The Jewish Community of Khartoum

Ketubbah (Marriage Contract) from the Registry
of the Jewish Community in Omdourman (Khartoum).
Sudan c.1918.
All the Ketubboth were hand-written and signed by
Rabbi Shlomo Malka.
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot,
courtesy of Rita Tamman, London)

Nessim David Gaon (1922-2022), businessman and community leader, born in Khartoum, Sudan. His family originated in Turkey but moved to Egypt. His father was a political officer with the Sudanese government in Khartoum. He graduated from college in that city. During WW II he saw active service in the British army and reached the rank of captain. After the war he joined the family business in Sudan and in 1957 moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he developed a worldwide business corporation in import-export, investment and real estate. Prominent in Jewish affairs, he headed the community in Khartoum and in 1966 became head of the united Ashkenazi and Sephardi community in Geneva. Gaon has been especially active in Sephardi institutions served as president of the World Sephardi Federation since 1971. He was also vice-president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of the board of governors of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

Joseph (Yousif ) Aslan Seroussi (1933-2018), fashion designer and businessman, born in Khartoum, Sudan. He moved to Great Britain in 1957 and then he immigrated to Canada in 1959. Seroussi first came to Romania in 1965, then in 1974 he opened an office in Bucharest, and at the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, his business in Romania already had a turnover of US$ 55 million. He started producing under the Seroussi brand in 1990, when he bought the first factory in Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania. In the 2000s, his companies, located in Odorheiu Secuiesc and in Botosani employed over 3,000 workers and manufactured about four million trousers for men and women as well men’s suits for international fashion houses, including Hugo Boss of Germany and Tiger of Sweden. Seroussi was a founding member of the National Association of Romanian Exporters and Importers (ANEIR) and of the Romanian Association of Foreign Investors. His philanthropic activities included important donations to the local hospital in Odorheiu Secuiesc.

Georges Gutelman (1938-2019), engineer and businessman, born in Liege, Belgium, to parents who immigrated from Poland to Belgium. Following the invasion of Nazi Germany to Belgium, Georges’ father found a hiding place for his two sons with a Christian family, thus saving their lives. Georges’ mother perished in Auschwitz. 

The Jewish boy from Liège became a young, talented businessman. While still a student, he used to sell his friends airline tickets to flights he has leased in advance, a brilliant new idea at the time, that gained much success. One day, his wife Aline recalls, he simply told her, we are buying an airplane.

Years went by, and Gutelman’s TEA (Trans European Airways) company expanded rapidly, first introducing license flights in Europe. At its peak, the company held a fleet of over 250 aircrafts. They became franchisors of flights of thousands of Muslim pilgrims from northern Africa to Mecca, and made a fortune.

In the winter of 1984, Gutelman received a phone call from Efraim Halevy, then director of the Mossad. The following day they met in Brussels, and Halevy presented to Gutelman Israel’s secret plan. “We need a neutral airways company to fly the Jewish Ethiopian refugees from Sudan to Israel”, he explained. Years after, Halevy recalled that Gutelman did not ask any further questions, and agreed immediately, demanding no fee for lending his aircraft for the operation.

Gutelman and Halevy planned the route: from Ben Gurion airport to Cyprus, then to Khartoum capital of Sudan, boarding hundreds of Jewish refugees onto each plane, and taking off back to Israel via Brussels, where they had to land for fuel.

For a whole month, Gutelman’s iron birds brought 6,500 refugees from Ethiopia – men, women, children, and elders, but then the secret leaked. Arye Dulchin, head of the Jewish Agency, shared confidential details with some Canadian donors, who innocently published the operation, which soon enough became a story in the New York Times.

Due to the premature leak, 15 TEA planned flights could not take off, as the president of Sudan interrupted the operation. Following the leak, all Arab states boycotted Gutelman’s company, causing the total loss of the Jewish entrepreneur’s life work, which relied mainly on flights to Mecca. TEA went bankrupt and ceased to exist in 1991.

He was never compensated by the Israeli government for his losses, nor did he ever demand any coverage. “I must emphasize that I know not of any other Jew who has been that helpful to Israel’s efforts”, Halevy said, “Operation Moses should have been named Operation Gutelman, as thousands of Ethiopian Jews owe their lives to him”.

Georges Gutelman and his wife Aline came to Israel in 2011. 

In 2022 ANU - Museum of the Jewish People inaugurated the Gutelman Educational Center in partnership with the Gutelman family and KKL Belgium. The center serves groups and schoolchildren who enjoy enriching programs and workshops.

