-Caveat Lector-
BASATIN, Egypt (AP) - Wearing a Foreign Legion-style sun hat over
his yarmulke, the rabbi stretched a tape measure across the
stones of a bridge embankment. Nearby, Egyptians hauled stones on
a donkey cart to build a wall for the bridge.
Rabbi Schlomo Ziffer and consulting engineer Arieh Klein,
visiting from Israel, were trying to reconcile neat measurements
on paper with the rough reality of squeezing several hundred
gravestones back into a cramped corner of a millennium-old Jewish
cemetery.
They were also engaged in an act of reconciliation in its broader
sense last month, demonstrating that while Israelis and
Palestinians were heading toward a new spasm of violence, Jews
and Muslims could work together to save a piece of shared
heritage.
To build a modern highway through the final resting place of
countless Jews took international diplomacy, exacting care and
hard physical labor. Now, with the effort in its final phase,
Klein was using a handheld computer to plot the coordinates of
gravesites, conferring with Ziffer in Hebrew and with an Egyptian
foreman in a mixture of English and Arabic.
Two girls from a nearby slum turned up selling flat Egyptian
bread from trays balanced on their heads.
``Joseph Mitrah. Died 17-9-1959 at the age of 74 years. Pray for
him,'' read a legend carved in French on one tombstone. Another
stone's Hebrew letters and Star of David had been mostly worn
away by desert wind and sand.
Egypt today is home to only a few hundred Jews, but the cemetery
is proof of a larger Jewish past, and given the players and
themes involved, its rescue has been surprisingly free of drama.
``We've had good cooperation from Egyptians,'' Klein said. ``We
suggested the solution and they adopted it. It's their
execution.''
Predominantly Muslim Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel, and
its Jewish minority is usually left alone. Anti-Israeli or
anti-Jewish sentiment simmers, yet so sensitive is the cemetery
issue that Egyptian authorities were willing to live with a delay
of several years in the construction of the 60-mile Cairo ring
road, an ambitious attempt to ease congestion in the Egyptian
capital.
Ziffer's New York-based Athra Kadisha Society works to preserve
Jewish sites around the world. In 1992 it fought against
construction of a shopping mall over a Jewish burial site in
Hamburg, Germany. In Israel too, it frequently runs afoul of the
secular public for trying to protect ancient cemeteries from
developers.
While Christian and Muslim graves have been shifted from the ring
road's path, the Jewish ones could not be moved without gravely
offending Jewish law, according to Athra Kadisha.
``According to Jewish law, a cemetery is the holiest place for
Jews, holier even than a synagogue,'' explains Lazar Stern, an
Athra Kadisha rabbi.
Stern said Athra Kadisha learned through newspaper reports in
1989 that Basatin, just south of Cairo, was in the ring road's
way. The rabbis enlisted Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y. The
influential chairman of the House International Relations
Committee raised the matter with Egyptian officials. U.S.
Embassy officials have kept close watch over the project.
Eventually a compromise was reached: Though the graves could not
be moved, the rabbis ruled that their markers could be pushed
aside to make way for construction, provided they were put back
afterward.
The two ends of the highway, long poised like two hands kept
apart by Basatin, could finally come together.
Klein and Israel Klar, Israeli consultants brought in by Athra
Kadisha, proposed covering the graves with earth and layers of
tough woven plastic known as geotextile - humble dirt and
high-tech plastic protecting the fragile bones and bearing the
weight of the highway bridge on its concrete supports.
``The Egyptian government is to be commended for its ongoing
commitment to completing this difficult project with the
sensitivity necessary to ensure that Jewish religious sentiments
and strictures were not violated,'' Gilman said in a statement to
The Associated Press.
Carmen Weinstein, one of the few remaining Jews of Cairo, is
Basatin's self-appointed guardian. Over the years she has used
her own money to buy out poor families squatting in the
graveyard, to hire guards and to discourage neighbors from using
Basatin as a trash heap.
On her Web site, Weinstein says: ``To keep this cemetery is to
keep alive the Jewish presence in Egypt.''
On the Net:
Weinstein's Web site:
www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/5855/bassa1.htm
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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