A Jew in Cairo: the defiance of Chehata Haroun

ABSTRACT

This article is the first to expound on Chehata Haroun's personality, his beliefs, and the implications thereof, all of which will be scrutinized within the context of the national and political transformations that convulsed the Land of the Nile, especially its Jewish community, from the late 1940s onwards. For the most part, the emphasis will be on three strands of the activist's critical views of the Middle East. The first is his claim that the Zionist movement and the Arab leadership are jointly responsible for the asphyxiation of Egyptian Jewry. This argument was promulgated in a letter that he addressed to President Gamal ᶜAbd al-Nasser in February 1967. The second strand is that Haroun's Jewishness does not contradict his Egyptian national identity, his uncompromising devotion to communism and humanism, ardent opposition to imperialism, or his identification with the Palestinian cause. The third contention is that the Jewish community and its heritage constitute an indivisible part of the Egyptian social and cultural fabric.

Acknowledgments

I have been most fortunate to be in constant email exchange with Magda Haroun, who fully answered my queries and read the first draft of this article. My gratitude goes also to Dr. Yossi Amitai of Ben-Gurion University, who read the final draft carefully and offered dozens of suggestions and insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. J. Beinin touches on Haroun's views; idem, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), pp. 247–8. Other well-cited studies on Egyptian Jewry, though, do not even mention him. For example, G. Kramer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914–1952 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989); M. Laskier, The Jews of Egypt, 1920–1970: In the Midst of Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Middle East Conflict (New York: New York University Press, 1992); D. Starr, Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt: Literature, Culture, Empire (London: Taylor and Francis, 2009); S. Shamir (ed.), The Jews of Egypt: A Mediterranean Society in Modern Times (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987).

2. In most of the countries in the Middle East, Jews played a prominent role in the establishment of communist groups and parties. Egypt is no exception to this rule. For more on this topic, see note 16.

3. In fact, A Jew in Cairo does not surface in most of the topical bibliographies. Also see note 1.

4. R. Hunter, ‘Egypt under the Successors of Muhammad ᶜAli’, in M.W. Daly, The Cambridge History of Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Vol.2, pp. 180–97; E.R. Toledano, ‘Social and Economic Change in the “Long Nineteenth Century”’, The Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol.2, pp. 252–84.

5. Starr, Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt. She expounds on this urbane atmosphere, especially its Ottoman and Egyptian iterations; ibid, pp. 10–27.

6. Ashkenazic families lived in Cairo from as far back as the sixteenth century. Most of them continued to speak Yiddish and pray using an Eastern European liturgy. The Ashkenazi Community of Cairo was officially recognized by the government in 1865. It provided education and welfare services and put out the Yiddish newspaper Dee Tzeyt (Time). In addition, the community founded a symphony orchestra and a small theater group. Much of its activities were conducted at the synagogue, which still stands on Al-Jaish Street (not far from bustling ‛Ataba Square). See Yoram Meital, Attarim yehudim be-mitzraim (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, 1995) [Hebrew], pp. 96–9.

7. M. El-Kodsi, The Karaite Jews of Egypt, 1882–1986 (New York: s.n., 1987).

8. Kramer cites these numbers from the 1947 Egyptian census; idem, The Jews in Modern Egypt, p. 10.

9. Meital, Atarim yehudim, pp. 89–103.

10. Jewish entrepreneurs spearheaded the efforts to build the prestigious neighbourhood of Maᶜadi; S. Raafat, Maadi 1904–1962: Society and History of a Cairo Suburb (Cairo: Palm Press, 1994).

11. A. Aciman recalls his own upbringing in a bourgeois Jewish-Egyptian family; idem, Out of Egypt: A Memoir (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994). For an in-depth look at this slice of Cairene life, see D. Miccoli, Histories of the Jews of Egypt: An Imagined Bourgeoisie, 1880s–1950s (New York: Routledge, 2015).

12. For a nuanced study of Cairo's department stores, see N. Reynolds, A City Consumed: Urban Commerce, the Cairo Fire, and the Politics of Decolonization in Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 47–69.

