Synagogues in Cairo

Even with only 5 Jews left in Cairo , Egypt as of July 2019, there are still some synagogues in Cairo . The Egyptian Jews constitute both one of the oldest and youngest Jewish communities in the World . The historic core of the indigenous community consisted mainly of Arabic-speaking Rabbanites and Karaites . After their expulsion from Spain, more Sephardi and Karaite Jews began to emigrate to Egypt and their numbers increased significantly with the growth of trading prospects after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. As a result, Jews from all over the territories of the Ottoman Empire as well as Italy and Greece started to settle in the main cities of Egypt, where they thrived. The Ashkenazi community, mainly confined to Cairo 's Darb al-Barabira quarter, began to arrive in the aftermath of the waves of pogroms that hit Europe in the latter part of the 19th century. In the late 1950s, Egypt began to expel its Jewish population (estimated at between 75,000 and 80,000 in 1948), also sequestering Jewish-owned property at this time. In 2016, the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in the city of Cairo, Magda Tania Haroun , stated that there were 6 Jews remaining in the city, all women over the age of 65. In July 2019, there are only 5 Jews left in Cairo. It's estimated that only 18 Egyptian Jews remain in the entire country, with most of them in the city of Alexandria. The 1947 census gives 65,639, possibly too low.¹