Summary
Chief rabbi of Egypt from 1924 to 1960, formerly chief rabbi of Istanbul, a consistent anti-Zionist who advocated cultural integration and loyal patriotism as the only strategy ensuring a Jewish community’s survival in Egypt, and who in The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry repeatedly performs the role of an Ottoman millet head mediating between his community and the Egyptian state — protesting the 1945 riots while affirming equal rights, delivering the community’s allegiance to the Free Officers in 1952, and petitioning the state over matzah flour, bank holidays and high-holiday leave (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 485-513, 1165-1166, 1241-1261).
Details
- Nahum, “a consistent anti-Zionist throughout his tenure in office (1924–60),” refused Albert D. Mosseri’s request to explain “that one can be an excellent patriot of the country of one’s birth while being a perfect Jewish nationalist” (Chapter 2, note 11) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 485-513).
- King Fu’ad bestowed Egyptian citizenship on Nahum shortly after his arrival in Egypt and appointed him a founding member of the Arab Language Academy in Cairo in 1932; both Fu’ad and Faruq had warm and respectful relations with him; “Throughout his career, Nahum advocated cultural integration and loyal patriotism as the only strategy that would ensure the survival of a Jewish community in Egypt” (Chapter 3, notes 60-61 in sequence) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1281-1285).
- After the November 1945 riots he wrote to Prime Minister Al-Nuqrashi on behalf of Zionist and non-Zionist leaders protesting the violence and the desecration of the Ashkenazi synagogue, yet affirmed the community had been enjoying equal rights and asserted (incorrectly) that there had not been a synagogue desecration in Egypt since the advent of Islam (Chapter 3, note 10) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1165-1166).
- Days after the July 23, 1952 coup he telegraphed General Muhammad Naguib affirming that “The Chief Rabbi and the Jewish communities in Egypt supported the revolution and asked God for its success” — conducting himself, the chapter argues, “exactly as the head of an Ottoman millet would have acted in delivering the allegiance of his community to a newly installed sultan,” a familiar role for the former chief rabbi of Istanbul (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1241-1243).
- On Yom Kipur 1952 Naguib visited him at Cairo’s main ‘Adli Street synagogue, “the first and only courtesy visit by a head of state to a chief rabbi in modern Egyptian history” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1244-1245).
- After the March 1953 fire destroyed most of the Cairo Sephardi community’s Passover matzahs, Nahum petitioned the minister of supply for permission to import 20,000 kilograms of Australian or Canadian flour, and the government allocated enough flour to remake them — a petition that “reinforced the relationship of Neo-dhimma” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1249-1251).
- On the eve of the 1953 high holidays he wrote to the Cairo police commander, the Ministry of War and the prison administration seeking holiday leave for Jews in those services and freedom from labor for Jewish prisoners, although no Jews served in the police or armed services and most Jewish prisoners were nonobservant communists (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1257-1258).
- When Shaykh Ahmad Hasan al-Baquri’s February 1953 radio talk called Judaism a racist ideology like Nazism and Jews swine, Nahum wrote to Naguib, who demanded al-Baquri apologize to Nahum face to face at his home rather than by telephone (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1259-1261).
- By the post-1956 crisis Nahum was chronically ill; he died in 1960, one of the key personnel losses that left Jewish communal life in Egypt no longer viably sustainable (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1325-1329).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Muhammad Naguib, Al-Nuqrashi, Neo-dhimma, Tuvia Babovitch