Israel: Montefiore Censuses online database launched

The online website of the 19th-century Montefiore Censuses of the Jewish population of the Holy Land, Alexandria, Beirut and Sidon has been launched.

There are five censuses of the Holy Land (including Beirut and Sidon), and one of Alexandria. Currently, the censuses of 1839, 1840 (Alexandria) and 1855 are online. Work continues on the remaining censuses.

The Montefiore Endowment had the censuses scanned in stages.

In 2008, it commissioned the Israel Genealogical Society to transcribe them into a modern Hebrew font, transliterate names and translate data into English. IGS genealogists Mathilde Tagger, Rose Feldman and Billie Stein are in charge. The project is being conducted by teams of dedicated volunteers with good language skills and knowledge of Hebrew scripts.

For more information and to search the database, click here. It can be searched in English or Hebrew, making it accessible to linguistically-challenged researchers. Each entry is linked to the original scans permitting researchers to view the transcribed Hebrew and English in addition to the original document. Families are cross-referenced where relevant.

BACKGROUND

These censuses were compiled by Sir Moses Montefiore during his visits to the area, 1839-1875.  between the years 1839 and 1875. Recorded details include personal and family information, occupations, countries of origin, and surveys of Jewish religious institutions. Together, this database is a unique sociological and genealogical record of Jewish life in the area at a specific time.

Montefiore Endowment chair Lucien Gubbay said “The censuses are unusually comprehensive as it is estimated that fewer than 1% of the Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Israel refused to participate because of religious scruples.”

Sir Moses had undertaken to distribute charitable funds collected throughout the world, together with money of his own, to the Jewish poor. Each applicant received a gift of coins (Spanish dollars), according to a fixed scale, from Sir Moses himself. The documents indicate that almost all members of each community participated, not just the poorer ones.

The handwritten manuscripts, in a variety of scripts, belong to the Endowment and can be seen by appointment at its London library. Many entries are difficult to read and - without an index - lacking an index - tracing of individuals is very difficult.

Each entry is linked to the original scans giving the user ability to see not only the transcribed Hebrew and English script but the original document as well. Cross references are also used to link one family with another where relevant.

In all, there are 5 censuses of the Holy Land (including Beirut and Sidon), and one of Alexandria. At present, the censuses of 1839, 1840 (Alexandria) and 1855 are on line. Work is continuing on the remaining censuses.

Montefiore's census of 1839 is probably the first head count of the Jewish population in Eretz Israel since biblical times. He sent standardized forms for information collection but not all the registrars used them. Thus information varies from town to town and community to community. Other censuses were conducted in 1849, 1855, 1866 and 1875, with Alexandria in 1840.


DATABASE INFORMATION

Every adult and child mentioned - even without a name - is listed individually. Parents, if known, were added to the child's listing.

To read more about the various fields and explanations, click the IGS link above. There are notes on orphans, widows, sages and leaders of communities, abbreviations used as surnames, spelling, various languages and accents. For example, the name Yehuda is spelled at least three ways: יהודה, יהודא, יאודה. Hebrew spellings were kept as the scribe wrote it.

Most Sephardim have surnames, while Ashkenazim rarely do. Names of birthplaces of Sephardim changed little over years, while Ashkenazi birthplaces changed many times, due to historical events.

Cairo Geniza: Digitizing project underway

The Cairo Geniza, with some 200,000 documents and fragments, was discovered in the late 19th-century, in Old Cairo's Ben Ezra Synagogue annex in Fustat.

It is a rich source of genealogical information as well as documents - from the 9th-14th centuries - which include rabbinical court records, leases, deeds, endowment contracts, debt acknowledgments, marriage contracts and private letters.

The collection demonstrates the history of Jews in the region during the Middle Ages as well as information on religious beliefs and practices, economic and cultural life.

Today, technology is making it possible for everyone to access these treasures as the collection is being digitized.

Autograph draft of Mishneh Torah, the legal code compiled by

the rabbinic authority, philosopher and royal physician

Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, 1137/8-1204)

MS.Heb.d.32, fols.50b-51a

Learn more here.

The project is important because pieces of the Geniza are today in many institutions; even manuscripts were separated by single leaves and located in different places, making it difficult to understand the importance or significance of the whole item.

One major collection of 25,000 items, is at Oxford University's Bodleian Library, which possesses liturgical manuscripts and rare Talmud fragments among its holdings. These are unusual because 16th-century Europe experienced mass burnings of Talmud manuscripts.

