Letter to Miriam Jabes from Louis Rivet, Ismailiya, Egypt, c. 1944

JABES, JABEZ

This family name is a patronymic surname based on a male ancestor's personal name, in this case of biblical origin. Jabes is a medieval Spanish spelling of the Hebrew biblical male personal name Yabetz (I Chronicles 4.9). Yabetz was a descendant of Yehuda. The biblical name-etymology of the name is an anagram of a Hebrew word which means "pain": ... "and his mother named him Jabez, 'Because', she said, 'I bore him in pain' ". As a Jewish family name, Jabez is documented in the 15th century with the Spanish-born Hebrew homilist and exegete, Joseph Ben Hayyim Jabez.

Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Jaabez include the 16th century Hebrew printers Salomo and Joseph Jaabez who published many Jewish books in Greece and Turkey.

Distinguished 20th century bearers of the Jewish family name Jabes include the Egyptian-born Swiss organization executive, Andre Jabes.

YABETZ, YAVETZ, YAVITZ, JAVITZ, JABEZ

Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a patronymic, derived from a male ancestor's personal name, in this case of biblical origin.

Yabetz/Jabez is a biblical Hebrew male personal name. It is an anagram of Atzev, which means "sorrow/pain". The name appears in a genealogical list of the tribe of Judah in 1 Chronicles 4.9: "and his mother named him Jabez, 'Because,' she said, 'I bore him in pain' ". In some cases Yabetz is a Hebrew acronym (a name created from the initial letters of a Hebrew phrase, and which refers to a relative, lineage or occupation) for Yaakov Ben Tzvi.

Distinguished 20th century bearers of the Jewish family name Yavetz include the Romanian-born Israeli historian and educator, Zvi Yavetz.

JAABEZ

This family name is a patronymic surname based on a male ancestor's personal name, in this case of biblical origin.

Ja(a)bes(z) is a medieval Spanish spelling of the Hebrew biblical male personal name Yabetz (I Chronicles 4.9). Yabetz was a descendant of Yehuda. The biblical name-etymology of the name is an anagram of a Hebrew word which means "pain": ... "and his mother named him Jabez, 'Because', she said, 'I bore him in pain' ". As a Jewish family name, Jabez is documented in the 15th century with the Spanish-born Hebrew homilist and exegete, Joseph Ben Hayyim Jabez.

Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Jaabez include the 16th century Hebrew printers Salomo and Joseph Jaabez who published many Jewish books in Greece and Turkey. Distinguished 20th century bearers of the Jewish family name Jabes include the Egyptian-born Swiss organization executive, Andre Jabes.

JAWETZ

Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. Jawetz and similar names are associated with the biblical Jabez of the tribe of Judah (I Chronicles 4.9). This family name may also be an acronym (a name created from the initial letters of a Hebrew phrase, and which refers to a relative, lineage or occupation) derived from 'Yaakov Ben Tzvi' ("Yaakov, son of Tzvi").

Between the years 1787 to the 1830s, authorities in central Europe began to force Jewish families to adopt fixed hereditary family names. Many Jews then formed European-sounding family names that were in fact Hebrew acronyms. They are also linked to the acronym derived from Yaakov Ben Tzvi.

Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Jawetz include the Spanish-born 15th/16th century author Joseph Ben Chaim Jawetz who died in Italy in 1505.

Isma’iliya

In Arabic: الإسماعيلية‎ 

A town on the west bank of Suez canal, northern Egypt.

Isma’iliya was established in the middle of the 19th century and was named after its founder, the ruler of Egypt at that time, Kheduv Ismail. Jews settled in Isma’iliya soon after the establishment of the town, as affirmed by the tombstone on the grave of one Aaron Alters, who died in 1866.

During the rule of the Khediv (1863-1879) permission was given to foreigners to acquire land in Egypt. This resulted in a period of economic development and an influx of immigrants from Europe, including a number of Jews. In 1897, 40 Jews were living in Isma’iliya, while the census of 1907  lists only 11 Jews.

