Berkley Center

Simchat Torah is one of my favorite Jewish holidays. Every year, the entire Jewish community comes together to celebrate of one of our nearest and dearest possessions: God's Torah. The children in the community, for obvious reasons, love it. They get to make as much racket as they want in a room where the atmosphere is normally respectful and silent. Even the stuffiest of the adults cuts it loose and conga-lines around the synagogue a couple of times.

The synagogues are overflowing with candied apples and animated conversations. The various interpretations of glittery handicrafts from Sunday School are paraded around for all to admire. There's dancing, cookies, food, fun, more dancing, flirting with the new kid in town, more food, and even more dancing. We catch up with old friends, and we try to make some new ones. All this in an atmosphere of pious, fanatical ecstasy that I have yet to see duplicated anywhere else. The warmth, love, joy, and community-wide feelings of belonging burst out the doors and spill into the street.

Not tonight, though. Not in Cairo.

In Cairo, Simchat Torah is celebrated a little differently. Here the festival is marked with a large cloud of indifference from the rest of the city, and with a yearly death rattle from the decomposing Jewish community hidden within it. The handful of old women and men who make up the Jewish community of Cairo drag themselves to their synagogue. They sit—sulking —in their empty, cavernous prayer hall, just to remind the policemen forced to stand guard outside that they still exist.

In its heyday, Sha'ar HaShamayim Synagogue bustled with mayhem as the sun set on Erev Simchat Torah. All of the Jews of Cairo rushed to finish their worldly duties so they could have a shot at sitting in the front row. They showed up early to chat with the other influential families, to set up their daughters with the best boy-chicks (and vice versa), and to bask in the glow of shared minority-ness that comes with being a Jew in diaspora. They took their seats, and as the Sephardic style service got under way, they all chanted along to whatever tune their hearts desired, at whatever pace they wanted. The cacophony of noise drowned out any distractions, allowing the devotees to wrap themselves completely in their prayers.

But that wasn't to be today. The only bustle was the traffic blowing by outside. The only cacophony was the chorus of car horns hurled at us when we took more than a millisecond to pay our taxi driver. There was no rush for the chairs. There was no chatting with (or about) the influential families. No one thought to set me up with his or her daughter, because their daughters all had grandchildren.

After a weakly-ran prayer service, the community readied itself what is usually the fun part of Simchat Torah: the dancing with the Torah. This is a celebration of the Torah! We're talking about God's gift to the Jewish people! I waited anxiously for the community to start letting their proverbial hair down, but the Jewish community of Cairo never delivered. The party was halfway over before we foreigners even realized that we had begun.

We sat there in silence— watching —as one-by-one what was left of the Cairo Jewish community bend their stiff, aching backs to kiss the Torahs, as they made their somber procession past. And after the ‘celebration’, we few able-bodied men in the synagogue marched up to the ark and put the Torahs back. Wait…...just kidding. We didn't hold it…—but then we did.

No one knew what to do after the procession was over. Someone decided that we should put the Torahs back in the ark, but as we were walking up the steps to the ark, the rabbi called us back down. We looked at each other, confused, and started back down the stairs. Halfway down, the rabbi realized that he didn't remember what he was supposed to do with the Torahs now that we had already finished the procession. So, he decided to send us back up, to put them away. Once this was good and finished (for real this time), everyone looked at each other wondering what came next, but, again, no one knew. So, after some light deliberation, we dismissed for the after-service snack.

The whole process was nowhere near kosher. We didn't say any blessings before taking out the Torah. We didn't read from the Torah. We didn't say any blessings over the Torah when we took it out. We didn't say any (real) blessings over the Torah while we were dancing, and we didn't say any blessings over the Torah when we put it back. We didn't finish off the service with the Amidah or any of the kaddishes. Halachically and structurally speaking, it was a total disaster. My younger brother could have run a better Simchat Torah service.

The mingling after the service didn't go to well either. The Cairo Jewish community grew up speaking Arabic and French. I don't speak a word of French. I also don't speak Arabic well enough to get any real meaning from deep conversations. I don't speak Hebrew well enough to communicate anything complex anymore, and they don't really speak comprehensible English. After a while, no one even knew what language we were speaking in anymore. There was so much English, French, Hebrew, and Arabic flying around that we were answering in any language that popped into our heads. It was quite fitting though, in retrospect. That was kind of the theme of the night: no one understands.

No one understands how to run a service. No one understands how they feel about being Jewish in Cairo. No one understands why those old ladies show up if they're just going to sit there gossiping all night. No one understands why they stayed behind in the first place. No one understands how we could be so close to Israel, yet feel so far away. No one understands the rituals. More importantly, no one understands the reasons behind the rituals. No one feels spiritually sated. No one knows if coming to services was worth it, and no one knows if they feel more or less Jewish after coming. No one knows what is missing, and everyone long ago agreed to pretend that they don't notice its absence.

Perhaps most importantly, no one understands that there is no real Jewish community of Cairo anymore. It's all a charade. They play along because they don't know how else to live. They're just one more mirage in this vast, lonely Egyptian desert. The Jewish community of Cairo has no substance. It is a real live ghost, content to just keep up appearances.

Slowly, but surely, the “Jewish community” of Cairo will die off. Soon there won't be enough locals left to make a minyan (ten Jewish adults are needed to pray some prayers). Eventually the Egyptian government will repossess the synagogue; no one will be alive to remember to pay the taxes. They'll probably turn it into a museum, but maybe not. Someone might even stop by one day in the future, to disturb the dust, and to snap some photos.

Dead man walking,” the bored policemen seem to say as we drift away after the service. But they didn't need to; we'd been reading it in everyone's eyes all night. Happy Simchat Torah, Cairo. Dead Jews walking.