Technology contributes to the study of these fragments and major libraries are, or have completed, digitizing their collections. The goal is to generate a worldwide database of digitized images, thereby enhancing the accessibility of the various collections and bringing them together. Other institutions involved are Cambridge University, Jewish Theological Seminary, John Ryland Library and the University of Pennsylvania.

Digital communications pioneer and philanthropist George Blumenthal of New York ( president, Center for Online Jewish Studies) and donated his organization's professional services to this project.

The ability to compare fragments in Oxford with those in Philadelphia, New York, Cambridge and Manchester will enable global scholars to access these collections and to identify matching fragments in different collections.

Cairo: Rededication, Maimonides synagogue, March 7-9

Yves Fedida of the International Nebi Daniel Association has announced the dedication of the restored Moses Maimonides (Rab Moshe) Cairo Synagogue and Yeshiva on March 7-9, in Cairo, Egypt.

The event is by invitation only. Read below to learn how to request an invitation.

See a video (9:47 minutes) on the Maimonides project and visit the association's website, available in several languages.

Learn about the synagogues of Egypt here. To see a short video on Alexandria's synagogues, click here. This is the El Nabi Daniel synagogue in Alexandria:

Cairo's Rabbi Moshe complex - and another nine synagogues in Egypt - are historical heritage sites under the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Through an extensive restoration program, the Supreme Council of Antiquities - with the help of the Jewish Community of Cairo - has completed the renovation of the Maimonides complex.

The rooms have niches where, until recently, sick people of all faiths and genders would spend the night praying for recovery or fertility.

The synagogue adjacent to these rooms was built in the early 19th-century. The yeshiva suffered recurring flooding from underground water and the synagogue was badly damaged in the 1992 earthquake. The restoration has been a painstaking effort returning the compound as faithfully as possible to its original splendour .

The three-day event program includes visits to synagogues and cemeteries, music presentations, history talks, refreshments, brunches and dinners.

- Dinner in the communal centre of the main Synagogue, Shaar Hashamayim, built in the early 20th-century and faithfully restored in its rich decorations.

- Visit to Fostat (Old Cairo) where the oldest remaining synagogue in Egypt stands, believed to have been first built around 340BC.

The pre-Islamic Ben Ezra Synagogue which has also been perfectly restored was the synagogue where Rab Moshe prayed and held services as the head of the Jewish community of the time. The famous Geniza Papers were found at the Ben Ezra Synagogue and the new Geniza museum in the Ben Ezra complex has a number of reproductions of these papers.

- A visit to the also recently restored Moussa Dar’i Synagogue built by the Karaite community in the 1920s. It features Art Deco lotus flower columns and an imposing dome.

- Finally, a visit to the Jewish cemetery at Bassatine, in the southeast outskirts of Cairo, a vast site that has not been easy to maintain.

The Jewish Community of Cairo has made heroic efforts to defend it against a highway overpass and squatters’ buildings which have encroached on the territory itself. Most of the marble tombstones have been stolen in 1967 so that the majority of the tombs are today unidentifiable. However, the Cairo Community has built a perimeter wall and continues to landscape the cemetery and guard it against vandals. It maintains a list of a number of tombs that have been identified.

Events on Sunday, March 7 start at 2pm at the complex, with a presentation, Ladino music, prayer, refreshments, history of Maimonides, history of Jews in Egypt, Arabic songs and a program by the Supreme Council of Antiquities. At 6pm, attendess will have an oriental Egyptian dinner at the Shaar Hashamayim Synagogue.

On Monday, March 8, attend a meeting at the Ben Ezra Synagogue, a presentation on Maimonides and his letters discovered in the Genizah, and brunch, followed in the evening by a 9pm dinner reception.

On Tuesday, March 9, attendees will visit the restored Karaite Synagogue, hear the community history. There will be optional tours of other synagogues and the Bassatine Cemetery.

Attendance is by invitation only, which can be applied for from the Cairo Jewish community. Email here or here for more information.

Egypt: More Jewish restoration projects

In an article forecasting announcements of major archaeological discoveries in Egypt, mention is made of additional restoration projects for Jewish sites in that country.

The story appeared on BikyaMasr.com.

Zahi Hawass, Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities secretary general, noted that these announcements will be made over the next three months.

Most importantly for Tracing the Tribe readers, he said that Egypt is currently working on the “restoration of Jewish temples, including three temples and the restoration of five other temples would start soon.”

Other topics addressed were DNA test results on the lineage of Tutankhamun:

“Egypt will announce the secrets of the family and lineage of Tutankhamun on the 17th of February in the Egyptian Museum through the announcement of results of scientific tests conducted on the mummy of the king after the completion of DNA analysis and CT scan.”

