FREE EVENT
Qesher Book Club:
"Sacred Places Tell Tales:
Jewish Life and Heritage in Modern Cairo"

Tuesday, May 6
USA 12:00 pm PT / 3:00 pm ET
UK 8:00 pm / France 9:00 pm / Israel 10:00 pm
The talk will last approximately 60 minutes
About this talk
Sacred Places Tell Tales is the previously untold history of Egyptian Jewry and the ways in which Cairo's synagogues historically functioned as active institutions in the social lives of these Jews. Historian Yoram Meital interprets Cairo's synagogues as exquisite storytellers. The synagogues still stand in Cairo, and they shed new light on the social, cultural, and political processes that Egyptian society and the Jews underwent from 1875 to the present. Studying old and new synagogues in the Egyptian capital, their locations, the items they stored, and the range of religious and nonreligious activities they hosted reveals the social heterogeneity and the diverse ways in which modern Jewish sociocultural identity was constructed within Cairo's Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Karaite communities. Meital contends that studying the congregations and the social services provided in synagogues reveals the local Jewish community's customs, cultural preferences, socioeconomic gaps, and class divisions.
You can read more and order the book here: https://www.pennpress.org/9781512825886/sacred-places-tell-tales/
About the Author
Yoram Meital is a professor of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University. He has conducted extensive research on various topics related to Arab societies during the modern era, focusing on Egypt's social, cultural, political, and legal history. From 2017 to 2021, he served as the historical consultant to the Jewish community in Cairo, actively participating in documenting and preserving Egyptian-Jewish heritage. His publications include Revolutionary Justice: Special Courts and the Formation of Republican Egypt (2017); Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East (2006); and Sacred Places Tell Tales: Jewish Life and Heritage in Modern Cairo (2024).
