Summary
Jacqueline Kahanoff, daughter of an upper-middle-class Cairene Jewish family, whose essays — above all “The Generation of Levantines” — are presented in The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry as the point of departure for the post-1977 reclamation of Egyptian Jewish identity in Israel, against Rahel Maccabi’s Zionist representation (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 613-634, 635-698).
Details
- Her account of her French schooling explains the radicalism of her generation of Christians, Jews and elite Muslims who “had abandoned strict religious observance and no longer lived as members of millets but were neither fully European nor fully Egyptian”: “We thought ourselves to be Socialist, even Communist, and in our school yard we ardently discussed the Blum government, the civil war in Spain, revolution, materialism, and the rights of women, particularly free love.…Revolution, which would destroy a world where we did not have our rightful place, would create another, where we could belong.…We would no longer be what we were, but become free citizens of the universe” (Chapter 2, note 65) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 613-634).
- Zionism was a rarity among the Jewish pupils in her schools; her schoolmates were “pro-nationalist as a matter of principle,” though their parents were “pro-British as a matter of business and security” (Chapter 2, note 76). Her essays, including “The Generation of Levantines,” were written in English, translated by Aharon Amir, and published in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the first issues of Keshet, the Canaanite movement’s journal, whose outlook “was far more congenial to Kahanoff than to Maccabi” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 635-698).
- Her Levantine synthesis consciously held two commitments together: “[E]ven though we sympathized with the Muslim nationalists’ aspirations, we did not believe them capable of solving the real problems of this society, and for this they could not forgive us.…We knew that Europe, although far away, was inseparably part of us because it had so much to offer” (Chapter 2, note 77); she also “wondered how those young Muslims intended to change conditions in Egypt if they did not realize that learning what the Europeans knew was the most important thing of all” (Chapter 2, note 78) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 635-698).
- With Jewish friends she started a clinic in harat al-yahud; they had to abandon it when the head of the Jewish community in the hara accused them of advocating birth control and Zionism — “the second allegation was a lie.” Blocked in both the Egyptian national arena and the Jewish community, she left Egypt in 1940: “I loved Egypt, but could no longer bear to be part of it, however conscious I was of its queer charm, its enchantment, its contrasts, its ignoble poverty and refined splendor” (Chapter 2, note 79). After living in the United States and Paris and publishing a novel in English, she moved to Israel in 1954 (Chapter 2, note 80) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 635-698).
- “Kahanoff’s celebration of Levantinism was abhorrent to the dominant Ashkenazi Zionism that required the mass migration of the Middle Eastern Jews to Israel to populate the country but detested their culture and regarded Levantinism as a curse to be avoided at all costs”; critics praised her sensitivity while dismissing her aspirations — one called them “fruitful illusions,” “an interesting addition to the psychology and sociology of one more exile” (Chapter 2, note 81). After Anwar al-Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jerusalem created a receptive audience, her essays were collected in a warmly received book, Mi-mizrah shemesh (From the east the sun), and an avant-garde literary magazine’s review endorsed her revalorization of Levantinism (Chapter 2, note 82) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 635-698).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Levantinism, Mizrahim