restoration of ownership to those refugees. The squatters pursued every possible means, in every court, to delay the implementation of the possession by the legal owners. Every such legal proceeding lasted for decades, until an appeal was made to the High Court of Justice.

"In 2009, the High Court of Justice had its say too - the squatters must be evicted and they must also pay compensation to the owners of the land for all the years they made use of it. The proceedings against all the squatters has not yet been completed, but this year dozens of Jewish families are slated to return to their homes. Jewish? What? Yes, yes. These are families that are now purchasing, for the full price, their own properties in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, better known as Sheikh Jarrah.

"Is anyone on the left standing by the side of these robbed families and against the Arab squatters? Not a single one of them. All the morality melts away when the actors change. Where can the (supposedly) moral left be found? In demonstrations against the police and against the old-new settlers who have returned to their stolen homes.

"I visited Shimon Hatzadik one Friday. My arrival was greeted by the Taayush choir singing "Free Sheikh Jarrah." A procession of some of our best boys, wrapped in kaffiyehs, marched toward me with drums, shouting.

"In truth - they were scary. I didn't understand what the fuss was about. After all, these houses were purchased twice, paid for with lots of good money. Once in the 1920s and once now, to the Arab squatters.

"No Jew cowed an Arab with threats so he would sell his home to Jews. On the contrary, his Arab friends threatened him if he sold it. But he and some of his neighbors did sell. And now the house belongs to its original owners."

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Ami Isseroff, a Zionist liberal and owner of the excellent blog ZioNation, has also noted the hypocrisy of the Left when it comes to Jewish rights:

"I thought that "shared Jerusalem" means that the city, in all its neighborhoods would be open to both Jews and Arabs, as it was in the days when I was a student there, and lived for a time in Wadi Joz, in East Jerusalem, in rooms sublet by an Arab landlord. The kaleidoscope of different cultures, admittedly not always living in harmony, is what created the exotic charm of Jerusalem in those days. Silly me! It seems that shared Jerusalem, according to Ir Amim, means that East Jerusalem must be ethnically cleansed of Jews. For Ir-Amim has cynically turned slogans like "human rights," "democracy" and "justice" on their heads.

"Orly Nir of Ir-Amim explained to me that shared Jerusalem means this:

Ir-Amim's idea of shared Jerusalem is for the city to acknowledge both national identities and serve as both the Israeli and the Palestinian capital. Any development which aims to prevent this model is dangerous to our understanding, including ideological settlements in Palestinian neighborhoods.

"Of course, if there are two capitals in Jerusalem, there will be a divided city. Sheikh Jarrah will be there to prevent access to outlying Jewish neighborhoods from the center. The old city will be ethnically cleansed of Jews once again, and Jews will have no access to their holy places or any national presence in their ancient capital. The Arabs stopped paying rent for ideological reasons, not because they do not have money. It is impossible to understand why one ideological act by Jews is wrong, while another by Arabs is deemed to be right.

The proponents of "peace" and "democracy" and "rights," Ir Amim included, want to ignore the entire history of Jewish habitation in Jerusalem prior to 1948, as well as the 43 years of Israeli rule in "Arab" East Jerusalem following 1967. The ethnic cleansing of the Jews of Jerusalem, and the 19 year illegal occupation of Jerusalem by Jordan, are to define rights of sovereignty and the rights of habitation in Jerusalem, in the name of "human rights." Ir-Amim seems to believe that when Jews are ethnically cleansed, they should know their place and remain ethnically cleansed, and not try to recover their rights."

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To those who claim that the recovery by Jews of homes in Sheikh Jarrah opens the floodgates to Palestinians claiming their right to recover property inside Israel, Yaacov Lozowick claims that non-citizens are not able to recover their property (I don't know if this is true) , and Yair Gabai argues that those who started an aggressive war must forfeit their property rights, although the Israeli government did enact a law in 1973 permitting compensation in such cases.

Jewish rights ignored in Jerusalem evictions story

Rambam restoration will not lead to dialogue

Before restoration, the synagogue was roofless and prone to flooding (AP)

Dignitaries from all over the world are flooding in for the official inauguration on Sunday of the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo. Egypt has spent up to $2 m rebuilding it, but does not want its Jewish heritage to be a vehicle for dialogue and 'normalisation' with Israel. The Jerusalem Post reports:

After a year-and-a-half of careful restoration work by the Egyptian authorities, the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo is set to be rededicated on Sunday.

The 19th-century synagogue and adjacent yeshiva, which stand on the site where Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the Rambam, worked and worshipped more than 800 years ago, was restored by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

According to the Egyptian press, the restoration of the synagogue is part of a plan by the SCA to restore all the major religious sites in Egypt, including 10 synagogues.

The rededication ceremony will be attended by members of the Cairo Jewish community, the Egyptian diplomatic corps, former Israeli ambassadors and representatives of the state. A group of Chabad Hassidim will also attend the ceremony and help in rededicating the synagogue.

Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of international Jewish affairs at the American Jewish Committee, is one of the people responsible for the renovation project. The initiative dates back five years, Baker told The Jerusalem Post.

“My initial reaction to the situation of the Jewish heritage sites in Egypt was not easy,” he said. “The authorities have protected the site from thieves and vandals by placing guards around them, but things were in a sorry condition.”

Baker said that over the past few years he went back and forth from the United States to Egypt and met with state officials to discuss the preservation and future of Egypt’s Jewish sites. Among the people he met were Culture Minister Farouk Hosny and SCA director Zahi Hawass. On other occasions he met with the foreign minister and some of the chief advisers to President Hosni Mubarak.

“The Egyptians were reluctant to form a formal partnership with us, but were willing to step forward themselves to do the restoration work,” Baker said. “They even endorsed our proposal that one of the restored synagogues should serve as a Museum of Egyptian Jewish Heritage.”

Upon taking on the task, the Egyptians proceeded to carefully renovate the Maimonides Synagogue, known to the community as Rav Moshe. Baker said that the Egyptians had transformed the structure from an earthquake-damaged, roofless and moldy wreck to a near picture-perfect replica of the synagogue that was built in the 19th century.

“I was there in December and it was remarkable,” he said. “They restored it expertly according to old photographs.

“They dug a cistern under the building to drain up excess water that had flooded the yeshiva. They reinforced the ceiling with steel beams. They made new marble columns to replace old ones that had fallen to rubble. They even built a new ark for the Torah scrolls and carefully restored intricate artwork on the walls,” Baker said.

The cost of the renovation is estimated at between $1.5 million and $2m.

Baker said the Egyptians were cautious about highlighting their work on Jewish sites.

“The authorities are tentatively embracing Maimonides as part of their own heritage, but as in most places in the Middle East, Jew and Israeli are often equated and the conflict has a way of entering any discussion,” he said.

Former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel and his wife flew to Cairo on Thursday to attend the event.

“Many of Egypt’s Jewish institutions are in bad shape,” said Mazel who was stationed in Cairo between 1996 and 2001. “The Jewish community is very small and is not capable of preserving all the sites. Once there was a large Jewish population there but most people left in the 1950s.”

Mazel characterized the path to renovation as “entangled.”

“The Egyptians consider the synagogues and the ancient Torah scrolls as part of their heritage, but the fact of the matter is that they were built and purchased by the Jewish community. I think it’s good that they conducted the renovations, but sad that they won’t let Israel be a part of it.

“There is a real fear in Egypt of the appearance of normalized relations, which reflects the prevalent anti-Semitism in the Arab world. If there is no dialogue on an issue like this, I think it’s a bad sign,” Mazel said.

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