The Rise, and Sudden Fall, of Sudanese Jewry

Oct. 30 2019

Unlike neighboring Egypt and Ethiopia, where Jews lived since before the rise of Islam, Sudan was not home to a Jewish community until relatively recently. Sudanese Jewry flourished in the early 20th century, but, like other Jewish communities in the Muslim world, it also came to an abrupt end. Daisy Abboudi writes:

In 1908, the Moroccan-born rabbi Suleiman Malka arrived in Khartoum with his wife and two eldest daughters at the request of the Jewish authorities in Egypt, which oversaw the community in its southern neighbor. . . . The rabbi came to minister to the small older community as well as to a growing number of Jews coming from across the Middle East, including Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. They arrived on the new railway line built by British colonialists, connecting Alexandria in Egypt with Khartoum.

Many were small-time merchants trading goods like textiles and gum arabic—an important food additive made from Sudan’s acacia trees. Settling along the Nile in the four towns of Khartoum, Khartoum North, Omdurman, and Wad Medani, they soon began to flourish.

While the synagogue was the spiritual home of the community, social life revolved around the Jewish Recreation Club. Middle- and upper-class society in Sudan was made up of many interlinked yet distinct groups. As well as the Jewish community, there were thriving Greek, Syrian, Italian, Egyptian, Armenian, British, and Indian communities in Khartoum and Omdurman, its sister city across the Nile. Each of these had a social center, or “club,” in the capital, where they could meet, play cards, chat and socialize in the evenings.

At its height, the Jewish population reached over 1,000 souls. But following the 1956 Suez war, there was a rapid increase in anti-Semitism, which intensified further after the Six-Day War. By the early 1970s, the community was gone altogether.

Read more at BBC

More about: African Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Sudan

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula