Egypt – Working among Hebrew inscriptions and Stars of David, the staff of the Ministry of Social Affairs in the east of Cairo are, effectively, squatting in a disused synagogue.
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Up until the 1952 revolution in which Gamal Abdel Nasser was brought to power, the Hadayeq el-Qubba district of Cairo – where the synagogue still sands, not far from King Farouk’s palace – was home to the city’s local and foreign bourgeoisie.
The Jewish community in Egypt counted 75,000 before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. But, today it has barely 100 members.
The neighbours remembered the building as a synagogue up until the 1960s. After that, it was claimed by the authorities, who transformed it first into a public crèche, then into offices of the National Democratic Party, and finally into a bureau of the Ministry of Social Affairs. Evidence of this continuous transformation can be found in various signs on the wall.
We tried to get in touch with the Cairo governorate for information about the legal status of this former place of prayer, but we didn’t get any response. One of the staff told us, anonymously, that the authorities took over the building because it had no known owner.
We then talked to Carmen Weinstein, who runs the Jewish Community Council of Egypt. According to her, the synagogue was built by the rich Adda family, who had made their fortune in the banking sector and the textile trade in the 1940s. The entire family had left the country years ago, however. Numerous Jewish families emigrated after the 1952 revolution and the 1956 Tripartite Invasion [led by the UK, France and Israel after the nationalisation of the Suez Canal].
Inside the former synagogue
I was in Cairo in 1997 in the Rambam’s shul in Cairo. I assume it is the one that the article is talking about. It was beautiful. The bimah has an inscription stating that the shul is built on the spot that tradition says was the spot where Moshe Rabbeinu stood when he stretched his hands out to Hashem in prayer.