Summary
Samir W. Raafat, an Egyptian writer whose chronicle of Ma’adi and his Egyptian Mail columns offer fond remembrances of Egypt’s Jews unencumbered by the ideological agenda of most post-1979 Egyptian writing — one of Chapter 9’s meager signs of dialogue in The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4296-4326).
Details
- He has published a chronicle of Ma’adi, a Cairo suburb built by Jewish investors, and regularly contributes a column to the Saturday Egyptian Mail and occasionally other English newspapers, often writing about Jewish business families, their enterprises and homes (Chapter 9, notes 63–64) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4296-4326).
- One article, asking why there is no tree at Yad Vashem honoring Egyptians who gave refuge to Jewish survivors of the Nazi persecutions, was translated and reprinted in ha-Aretz’s Saturday supplement (note 65) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4296-4326).
- His broader project revalorizes the monarchy era through its architecture, economic accomplishments and social life; he has operated primarily outside Arabo-Egyptian intellectual life’s circuits, and, writing only in English, has had limited influence (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4296-4326).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Yoram Meital