Ferede Yazezew Aklum (aka  Farada Aklum or Ferede Yazazao Aklum) (1949-2009), a Mossad agent and Zionist activist, born in Adi Woreva, Tigray district, Ethiopia. His father, Yazezew Aklum was a wealthy, educated successful man who valued all his children’s education. Ferede studied pedagogy in the Addis Ababa teachers’ college, then worked as a teacher and in 1976 was appointed schoolmaster in Indabeguna in Tigray. He asked the ORT network to open a Jewish school in Tigray, and indeed two ORT schools were opened for the Tigray Jewish communities. A year later he moved to Gondar, to teach in the Jewish school. During the 1970s he initiated the establishments of two more schools in Tigray, and also became the council chairman of Indabeguna.

In 1977, an agreement on the transferring of Jews via Addis Ababa to Israel in return for weapons was signed between Ethiopia and Israel. Aklum was responsible for bringing some 200 Jews that year. After a few of them arrived in Israel, the deal was leaked and uncovered, and as a result, Ethiopia cut all diplomatic relations with Israel, and deported all Israeli representatives, including the ORT agents. Aklum realized he was not safe there, fled to Khartoum, and sent an urgent letter to the Israeli representative in Geneve, which reached the Mossad in Tel Aviv. The Mossad people were looking for new ways to bring the Jews of Ethiopia in the midst of the Ethiopian civil war. Aklum’s letter, in which he wrote how he crossed the border to Sudan, made them examine the possibility of a rescuing operation to Israel via Sudan, disguising the Jews as war refugees. The Mossad agents met with Aklum and it was decided that he would locate and gather more Jews in Sudan. Eventually, he was recruited as a Mossad agent himself. He managed to bring his two brothers to join him in search of more and more Jewish families who arrived in Sudan, and sent a group of 30 people to Genève with the help of ORT and Mossad men, and from Genève to Ofakim, Israel.

After this successful attempt, the Mossad kept using Aklum for locating and gathering Jews in Khartoum and in refugee camps along the Sudan-Ethiopia border. He realized the best way to transport the Jews via Sudan was disguises as refugees. The word spread in many Jewish villages, and the Jews of Tigray started to flow towards the Sudanese border, pretending to be war refugees. Thousands of Jews came to Israel in this method, through the Red Sea. However, after two years, Aklum’s name and actions were informed to the Sudanese authorities and they started pursuing him. He realized his life was in danger and left to Israel. During those two years, the Mossad prepared the logistic and intelligential basis to the Moses Operation by airplanes, in 1984.

In Israel, Aklum settled with his family in Beer Sheva, and continued his efforts as an Aliyah activist, who assisted many olim to adjust to their new country. At that period, he heard that many Jews were killed while crossing the Sudanese border, and established some contacts with countries bordering with Sudan and Ethiopia, in order to bring more Jews to Israel, however was given a cold shoulder and even driven out of Kenya by the local police.

Ferede Aklum died on January 7, 2009, while staying in Addis Ababa, and buried in the new cemetery in Beer Sheva on January 11. In January 2016 a memorial cornerstone was laid in his memory for a park and square in Beer Sheva.
__________

Source: “The Power of One’’, book by Batya Makover, published by Forum Yerusalem
www.forumyerusalem.org

Isaac Moses Israel El-Eini (1921–1983), President of the Jews of Sudan (1965–1983), project developer, and poet, born in Khartoum, Sudan, into a prominent family of the small Jewish community of Sudan. His father, Moses Israel El-Eini, was born in Suez, Egypt, and his grandparents, Israel and Samra El-Eini, originated from Kurdistan. His mother, Rosa Haïs, was born in Cairo, Egypt, where her father, Herman Haïs, an engineer from Germany, immigrated to, and married Annette Nada of Russian and Syrian origin. Isaac had an elder brother, Jacob.

Isaac’s father, Moses, was a merchant and trader who owned general stores selling a variety of goods, ranging from groceries to haberdashery, kitchenware to hardware goods, bolts of fabric, including fine silk from Japan, and handmade carpets from Central Asia. He was President of the Jewish Community of the Sudan during the 1930s and 1940s, and was invited for government consultations, especially concerning the Second World War. Isaac’s mother, Rosa, was an accomplished classical pianist and banjo player.

Isaac attended the Coptic School for Boys and Comboni College in Khartoum. In 1938, aged seventeen, he enrolled at the American University in Cairo and completed the Junior College course of two years, in preparation to study architecture. Isaac excelled at sports and was captain of the university football team, winning the university cup.

Due to German military advances in North Africa following the outbreak of the Second World War, Isaac had to return to Khartoum in 1940. He worked with his father and his brother, Jacob, at the family’s general stores until 1949, when his father passed away. Jacob and Isaac then sold the stores and opened a company, trading in wholesale building-construction and agricultural equipment.