Other announcements to be made soon will include important discoveries in the area of Saqqara and the Pyramids. Robots will be sent into the corridors of the Great Pyramid of King Khufu.

Hawass added that the Council's work on antiquity restoration includes Pharaonic, Coptic, Jewish and Muslim within the cultural heritage of Egypt, such as the Coptic monastery of St. Anthony and restoration of Cairo's Hanging Church.

Read the complete article for much more.

New York: Defining Sephardic identity, Jan. 14

A kick-off event exploring identity in New York's Sephardic communities will take place at the Next Generation Culture Café of the American Sephardi Foundation (ASF) in January.

"Defining Sephardic: A Roundtable Discussion on Sephardic Identity" begins at 6.30pm, Thursday, January 14.

Moderated by filmmaker and Be-chol Lashon's New York director Lacey Schwartz, the participants will be:

-- Zena Babayov: New York University master's (communications) student and active member of the Bukharan community in Forest Hills, Queens.

-- Mijal Bitton: Yeshiva University/Stern College junior from Argentina and an active member of the Sephardic Community of Great Neck, Long Island.

-- Sion Setton: Manhattan's Safra Synagogue director of youth programming, with Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian heritage.

-- Matieu Furster: Software engineer with both Moroccan Sephardi and Russian Ashkenazi heritage.

Admission is free. Light refreshments served. Email reservations or call 212-294-8301 x8356.

This is the first event of a year-long program funded by the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation. ASF also received assistance from the Consulate General of Spain in New York.

For more information, click on the ASF site and see future events.

Washington DC: Jews of Brazil program, Oct. 20

The Library of Congress will host Daniel R. Pinto of the Embassy of Brazil for an illustrated lecture on the Jews of Brazil at noon Tuesday, October 20.

The free program is open to the public and is sponsored by the LOC's African and Middle East Division (which incorporates the Hebraic Section) and the Hispanic Division.

Pinto was born in Rio de Janeiro to Egyptian Jewish refugees. He attended Rio's French School and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Candido Mendes University. Prior to joining the Brazilian Foreign Service in 1999, he worked in the tourist, health care and banking industries. He has been posted at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington since 2006, and follows intellectual property and trade policy issues.

The history of the Jews in Brazil is long and complex. Jewish settlers came to Brazil in 1500, fleeing persecution in Portugal in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. Under Dutch rule, the Jews of Brazil worked on sugar plantations and were allowed to practice their religion. They established a synagogue in Recife in 1636, the first synagogue in the Americas.

Less than two decades later Brazil fell under Portuguese rule, which caused many Jews to leave the country. Some of these refugees fled to New Amsterdam (New York), founding the first Jewish community in America in 1654.

When a Portuguese royal decree abolished discrimination against Jews in 1773, Jews began to return to Brazil. By 1920, more than 7,000 Jews lived in Brazil. More than 100,000 Jews—less than .01 percent of the population—live in Brazil today.

The program will be held in the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) Reading Room, Room 220 of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

Egypt: Politics of Jewish preservation

The New York Times reported on Egypt's foray into its Jewish past.

In its "Cairo Journal" section, reporter Michael Slackman offered a different view of the ongoing renovation, restoration and preservation projects relating to Egypt's Jewish history and community.

Slackman writes that Egyptians generally don't make distinctions between Jewish people and Israelis. They are both seen as the enemy.

Tracing the Tribe feels that despite the politics that might be advancing these projects, the possibility that genealogical and community records may be finally made accessible to those who have been clamoring for them for decades, and the preservation of Jewish heritage, it's all worth it.

Perhaps the true worth of these projects is not why these things in Egypt are being done - to possibly serve political ends - but the end result itself.

One could even liken it to the Prague Jewish Museum which began life as a supposed collection of artifacts representing a dead people, according to Nazis. When so much else was destroyed, that collection was preserved and commemorates a people who survived despite the tragedy and murder of millions.

However, the question also arises of what happens to these projects if Hosny is passed over as UNESCO head? Tracing the Tribe will continue to watch the situation closely.

According to the story, an Old Cairo kiosk snack-seller, Kahlid Badr, 40, whose views are pretty typical, has recently had his ideas challenged.

But Mr. Badr’s ideas have recently been challenged. He has had to confront the reality that his neighborhood was once filled with Jews — Egyptian Jews — and that his nation’s history is interwoven with Jewish history. Not far from his shop, down another narrow, winding alley once called the Alley of the Jews, the government is busy renovating an abandoned, dilapidated synagogue.