During World War I the  Jewish community grew, so that by 1917 there were 40 families (95 persons) living in the town.  Most of them had come from other cities in Egypt because of the employment opportunities in the British army camps. By the end of the war (1918) only 20 families remained in Isma’iliya, as the others had moved away to Alexandria, Port Said and Cairo.

The reduced size of the community resulted in  a lack of participants for a minyan for public prayers, so a number of Jews were brought from Port Said to make up a minyan on the Festivals. The synagogue was located in a private residence with the help of Hassan, one of the wealthy members of the community. Hassan also donated three Torah scrolls to the synagogue, and  served as hazzan (cantor), shohet (ritual slaughterer) and mohel (circumciser).

There was no Jewish school in Isma’iliya so the children attended French schools. There was a separate Jewish section in the town's European cemetery.

Among the community notables in the 1920’s and 1930’s were Mussa Helfman, a goldsmith and watchmaker, Albert Travis, employed by the electricity company, and Zuriano, employed by the Suez canal company.

During the 1930's the remaining Jewish families left Isma’iliya for Alexandria and Port Said. Since then no Jews have lived in the town.

Egypt

مَصر‎ 

Arab Republic of Egypt

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 100 out of 94,000,000

HISTORY

The Jews of Egypt 

586 BCE | Fleeing South to Freedom

The founding story of the Jewish people is the biblical Book of Exodus. “In each and every generation,” the Haggadah says, “one must regard oneself as though he himself came out of Egypt” - a statement which can be interpreted as release from mental molds, from our internal Egypt, binding us and inhibiting us on our way to freedom.
But let us leave the psychology aside and move on to history: researchers speak of an ethnic group known as the Habiru (or Hebrews) who left Egypt around the 13th century BCE. Some scholars identify this group with our ancestors and the Biblical Exodus narrative.
The next mention of Jews in Egypt comes in 586 BCE, when the Babylonian Empire destroyed Jerusalem and brought about the Babylonian exile.
In Jeremiah 43 it is told that the Babylonians appointed one Gedaliah Ben Achikam as governor of the small Judean population remaining in the country. Due to internal conflict, Gedaliah was murdered. His killing is considered the first political assassination in Jewish history. Following the murder and the Jews' fear of revenge, a group headed by the prophet Jeremiah got together and fled to Egypt and to freedom.

410 BCE | Soldiers Of Fortune

One of the most intriguing mentions of Jews in Egypt refers to an ancient and mysterious city named Elephantine (Yeb, in Hebrew). This city sat on an island in the Nile, at a strategic location – just south of the major city of Aswan. Records unearthed in archaeological excavations indicate that the Jews of Elephantine made their living mostly as mercenaries. Historians believe that the Persian Empire, which then ruled Egypt, hired a rather large group of Jews to defend the southern border of the Land of the Nile. These Jewish warriors were tasked with killing anyone trying to enter Egypt uninvited.
In memory of the ritual of animal sacrifice, the members of the Jewish warrior community built their own temple, to replace the one that was destroyed in Jerusalem. But close to the Jewish temple sat an Egyptian one, the abode of the Egyptian god Khnum, who according to Egyptian mythology was in charge of source of the Nile, among other things. The Egyptian neighbours took a dim view of the foreign Jewish temple, and in the year 410 BCE they burned it to the ground.

