Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Just five Jews remain in Cairo following death of matriarch

The death of Marcelle Haroun at the age of 93 leaves her daughter, Magda, and four granddaughters as the only Jewish residents of the Egyptian capital.

Cairo, Egypt. Source: Flickr.
Cairo, Egypt. Source: Flickr.

And then there were five ...

That’s the number of Jews known to currently live in Cairo following the death of the mother of the president of the Jewish community there.

The death of Marcelle Haroun at the age of 93, announced on Saturday, leaves her daughter, Magda, and four granddaughters as the only Jewish residents of the Egyptian capital, reported Watani International.

As of 2017, there are an additional 12 Jews residing in Alexandria, according to AFP.

Haroun was married to anti-Zionist lawyer and politician Shehata Haroun, who was part of Egypt’s Communist Party. He died in 2001 at the age of 82.

Egypt was home to around 100,000 Jews in 1948, when modern-day Israel was established. But an exodus of Jews from Egypt occurred during the Suez Crisis in 1956, leaving a small number remaining that incrementally left in later years.

President Isaac Herzog was presented with an honorary degree by the Jewish Theological Seminary in Jerusalem.
The nations agreed on a coordination mechanism for citizen services following Jerusalem’s prolonged humanitarian assistance deployment to the country.
The diplomatic move joins a host of bilateral measures to immediately strengthen relations between Jerusalem and Bogotá.
The meeting “focused on strategies to strengthen Jewish safety and belonging, maintain candid lines of communication and collaborate on issues where we have shared values and goals,” Phylisa Wisdom, executive director of the Mayor’s office to Combat Antisemitism, told JNS.