Egyptian Jews: "ولا يهمك שום דבר" (‘Don’t you worry about a thing’)

Synagogue for Immigrants from Egypt, in Tel Aviv.

(forgive the long intro. If you prefer to skip to the conversations, just scroll down).

Egyptian Jews are a little, to us Egyptians, a little like... spirits: you believe they exist but you’ve never seen one - and aren’t too keen on seeing one any time soon either.

Jewish characters were ever-present in the pre-1952 Egyptian cinema. Not only as protagonists - films like “Fatma, Marika and Rachel” and its apparent male equivalent “Hassan, Morcos, and Cohen” come to mind - but also, and I might even say more importantly, as ever-present side characters. The downstairs neighbour, or the man fixing watches in the street, or the jeweler (who was always either Jewish or Greek). They were often referred to as ‘Khawaga’ - foreigner, but they were present - in a non-alarming way.

The exodus of Egyptian Jews - in a line, since this is very far from my topic today - began heavily during WW2, as the Germans approached Egypt; this concerned the richest of them, those who could afford to head to the United States or to South Africa. Then, a second wave between the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948 and the Egyptian revolution of 1952, after which things cooled down a bit, only to pick up at an increasingly fast pace in the years after the 1956 Suez war. Today, the Egyptian Jewish community is only composed of a couple of hundred people.

My first peek through Egyptian Jewish eyes was through Andre Aciman’s book, “Out of Egypt”. He described the sophistication, the complexity, the simplicity, the hypocrisy, and the love of his family, its problems, its happiness, its confusions, its multiple, and sometimes conflicting identities. Egyptian Jews, if we were to believe him, never integrated, remaining a floating community with variable allegiances and considered Arabic a language only useful to communicate with their servants - which is what the Egyptians were to their eyes anyway. I hated the book, but I loved it.

The 1973 Israeli film “the House on Chelouche street” took it a step further and put in sound the written stories that were, until then, my only peephole to these lost compatriots. In this film depicting the ups and downs in the life of an Egyptian Jewish family who migrated to Palestine, then under British occupation and briefly before the creation of the State of Israel, I heard them speak this strange mix of Arabic, Hebrew, Ladino, and the occasional French or Italian. The hilarious line heading this article - read ‘wala yehemmak (ولا يهمك in arabic) shoum davar (שום דבר in hebrew)’ (“don’t you worry about a thing”) was uttered by one of the film characters, who would reminisce about the good old times in Egypt, when they were rich. Like all immigrants everywhere - it was better at ‘home’.


I randomly met two Egyptian Jews here.

Avi Haim - the Soldier
I met Avi randomly by the old city in Jerusalem - I was waiting for my friends and I sat nearby the soldiers. (I know, I know). They approached me, striking a conversation - a bilingual one, since many soldiers posted in the old city speak Arabic.

His father was born in Egypt. “Cairo or Alexandria?”, I asked? He didn’t know - so he actually called his father to ask him. “Alexandria”, he said victoriously as closed his flip-phone.

I smiled. My father was born in Alexandria, too. Go figure.

Born in Alexandria in 1928, Arie Haim lived in Egypt for 14 years, before moving to France for 10 years. Then his family moved to Israel.
His father spoke Arabic, French, and Ladino - and Hebrew, said Avi.

Remembering the ‘out of Egypt’ book, I imagined his father, biking from the Corniche of Alexandria to the famous - and then posh - Sporting Club.
Then, as Hollywood taught us how the final few moments of a dream look like - a series of accelerating random images flashing before one’s eyes - Arie in Paris, now called Albert, buying a baguette (I pictured the Doisneau photography, I know); World War Two; the move to Israel; ; little Avi in Tel Aviv; Jerusalem today...

...and it all came down to this guy and me, sitting there on these short stone pillars, him in his army fatigues and his M-16 resting on his knees, me in shorts and my feet resting on my backpack, casually chatting in Arabic and in Hebrew.


Shlomi Zaafarani
The irate, blue-eyed clerk at the Avis car rental counter in Tel Aviv, who gave us a dirty look upon arriving (half an hour after the smugly early closing hour on a friday).

Upon seeing my driver’s license, he gave a snarky look, and said - “my father has one like this”.
I thought he was being smug, until he added - “He’s from Egypt”. Cairo was where his father was from.

“There remains some Zaafaranis in Cairo, if I’m not mistaken”, I told him. He nodded. “Yes, I know of family there. Never met them though, of course”.
“You should. Cairo's a great city”.
He was very curious about Jewish Cairo - and if there were any synagogues left. “Three or four”, I ventured carefully - I could think of the one in Old Cairo, the one that’s closed in Adly, and that other functioning one. “Some are open for worship but not all, though”.

It seemed to make him happy.
And he gave us a pretty damn good upgrade on the rental car, too.