In 1954, Isaac was introduced to Odette Arav, née Judith Benjamin Arav, through a mutual family friend, and they were married a month later in Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue in Cairo. They lived in Khartoum and had six children: Mosé, Herman, Roza, Moira, Jack, and Anna. Isaac studied building construction in Khartoum and for a while farmed government-owned land in Gadaref, east Sudan, in arduous and isolated conditions.

Isaac had friends from all walks of life and different political circles, and was close friends with the Mahdi, the main religious and political Muslim family in Sudan. Known for his generosity, Isaac helped numerous people to start successful businesses. He made many donations and did his own charitable work, personally buying and distributing food, clothing, and health and hygiene items every Friday to the homeless migrants who lived in the “Cartoon Village” shanty town outside the capital.

In 1965, Isaac was elected President of the Jewish Community of the Sudan, when the country was becoming more antisemitic. Sudan participated in the Six Day War against Israel in 1967. He had to attend daily police interrogations and, at great risk to himself, helped secure the release of both Jews and non-Jews falsely imprisoned on espionage charges.

A year after Gaafar el-Nimeiri’s military coup in 1969, Isaac and Odette escaped with their family and settled as political refugees in Hove, East Sussex, England, where there was a Jewish community from Sudan and Egypt. In 1973, Isaac and Odette donated a specialized ambulance to Israel for the Yom Kippur War effort.

Isaac was a poet and wrote in literary Arabic, also in calligraphy. He was knowledgeable about the Koran and could repeat it by heart in Arabic. Isaac was often invited by family, friends, and officials to compose and recite poems, elegies, and prayers for social events and ceremonies, where he sometimes also improvised spoken word poetry.

------------------------

This biography was written and contributed to the database of ANU - Museum of the Jewish People by Dr. Roza I. M. El-Eini

Odette El-Eini (born Judith Benjamin Arav) (1925–2021), painter and author, born into a cultured family in Cairo, Egypt. Her father, Benjamin Arav, was a leading horologist in Egypt, where he was born, and his family originated from Hebron, Eretz Israel. Her mother, Marie Arav, née Fedida, was highly skilled in needlework and cuisine, and was born in Meknes, Morocco, from where her family immigrated to Egypt when she was a child. Odette was born a twin to her brother Maurice and had an elder brother and sister, Albert and Victoria, and a younger brother, René. Her uncle, Judah Arav, was one of the founders and the first mayor of Sejera–Ilaniya in the Galilee.

Odette attended l’École Abraham B’tesh and the Lycée Franco-Égyptien in Heliopolis, and the Lycée Français du Caire in Cairo. She excelled at mathematics, literature and art and was a school friend of the painter Inji Efflatoun. After initiating a small private school of six pupils of the Cours Maintenon, Odette attained her baccalaureate in Philosophy there. She trained in Isadora Duncan interpretive dance and was an accomplished roller-skater.

Planning to become a mathematician and research hypotheses she had developed on Pythagorean geometry and Amedeo Avogadro’s law, when her father’s health declined, Odette instead decided to study medicine in the hope of discovering a cure for him.

After two years at the Jesuit Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, Lebanon, Odette continued her studies in 1946 at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Because of the difficult post-war conditions in France, Odette returned to Egypt in 1949, and worked in Nomenclature at the Cairo Museum whilst taking a course in drawing. Political instability and rising antisemitism in Egypt made life for the Jewish Egyptian community increasingly uncertain.

In 1954, Odette met Isaac Moses Israel El-Eini, a project developer and poet from the Jewish community of Sudan, through a mutual family friend and they were married a month later in Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue in Cairo. They lived in Khartoum and had six children: Mosé, Herman, Roza, Moira, Jack, and Anna.

Isaac was elected President of the Jewish Community of Sudan in 1965, when the country was becoming more antisemitic. Sudan’s involvement in the Six Day War of 1967 profoundly affected the Jewish community. Isaac had to attend daily police interrogations and, at great risk to himself, helped in the release of many Jews and non-Jews falsely imprisoned on espionage charges.

A year after the military coup of 1969, Isaac and Odette escaped with their family to England and settled as political refugees in Hove, East Sussex, where there was a Jewish community from Sudan and Egypt. In 1973, Isaac and Odette donated a specialized ambulance to Israel to help out with the Yom Kippur War.

Isaac passed away in 1983 and Odette cared for her family alone. She started painting again, studying photography at Brighton Polytechnic and completing her first novel.