200 BCE | The 70 Faces of Torah

Towards the end of the third century BCE Ptolemy II, then King of Egypt, gathered seventy of the wisest men of the Jewish community in Alexandria and asked them to join in a great undertaking of translating the Jewish Torah into Greek, in order to make it accessible to the world.
This translation, known as the Septuagint, is famous to this day for its accuracy, its rich language, its historical value and most of all, the legend claims, for the fact that each of the seventy scholars translated the Torah on his own – and miraculously, all the translations came out identical to one another.
Legends aside, the project indicates a vibrant Jewish community living in Alexandria. This community, numbering in the tens of thousands, partially adopted the Hellenistic culture, including Greek names, use of the Greek language, daily visits to the baths and an obsession with physical culture. But not all the Jews of Alexandria were Hellenized. Many maintained their own heritage, and the authorities, whose Hellenism included a policy of religious toleration, gave them the right to establish their own autonomous system, under which they could live by their own rules, choose their own leaders and even be tried at their own tribunals.

170 BCE | Another Temple in Egypt

In the run-up to the Maccabean revolt (aka the story of Hanukkah), the ancient line of High Priests known as The House of Zadok was dispossessed of that all-important position, and the last legitimate High Priest, Onias (Honyio) III, was murdered in Antioch. His son, Onias IV, fled to Egypt, where he built a precise replica of the temple in Jerusalem in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis, which stood for about 240 years, presided over by the descendants of Onias and the House of Zadok.
The Sages of the Mishna were of two minds about this competition to the holy site in the Holy City. They conceded that Onias built his temple “for the sake of heaven” and that both the place and the work done there were ritually correct, and they also viewed it as a fulfillment of bibilical prophecy, which predicted that “on that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the land of Egypt (Isiah 19:19). But some took issue with the fact that it was built outside of Jerusalem, outside of Israel, and in Egypt of all places. However, the fear of competition proved overblown. The temple in Heliopolis served local needs only, and the one in Jerusalem remained the undisputed heart of Jewish life.
In 73 CE, shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Roman Emperor Vespasian ordered the one in Egypt destroyed too, for fear that Jewish zealots, who had fled the failed revolt to Egypt, would rally around it.

45 BCE | The Jewish Plato

The man who best personified the synergy between the precepts of Hellenism and Judaism was Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who lived between 25 BCE-50 CE. In Philo's family tree one can find branches of Roman aristocracy alongside Jewish Hasmonean nobility. He was born in Alexandria to a rich family and his brother is described as “exceeding all others in wealth and good breeding.”
From a young age this prodigy displayed an interest in philosophy and natural science (then far closer pursuits than now), and most of all was interested in the tension between these and the Jewish faith, to which he adhered with all his heart.
The image arising from his many works is that of an original thinker interested in a wide array of topics: Philo pondered the meaning of death 1900 years before the Existentialist philosophers, interpreted the Torah according to Greek philosophical principles 1200 years before Maimonides, and predates most of the Sages with deep observations on human nature, penned 200 years before the sealing of the Mishna.

115 CE | The Diaspora Revolt

The Kitos War, known in Jewish historiography as “The Diaspora Revolt”, broke out in 115 CE, lasted for two years, and is seen as sort of a forgotten “sandwich child” between its better known siblings – The Great Revolt (66-70 CE) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135 CE). The main causes for this revolt, which as the name indicates took place outside the Land of Israel, were religious zealotry, discriminatory laws and frustration following the failure of the Great Revolt and the destruction of the Temple. In addition, horror stories by refugees regarding the cruelty of Roman troops towards the defeated Judean population also inflamed passions, which were running high anyway due to tensions between the Hellenistic and Jewish cultures. The rebelling Jews “piggybacked” on a larger war taking place at the time, between the hated Romans and the Parthian Empire, which ruled modern-day Iran and Iraq, seizing what they saw as a historic opportunity to rise up. The revolt began in Cyrene, in modern-day Libya, but quickly spread to Egypt, and mostly to Alexandria. Despite initial victories, the Romans suppressed the revolt, and the Alexandrian community, the richest and most flourishing in all the diaspora at the time, was destroyed and mostly annihilated.

