Just take a taxi at Midan-al-
Tahrir Square and tell the driver “Misr el Qadima” - Old
Cairo. When you emerge from this chaotic journey, the way
cleared by loud blasts on the horn through the crazy
traffic, the dust, the crowd, the animals and the shouts
from the policemen, you will appreciate even more the calm
of the Coptic quarter, where squeezed between two small
streets, the Ben Ezra synagogue is to be found.
According to legend, the
synagogue goes back to the era of Ezra who describes that he
came down from heaven to order its construction on the very
same spot where Moses implored God to free his people from
slavery.
However, it was built in
882, originally as a Christian basilica which was closed in
1115 under the order of the Caliph and sold off to the
Jewish community. Rabbi Abraham ben Ezra transformed it into
a synagogue which Benjamin of Tudela visited on one of his
many journeys to find lost Jewish communities and which
Maimonides used to attend.
The synagogue became even
more famous when in the 19th century the Karaite Firkovich
discovered some very antique documents in its “geniza”
(secret depository). Further successful investigations took
place and the traveller Elkan A. Adler, the women
orientalists Lewis and Gibson and Dr. Solomon Shechter, a
professor attached to the Department of Rabbinic Studies at
the University of Cambridge and later on President of the
Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, discovered
thousands of manuscripts, fragments and palimpsests(*) which
went from the 8th to the 11th century. Various extraordinary
factors combined to make this one of the most exciting
historic discoveries that has ever been made.
In the first place the
synagogue was very old - nearly one thousand years.
Secondly, it had an enormous storage room in a crypt so it
was not necessary to bury the material in the ground.
Thirdly, the Egyptian
climate is more than well-known to be especially favourable
for the preservation of parchment and paper.
Then, finally, Cairo had
been, during the period of the “geniza” one of the principle
centres of Judaism with strong religious, cultural and
commercial links with other places in the Jewish world.
Amongst the documents found were included The Bible and The
Torah, liturgy and poetry, legal and literary documents,
personal and commercial documents all with dates from the
10th to the end of the 19th century.
In 1980 it was decided to
completely renovate the synagogue, but once permission was
granted and funds released (a donation from Canadian Jews)
nothing happened. Without us even knowing why, the work only
began six years later.
Be that as it may, the Ben
Ezra synagogue duly restored has appeared hence forward in
travel brochures and it receives daily hundreds of tourists
who take advantage from this optional visit to have a break
from the frenetic shopping at Khan el-Khalili, the famous
bazaar.
Magnificent with its three
naves, marble columns, ivory and mother-of-pearl mosaics,
mahogany benches and its granite aisle, it has unfortunately
not been in service for a long-time. There remain in the
country only a few dozen Jews, old women for the most part,
and it is rare to get a minyan. Deaf to the pleadings of
their co-religionists originally from Egypt who live in
Brooklyn or Montreal and anxious to retrieve their books and
archives, the members of this minute community defend tooth
and nail their heritage and have even managed to have it
classified as Egyptian antiquity to prevent it from being
sold abroad.
The Egyptian Post Office
brought out a beautiful carnet of 30 stamps covering 5000
years of civilization in the country of the Nile, amongst
which is to be found the Ben Ezra Synagogue.
Finally, the only object
of Judaica that you can take out of the country is this
stamp. But you still have to get hold of it.
(*)
Palimpsests are reused writing materials from which the
underlying text has been erased. This was not always
completely done and underlying texts can often be read with
the assistance of an ultra-violet light.
