In 1807, two years after the Ottoman Sublime Porte anointed Mohamed Ali as viceroy of Egypt, the Jewish population of Egypt numbered only 6,000. Jewish migration to Egypt grew dramatically from the mid-19th century onward, reaching a peak of 90,000 in 1947. Today, two centuries later, only 40 Jews live in all of Egypt. This article describes that population, the records it produced and the lack of access to them today.

Ali is widely remembered as the founder of modern Egypt; the growth in Jewish population may be attributed to the economic development he initiated by work on major infrastructure and institutions such as roads, ports, canals, the navy and the army. This development was bolstered by the so-called “cotton boom” during the U.S. Civil War and encouraged by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, with its accompanying building frenzy and the need for industries to serve various new needs.

A tolerant society opening up to the western world required various skills and, thus, was host to great numbers of Jewish immigrants. Half of these immigrants came from elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, the rest from Europe and North Africa. By the middle of the 20th century, fewer than 15 percent of the Jewish families in Egypt had lived there for more than three or four generations. Pogroms, persecution, wars and revolutions in Europe, Russia and Palestine also produced an important Ashkenazic immigrant contingent, estimated at 8 to 10 percent of the total Jewish population.

Egypt stands out alone among other Arab countries as the sole nation whose Jewish community was composed essentially of immigrants. It was a multicultural community, mostly secular, and in many ways more modern than many other European Jewish communities of the time.

Record Types

Egyptian civil administration was based on the Ottoman millet system. This system subdivided the non-Muslim population into religious groups, each enjoying a large degree of autonomy, responsible among other things for the individual’s civil status relating to births, marriages, divorces, deaths and various intra-communal legal affairs. With some amendments, the millet privileges outlasted both the Ottoman Empire and the English protectorate of 1914. It survived the independence of 1922 with the monarchy and endured through the Republic of 1953 until January 1956.

As a consequence of the millet system, the Jewish communities generated a comprehensive series of civil and religious registers. These registers date back to 1830 in Alexandria, earlier in Cairo, and probably later for other towns. An inventory of Jewish records from Alexandria, where they are best preserved, illustrates what may be found. Judging from existing examples and reliable sources, we estimate the existence of more than 255 registers and 17 indexes, numbering approximately 60,000 pages that have survived over the years. A look at the content of three types of registers allows one to appreciate better the span and potential of all of them.

                               Table 1

               Jewish Population by Year

Year                 Jews

1807                 6000

1847                 8500

1897                25200

1907                38635

1917                59184

1927                63550

1947                90000

1957                15000

1977                   200

2007                     40

The registers of affidavits summarized in Table 3 demonstrate that half of the individual and family affidavits cover an initial period of 57 years, while the second half spans only 20 years. This might be normal in a growing population. A closer look reveals, however, that 6.5 percent of the registers were created in the 20 months between the United Nations Palestine partition plan of November 29, 1947, and the final armistice ending the Israeli War of Independence in July 1949.

Table 2

Inventory of Registers

Types of registers Circumcision Births & Marriages Engagement & Marriages Divorces Deaths City of Tanta Relating to Life Cycle Events: 130 Conversion Coming of age (bar mitzvah) Weddings of destitute girls Rabbinical rulings Relating Explicitly to Jewish Religion: 21 Celibacy affidavits General affidavits Civil status affidavits Relating to General/ Religious Certification: 104 Total

No. 15 25 66 6 16 1/2 1 1 7 12 28 76 255

Index 1 10 4 1 1 17

Table 3 also shows that 12 percent of the registers were created in the 15 months from September 1956 to December 1957, the period of the Suez Crisis build-up and its aftermath. Nearly one-fifth of the registers span a period of 3 years, while the rest cover a period of 74 years.

