Egyptian-Jewish Emigrés in Australia By Racheline Barda

primary and secondary sources, Krämer painted an extremely informative picture of the Jewish community with its diverse ethnic composition, its multiplicity of languages, its distinctive rites and regional origins, and its occupational and social structure. Krämer also pointed to the stability and efficiency of the communal organisation despite the diversity of the Jewish population and looked at the complex issues of nationality and the privileged status of foreigners. Furthermore, Krämer reviewed the socioeconomic and political changes that occurred between 1915 and 1948 and their negative impact on the relations between the Muslim majority and the local Jewish minority from the late 1930s on. She argued—as is also my contention—that this was really the beginning of the end for the Jews in Egypt, “not so much caused by new conditions or behaviour within the Jewish minority itself as by a gradual shift in the political climate in Egyptian society at large”.³⁹ She raised the critical issues of integration and acculturation of Jews into Egyptian society in view of the inevitable alienation caused by their wholesale adoption of European languages and education. However, she still suggested that even if, from the 1930s, the bulk of Egyptian Jews had opted for the Arabic language and culture and had actively participated in Egyptian life and politics, it was probably already too late for them as non-Muslims and non-Arabs to be accepted as full members of Egyptian society. Although she rejected Bat Ye’or’s thesis that Jews were consistently subjected to discrimination in Egypt, as in all Arab countries, she also argued against the postulation that it was mainly Zionism that created problems between the Muslim majority and the Jewish minority. Rather, she was of the opinion that there were periods of acceptance and rejection, and although Zionism played a part in the latter it was not the only factor. It is regrettable that Krämer’s book touched only briefly on the mass departure of the Jews after the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1956 and 1967 and thus did not add anything new to our understanding of the events after the 1948 war and their consequences for Egyptian Jewry.

The historian Michael Laskier provided a different perspective in his book, The Jews of Egypt, 1920–1970, published in 1992.⁴⁰ He focused on the last decades of Jewish life in Egypt, particularly on the Zionist