The tiny Jewish community in Cairo has high hopes for a revival once normal relations are established between Israel and Egypt and Israel opens its Embassy in the Egyptian capital in about nine months. Salim Salameh, secretary of the 75-year-old Shaar Shamayim Synagogue in downtown Cairo said in an interview published in Maariv yesterday that the arrival of Israeli families to work at the Embassy shoold and new. members to the congregation so that it can resume many of its religious and communal functions.
The synagogue, once the center of a flourishing Jewish community, is in a bad state of disrepair and its membership has dwindled to about 170 elderly persons. Salameh, 64, is the only Jew still in the employ of the Egyptian government. He praised President Anwar Sadat as the “angel” who brought peace and said that the visit of Israeli Premier Menachem Begin to the synagogue Monday was the greatest day in his life.
Robert Rahman, 64, a Jewish merchant, said he hoped Israel would send a rabbi to the Cairo synagogue to help rebuild the community. He said most of the synagogues and Jewish institutions in Egypt sold their assets when Egyptian Jews left the country on masse 30 years ago.
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