Egypt’s Forgotten Jewish Legacy

Baltimore
Blanche Sachs
Special to the Jewish Times

Author André Aciman’s recent speech to the American Sephardi Federation yearly Benefit Dinner in New York at the Essex House Hotel near Central Park was a wake up call for the audience and hopefully people not present.

He lamented the loss of time “le temps perdu” and deplored the loss of assets. Jews lived in Arabic countries for thousands of years. Soon they will disappear. His liberal colleagues know and talk only about Palestinians.

Prof. Aciman, a literary individual, talks in aphorisms and metaphors. “We are like cargo on Noah’s Ark. We all speak with accents. We are from “there” (De l?-bas); Alexandria, Corfu, Cyprus or North Africa. There are no traces left. We ritualize chit, chat.”

He feels and explains, “A small part of him is stuck elsewhere”. The hard question for him is “the land of the mind”.

The Jews have been bankrupted but they forgot.

He relates, “My family has Italian roots. The Gestapo took care of that. Ottoman is dormant. The Marranos slipped from one language to another and they disappeared.”

When President Barack Obama returned from his early summer trip to the Islamic world – including his landmark speech in Cairo calling for stronger U.S. ties with the Muslim world, Prof. wrote a letter published in the New York Times that was read by many Jews all over the United States as it appeared on many blogs.

Thousands upon thousands of Jews lived in Arab lands for thousands of years, he noted. They slipped away. Egyptian Jews were the wealthiest Jewish community of the Middle East. They disappeared.

In fact, the Zionist Organization of America has published a book entitled “The Forgotten Millions,” referring to the Jews who lived in Arab lands who were dispossessed of their assets and their livelihoods, and had their belongings confiscated – looted, as the Nazis did to their European co-religionists.

“A Jew without memory what is that?” Asks the speaker rhetorically. Prof. Aciman’s mother was embarrassed that she could not invite people because she did not have her silver and her dishes.

When the Aciman family arrived in Italy in 1965, they were taken to a refugee camp in Naples. André was fourteen-years old. A woman told his mother, “Madame, do not be afraid. We are not Jews”. The Acimans stayed there for only two hours.

Literature is not able to dwell on it.

History walked out on the Jews of Egypt. Soon they will all be gone.

The American Sephardi Federation is in charge of Archives and is working on collecting oral and written memories and interviews.

Blanche Sachs, an Egyptian Jew and long-time Baltimore resident, is an occasional contributor to the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES.

Fuente: JewishTime.com
Fotografía: Historical Society of Jews from Egypt