editorials
Israel at 74
Y om Ha’atzmaut, which begins at
sunset on May 4, invites us to
look at Israel through a long lens and
see how utterly different it is today
than when it came into being 74
years ago.

There are many who remember
how encircled and outnumbered the
just-declared state was on the fifth
day of Iyar in 1948. There was no
guarantee that Israel wouldn’t be
overrun and wiped out by the sur-
rounding Arab armies — not then,
and not in 1967, when a similar coa-
lition, backed by the Soviet Union,
threatened war while the United
States was too distracted by Vietnam
to offer even moral support.

Many remember 1967, how Israel
survived and how it prevailed again
in 1973, but not without the cost of
2,400 lives lost and a badly strained
economy. It was Israel’s peace
agreement with Egypt in 1979 that
removed the most powerful Arab
country as a strategic threat to
Israel’s existence. That agreement
wasn’t universally welcomed, but it
has lasted more than four decades.

Today, threats and enemies
remain, but unlike in the past,
everyone seems to be normalizing
relations with Israel — a country
that is technologically advanced,
economically stable and tied to
its partner and strategic asset, the
United States. The close American
connection has melted the
Three No’s of the 1967 Khartoum
Resolution: “no peace with Israel,
no recognition of Israel, no nego-
tiations with it ...” In its place, the
Abraham Accords includes Arab
countries that have said yes to all
three prohibitions.

In this country, the annual Gallup
poll of country favorability found that
71% of Americans gave Israel a “very
favorable” or “mostly favorable”
rating. That’s in line with average
favorability ratings since 2013 and
a leap from the 45% in 1989. The
results put Israel in good company;
among the countries Gallup rated,
only Canada, Great Britain, France,
Japan, Germany and India ranked
higher. Lately, Israel has become posi-
tively associated with coronavirus
research. With each surge of the
coronavirus pandemic, it was often
a surprise to hear Israel mentioned
in the media as one of the countries
that was doing something right in
beating back COVID.

In January of 2021, before most
Americans even got their first inoc-
ulation, The Atlantic highlighted how
Israel had vaccinated six times more
of its population than the United
States. Writer Uri Friedman said the
reason Israel was able to act so effi-
ciently “traces back decades to the
embryonic health infrastructure cre-
ated before the State of Israel even
existed.” Israel’s universal health sys-
tem, present at the country’s found-
ing, was able to reach a population in
danger seven decades later.

Then there are the more anec-
dotal accolades. Tel Aviv made the
Forbes list of the world’s 15 best cit-
ies, coming in eighth. And Time Out
ranked Tel Aviv as the world’s most
fun city for the second year in a row
and the second-best city in the food
and drink category. Speaking of
food and drink, Israeli food is having
a bit of a moment in the states, too,
as chefs like Michael Solomonov
introduce the public to both familiar
and unfamiliar culinary offerings.

None of these was on Israel’s
founders’ list of goals 74 years ago.

It’s important not to forget Israel’s
successes. JE
Preserving an Ancient Diaspora
Community E
gypt is considered one of the
oldest Jewish communities in the
world. In 1948, the Jewish population
of Cairo and Alexandria was estimated
to be more than 75,000. In the 1950s,
Egyptian authorities began expelling
Jews and sequestering Jewish-owned
property. Today, the number of Jews living in
Egypt can be counted on one hand.

The declining population also
went hand in hand with a lack of pro-
tection for Jewish heritage sites. But
we can take some inspiration from a
group of volunteers who have been
working to revive Egypt’s Jewish
heritage. As described in Haaretz, the vol-
unteers have worked to conserve
Jewish sites in the North African
nation. The project is being carried
out with American funding by the
tiny Jewish community that remains
in Egypt and with the cooperation
14 of Egyptian authorities. When these
volunteers go to work, they are
often greeted with destruction and
neglect — places closed for more
than 70 years have been used as
garbage dumps.

In March, the project’s focus was
an old Jewish cemetery in Cairo,
where it took 250 garbage trucks
to remove all of the debris that had
accumulated over the years.

Of the 16 synagogue buildings in
Egypt, 13 are in Cairo. In 2020, the
refurbishing of the Eliyahu Hanavi
synagogue in Alexandria, built in the
19th century, was completed. The
Egyptian government covered all the
costs of renovating the structure.

The next big project is to restore
the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo,
which was built about 1,200 years
ago and is one of the oldest syn-
agogues in the world. This syna-
gogue is the site of the famous
APRIL 28, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Cairo Geniza, a collection of almost
400,000 pieces of manuscripts and
documents outlining a 1,000-year
continuum of Jewish Middle Eastern
and North African history. These
pieces comprise the largest and
most diverse collection of medieval
manuscripts in the world and, to this
day, serve as the primary source for
writing the history of Eastern Jewish
communities. One of the guiding principles of
the Jewish heritage project is to
keep what is found in Egypt.

The most incredible finding was
discovered at the Karaite synagogue
in Cairo. In a place where anyone
could have picked it up was a Bible
written on vellum. The priceless 616-
page manuscript was dated to 1028.

The group of volunteers has
uncovered more books in existing
structures that are lying about like
trash. Some of them are rare editions
dating from the 16th or 17th centu-
ries. To date, around 1,000 books
have been recovered.

Another discovery was unearthed
in the cellar of a Cairo synagogue. A
small metal box contained a registry
of the entire Ashkenazi community
in Egypt, including names, birthdates,
emigration, professions and other
information from the community’s past.

These are just some of the trea-
sures that have so far been discov-
ered. If the project’s organizers are
successful, someday there will be a
central library in Cairo where these
antiquities can be preserved — and
hopefully be on display — so the
world can know of the rich Jewish
heritage that was once in Egypt.

We look forward to that day. These
items are beyond priceless and
serve as a reminder of often-forgot-
ten Jewish history. It’s a project we
can all get behind. JE