641 | The Arab Conquest

Ask the average person, and it would take them a few moments to recall that Egypt was not always an Arab country. But the truth is that only in 641, as Islam spread from the Arabian Peninsula, did Egypt become a majority Arabic speaking Muslim country.
Like many other countries under Muslim sovereignty, the Jews were treated as a protected minority – dhimmi, in Arabic. The dhimmi arrangement was simple: The Jews (and Christians) were required to acknowledge the supremacy of Islam, to pay a poll tax (called jeziah), where special clothing indicating their status and other restrictions. In return they enjoyed autonomy in family, personal, and religious matters, and were also permitted to adjudicate internal disputes before Jewish courts. This arrangement with the Jews was meticulously upheld, save for a few episodes, such as that of the sixth Fatimid Caliph Ali Mansur al-Hakim who was known for cruelty. This ruler forced the Jews to convert, and even burned down the Jewish quarter in the city of al-Jawardia.

882 | Karaites and Rabbis

The history of religious sects in Judaism has known bitter struggles – Sadducees and Pharisees, Hasidim and Misnagdim, Haredis and Secular and more. One of the best known was the dispute between the Karaites and the Rabbanites, which took place in full effect in Egypt. Religious, the difference between the two camps is that Karaites adhere strictly to the text of the Torah, whereas proponents of rabbinical Judaism believe that those ordained as rabbis are empowered and even obligated to interpret the Torah so as to fit the times, an authority the Karaites vehemently denied.
Researchers estimate that the Karaite community lived and worked in Fustat (ancient Cairo) from the dawn of the Muslim occupation. Around the year 882 the Karaites in Fustat founded Beit Ezra, the synagogue where in 1896 the rich archive known as the Cairo Geniza was discovered. Among many treasures revealed in this trove, shedding light on trade, relations, intimate and family relations and the music of the Jews of Egypt and neighboring countries, were also the fierce debates which the Karaites waged against the Rabbanites. One of these, Rabbi Saadia Gaon, was born in Egypt and was one of the chief adversaries of the Karaites. Later he moved to the rabbinical academies in Babylon and became one of the great geniuses of the age.

1050 | The Triple Thread

In the mid 11th century the largest Jewish community in Egypt was centered in Fustat, or ancient Cairo. The well-respected, well-to-do community was divided in two: The “Babylonians”, who originated in modern-day Iraq and followed the legal and halachic authority of the great yeshivas of Babylon, and the Jerusalemites, who followed the wise men of the Land of Israel. Both centers of learning were financially dependent upon the rich Jews of Fustat.
Add the fact that Fustat was the epicenter of the struggle for a monopoly on rabbinical authority between Babylon and Jerusalem, and we see a loaded triple thread, which gave rise to much political friction. One of the most famous personal contests was between Ephraim Ben Shmaryah, leader of the Jerusalemites, and Elhanan Ben Shmaryah, leader of the Babylonians. Among the documents in the Cairo Geniza is one detailing a dream had by Ephraim Ben Shmaryah, in which Moses himself came to him at night and bestowed the chief authority in Fustat upon him.

1165 | From Moses to Moses, There Was None Like Moses

One cannot speak of the history of Jews in Egypt without discussing “The Great Eagle,” the man who did it all: philosopher, legal scholar, religious authority, physician, nutritionist and moralist, the genius Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimom, better known as Maimonides, or by his Hebrew acronym, the Rambam, who settled in Cairo in 1165.
Maimonides was the great architect of Jewish thought. He cracked the genome of the Jewish world-view in his composition “Moreh Nevochim” (“Guide to the Perplexed”), strengthened the foundations of faith in the “Epistle to Yemen”, and simplified halacha in his monumental work “Mishne Torah”, (literarily “Secondary Torah”), which was subtitled “HaYad HaChazaka”, in a typical rabbinical wordplay, reflecting the 14 (“yod-dalet” in Hebrew, which spells “Yad”) volumes encompassing all of Jewish law up to his time. Maimonides wrote several books on philosophy, but was also a leading medical authority, leaving behind many writings on proper nutrition and preventive medicine. His immense output is particularly astonishing when one considers that by day he was physician to the Sultan, and in the evening, as head of the Jewish community, received visits from his parishioners.
The greatness of the Rambam was immortalized in the saying “From Moshe (Rabeinu) to Moshe (Ben Maimon) there has been none like Moshe”.

