After many decades of a complete media blackout about the Jews of Egypt, suddenly a historical musalsal set in 1948 called ‘Haret Elyahoud,’ or the Jewish Quarter, hit the airwaves in Ramadan 2014. This was a time of great political turmoil in Egypt; Mohamed Morsi had just been ousted from power, and even though Adly Mansour was interim President, it was no secret that Abdel Fatah Elsisi was running the country from behind the scenes and that it was simply a matter of time before he officially became President. So, was this musalsal an early sign of Sisi’s intention to make drastic changes to both Egyptian foreign policy and media representation of the Jews of Egypt?
This paper will analyze the depiction of the Jews of Egypt in Haret Elyahoud in comparison to information about their actual status, as conveyed in various documents in the archives of the Center for Jewish History in New York. The paper will argue that the musalsal did indeed give due diligence to important historical facts, such as how the Jews of Egypt included different Jewish sub-groups who largely led separate lives and did not intermarry and how many of them were educated in French schools and deeply influenced by French culture. But it will also show how other aspects of the musalsal contradicted with other important historical facts, so that it by and large painted an idealistic picture of the life that Jews once had in Egypt. Therefore, the paper will argue that this musalsal was indeed an early sign of the Sisi regime’s foreign policy of “unprecedented collaboration” with Israel, as Sisi himself put it in his infamous disastrous interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes.
Art/Art History
Communications
History
International Relations/Affairs
Media Arts
Political Science
None