Rabbi Berel Wein - The Jews in Egypt

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Berel Wein’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

One of the uh terrible uh disasters of the 20th century in Jewish life uh which the Holocaust uh caused uh was the disappearance of many ancient Jewish communities. Communities that had existed for thousands of years and uh seemingly would continue to exist and uh seemingly would continue to exist and they were snuffed out. But there were Jewish communities that later were snuffed out not so much by the Holocaust as by the coming of the state of Israel. The state of Israel's naturally the indirect cause uh but the Jewish communities that lived in Arab countries and Muslim countries where again Jews lived for many many many centuries many many many centuries and had established large and wealthy and influential communities uh all of those communities were also destroyed. And there are just a few meager remnants of those communities that still exist today. So tonight's lecture concerns itself with the great Jewish community that existed in Egypt. And it's a community that uh existed for at least 2,600 years existed for at least 2,600 years consecutively which is a long time. It's uh over uh it's about 60 generations. And existed under all sorts of different conditions and rulers and empires and somehow was able to survive them all. Uh but in the 1950s uh with the arrival of Nasser as the head of Egypt head of Egypt uh the Jewish community uh was forcibly diminished. And by the end of the 1967 war uh then the Jewish community was practically eliminated and today it's estimated that there are 40 to 50 Jews that still exist in Egypt out of a community that in the 1930s uh numbered close to 70,000.

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1. 0:08One of the uh terrible uh disasters of the 20th century in Jewish life uh which…
2. 5:51which is a record of letters that the Jewish soldiers wrote to the rabbis and to…
3. 13:24Jerusalem was destroyed, so then the Romans destroyed that temple also. But you know, to us…
4. 19:42written Jewish defense against anti-Semitism. But in Alexandria now there were pogroms. Jews were killed. And…
5. 25:20interim in the 7th century, in 622 uh Islam comes. The Muslims come. And the Muslims…
6. 31:30uh that they made in Egypt. Well, uh there was a man by the name of…
7. 37:10successful in removing the Karaites. The Karaites shrank to about 7 or 8% of the Jewish…
8. 42:47demanded an enormous amount of money, and it said it had to be paid by this…
9. 48:32Now, there never was any reform in Egypt. There never was any uh other type of…
10. 54:09uh could work could were legally entitled to work. Most of the Jews were not citizens.…

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