1312 | Prophecy Is Given to the Wise

According to the wisdom of King Solomon, one of the things that “makes the earth tremble” is that of a slave become king (Proverbs, 30:21), meaning one who goes straight from servitude to the highest power, without learning the ways of ruling first. Solomon's prophecy came true 2.300 years later, when the Mamluks, slave-soldiers in service of the Arab Abbasid Empire, took over the Middle East in 1250 and established a tyrannical kingdom in the lands of Egypt, Israel, Syria and other countries in the region.
Historian Eliyahu Ashtor writes in his acclaimed book “History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria” that the rise of the Mamluks ended the golden age for Jews in Egypt and marked the beginning of “the decrease in creative force in Arab culture”. Ashtor quotes philosopher Joseph Caspi, the famed Jewish biblical interpreter, who came to Egypt in 1312 to study philosophy, but was thoroughly disillusioned after meeting the local Jews. “They are all righteous,” Caspi wrote, “but in no wisdom did they engage, nor were there any wise men in all of the east, and I called upon myself: 'Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help' (Isiah 31:1), and I returned to my homeland in disgrace.”

1604 | Twin Communities

For hundreds of years the Land of Israel and Egypt were under the same sovereignty – from the Fatimid dynasty, through the Mamluks to the Ottoman Empire, which took over the Land of the Nile in 1517. Due to this, symbiotic relations developed between the Jewish communities in Israel and Egypt. These relations manifested in mutual migration, in families that lived part time in each country and in trade relations mostly indicating a dependence of the smaller community in Israel on its wealthier southern counterpart.
Another stream of Jews arrived in Egypt following the Spanish expulsion of 1492. Among these were famous men such as David Ben Zimra, a rich merchant and religious ruler who was head of the Jewish community in Egypt, and Avraham David, a rich businessman who gave much of his money for Torah study and community causes.
In the early 17th century the Ottoman Empire suffered a severe economic crisis. This crisis greatly affected the Jewish community and shrunk its population. Testament of this can be found in a missive sent by the leaders of the Jewish community in Safed in 1604. “Egypt is lost to our brethren,” the Jews of Safed write, “for those who were of aid to our supporters in the land of Egypt have fallen most low, for their dealings are greatly diminished.”

1805 | An Ashkenazi, a Sephardi and a Karaite Walk Into a Bar

The dry period in Jewish history in Egypt ended with the great wave of immigration that flooded the Land of the Nile in the 19th century upon the rise of Muhammad Ali, who came to power in 1805. This ruler was responsible for the modernization of Egypt. He is credited with infrastructure development, farming innovations, the paving of roads and byways, establishing centralized authority and more. In the middle of the 19th century there were but 6,000 Jews living in Egypt, and in less than 70 years that number rose to 60,000. The Jews were divided into four groups: Sephradi, Karaite, Egyptian Jews and a group of Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Egypt from the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe during the 19th century.
Thus did Egypt, and particularly Cairo, become a cosmopolitan mosaic, so multi-cultural that anyone walking around Cairo at the time could encounter Jews holding lively discussions in Ladino, Yiddish, French, Italian or Arabic.

