Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo
Jewish history in Egypt dates back to the era of the Old Testament and the stories of Moses and the persecution by the pharaohs.
After the Roman expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem in the first century AD, Alexandria became the “world’s most important center of Judaism. As recently as the early 20th century the Jewish community in Egypt remained significant and prominent.
This changed dramatically with the creation of Israel in 1948. Those Jews that had not already left by choice were forced out of Egypt when the country went to war against the newly formed Jewish state.
Monuments to the long history of the Jews in Egypt are few and, of these, Ben Ezra is the oldest. Legends link it with Moses but in fact, the synagogue was formerly a church, built in the 8th century.
Around 300 years later the church was destroyed and the site and its ruins given to Abraham Ben Ezra, a 12th-century rabbi of Jerusalem.
Repairs in the 19th century unearthed hundreds of Hebrew manuscripts from the synagogue’s intact geniza, or treasury.
In Egypt, any paper bearing the name of God had to be preserved and this has resulted in a legacy of thousands of documents dating largely from the 11th and 12th centuries. Together, they amount to a minutely detailed chronicle of life in medieval Cairo.
The Ben Ezra synagogue underwent extensive renovation in the 1980s and although it is no longer used for worship it is in a pristine state.
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