From their description:
Women’s Lens provides a modern take on today’s news which relate to worldwide Jewry, with a specific slant on those originating from Egypt. It is an understatement to suggest that Egypt had reached a second hey dey during the early to mid-twentieth century, when its Jewish population reached a peak of close to 80,000. The city of Alexandria was rightfully called the Pearl of the Mediterranean. Commerce thrived and creativity flowed. It is in this cosmopolitan climate that I was born, at the Hôpital Israëlite of Alexandria on January 28, 1951 at 5:30pm. Though many decades have passed since, Alexandria still appears in my dreams, betraying a longing to validate those images of a childhood grossly interrupted. There is a specificity to having been Jewish in Egypt, and it is with this particular focus that I have created this blog with the support of the Historical Society of Jews from Egypt.
The writer seems to be an Egyptian-born Jewish woman who was raised in the United States. It’s a charming blog with somewhat of a serious mindset melded with a sophisticated nostalgia for a world which no longer exists and which disappeared in front of the author’s young eyes.
We tend to dismiss the Arab Jewish victims of 1948, but more Jews ended up leaving or were pushed out of their homes in Arab lands and moving to new countries such as Israel, France, Canada and the US, than Palestinians who left or were pushed out of Israel. We tend to dismiss these victims in part because they have been integrated into their host countries and have not had an internationally supported campaign (with significant assistance from the UN in this regard) to maintain their refugee status as have the Palestinians. Still, for these Jewish families, and mine was touched by this issue as well, the loss of home, connection to a place, language, friends, communities, assets, income source or career was debilitating and heart-breaking. There is some movement now to at least begin a discussion about what was lost and to try to locate the memory of these communities. In this respect, Women’s Lens is a welcome addition to the Jewish blogging universe.