In fact, the government is not just renovating the crumbling, flooded old building. It is publicly embracing its Jewish past — not the kind of thing you ordinarily hear from Egyptian officials.

“If you don’t restore the Jewish synagogues, you lose a part of your history,” said Zahi Hawass, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, who in the past has written negatively about Jews because of the clash between Israel and the Palestinians. “It is part of our heritage.”

Egypt has slowly, quietly been working to restore its synagogues for several years. It has completed two projects and plans to restore about eight more. But because of the perception on the street — the anger toward Israel and the deep, widespread anti-Semitism — the government initially insisted that its activities remain secret.

American Jewish Committee director of international Jewish affairs Rabbi Andrew Baker said they were told the Egyptian government was doing these things but to keep it secret. This is opposite to Eastern Europe, where the governments shout these projects aloud to try to change the old picture.

The answer is not street politics, but global politics according to Slackman, and chalks it up to the fact that Egyptian minister of culture Farouk Hosny wants to be UNESCO's next director general. Hosney is 71, considered liberal, and has criticized women wearing head scarves. However, in 2008, he also told his local supporters that he burn any Israeli book found in the Alexandria library, even though he apologized.

After a year, work began in June 2009 inside an old synagogue around the corner from Badr's kiosk. It is a historic place, named after Moses Maimonides (physician and scholar Rabbi Moses ben Maimon) who was born in Cordoba, Spain in 1135, and then moved to Alexandria and Cairo, working and studying in the temple until his death. Supposedly it was last used in 1960 and some say the work was ordered to quiet Hosny's detractors.

“The irony is they have done something,” Rabbi Baker said. “It goes back at least several years now. They didn’t want to do it in a formal relationship with us. They said, ‘We accept this as our responsibility to care for our Jewish heritage, so we will do things ourselves.’”

The claim that what they are now undertaking is not for the Jews per se, but for their own heritage.

The story goes on to detail Egyptian Jewish history and the words of those who moved as young children to the neighborhood, touching on Israeli history and more. From the Jewish standpoint, there are very few Jews - Baker says fewer than 80 - left in Egypt and preservation projects are even more important.

Some area residents, says Slackman, have begun to see beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is a good thing.

Read the complete article at the link above for much more.

Egypt: Preserving Jewish heritage, records!

Tracing the Tribe has previously written about the non-profit Nebi Daniel International Association, which has struggled - since 2002 - for the preservation of Jewish cultural and religious heritage in Egypt. It is headed by co-founder Yves Fedida with offices in Malmaison, France.

A major advance in this preservation effort was made recently in Cairo on August 29, 2009, when important remarks concerning the community's genealogical records were made by Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosny.
Nebi Daniel notes the ongoing protection and restoration of 10 of the last 15 synagogues in the country, fulfilling the minister's promises. View the website (in six languages) for much more detail, as well as the Links page for many sites of interest.

For genealogists and Egyptian Jews looking for vital records information on the community's records, success may not be far off. According to a Nebi Daniel press release:

In June, Fedida asked Hosny for "permission to copy the civil and religious registers still kept at the Jewish Communities for genealogical research, the issuance of civil identity papers and to study this exemplary cohabitation in an Islamic country.”

The Minister replied that “it is your right and I personally agree to it.” Fedida said “this commitment, proof of your attachment to education and culture, would augur well for your election to UNESCO. 3-400,000 descendants of the 80,000 Jews from Egypt, who have rebuilt their lives in over 80 countries, will applaud this gesture.”

Most important, during a Cairo meeting on August 29, 2009, Hosny reconfirmed his promise to allow all archives and registers currently held by the Jewish communities to be copied and the copy to be deposited for free access at the Egyptian National Library. We are therefore fully confident that our objective of making these archives available to researchers worldwide will be met within the next few weeks.

Egyptian families worldwide seeking records have not been able to access those records, so this announcement is very important.

The Nebi Daniel website indicates that as part of the Ottoman Empire, the non-Moslem communities were solely responsible for maintaining civil registers recording births, deaths, marriages, divorces and conversions. in 1925, Egypt began registering the births of Egyptian citizens only. The Alexandria registers in Alexandria date to 1830 and cover a community that numbered as many as 40,000.

Today's aging community members are the last custodians of some 255 registers containing about 60,000 pages. In Cairo, some Ashkenazi and Karaite registers have already been, lost or stolen. The registers are not related to personal property, but are extremely important for descendants of Egyptian Jews because:

- They are often the only proof of Jewish identity for a Jewish marriage, determine Jewish lineage or be granted a Jewish burial, especially in the Diaspora.
- In civil matters, they are used to establish civil identity related to nationality, marriage, divorce, etc.
- Concerning authenticity, the current Jewish Community leaders in Alexandria and Cairo do not hold religious authority and are therefore not truly entitled to impart, on the certificates they still issue, the level of confidence required for their
legitimacy. Furthermore, there will soon be no one to offer any certification at all. - - For historical and genealogical research, the Registers are a rare collection covering 150 years of the history of a thriving Jewish community.

