ABSTRACT
This paper tackles the life, persecution, and eventual expulsion of Jewish Egyptians through two memoirs that can arguably be considered the most representative of what was once an integral part of the Egyptian social fabric: Out of Egypt (1994) by André Aciman and The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (2008) by Lucette Lagnado. Through the memoirs, the paper traces the stages through which the writers and characters of the memoirs, like the majority of Egyptian Jews, had gone until one of the world’s most flourishing Jewish communities was erased from national memory. The paper first provides an overview of the heyday of the Jewish community then traces the rising popular and official hostility towards its members until they were driven out of Egypt and finally looks into a different concept of the “promised land” as seen by expellees. Those stages, which encapsulate the history of Egyptian Jews, will be analyzed as steps leading up to the cultural pogroms to which the community was subjected and as a demonstration of the falsity of the national discourse of both Egypt and Israel.
Keywords: Egypt, Jews, Memoirs, Culture, Pogroms.