Khartoum’s Jewish Community: A Proper Burial

The feature essay for the month of June is Elli Fischer’s, “Khartoum’s Jewish Community: A Proper Burial,” written especially for Sephardi Ideas Monthly. We will return to exploring piyyut, Sephardi liturgical poetry and (soul) music, in July.

The oldest grave: Khedhuri Sion died in 1911, a year after his father, Sasson Ezra, migrated to Sudan from Baghdad. His brother Abraham married Allegra, a daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Malka, and they are buried near the reinterred graves in Giv’at Shaul, Jerusalem, Israel (Photo courtesy of J. Sandler)

Elli Fischer is a rabbi, writer, translator, and Jewish heritage travel consultant, who is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Jewish history at Tel Aviv University. Fischer previously translated the writings of Rabbis Ouziel and Qafih for Sephardi Ideas Monthly, and this month he turns his attention to the Jewish community of Sudan.

Most people don’t even know that there was a Jewish community in Sudan, but, “at its height in the 1930s and early 1940s, the Sudanese Jewish community numbered approximately a thousand souls.” Most of the community immigrated to Sudan after the British conquest in 1899, and its

members worked in the country as “retailers, merchants, and senior officials in the British administration.” The community began to crumble after the country declared its independence in 1956, and by the end of the 1960’s the community’s disintegration was complete. 

Gravestone 9: Shihata Abdalla Saltoun, Died: 25 May 1938. Click for additional photographs and video of Khartoum’s Jewish cemetery (Media courtesy of Chaim Motzen/Diarna Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life)

Gravestone 9: Shihata Abdalla Saltoun, Died: 25 May 1938. Click for additional photographs and video of Khartoum’s Jewish cemetery (Media courtesy of Chaim Motzen/Diarna Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life)

Enter Chaim Motzen, a Canadian student who happened to be in Sudan and who decided to visit the Jewish cemetery in Khartoum. Located in an industrial section of the city, the graves were not in good condition: “Most of the grave sites have been ruined, their stones uprooted or smashed, and the cemetery itself serves as a dumping ground for all sorts of refuse, especially discarded auto parts.” 

The state of the cemetery in August 2015 (Photo courtesy of J. Sandler)

The state of the cemetery in August 2015 (Photo courtesy of J. Sandler)
 

Motzen recorded what remained of the cemetery and, in August of 2015, arranged for a group of local workers to clean up and look after the site. Fischer notes how the graves provide “insight into the nature of the Jewish community in Sudan.” For instance, the gravestones appear in Hebrew, English, Arabic, and French. Sometimes it’s one of the languages, sometimes two, and one gravestone is even trilingual. Whatever the case, the graves reflect: “varying degrees of acculturation into both the Arab and European cultures present in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, as well as different levels of preservation of Jewish cultural traditions within this tiny community.”

Fischer concludes his essay with a bittersweet story about what happened when Motzen found himself at a Shabbat meal in New York with a descendant of the community. Motzen mentioned that he had photographs of the cemetery, “including the gravestone of a child named Shalom Malka.” Amazingly, it turned out that he was talking to the daughter of Shalom’s brother. Motzen was directed to Shalom’s mother, who had always assumed that the grave had been desecrated or destroyed.  Seeing photos of Shalom’s gravestone brought the mother a certain degree of comfort in her final years.
 
Sephardi Ideas Monthly is honored to help preserve the memory of Sudanese Jewry with Elli Fischer’s fine essay, “Khartoum’s Jewish Community: A Proper Burial.”

Othello by William Shakespeare
in a Moroccan Adaptation

June 16th, 23rd, 26th, 28th, and 30th
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York City

ASF’s theatrical season (Merchant of Venice, Nabucco) concludes with David Serero’s Othello, a Moroccan adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic play about love and war, reason and race, fortuna and virtù. The production features Serero (as Othello), a diverse cast, and traditional music.
 

Please click here to purchase tickets

Portugal, The Last Hope: Sousa Mendes’ Visas for Freedom

April 7th through September 9th
Center for Jewish History 
15 West 16th Street, New York City

The American Sephardi Federation, Portuguese Consulate of New York, the Sousa Mendes Foundation, and the Municipality of Almeida, Portugal proudly present a new exhibition in the Leon Levy Gallery honoring Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the courageous and creative Portuguese diplomat who saved Salvador Dali, the authors of Curious George, and thousands of other Holocaust refugees.
 

Please click here for viewing hours

$72

($54 tax-deductible)

Contact us by email or phone (917.606.8266) to sponsor future issues of the Sephardi Ideas Monthly in honor or memory of loved ones. 

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