Table 3 Initial Indexing of the Jewish Community Records in Alexandria 2006
Affidavits Registers
General & Celibacy			Births & Weddings
Vol	Start	End	Vol	Start	End
1	17/12/1905	23/10/1907	A	9/12/1831	10/1855
2	3/11/1907	10/07/1910	B	25/11/1855	1869
3	14/07/1910	30/09/1912	C	2/12/1851	26/09/1891
4	3/10/1912	1/3/1915	D	1886	1895
5	1/3/1915	1/5/1917	E	25/06/1895	29/12/1901
6	1/6/1917	19/01/19??	Extra	2/12/1901	30/10/1907
7	19/01/19??	1/5/1920	F	1/01/1902	1904
8	11/5/1920	23/6/1921	G	9/3/1904	7/11/1906
9	21/6/1921	1/11/1922	H	8/11/1906	8/1/1908
10	1/11/1922	31/3/1924	I	1908	1910
11	1/4/1924	1/12/1925	J	1910	25/12/1912
12	13/12/1925	1/4/1927	K	5/1/1913	21/3/1920
13	1/4/1927	1929	L	20/3/1920	15/3/1922
14	14/7/1927	22/2/1931	M	15/3/1922	24/3/1923
15	1/2/1931	11/9/1932	N	24/12/1923	18/12/1925
16	18/9/1932	11/1/1934	O	21/12/1925	10/7/1927
17*	15/1/1934	5/4/1935	P	13/7/1927	28/12/1928
18	12/4/1935	22/10/1936	Q	24/12/1928	6/7/1930
19	15/11/1936	26/4/1938	R	7/7/1930	20/12/1931
20	1/5/1938	27/8/1939	S	20/12/1931	7/7/1934
21	3/9/1939	23/3/1941	T	13/9/1934	5/7/1937
22	30/3/1941	3/6/1942	U	7/7/1937	1/5/1940
23	1/6/1942	1/4/1943	V	1/5/1940	18/4/1944
24	1/4/1943	1/1/1945	W	18/4/1944	17/11/1952
25	4/2/1945	30/1/1947	X	20/11/1952	29/04/1979
26	31/1/1947	30/10/1949
27	30/10/1949	4/10/1953	*PRATO BET DIN @ JNUL
28	4/10/1953	18/10/1972

Death registers typically indicate the burial location in the respective cemeteries, as well as name, age, place and date of death. Number 17 in the General and Celibacy Affidavits from Rabbi David Prato’s private bet din (rabbinic court) collection, fortuitously deposited in the archives of the Jewish National and University Library (JNUL) in Jerusalem, illustrates the type of information that may be found. Mathilde Tagger undertook the massive work of indexing the entries. This box of 237 marriage authorizations, covering a period of 15 months, supplies evidence of the wealth of potential information in the larger collection. Included also are the actual registrations of 16 marriages.

The 237 entries hold information on 2,086 individuals with 505 different family names. Based on 948 individuals for whom information is complete, (spouses and their witnesses), we note that 60 percent were “Egyptian” (which might include those defined by the government as stateless, also known as “local subjects”); 40 percent held one of more than 22 different other nationalities.¹ There are 29 different countries of birth. Only 54 percent of the individuals were born in Egypt, and of these, 37 percent held foreign nationality. Beyond the wealth of extraordinary personal and genealogical details, a data analysis, if extended to all other registers, could enrich our comprehension of the causes and origin of migration flows to that part of the world, at that time; that is the social and political history. The list of names Tagger extracted is available on the Nebidaniel website in the “documents” section.²

Although the Alexandria collection is practically intact, others, such as those of Port Said, have totally disappeared. In Cairo, where the records are incomplete, the president of the Jewish community denies access both to individuals and to associations of Jews from Egypt. In both Alexandria and Cairo, pages have been torn out of existing registers. The pages may be found circulating among Judaica merchants, primarily in Israel. Institutions, such as the Jewish National University Library (JNUL) and the Yeshiva University in New York, have saved some of these documents.

Registers either are books (pinkassim in Hebrew or seguel in Arabic) in which information was recorded in free format, line entry basis such as mohel (ritual circumciser) registers, or they are souras (pre-printed sheets) of affidavits or of marriage contracts (but not the actual ketubot [marriage contract], some of which also can be found). Items were recorded either at the time of the occurrence in Alexandria, or they authenticated a foreign occurrence or a later declaration, on the basis of “certified affidavits.” Some of these certified affidavits include photographs. A wealth of family stories, information, connections and emotions are embedded in them. The information they contained was used to establish chehadat (certificates) for civil and/or religious authorities, both local and foreign. The affidavits could be based on foreign celibacy certificates issued by foreign, civil or consular authorities, or by rabbinical authorities in the case of predominantly religious marriage laws.

Pinkassim, souras and chehadats are written in Arabic, French, Hebrew or Italian depending on type and period of time. Circumcision, marriage contracts and burial registers serve religious purposes only. Affidavits and certificates derived from all registers were utilized for both religious and civil purposes. All are useful for genealogical and historical research.