Also during August, two of Nebi Daniel's council members visited Cairo to see renovation work at Maimonides' yeshiva and synagogue, at the Karaite synagogue and in the main synagogue's interior courtyard on Adly Street.

As far back as 2006, the Ministry of Culture had confirmed renovation plans to Nebi Daniel.

In October 2007, the association's representatives viewed the first renovations to the main Har Hashamaym synagogue on Adly Street, which also launched a permanent exhibit near the Ben Ezra synagogue demonstrating Middle Ages Jewish life in Egypt. There is a video to watch here.

Since then, renovation and infrastructure has been aimed at protecting the neighborhood from regular flood to allow reconstruction.

Cairo Jewish Community president Carmen Weinstein said, “it is a miracle that the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) have initiated such a gigantic programme to save this synagogue whilst solving the underground water problem.”

To see a video and photos demonstrating the renovation work as of the end of August, click here.

For more information and photos, visit the Nebi Daniel website

Minnesota: Sephardic Jews connect in Twin Cities

Google alerts are a valuable resource and inform Tracing the Tribe about happenings around the world, as well as provide pointers to outposts of diverse groups of Jews in places one wouldn't ordinarily expect to find them.

The American Jewish World is the Jewish community paper in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In an April article I learned that Sephardic Jews were connecting there. Minnesota is not considered a hotbed of Sephardic life, so I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to read this story.

In an effort to connect with his heritage, local engineer Joseph Israel joined the Sephardi Minyan when he moved to Minnesota in 2002. The minyan, which was started by Lebanese immigrant David Khabie and former Minnesotan Abe Sclar more than 30 years ago, is a welcoming group for local Sephardic Jews who want to retain the worship melodies and traditions with which they grew up.

“Being Sephardic is a state of mind in the broader sense,” said Israel, who is now a co-leader of the minyan. “We come from so many different countries with so many different influences, but there is a commonality among the way we do things, the food we eat, our histories.”

Of the 14 million Jews in the world, about 3 million of them are of Sephardic origin, meaning that they trace their roots to Spain, Portugal and countries of the Middle East (also known as Mizrachi origin).

This minyan (group of at least 10 Jewish males) conducts monthly services in the basement of Kenesseth Israel Congregation in St. Louis Park, and approximately 40 people have attended services on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

The space for the Orthodox minyan is donated by Kenesseth Israel, and the group has been accepted by Kenesseth’s leadership, including Rabbi Chaim Goldberger.

“Many local Sephardic Jews already belong to synagogues here,” Israel said. “We are not trying to create our own synagogue. Rather, we just want to get together periodically and do things the way we remember doing them with our parents and our grandparents.”

The minyan provides an opportunity for Sephardic Jews to join together, socialize and pray using their traditional melodies and customs.

“We have beautiful traditions, and it feels so soothing to hear the melodies that we use for prayer and Torah reading,” Israel said. “I am reminded of how I felt sitting with my father in our synagogue in Egypt when I was a boy.”

Israel’s father was the hazzan in his Cairo, Egype synagogue and at Ahi Ezer Congregation in Brooklyn, New York. Yom Tov Israel, his great-great-great-grandfather, was Egypt's chief rabbi 1866-1891.

No one knows how many Sephardim live in the Twin Cities area, but he hopes to find all of them. So far, the minyan's presence has only been spread via word of mouth, but perhaps the newspaper story found more of them. He wants to reach more local Sephardim, those who are Sephardim at heart or who simply want to experience a Sephardic service - all are welcome.

In reference to the story, Israel said,“I hope that this article will create more awareness about the local Sephardic community, bring the diverse Sephardi community together for Shabbat and holidays, help the Sephardi Minyan to grow, and expose the broader Jewish community to the beauties of Sephardic culture.”

A Lebanese woman, her husband and brother are believed to be the only local Jews raised in that country. Lili Khabie hopes to bring women together to celebrate Sephardic culture.

“I love the Jewish community here and I feel very much a part of it,” Khabie said. “But you don’t forget who you are and where you come from, and you don’t ever stop longing for those traditions that are most familiar to you… I believe that all Jews should know where they came from, and one way to do that is for the women to keep our Sephardic traditions alive and share them with the whole
community.”

