"From the late 1800s until World War II, the Jewish communities of Cairo and Alexandria were vibrant, prosperous, and dynamic elements of Egyptian society. Suddenly in the 1980s only a few hundred Jews remained in the entire country. Gudrun Krämer explores the reasons for the swift rise and rapid decline of this minority community in a Muslim land. Beginning with an examination of the communal structure and composition of Egyptian Jewry, she illuminates its diversity in religious rite, ethnic origin, language, and nationality."--Book Jacket.

In this provocative and wide-ranging history, Joel Beinin examines fundamental questions of ethnic identity by focusing on the Egyptian Jewish community since 1948. A complex and heterogeneous people, Egyptian Jews have become even more diverse as their diaspora continues to the present day. Central to Beinin's study is the question of how people handle multiple identities and loyalties that are dislocated and reformed by turbulent political and cultural processes. It is a question he grapples with himself, and his reflections on his experiences as an American Jew in Israel and Egypt offer a candid, personal perspective on the hazards of marginal identities.

States that there is no indication of Egyptian hostility to Jews between World War I and the outbreak of the Arab revolt in Palestine in 1936. Blood libel accusations were made by Christian minorities, and a limited number by Muslims. A change in the attitude to Jews occurred in the late 1930s-40s due to the Palestine issue, the identification of "Jews" with "Zionists", and general anti-foreign tendencies. The Jewish reaction was to remain inconspicuous. A complex image of the Jew as enemy developed. Points out that Jews were discriminated against for political reasons rather than religious or racial; however, one must examine economic and cultural tensions in order to understand the deterioration of Jewish-Muslim relations. Refutes the assumption that Islam is inherently antisemitic through evidence of the economic and social success of Egyptian Jewry.

Up until the advent of Nasser and the 1956 War, a thriving and diverse Jewry lived in Egypt – mainly in the two cities of Alexandria and Cairo, heavily influencing the social and cultural history of the country. Histories of the Jews of Egypt argues that this Jewish diaspora should be viewed as "an imagined bourgeoisie". It demonstrates how, from the late nineteenth century up to the 1950s, a resilient bourgeois imaginary developed and influenced the lives of Egyptian Jews both in the public arena, in institutions such as the school, and in the home. From the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Cairo lycée français to Alexandrian marriage contracts and interwar Zionist newspapers – this book explains how this imaginary was characterised by a great capacity to adapt to the evolutions of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Egypt, but later deteriorated alongside increasingly strong Arab nationalism and the political upheavals that the country experienced from the 1940s onwards. Offering a novel perspective on the history of modern Egypt and its Jews, and unravelling too often forgotten episodes and personalities which contributed to the making of an incredibly diverse and lively Jewish diaspora at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East, this book is of interest to scholars of Modern Egypt, Jewish History and of Mediterranean History.

Although nineteenth-century Egyptian Jewry was an active and creative part of society, this work from 1969 is the main comprehensive work devoted to an analysis and appraisal of its activities. The period under review commences with the fall of the Mamluk regime in Egypt, and the incipient modernization of the state, with the resulting increase in Jewish activity. It terminates with the end of World War I and the new era in the history of modern Egypt, an era of extreme nationalism that led to the undermining of the Jewish community.

Despite considerable research on the Jewish diaspora in the Middle East and North Africa since 1800, there has until now been no comprehensive synthesis that illuminates both the differences and commonalities in Jewish experience across a range of countries and cultures. This lacuna in both Jewish and Middle Eastern studies is due partly to the fact that in general histories of the region, Jews have been omitted from the standard narrative. As part of the religious and ethnic mosaic that was traditional Islamic society, Jews were but one among numerous minorities and so have lacked a systematic treatment. Addressing this important oversight, this volume documents the variety and diversity of Jewish life in the region over the last two hundred years. It explains the changes that affected the communities under Islamic rule during its "golden age" and describes the processes of modernization that enabled the Jews to play a pivotal role in their respective countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first half of the book is thematic, covering topics ranging from languages to economic life and from religion and music to the world of women. The second half is a country-by-country survey that covers Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, the Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.