Ada Aharoni

Ada Aharoni was born in Cairo in 1933.[1] Ynet's account of her book portrays Egypt's Jewish community as including members of the economic and business elite and possessing a prominent multilingual intellectual culture before its circumstances deteriorated after 1948.[6] In a childhood memory she recounted, Aharoni said that, at around six or seven years old, she asked her grandmother during a Passover seder why the Jewish people were still in Egypt. Her grandmother answered in Ladino that God would take them out of Egypt a second time.[6]

Aharoni left Egypt with her family in 1949.[4] Her younger brother, Edwin Diday, who later lived in Paris, recalled the climate of fear before the family's departure, including antisemitic caricatures and a warning to their parents that a gang was coming to lynch them. He contrasted those events with an earlier childhood memory of roaming freely through Cairo's museum.[4] Aharoni has described the Egyptian Jewish community's departure as a "second Exodus," a framing she also uses when telling her children and grandchildren about the community's history at Passover.[4][6]

Aharoni also recounted that her grandmother, unable to cope with the prospect of leaving Egypt, died by suicide after throwing herself and her most treasured possessions down a stairwell.[7] In the same account, Aharoni presented the culture of Egyptian Jews as a potential bridge to peace.[7]

After making her home in Haifa, Aharoni built a career as a cultural sociologist and researcher at the Neaman Institute at the Technion.[3] Her research focused on the uprooting of Jews from Arab countries during the mid-twentieth century, placing the Egyptian Jewish experience within the broader history of Jewish communities across the Arab world.[3]

A 2007 Jerusalem Post event listing described Aharoni as an expert on the writings and history of Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and announced a presentation of her book The Inner Voice in the Novels of Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, published by Pardess Publications in Haifa.[8] A National Library of Israel record also lists her as the author of the Hebrew-language article "Egyptian Jewry: The Tensions in the Community and Zionism," published in Pe'amim: A Quarterly for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, issue 16, pages 89–106.[9]

Aharoni founded IFLAC, the International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace, and has served as its president.[5][3] Through IFLAC, she has promoted literature and culture as instruments of reconciliation. In a guest contribution, she proposed that young people from countries or peoples in conflict compete in football instead of being sent to war. Under the proposal, the winning side would not gain the right to conquer or humiliate the other, but would be responsible for proposing a fair settlement followed by negotiations with professional mediators.[2]

A major project of Aharoni's later career has been the preservation of memories from Egypt's Jewish community. She initiated and edited The Golden Age of the Jews From Egypt, Uprooting and Revival in Israel, a 2014 Orion volume containing personal testimonies and photographs.[1][4] Aharoni said that the deaths of living witnesses and reported censorship of a documentary about Egyptian Jews added urgency to the project.[4]

A 2013 report described a planned 400-page book containing 68 testimonies, dozens of rare photographs, and accounts mostly in Hebrew, with some written only in French.[4] By 2014, Ynet and the National Library of Israel catalogue described the volume as containing 73 personal accounts.[1][6] Aharoni presented it as a modern Passover Haggadah recording the experiences of Egyptian Jews who left in haste with little property.[6] Its materials included a photograph of nine smiling Maccabi Cairo teenagers taken shortly before Aharoni left Egypt in 1949, a 1948 Maccabi membership card, and an Egyptian travel document for expelled Jewish families stamped "One way — no right to return."[4]

Aharoni estimated that between 75,000 and 100,000 Jews left Egypt during this period and that only about half settled in Israel; she named France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil among other destinations.[4] Ynet's account portrays members of the community as having occupied prominent economic, business, and intellectual positions before facing isolation, mass arrests, loss of employment, riots, and accusations of being a "fifth column."[6] Aharoni separately described Egyptian Jewry as having lived in "a European enclave in the heart of Cairo."[4] Many pages of the book addressed property that Jewish residents had left behind.[4]

Aharoni's public work has connected Sephardi and Mizrahi cultural preservation with peace-oriented literary advocacy. JIMENA identified her as an editorial advisor to its online quarterly Distinctions: A Sephardi and Mizrahi Journal, whose inaugural Summer 2023 issue focused on antisemitism.[5] Ynetnews reported that she presented the culture of Egyptian Jews as a potential instrument for peace-building between peoples of the region.[7]

Over the course of her career, Aharoni has published 33 books and more than 120 articles spanning sociological research, literary criticism, poetry, and memoir.[3] Her work has combined research on the uprooting of Jews from Arab countries with literary scholarship, the collection of Egyptian Jewish testimony, and advocacy through IFLAC.[5][3]