The dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: culture, politics, and the formation of a modern diaspora

Abstract

The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, by Joel Beinin. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1998, xii + 267 pages. Append. to p. 274. Notes to p. 306. Bibl. to p. 322. Index to p. 329. n.p. Reviewed by Eric Davis In its initial phase, the study of minorities in the modem Middle East, which began with Albert Hourani's Minorities in the Arab World (1947), was relatively non-controversial and largely theoretical. The study of minorities acquired a negative connotation only with the rising interest in theories of imperialism, dependency and neocolonialism in the wake of decolonization and the Vietnam War. For younger scholars especially, the study of minorities came to be viewed as an attempt to give intellectual sustenance to efforts to fragment the Middle East (e.g., by undermining Arab nationalism). In recent years, the interest in minorities seems to have faded. While the reasons for this are difficult to pinpoint, the emigration of minorities from the Middle East-such as the Copts from Egypt and the Maronites from Lebanon-certainly represents an important factor. In light of the relative paucity of studies on minorities, Joel Beinin's analysis of the Egyptian Jewish community is a welcome addition. Thoroughly researched and written with great empathy for its subjects, this study eschews a chronological narrative in favor of a tableau that emphasizes this community's social and cultural heterogeneity and diverse geographic origins. The author's intriguing portrait is not merely an account of the rise and decline of the Egyptian Jewish community, the majority of which left Egypt after the 1956 invasion by British, French, and Israeli forces. It also presents a critique of the shortcomings of master narratives, especially those of traditional Zionism and Egyptian nationalism, in explaining the dynamics and structure of this community. As such, this volume offers insights into other transformations in the Middle East, such as the weakness of civil society, reflected especially by the lack of tolerance for cultural and political diversity. The author's study also reminds the reader that, in attributing blame to Egyptian Jews for the creation of a Zionist state, a great deal of Egyptian intellectual discourse is still dominated by a conspiratorial approach (pp. 248-50). Read simply from a pre-1956 cultural perspective, this study reminds the reader of the tremendous loss to Arab and other Middle Eastern states (e.g., Iraq) that resulted from the exodus of the Jews and other minorities during decolonization. Among the many members of the Jewish community who had enhanced the cultural and social fabric of everyday Egyptian life were great singers such as Layla Murad, civic leaders such as Ren6 Qattawi (who lectured me in Paris in late 1974 on his family's anti-Zionist credentials), wealthy entrepreneurs such as the Cicurels, and leftist political activists such as Henri Curiel. Thoroughly Arabized and Egyptianized, on the one hand, and drawn from diverse geographic origins and divided into competing Rabbanite and Karaite communities, on the other, Egyptian Jews were, one can argue, as divided internally as they were by the divisions that separated them from the larger Arab Muslim populace. …