The Jewish Community of Khartoum

Khartoum

In Arabic: خرطوم 

The capital of Sudan.

Khartoum lays at the confluence of the white and blue Niles, most of it between the two rivers, with the town center on the left bank of the Blue Nile. Khartoum is one of a conurbation of three sister towns at that location - Khartoum, Khartoum North, and Omdurman. Khartoum North lays on the right bank of the Blue Nile and Omdurman on the left bank of the White Nile.

The first Jews came to settle at Khartoum North following the opening of the railway line from Cairo in 1898. Murad Israel Al-Ayni, a military man, was granted a license to open a shop at Khartoum North, settled at the town and brought from Cairo his parents and his fiancée. His brother and other members of the family joined him and became merchants and entrepreneurs. In 1910 came additional families of merchants.

Following the development of Khartoum as the capital of the state, Jews from Khartoum North began in 1918 to move into Khartoum. In the 1940’s and 1950’s some Jews, business people, shop owners, and officials continued to live at Khartoum North. Among the prominent enterprises owned by Jews at that time was a packing enterprise of the Malka family and a soap factory. On Sabbath days and the Jewish holidays they used to travel to Khartoum to pray at the large synagogue of the town.

The Jewish community of Khartoum was first organized in 1918. Joseph Forti, the manager of the local branch of the textile company Nathan and Company was elected as the head of the community. The community acquired a large site at the middle of (then) Victoria Avenue and built on it a great and splendid synagogue in the Sephardi style, capable of seating 500 worshippers. It was inaugurated in 1926. The rabbi was Solomon Malka, originally from Omdurman. The prayers were conducted in the Sephardi practice, according to Moroccan and Egyptian customs. Rabbi Malka died in 1949 and at the beginning of the 1950’s the synagogue was named after him “Ohel Shlomo”. In the 1930’s and 1940’s many Jews came from Egypt for service in a variety of appointments in the British administration, in banks, and in Egyptian and foreign commercial establishments, or in Jewish owned business companies. At that time came to Khartoum also Jews from England, Eretz Israel, and refugees from Germany. They settled in Khartoum and the community was then at the peak of its prosperity. The Jews of Khartoum flourished in commerce and some of them reached senior positions in the law courts, in the health services and in other governmental fields.

In 1948 the Jewish sport club “Maccabi” was founded. Earlier in the 1940’s the community set up its own sport and recreation club on a lot behind the synagogue. Its football team played in the local league. The life of the community centered around that club, which had among other facilities a dance hall and a kosher restaurant.

Zionist activity at Khartoum was aroused in 1934, following a visit by Nahum Sokolow, the president of the World Zionist Organization. In that year was founded also a local branch of the B’nai B’rith organization.

Until 1945 all the heads of the community had come from the first generation of settlers. They were followed by members of the second generation. The last of them was Ishag Mussa Israel Al-Ayni who was elected in 1965, when the majority of the community had already left Khartoum. He occupied the position until 1970, when he emigrated to Britain. In the last years of the British rule in Sudan some 2000 Jews were living in Khartoum. On the eve of Sudan’s independence (1956) many Jews left Khartoum, particularly to Britain.

In 1965 many others emigrated mostly to the U.S.A. and Britain. When Numeiri came to power in 1969 the property of the Jews who had left the country in former years was confiscated by the state. In the 1970’s most of the remaining Jews left Sudan. Only a small number of the Jews of Sudan have come to Israel in the course of the years.