Those who may want more information, may email the group.

Read the complete story at the link above. The story was published around Passover and includes some information on different Passover food customs for Sephardim.

Egypt: Alexandria's Jewish history and records

Over the years, the major problem of Egyptian Jewish family research has been difficult, nearly impossible access to community registers held in a small archives, staffed by increasingly elderly volunteers. It has been nearly impossible to get that access or to copy documents.

Here's a story about the remnants - only 18 survivors of a community that once numbered 80,000 - of Alexandria's community, which was established some 2,300 years ago. It touches on the vital records problem, the El Shatby cemetery, the Eliahou Hanabi synagogue and more, along with photos. The focus of the story is the youngest Jew in the city, Youssef Gaon, 53, and Yves Fedida of the Nebi Daniel Association.

Surprisingly, the story appeared in The National, a new English newspaper launched by the Abu Dhabi Media Company. According to its About Us, its reporters and editors are drawn from The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The author is Cairo-based Jack Shenker, a freelance journalist from London, whose credits include TheTimes and The Guardian in Britain, the Hindustan Times in India, and other publications in print and online.

Sweating in the mid-morning heat, Abdul Salaam gently brushes the dirt off a grave to reveal a faded Star of David. Mr Salaam, a committed Muslim, has lived as a resident guard within the high walls of this Alexandrian Jewish cemetery for 41 years, just as his father did for five decades.

The cracked headstones and marble tombs around him bear witness to people who first made this Egyptian city their home more than 2,300 years ago, and in their heyday numbered almost 80,000. Last summer, the final remnants of that vibrant community gathered here to bury their leader. So few of them were left that the Kaddish, a Jewish funeral blessing, could not be recited. The significance of that was obvious to all who attended; this once-cosmopolitan corner of the Arab world will soon entomb its final Jewish resident, and Mr Salaam will be left alone with the graves.

The death of Max Salama, 92, an Egyptian Jew who once served as King Farouk’s personal dentist, leaves 18 surviving Jews in what was once one of the religion’s greatest cultural capitals. The majority of those remaining are in their 70s or 80s and reside in old people’s homes, no longer interacting with the city they have always called home. At the tender age of 53, the new leader, Youssef Gaon, is now the youngest Jew in Alexandria by a considerable margin, and he is childless.

“What can I say?” he shrugs, as he gives a tour of a beautifully decorated but deserted synagogue in the old city centre.

Jews have been an integral part of Alexandria’s history ever since the port city was founded by Alexander the Great in 332BC. Their numbers have ebbed and flowed over the years but reached a zenith in the early 1900s, when Jews from across Europe and North Africa flocked there to escape persecution.

“It was an immigrant community drawn from all corners of the world, especially the remnants of the old Ottoman Empire,” said Yves Fedida, an Egyptian Jew now living in France, whose grandparents emigrated to Egypt from Palestine at the turn of the century in search of work. These were the rekindled glory days of Alexandria, an urbane melting pot of nationalities where poets, scientists and intellectuals mingled freely on the Corniche.

The story goes through Nasser's arrival in 1952 through the creation of Israel in 1948 which led to the gradual exodus of the city's Jewish community, which eroded still further following the 1967 and 1973 wars. Many who stayed were suspected of being spies for Israel and imprisoned.

Fedida works with the Nebi Daniel Association, a French group that brings together Jews originally from Egypt around the world.

Although Gaon says the community is in "very good hands," and does not want to upset the relationship they have with the Egyptian government, another war is brewing over the heritage of this community.

But as the final echoes of Alexandria’s Jewish ancestry die out, a new battle is raging over their heritage. At stake is the set of religious and civil registers maintained by Egyptian Jewry under the Ottoman Empire, which devolved such record-keeping to its non-Muslim communities. Mr Gaon and his elderly compatriots are the final custodians of these logbooks, which run to 60,000 pages detailing all the births, deaths and weddings of the community stretching back to the 1830s.

These documents are of vital importance to descendants of Alexandrian Jews such as Mr Fedida, as the Jewish faith requires individuals to prove their maternal Jewish bloodline in order to get married. The problem is that issuing such certification from Alexandria is increasingly burdensome for the small number of Jewish pensioners left and the process is often hampered by local bureaucracy. The Nebi Daniel Association is lobbying the Egyptian government to allow copies of the archives to be placed in a European institution where they could be more easily accessed, but so far their efforts have met with failure.

Shenker writes that the Egyptians' reluctance to allow access is their fear that descendants of Alexandria's Jews will use the data to make financial compensation claims against the government for property confiscated under Nasser.

