Last night a made it to - I think it's Shar ha'Shamayim synagogue. Which 2 days ago wad the site of an attempted bombing - just a crazy person who threw a gasoline canaster into the synagogue, but still not something I wanted to hear while in the city. When I went it was surrounded by Egyptian police who were pretty keen on me not taking a picture, so I had to be pretty discrete.
Today I made it to the Ben Ezra synagogue which was also surrounded by cards and no photo signs, but here I paid someone off to get one plus snuck a couple on my iPhone.
Then I tried to take the metro to Khan al-Khalili to see the Al-Azhar mosque, got really lost and found another(!) synagogue surrounded by police. This one looked pretty closed, and might have been the Maimonedies synagogue b/c the people at ben Ezra mentioned that the Maimonidies synagogue was being restored. But it was pretty exciting to stumble on a building with a Star of David in the "City of Minarets."
Tonight it's off to Aswan
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1 comments:
Because Egypt gets most of its aide from the US - and it's A LOT of aide - they are under a lot of pressure to make nice with the Jews. Bahrain is attempting to do the same with their TEN (that's the actual number) of Bahraini Jews. So the police being around the synagogue does probably offer some protection, but a lot of it is a way for the government to say "see we like Jews." Syria does the same too, but I'll find that out soon enough!