Summary
Jacob Masliah (Ya’qub Farag Salih, b. 1913), an Egyptian Karaite architect who emigrated to San Francisco in 1964 and became the first president of the reorganized Karaite Jews of America association in 1982–83, presented in The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry through a detailed family vignette (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3204-3342).
Details
- The Masliahs were relatively new to Egypt, having emigrated from Tunis in the nineteenth century; Jacob was not employed in the Karaite ethnic economy, was one of some 150 Karaites who worked in the free professions in the 1940s (Chapter 7, note 17), and enjoyed a comfortable upper-middle-class life; he knew Arabic well and felt culturally, socially and economically secure in Egypt while fully conscious of his minority status (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3204-3342).
- He graduated first in his class in architecture from the Royal Engineering College in Cairo in 1936 and was photographed with King Fu’ad; the certificate of citizenship he then requested so he could work for the government was still pending when he left Egypt in 1964 (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3204-3342).
- He designed air raid shelters and other military structures around Alexandria during World War II, entered partnership with Nasim Yahya of a leading Muslim business family of Alexandria (the legal arrangements made by his brother-in-law Yusuf Darwish), and designed the Port Said shrimp processing factory of another brother-in-law, Leon Darwish (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3204-3342).
- The family lived in Heliopolis and belonged to the Heliopolis Sporting Club, where his wife Nelly taught women’s exercise classes; he rose to third degree in a Masonic lodge whose members were 70 percent Jewish but which was affiliated with the Arab countries’ Masonic federation and considered itself Egyptian. His daughter Nadia Hartmann was on Egypt’s national water ballet team and represented Egypt in Syria in 1961 (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3204-3342).
- He held that “the Karaite Jews of Egypt have a special character that is different from other Jews,” their Arabic cultural orientation making them a more integral part of Egypt than other Jews; the family felt no discrimination as Jews until, in 1962, they were asked to stop coming to the Sporting Club — Nelly’s exercise class continued at their home — and left Egypt in November 1964 because the community was dwindling and they did not want their daughters to marry non-Jews, rejecting Israel as too unstable and choosing San Francisco (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3204-3342).
- In the United States he worked for Pacific Gas and Electric from 1968, retired at sixty-five and worked ten more years, and bought a home in San Francisco’s Sunset district; with Elie Nounou he initiated the community’s home high-holiday services, and in 1982 he was elected president of the reorganized Karaite association, becoming the first president of the Karaite Jews of America on its formal establishment in July 1983 (Chapter 7, notes 16, 25) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3204-3342).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Karaites, Karaite Jews of America, Yusuf Darwish, Joe Pessah