1865 | Class Warfare

Would you be surprised to learn that tensions between Ashkenazi and Sephardi - “The sectarian demon” as they are known in modern-day Israel – existed in Egypt as well? Well, they did, from 1865, when immigration from Eastern Europe began by Jews fleeing the rampant anti-Semitism of the time. The Ashkenazi group, which at its height numbered 10,000 souls, belonged at first to the lower-middle classes, but soon they advanced up the social ladder and managed to free themselves of the crowded, poverty-stricken “Harat al-Yahud” (The Jewish quarter) and move to the more upscale neighborhoods of Cairo. The attempts by the Ashkenazis to mold the face of Egyptian Jewry in their own image were met with strenuous opposition from the Sephardis, the descendants of those expelled from Spain, who constituted the elite of the Jewish community. The Sephardis spoke French, sent their children to British schools and lived in the affluent parts of Cairo. To the authorities, they alone represented the Jews.

1917 | National Coexistence

The seeds of Zionism in Egypt were sown by Joseph Marco Barouch, a colorful and multidimensional figure – poet and anarchist, teacher and journalist, and most of all an energetic Zionist activist who, had he not taken his own life due to unrequited love at the tender age of 27, there is no telling the heights he may have achieved.
Barouch founded the Bar Kokhba Society in Cairo, a Zionist non-profit organization which operated a library, a coffee shop, a vibrant Zionist clubhouse and more. His Zionist activity increased upon the establishment of the Zionist Organization of Egypt, a branch of the Maccabi organization, and the Hebrew Scouts Movement. The local Zionist organization, like many others around the world, was greatly impacted by the enthusiasm that swept across the Jewish world in 1917, following the Balfour Declaration.
These Zionist initiatives were joined by Jewish businessmen such as Felix de-Menashe and Jacques Mosseri, who made great contributions to the building of Israel and whose philanthropy established several settlements, including the moshav Kfar Yedidiah.
This was also the time in which a large Egyptian national movement, al-Wafd, was growing, calling for Egyptian territorial sovereignty. The fact that these two national movements did not come into conflict is a testament to the rare pluralism typical of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Egypt in the 1920s.

1939 | The True Spring of Nations

The darkness that descended upon humanity in the 1930s, with the rise of Nazism and the various fascist movements throughout Europe, did not skip Egypt. Racist propaganda and xenophobia spread among Egyptian students and military officers, who loathed British colonialism and viewed Hitler as their savior. The fact that the Nazi race theory ranked Arabs only a tiny bit higher than Jews did not stem the radicalization. Finding a common enemy, as the wise Jew Sigmund Freud said, is the best way to unite two adversaries. The moderate national sentiment that characterized the 1920s turned into a pathological nationalism, which rejected anyone deemed not a “true” Egyptian and anyone who was not a Muslim, or in other words Jews and Copts (the Christians of Egypt).
The flag of nationalism was carried by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Young Egypt movement, fueled by texts translated into Arabic, among them “Mein Kampf” and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. But the Jewish community did not sit still. Jewish journalists risked their livelihoods to publicly reject the false propaganda, and the Jewish community of Egypt boycotted German goods from 1933 to 1939.

1956 | The End

The UN resolution to partition the Land of Israel in November 1947, and the Israel War of Independence that followed, heralded the end of the Jewish community in Egypt. The Egyptian government used martial law to assault its perceived opponents, and confiscated their property (an issue still being handled with the Egyptian authorities to this day).
Despite protestations of loyalty, the Jewish community fell victim to incitement by the press and the authorities. Between June and September 1948 sections of the Jewish quarter in Cairo were destroyed. The violent demonstrations, acts of arson and bombings ravaged movie theaters, department stores and other businesses owned by Jews.
Between 1948 and 1952 some 20,000 Jews left Egypt. Later, with the rise to power of Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who implemented socialism and Pan-Arabism, another 30,000 Jews followed. In 1967 only around 3.000 Jews remained in Egypt, and their numbers dwindled over the years. In 2014 there were only 360 Jews living in the country.
Is this the end of the long ties between the Land of the Nile and the Chosen People? In 1979 a historic peace agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt. Since then, the Israel's border with Egypt has been respected, and many Israelis have visited the Land of the Nile as tourists, the place their ancestors left thousands of years ago to fulfill their destiny and become a nation.