The issue is a sensitive one; last year an unspecified amount was paid by the state to the Jewish family who originally owned The Cecil, a luxury Alexandrian hotel immortalised in Lawrence Durrell’s novels The Alexandria Quartet and seized by the government in 1957. Earlier this summer, a planned Cairo conference of Jews hailing from Egypt was cancelled after local media questioned the intentions behind the event.

Fedida says that fear is misplaced and that they aren't interested in financial claims.

“Our generation are the children of those who really suffered from expulsion and imprisonment. Although our parents tried to reconstruct their lives elsewhere, we saw their grief and we need to do them justice by giving them back the identity that led to them being uprooted in the first place.”

Unfortunately, in a community where the handful of Jews are in their 70s and 80s, this fight over the community's vital records is somewhat moot. What will happen when even Gaon is gone?

Read the complete story at the link above.

New library blog: Yeshiva University

Yeshiva University (New York) has started a YU Libraries Blog to share news about important additions to collections, new services, and to provide timely information at the school's Beren and Wilf campus libraries.

Recent postings have included journal articles of interest, such as Judaica Librarianship, published by the Association of Jewish Libraries. An article in the new 25th anniversary issue offers: "Yizkor Books in the Twenty-First Century: A History and Guide to the Genre," by Michlean J. Amir and Rosemary Horowitz.

I also did some looking around the YU Library site and found some interesting collections for Sephardic researchers interested in Egypt and France (see links below).

Another posting contains an online comprehensive guide to a major Soviet Jewry Collection. Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry Collection may now be viewed online.

The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) collection was donated to YU by Jacob Birnbaum, who founded the organization in 1964 and donated the collection in 1993.

This collection, one of the largest in the Archives’ holdings, documents the full scope of SSSJ's activities on behalf of Soviet Jewry, as well the condition of Jewry and individual Jews in the Soviet Union through numerous firsthand accounts. It includes case files of hundreds of individual refuseniks, correspondence, especially with Jewish “establishment” organizations and members of the United States and Israeli governments, newsletters and other SSSJ publicity information, clippings, thousands of photographs of SSSJ events, posters, buttons and other artifacts from SSSJ demonstrations, reports, and hundreds of sound and video recordings.

The collection has been used by historians, documentary filmmakers, authors and others in their work documenting the American Soviet Jewry movement, an area of growing interest among both scholars and the general Jewish public. In 2007, Jacob Birnbaum received a YU honorary degree for his achievements on behalf of Soviet Jewry.

There is a very detailed finding aid here, which indicates inclusive dates (1956-2006) and size of the collection: about 250 linear feet (350 manuscript boxes, 10 record cartons, 1 map box, 15 flat storage boxes and 40 artifact boxes). Contents include correspondence, questionnaires and statistical information on refuseniks, administrative and financial records, press releases and publicity material, newsletters, clippings, photographs, publications, reports, reel-to-reel tapes, audiocassettes, videotapes, CDs, and buttons, bumper stickers, posters, uniforms and other ephemera; mostly English, some Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish.

Sephardic researchers will also find details of collections from Egypt and France:

- An Inventory to the Jamie Lehmann Memorial Collection Records of the Jewish Community of Cairo, 1886-1961

- An Inventory to the French Consistorial Collection, circa 1809-1939 1809-1939.

Consistories were created by Napoleon I in 1808 to administer Jewish religious matters and facilitate the acculturation of French Jews. This collection contains diverse materials relating to Jewish communal life in nineteenth-century France, and includes personal and official correspondence, drafts, engravings, essays, community and organization records, accounts and financial records, petitions, demographical statistics, reports and membership lists. The Consistorial system was dissolved in 1905, after which some Consistories regrouped into Consistorial associations ("Associations consistoriales"). Materials in French, Yiddish, Italian, German, Hebrew.

For more information about YU's Archives, email them.

Egypt: Jews appeal for records access

What would you do if all the records of your family, your synagogue, and your community were to suddenly disappear? What if those records were hundreds, even thousands of years old?

Births, deaths, weddings, divorces, deaths - the history of an entire community, gone.

According to an appeal from a New York-based non-profit group - The Historical Society of Jews from Egypt - whose members are from the diaspora of Jews exiled from Egypt since the 1950s, this is what might happen if the new minister of culture has his way. He has offered to personally burn any Jewish books he finds in Egypt.

Descendants of this community number about a half-million.