In 1993, Odette immigrated to Jerusalem, Israel, and devoted her time to painting. She also studied sculpture in 1997 at the Musrara School of Art in Jerusalem. In 1999, Odette’s solo exhibition, The Colour of Joy, at the Jerusalem Artists’ House, was held to critical acclaim. Odette is a listed artist at the Israel Museum.

On returning to England in 2001, Odette lived in London and continued to paint and write, publishing Adèle in 2015, a children’s novel set in Heliopolis. Odette wrote her memoirs, Some of the ‘I’s that Made Me. Her deep love of the Bible is reflected in her novel, Only Two Trees in the Valley, an allegory about Adam and Eve, beautifully illustrated with luminescent paintings in chalk pastels and watercolour.

---------------

This biography was written and contributed to the database of ANU - Museum of the Jewish People by Dr. Roza I. M. El-Eini

Khartoum North

Arabic: الخرطوم بحر

Now part of Khartoum, capital of Sudan, about 30 km north of central Khartoum, also known as Al-Khartum Bahri. 

Origin of Jewish settlement

Although there was a Jewish presence in neighboring areas such as Elephantine and  Abyssinia  before the 15th century, the earliest recorded Jewish traveler in Sudan was David haReuveni in 1524. The first Jewish residents in Omdurman, Sudan were eight families living under Ottoman and Egyptian rule in 1885.  Family traditions trace their origins to descendants of Spanish Jews who fled to Turkey after the Expulsion in 1492, and later reached Palestine, Egypt and finally Sudan.

 

1885-1898

The community of eight Jewish families practiced Judaism openly until the rebel leader Muhamed Ahmad Ibn Abdul Mahdi took control of Sudan from the Turkish ruler in 1885, and forcibly converted all non- Moslems to Islam.  All new converts, known as Masalma, were encouraged to take Moslem brides. The Jewish men who held public positions married Moslem women and practiced their new religion openly, while maintaining Jewish traditions secretly in their homes. 

In  September 1898 the Mahdi was overthrown by a 20,000 strong Anglo-Egyptian army led by General Kitchener, who entered Omdurman and gained control of Sudan. The country became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium (British rule with a predominantly Egyptian army), and with this new political status it began to economically flourish. The railway line built by the British from Cairo to Khartoum, originally for the military campaign, became particularly important for opening up a previously long and difficult route for traders, including many Jews.

 

British rule 1898 -1956

Under British rule the Jewish families were able to practice their religion openly, so six of those who had adopted Islam returned to Judaism. The most prominent of them was that of Moshe Ben Zion Coshti, who chose to keep his Arabised name, Musa Bassiouni.  After 1900 the  few Jewish families were joined by their religious counterparts from many parts of the Middle East and North Africa, who arrived in Sudan via Cairo. These were merchants who traded in textiles, silks and gum, and settled along the Nile in the four towns of Khartoum, Khartoum North, Omdurman and Wadi-Medani. The community was officially organized in 1918, with a temporary synagogue. By 1926 the temporary structure had been replaced by a new building funded by the members, some of whom who had become successful businessmen.

Although there were four separate locations of the community, it was very closely connected. There was a highly active Jewish social club  and the community was served by a mohel (ritual circumciser) and shohet (ritual slaughterer). In 1934 the president of the World Zionist Organisation, Nahum Sokolov, visited the community, resulting in the awakening of Zionist activity. A local branch of Bnei Brit was founded in the same year.  Between 1930 and 1950 there were between 800-1000  Jewish residents in Khartoum.

During that period a Jewish woman won the title Miss Khartoum, and was on the way to compete in the contest for Miss Egypt. When the organisers found out that she was Jewish, her title was taken from her and given to the Christian woman who won second place.

Until 1945 all the community leaders had come from the first generation of settlers. The second generation took over for the following two decades, when the last leader Isaac Mussa Al Ayni, was elected in 1965. He emigrated to Britain in 1970.

 

Independent Sudan after 1956

With Sudan's independence from British rule, the Jewish community began to suffer from hostility from the local Moslem population. As a result, from 1957 many Jews began to emigrate to Israel, USA, Britain and Switzerland. 10 years later, during the 1967 Six Day War, the Sudanese press began publishing articles inciting to the torture and murder of the Jewish community leaders. In 1969, the year Numeiri came to power, all property of Jews who had left was confiscated by the state. By 1970 almost all the Jews had left Sudan. The synagogue was sold and demolished in 1986 and the site is now occupied by a bank.

The Jewish cemetery of Khartoum remained after the last residents left and was subject to vandalism. In 1975 arrangements were made by former community members to transfer some of the graves to Israel, where they were reburied in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul cemetery.  In 2005 there were at least 15 known graves left in Khartoum, and since then the place has been desecrated and used as a dump for used car parts.