13. M. Haroun, email response to author, 11 May 2014. Haroun's grandfather was the sexton (gabayi) of Beit Knesset Paḥad Yiṣḥaq (the Fear of Isaac synagogue), which still stands in Cairo's al-Daher neighbourhood. A marble plaque at the entrance to the building enshrines his contributions to the synagogue.

14. J. Beinin, ‘Egypt: Society and Economy, 1923–1952’, in The Cambridge History of Egypt, pp. 309–33. R. Harris and M. Wahba, ‘The Urban Geography of Low-Income Housing: Cairo (1947–96) Exemplifies a Model’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 26, No.1 (2002), pp. 58–79.

15. A reasonable estimate of the number of Jewish citizens in Egypt is provided by Shimon Shamir, ‘The Evolution of the Egyptian Nationality Laws and their Application to the Jews in the Monarchy Period’, S. Shamir (ed.), The Jews of Egypt, pp. 33–67; Kramer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 29–36. The Haroun family adamantly refused to give up their citizenship. For an overview of political developments in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century, see S. Botman, ‘The Liberal Age, 1923–1952’, in The Cambridge History of Egypt, pp. 285–308.

16. Communist activity in Egypt dates back to the early 1920s. Ideological controversies and organizational difficulties caused a schism, which debilitated the entire movement. However, the outbreak of the Second World War ushered in a communist revival. The movement's outreach intensified over the next two decades under the leadership of the Democratic Movement for National Liberation (DMNL), which was headed by Henri Curiel. See S. Botman, The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939–1970 (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1988); R. Ginat, A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2011); R. al-Saᶜid, Tarikh al-ḥaraka al-shuyuᶜiyya al-miṣriyya: Al-waḥda, al-inqisam, al-ḥall, 1957–1965 (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafa al-Jadida, 1986); idem, Tarikh al-ḥaraka al-shuyuʻiyya al-miṣriyya, 1900–1940 (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafa al-Jadida, 1987).

17. Haroun's police record indicates that he was arrested together with other communist activists and/or members of the Jewish community. Often he was asked how it felt to be accused of treason by Zionists while sitting in an Egyptian prison cell. ‘I don't think it's so strange’, he replied. ‘Whoever fights against bigotry [al-taᶜassub] in the context of the Israeli–Arab conflict can expect such difficulties. Nevertheless, I should mention that I was astonished by my arrest and even more so by my depiction in the press as a “leftist Jew” rather than an Egyptian opposed to Zionism, fighting for the rights of the Palestinian-Arab people’. An interview by Salah Hafiẓ, Ruz al-Yusuf, 2 March 1975.

18. G. Kramer, ‘Zionism in Egypt, 1917–1948’, in A. Cohen and G. Baer (eds.), Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (1868–1948) (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, 1984), pp. 348–66.

19. The newspaper Israël (1920–1939) adopted an unabashedly pro-Zionist stance. See H. Hillel, Israël be-kahir: ᶜiton tsiyoni be-mitsrayim ha-le'umit, 1920–1939 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 2004) [Hebrew].

20. Kramer, ‘Zionism in Egypt, 1917–1948’, pp. 348–66; R. Kimche, Tsiyonut be-tsel ha-peramidot: ha-tnuaah ha-tsiyunit be-mitsraim, 1918–1948 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2009) [Hebrew]; T. Mayer, Egypt and the Palestine Question, 1936–1945 (Berlin: K. Schwarz Verlag, 1983).

21. Under the leadership of Curiel, the Democratic Movement for National Liberation (DMNL) backed the UN's Partition Plan. Their position stemmed in part from Moscow's vote in favour of Resolution 181. That said, other Egyptian communists opposed the plan. For a disquisition on how leftwing parties in Egypt responded to the split of Palestine, see Y. Amitai, Egypt–Israel – A Look from the Left: The Egyptian Left and the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1948–1978 (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1999) [Hebrew], pp. 97–131.

22. Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, pp. 68–9.

