Sephardi Jewish Philanthropy in Cairo during the First Half of the 20th Century

Focusing on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as on Cairo and its Sephardi Jewish community, this study offers a detailed organizational history of its philanthropic work. I argue that it was shaped by the need of that community to reorganize its communal structures and institutions, as a result of mass migration of Jews into Cairo. This entailed a move by the organized community to take control of philanthropic work, which hitherto was in private hands, with partial, but significant, success. It both mirrored, and responded to, a similar move by the Egyptian state to control social welfare in the country, without replacing non-governmental, and especially non-Muslim, communal philanthropic organizations. In this process, the Jewish upper- and middle-classes rechanneled their efforts and funds into communally organized philanthropy, which they used in order to perform their social status, as well as to implement their modernizing agendas. These included a reconceptualization of poverty, from an individual problem solved by direct giving, to a social problem best dealt with by the community, based on the latest scientific knowledge in social work and healthcare. Managing philanthropy in this period also became internationalized, as Cairo's Jewish community was able to use its international networks for its philanthropic needs and goals. At the same time, philanthropy also highlighted the Jewish community's cooperation with local, non-Jewish Egyptian, charities, and emphasized its rootedness in Egypt. In this regard, revamping communal philanthropy and building new communal institutions as late as the second half of the 1940s were not the actions of a community cognizant of its impending demise.