According to the Egyptian Jewish group,

Years of requests to the Egyptian authorities for access and the right to photocopy the documents of the Jewish patrimony were met with obfuscation and silence. In view of the candidacy of Egypt's Minister of Culture to head the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Historical Society of Jews from Egypt (HSJE) has asked UNESCO to convince Egypt on its behalf and take custody of a copy of these archives under the Organization's World Heritage protection

In response to its members' expressions of concern at the controversy surrounding press reports of Minister Farouk Hosni's 10th of May statement that he "would himself, burn any Israeli book found in Egypt", HSJE has appealed directly to UNESCO.

The group states that registries and archives in Cairo and Alexandria represent the history and identity as Egyptian Jews. All attempts over the past decade, to get access from the Egyptian authorities to photocopy these documents, have failed.

UNESCO was urged "to take custody of this "intangible heritage" of the Jews from Egypt, by negotiating with Mr. Hosni to photocopy the registers and archives in Egypt and to hold these copies under UNESCO World Heritage protection.

For more information, click here.

Egypt: One family's roots in film

Do you think your family's roots are complicated?

An interesting take on one Egyptian family's mixed background resulted in a film shown recently at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival:

Egyptian director Nadia Kamel, worried by messages of religious war her young nephew was hearing from Cairo mosques, decided to show him their own family's history of mixed marriage in a journey that takes her from Italy to Israel.

The film focuses on the elderly grandmother Mary. She is half-Egyptian Jew, half-Italian Christian and married to an Egyptian Muslim. A Communist and staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, she has shunned contact with Jewish relatives since they moved in 1946 to British-mandate Palestine, two years before Israel was created. The film follows her as she decides to face disapproval of Muslim relatives in Egypt by visiting relatives in Israel.

In the 1930s-40s, Egypt was multi-ethnic, multi-religious - with thriving communities of Jews, Italians, Greeks and others. Her story shows that the divisions that appear so intractable now did not exist two generations ago.

The film shows the similarities between the Muslim family in Egypt, the Christian family in Italy and the Jewish family in Israel. They look similar, their homes are similar and they speak to each other in a mix of Arabic, Italian and French.

Mary's brother went to Italy as life in Egypt became hard for foreigners. Her parents stayed. Her cousin went to fight for Israel's creation but other relatives left Egypt out of fear.

One Jewish relative still listened to music by Egypt's late diva Om Kalthoum. His wife told of her warm ties with her Muslim neighbours in Cairo, who treated her daughter like their own.

That girl's sons are now in the Israeli army. Their photos in uniform hang in the same room where Om Kalthoum's voice rings out.

For the complete story, click here.

Egypt: Jewish history, restored property

The Jerusalem Post offered an interesting story on the Jews of Egypt and efforts to present claims for property restitution and develop a museum dedicated to the community.

The largest number of Egyptian Jews live in Israel, with communities in Brazil, the US, France and Argentina at about 10,000 each.

The World Congress of the Jews from Egypt, at a late-June conference in Haifa, focused on recent actions to reclaim property confiscated from Egyptian Jews since 1948, when about 100,000 Jews lived in that country. Today, estimates run from 20-100. Many were killed and thousands expelled after wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967.

The congress lobbies for the restitution of property and recognition of the historic tragedy of Egyptian Jewry, and seeks to add their story to Jewish education curricula around the world.

Earlier this month, the Cecil Hotel, a four-star hotel in Alexandria that belonged to the Metzger family until it was nationalized in 1952, was returned to the family. Nationalized five years before the family was expelled, the 86-room hotel was resold to Egypt after its return, according to Agence-France Presse.

Although an Egyptian court ruled, in 1996, that the hotel should be restored to the family, implementation was delayed for fear it would create a precedent for restitution of other Jewish property.

Organization head Prof. Ada Aharoni said the Egyptian Jews "were always a bridge between culture and created bridges."

"Philo in the first century created a bridge between Hellenism and the Jews. Saadia Gaon translated the Bible into Arabic, and this Bible is still used in schools and libraries around the Arab world, and the Rambam, thought to be the greatest philosopher in Judaism, lived in Egypt. Now we're asking many communities, from England to Australia, to add the culture and literature of the Jews of Egypt into Jewish schools and Sunday schools."

Aharoni stressed that Holocaust study should not wipe out all other tragedies, such as those which befell many Jewish communities in Arab and Moslem countries.

Her organization works to restore cultural treasures in Egypt that have been damaged since the forced departure, and there are plans to establish an Egyptian Jewry museum in Nesher (near Haifa), with a branch at the Library of Alexandria.

The reclamation effort is under way, and Israel's Justice Ministry has registered Egyptian Jews' property claims and sent them to Egypt and the US Senate, which has also recognized them as refugees.

To read more, click here.