Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo
In the heart of old Cairo stands a splendid little synagogue, known as Ben Ezra, a rabbi from Jerusalem, who renovated the building in the early 12th century. The building belonged to the Copts until the 9th century as a church dedicated to the Archangel Michael.
Ben Ezra Synagogue History
According to the History of the Patriarchs (official historical text of the Coptic Church), in the year 882 Patriarch Michael III – burdened by taxation arbitrarily imposed by the exasperated Caliph Ibn Tulun (870-884) who had also imprisoned him to pay him what he asked – was forced to sell this property to the Jews, as well as other places of worship, to get cash.
Two major Jewish sects lived in Egypt at the time: the Rabbanitis and the Qaraitis.
The first included two groups: on the one hand, the so-called “Palestinians”, who followed the Talmudic academy of Palestine (Jerusalem Talmud), on the other, the “Iraqis” or “Babylonians”, followers of the Babylonian Talmud.
The Talmudic Jews were opposed to the sect of the Qaraitis, which was founded in the mid-eighth century in Iraq by Anan ben David and originally called by him the ananites.
The members of this sect rejected the Rabbinic tradition of Talmudic Judaism and admitted the Torah as the only sacred text: they believed that the Torah was originally written with the diacritical signs of vowels and accents and, reproaching the Masoretic tradition of not including such signs in the sacred text, challenged the Rabbis’ authority to interpret it.
In the 9th century the ananites joined other anti-rabbin groups and became known as Qaraiti, or followers of the written text of the Torah (they call themselves Bne Hamiqra “Sons of Scripture”).
Hostiles in the East, the sects of the Rabanites, and the Qaraitis lived together without problems in Egypt: the synagogue of Ben Ezra (kanisat al-Shamiyyin) belonged to the Palestinians, while the synagogue of the Iraqis (kanisat al-Iraqiyyin), near the patriarchal church al-Mu’allaqa “the Suspended”. The Qaraitis instead owned a synagogue outside of Old Cairo, in the Mamsusa district, inhabited mostly by Jews.
The conflict between Qaraitis and Rabanites continued in the Islamic Countries until the 11th Century, then it moved to Europe, in particular, to the Crimea and Lithuania, where the Qaraitis had constituted numerous communities.
They were treated as Jews in all the nations in which they lived, until the 18th century, when Russia annexed Poland: on that occasion, Catherine II the Great (1762-1796) declared that the Qaraitis were exempt from the tax imposed on Jews.
Since then, European nations, including Nazi Germany, have considered the Qaraitis as non-Jews so that during the Holocaust they were spared.
An important Qaraitic community of about seven thousand people was present in Egypt, mainly in Cairo, until Nasser’s revolution in 1952. At the end of the seventies, it was reduced to only a few dozen members, mostly elderly.
An interesting document in Hebrew, found in Cairo, enlightens us on a crisis that broke out in 1442 between the Muslim government and the Jews, but which also had serious repercussions on the Coptic community.
During a check carried out by the Muslim authorities in the synagogue of Ben Ezra on April 15, 1442, it was found that a minbar, i.e. an ambo, of thirteen steps, had recently been restored without due permission.
A closer examination revealed that the names Muhammad (Muhammad) and Ahmad, who had been trampled on every time the preacher climbed the ambo, had been engraved on two steps and were badly eroded.
Not only was the minbar removed, but it was also threatened to cut off the feet of those who had trampled on those sacred names. Three Jews were arrested: two were tortured to death, while the third saved himself by converting to Islam.
The investigation was extended to other places of worship, Jews and Christians, and it was found that Qaraiti Jews had turned a house officially intended for school into a synagogue, while in a Melkite church, restoration work had been done using stones of better quality than the previous ones (stones of the same quality or poorer quality had to be used for such work).
John XI (1427-1452), Coptic Orthodox Patriarch, Philoteus I (1437-1450), Melchite Patriarch, Abd al-Latif ibn Ibrahim ibn Shams, doctor and representative of the Rabbathic Jews, Faraj Allah, one of the elders of the Qaraiti Jews and Ibrahim ibn Salama ibn Ibrahim, leader of the Samaritans, were summoned by the qadi Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani.