Historical and Genealogical Importance

It is rare in this part of the Mediterranean to find a series of documents covering a span of 150 years that bear witness to the life of an important Jewish community. In various other communities, such as Izmir or Salonika, fire and plunder resulted in the destruction of their documents. The material available in Egypt is a treasure of information for social and community history, and for the history of this region. Egypt and Alexandria, in particular, because of economic opportunities, political stability and tolerance, were attractive places to live for Jews from many parts of the world, including those already on their way to other destinations. This melting pot of different cultures created communal registers valuable for Sephardic, Ashkenazic and Karaite genealogy. Tagger’s index of a single volume of 237 certificates of marriage authorizations reveals 2,086 individuals in great detail. One can only imagine what 255 such volumes could reveal.

Religious Significance of the Registers

In Judaism, religious rights are codified according to strict halachic (rabbinic law) rules. The registers, therefore, are important in those cases where it may be necessary to:

• Prove Jewish lineage after one or more marriages outside the Orthodox synagogue, or after one or more mixed marriages
• Exercise one’s right to a Jewish burial in certain countries of the Diaspora. Cases have been known of bodies placed in cold storage awaiting a certificate!

The sworn-in religious authority required to authenticate and confer unquestionable halachic credence to the certificates issued on the basis of the registers, simply no longer exists in Egypt. It is essential that the records be placed in the hands of an accepted authority abroad.

Access to Registers

To date, the Egyptian government has offered protection to the tiny number of elderly Jews as a constituted community; but time, climate and/or pilferage inevitably will take their toll on the registers. No appropriate infrastructure exists to conserve the documents, and contemporary Egyptian researchers exhibit a clear lack of interest in anything Jewish. The need to preserve this historical heritage and provide free access and availability to researchers and individuals worldwide seems obvious. Yet, when an organization of Jews from Egypt seeks permission to copy all the registers of Alexandria, for example, the highest authorities of the state simultaneously express one or more of the following objections:

• The registers may be copied, but nothing leaves the synagogue grounds.
• The registers are part of Egyptian heritage
• The decision rests with the current Egyptian Jewish community which opposes it
• A copy could be used to initiate individual or collective reclamation procedures

These arguments clearly are spurious. Jews from Egypt are only requesting copies, and copies of non-Muslim religious documents at that. Having dissolved religious jurisdictions in 1955, Egypt paradoxically now seeks to confer on three men and twelve women of an advanced age, in Alexandria, eternal responsibility for the religious or civil status of the seven or eight generations that preceded them. For their part, these frail Jews are afraid to approve any unauthorized action. Their own security is at stake.

The claims argument makes no sense either. Historical facts and figures are well known and available to everyone, should anyone wish to claim anything. Personal reclamations or legal cases remain the rights of individuals, irrespective of their religion. Nothing in these records is a pointer to fortune or possible claims. It is hard to see how circumcision or wedding records can be used to harm Egypt.

The current answers do not reflect Egypt’s stated respect for other religions. Many approaches have been made in recent years, to no avail. A personal petition from the Chief Rabbi of France to Egyptian President Husni Moubarak went unanswered. Personal approaches by both British and French foreign affairs officials to their Egyptian counterparts have been fruitless. Results of direct contacts over the past three years with top Egyptian officials by Jewish ex-residents of Egypt, (this author included) recently, with the help of the American Jewish Committee, are still pending positive results.

Notes

1. Stateless subjects were individuals who, although they or their parents may have been born in Egypt, were not eligible for Egyptian nationality according to nationality laws instituted in 1925–26. The new laws replaced Ottoman nationality laws under which these individuals would have been considered rayas (local subjects). Some may have been stateless through failure to register in time or because their nationality was withdrawn by the government later.
2. www.nebidaniel.org/registres.php?lang=en

 

Yves Fedida was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and currently lives in Paris, France. He is co-founder of the Association Internationale Nebi Daniel and editor of www.nebi-daniel. org. Fedida has lectured or written on the 1840 Montefiore Census of the Jews of Alexandria; The First Palestinian Refugees, The First Jewish Soldiers, The Egyptian Haven; The Prisoner of Aboukir (1948 Jewish inmates); Consular Protection; and Genealogy Research in Archives for 19th-Century Erez Yisrael and History of the Modern Jewish Community in Alexandria; and Sifre Torah in the Hekhal of the Main Alexandria Sy