he SCA is working on renovating Moses Ben Maimon’s Synagogue in the Cairo quarter of al-Gamaliya, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawwas recently announced. The restoration of the synagogue is part of a key plan by the SCA to restore major religious sites in Egypt, spending some EGP700 million every year. The plan includes 10 Jewish temples. Ben Maimon Synagogue’s expenses alone have so far amounted to some EGP8.5 million, with 60 per cent of the restoration completed.
Three sections
The renovations started in June 2008 and are expected to be completed by 30 March 2010, coinciding with the birthday of the synagogue’s patron.
Moses Ben Maimon was born in 1135 in Cordoba, Spain, and died in Egypt in 1204. He was a philosopher, mathematician, physician, and a religious scholar. It is said that he was the private physician of Salah Eddin al-Ayoubi’s family.
The synagogue, which was declared an antiquity in 1986, dates back to the 19th century, and was mostly ruined during the 1992 earthquake and due to high water levels that covered its floors. “Since work began, the walls and ceilings have been reinforced, the floor has been isolated from the water table, and all cement—the product of previous bad quality restoration work—has been removed. The doors, windows and chairs of the temple have also been restored, and the dirt and debris that had built up within has been removed.”
The synagogue is divided into three parts: an area dedicated to prayers and rituals, another for Ben Maimon’s tomb and a third that included a women’s prayer section.
Nothing to do with Hosni
Hawwas denied the project was meant to assuage Jewish anger at Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, who is campaigning to be the next head of UNESCO, an office that promotes unqualified cultural diversity. Hosni outraged Jews with his comments in April 2008 vowing to burn any Israeli books found in Egypt’s famed Library of Alexandria. Jews are thus leading a counter-campaign against Hosni attaining the top UNESCO post.
“The Jewish monuments,” Hawwas said, “are Egyptian monuments. They are part of us and of our culture.”