(JTA) — Egypt’s Jewish community elected a new leader, Magda Haroun.
The announcement on Tuesday follows the death of former Jewish community head Carmen Weinstein on April 13. Weinstein led the community for more than 20 years.
“My goal is to preserve the cultural heritage of the Egyptian Jews so that when we are gone it will endure, because it belongs to all Egyptians,” Haroun, 60, told the Daily News Egypt.
Haroun was unanimously elected to head the Egyptian Jewish Community Council, the Associated Press reported. She told the AP that there are about 40 Jews remaining in Egypt, mostly elderly women, split between Cairo and Alexandria.
"I will continue taking care of them, socially, medically, gathering them for the holidays, and burying them with dignity," Haroun told the AP.
Haroun told the AP that she considers herself Egyptian before Jewish. Her father Chehata Haroun was a nationalist politician who was anti-Zionist, according to the AP.
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