23. On the confiscation of foreign assets, including the government's seizure of capital, following the Suez War, see Robert Tignor, Egyptian Textiles and British Capital, 1930-1956 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1989), 82-106. For a comprehensive analysis of the changes in Egypt's policy towards bourgeois-owned businesses, see Robert Vitalis, When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Robert Tignor, State, Private Enterprise, and Economic Change in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

24. Aciman, Out of Egypt, 295. Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff (1917–1979), who was born in Cairo to a typical Jewish bourgeois family, expands on, among other topics, the displacement of cosmopolitan Egyptian society; idem, Mi-mizrah shemesh (Tel Aviv: Yariv-Hadar, 1978) [Hebrew].

25. M. Haroun emphasized that much of her father's output has yet to be published; idem, email to author, 11 May 2014.

26. Ibid.

27. The spate of grammatical errors and typos indicate that A Jew in Cairo was hastily produced. It also bears noting that the book came out in 1988, long before Haroun's health started to decline and his bouts with Alzheimer. Other Jews, by and large Communists, held similar views. See, for example, the impressive collection of articles by his mentor Henri Curiel, Pour une paix juste au proche orient (Paris: n.s., 1979). Y. Darwish described Zionism as a mirror image of the fascist movements that had flourished in Europe before the Second World War; Al-Ḍamir, 17 October 1945. Also see the following interview of Jacques Hassoun: Joel Beinin ‘I am Jewish because I am Egyptian, I am Egyptian because I am Jewish’, MERIP Newsletter (Winter 1997), pp. 2–3.

28. Ruz al-Yusuf, 2 March 1975. Also see C. Haroun, Yahudi fi al-qahira (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafa al-Haditha, 1987), p. 39.

29. M. Haroun, email to author, 11 May 2014.

30. Haroun, Yahudi fi al-qahira, p. 73.

31. Ibid., p. 41. My emphasis.

32. Ibid., pp. 46–7.

33. Several theoretical aspects of this theme are explicated in S. Lavie, ‘Staying Put: Crossing the Israel–Palestine Border with Gloria Anzaldứa’, Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 36, No.1 (2011), pp. 101–21.

34. Haroun, Yahudi fi al-qahira, p. 69.

35. Ibid., pp. 71, 89.

36. Ibid., 70; an interview with the magazine Al-Watan, 6 February 1985.

37. Ibid., 99.

38. Ibid., 65.

39. Ibid., pp. 42–3.

40. Ibid., pp. 39–40.

41. The revolutionary government celebrated the February 1958 unification between Egypt and Syria even after the collapse of the United Arab Republic in September 1961. From that point on, Unity Day became a symbol of the yearning for pan-Arab solidarity. This tradition endured until the passing of ᶜAbd al-Nasser in 1970. On the establishment and collapse of the United Arab Republic, see M. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal ‛Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).

42. Haroun, Yahudi fi al-qahira, pp. 10–11.

43. Ibid., pp. 11–12.

44. Ibid., pp. 13–14.

45. For the full version of this report, see ibid., p. 51. Issam Sartawi, the special political envoy of Yasser Arafat, commissioned the Jewish activist to write this paper.

46. Ibid., p. 51. In an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas (22 October 1980), Haroun elaborated on this idea: ‘The Egyptian people itself was deprived of rights and thus could not protect the rights of minorities, including the Jewish minority’. Nevertheless, he ‘decided to stay in Egypt in order to participate in the Egyptian people's struggle for its rights’. Haroun, Yahudi fi al-qahira, p. 66.

47. Ibid., p. 52. For an in-depth look at the impact of geopolitical changes, like those wrought by the 1948 War, on Egyptian Jewry, see Kramer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, pp. 167–204.

48. Under this punitive policy, Haroun's oldest daughter, Mona, was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of four. The doctors recommended an expensive treatment overseas, but the authorities would only issue a travel permit on the condition that the family emigrates. The activist father had turned down the offer, and tragically his child perished shortly after. For a collection of personal stories recounting the coerced departure of Egyptian Jewry, see A. Ahroni (ed.), ᶜIdan ha-Zahav shel Yehudai Mitsraim (Holon: n.s., 2014) [Hebrew].

