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Page 14 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE May 5, 197*
Gilner’s
Kosher Meat Market
1192 N. Highland Avenue
Will Be Closed For
Vacation: May 8—13
Will Reopen: May 16
"N
Egypt
‘A country with growing pains’
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Commercial & Residential.
by Marilyn Ginsberg
Present day Egypt is a ghost of a
once magnificent culture. The
great pyramids, temples and
tombs of the past are a tremendous
contrast to the poverty and lack of
ingenuity today.
Cairo is a large city of eight
million people surrounded by
desert, with the Nile running
through the center. Day is the same
as night with people constantly
milling around, eating in family
groups where they can find a blade
of grass. The main streets are wide
boulevards. Behind these lovely
streets are dirt sidestreets with
mudbrick hovels with goats,
donkeys and camels sharing the
houses. Cars fill every main street
leaving no room to walk. Horns
blow constantly 24 hours a day.
In the other cities of Egypt, cars
are unseen. Most streets are dirt.
The mode of transportation is by
donkey, camel or foot. The
animals share the mudbrick houses
as well as the common town wells
along with the people.
The farms are tended the same
way the farms were tended five
thousand years ago. Modern
equipment is unheard of. Even if
the farmers had the equipment,
they would not know how to use it.
Few children attend school
because they are needed on the
farms.
Throughout Egypt, we were
constantly stopped every few feet
by beggers. The children beg for
pencils for school, lipsticks,
cigarettes, and money. The adults
beg for money. Men generally sit in
cafes smoking waterpipes and play
backgammon.
While the farmers use oxen as
tractors, camels to bring water
**. 4
_ s m • •
l v 43
IskA 3 I *L
Worship services at the Adley Street Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt,
reflect the dwindling number of Jews in that city. From a high in the 1940s
of 170,000 Jews, the number is now about 500.
from the Nile for irrigation,
donkeys to carry the goods to
market and the children beg for
pencils for school, the Egyptian
government is spending billions of
dollars on new archaeological
excavations. We saw dozens of
temples. All built the same.
The money would do better
going to educate the children and
teach modern farming methods.
The only cultivated land is a
narrow strip along the Nile delta.
This is the same farmland used
when Moses led his people out of
Egypt. With modern irrigation
methods, some of the desert lands
might be usable. These people
don’t seem to have a lot of “get up
and go.”
The Egyptian people I saw were,
for the most part, an unattractive
people, in comparison to the
bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked Israeli.
To have flies and bugs crawling on
the face, arms and legs, was not an
unusual sight for us to see on these
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people.
I also found these people to have
a strange sense of humor. If we
were crossing a street, they would
see how close to us they could get
in their vehicles without hitting us
and enjoy the joke immensely if
they thought they frightened us.
Another time a camel driver
grabbed a camera and almost
broke it on purpose as a tease.
Food orders given in the best
restaurants would be forgotten as
soon as given.
Soldiers were very visable,
through Egypt. At the airports
every plane had an armed guard.
Pictures were not permitted
because commercial and military
airfields were the same. In Cairo,
along the Nile, every few feet is a
bunker with an armed Egyptian
soldier guarding the Nile in case of
attack from Israel. I did not
understand how they thought
Israeli soldiers would all of a
sudden appear in the Nile in the
heart of Cairo before any place
else.
The oldest Jewish synagogue in
Egypt was on our itinerary. This
was where Moses was found in the
bulrushes. The Synagogue was
very small and fairly well-kept. We
were told by the “shamas” it still
serves 42 families. The Talmud is
written on papyrus and the Torah
on leather. They are trying to sell
these items to the U.S. for five
million dollars. According to our
guide, there are 38 synagogues still
in use in Egypt and twenty in use in
Cairo.
The Aswan Dam built by the
Russians is the major source of
electrical power throughout
Egypt. It was not large enough.
Refrigeration in the villages along
the Nile was unheard of. Soft
drinks, beer, etc. was cooled either
in the polluted Nile or
underground.
Egypt seemed to me to be a
country with growing pains. It
wants to join the Twentieth
Century but doesn’t know how. To
visit Egypt is to journey back five
thousand years and actually live it.
No wonder the Egyptian
soldiers ran away from their
Russian equipment in the 1973
war. These people have no concept
of mechanical technology.
Automobiles are play toys. When a
car stops, it’s left.
We could not help but compare
Egypt with Israel. Egypt has so
much and has accomplished so
little. Israel has so little and has
accomplished so much.