49. Haroun's interview with the Kuwaiti magazine Al-Qabas, 22 October 1980.

50. Haroun's interview with Al-Watan, 6 February 1985.

51. Haroun, Yahudi fi al-qahira, pp. 63–4.

52. Ibid., p. 94. Haroun was somewhat encouraged by the fact that the Israeli left ‘fought for a just peace under difficult internal conditions’. For this reason, ‘the Arab left should assist’ their Israeli counterparts. Ibid., p. 65. Like other Egyptian intellectuals, he kept track of the political discourse in Israel. For example, the passage of a law in Israel prohibiting its citizens from having ties with members of the PLO moved Haroun to condemn the Israeli government for suppressing local advocates of peace. Al-Ahram, 5 December 1985.

53. See Magda Harounʼs inaugural remarks as president of the Jewish community in, as well as her first interviews with, Bassatine News (Cairene Jewry's electronic newsletter): http://bassatine.net/bassa35.php.

54. The Egyptian Gazette, 18 April 2013.

55. For a comprehensive study on all these sites, see Meital, Attarim yehudim.

56. For a fine account of the Ben-Ezra Synagogue's restoration, see P. Lambert (ed.), Fortifications and the Synagogue: The Fortress of Babylon and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994).

57. A. Raz-Krakotzkin delves into this concept in the following works: ‘Exile within Sovereignty: Toward a Critique of the “Negation of Exile” in Israeli Culture, First Part’, Teoria u'Bikoret, Vol.4 (1993), pp. 23–55 [Hebrew]; idem, ‘Exile within Sovereignty: Toward a Critique of the “Negation of Exile” in Israeli Culture, Second Part’, Teoria u'Bikoret, Vol. 5 (1994), pp. 113–32; idem, ‘Jewish Memory between Exile and History’, Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 97, No. 4 (2007), pp. 530–43.

58. These ideas were evoked in a public talk by Shaul Tchernichovsky, the renowned Hebrew poet, on 22 January 1937. See the rare audio recordings on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9mU9RPoJc.

59. An illustrative example is Siham Nassar's research on the Jewish press in Egypt. For example, Al-yahud al-misriyun bayna al-misriyya wal-sahayuniyya (Cairo: Al-Arabi, 1981). Awatef ᶜAbd al-Rahman has concentrated on the Zionist press in Egypt; idem, Al-sihafa al-sahayuniyya fi misr, 1897–1954 (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafa al-Jadida, 1980). For a disquisition on the pivotal role of Jewish activists in the formation of various Communist organizations in Egypt, see Rifᶜat Saᶜid, Munadilun yasariyun (Cairo: Sharikat al-Amal lil-Tibᶜah, 2011), Vol.1. Mohamed Abu al-Ghar presents Jews as an integral part of Egyptian society and commends their participation in the national movement; idem, Yahud misr min al-izdihar ila al-shatat (Cairo: Dar al-Hilal, 2004). Over the past two decades, Egyptian novelists have been increasingly featuring local minorities, such as Jews and Copts; Starr, Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt, pp. 31–71.

60. Both Haroun and Darwish espoused similar views and took part in political struggles within the framework of sundry leftwing groups.

61. This quote is from his interview with Sara Elkamel, ‘“Jews of Egypt” Tells Story of Egypt's Exiled Jewish Community’, Ahramonline, 25 February 2013: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/65504.aspx. Also see M. Bale, ‘When “Egyptian” Just Meant Egyptian’, New York Times, 27 March 2014. Also see the documentary's trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zWT71FnA_I. Ramsisʼ work alludes to Youssef Chahineʼs iconic 1978 film ‘Alexandria … Why? [al-iskandariyya.. leh]’, which was the first Egyptian cinematic production to depict local Jews in a positive light. Yaron Shemer compares the two directors at length in idem, ‘From Chahine's al-Iskandariyya … leh to Salata baladi and ᶜAn Yahud Misr’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Vol.7 (2014), pp. 351–75.

62. M. Haroun, email to author, 15 May 2014.