Restoring the Jewish Synagogue of Moses Ben Maimon Featuring Dr Zahi Hawass

Submitted by Prad on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 11:16

Description

Dr Zahi Hawass takes us on a tour of the restorations taking place at the Jewish Synagogue of Moses Ben Maimon. Dr Hawass explains that since taking his post as Director of the SCA, he has made a point of restoring Jewish Temples, as it is also part of Egypt's heritage.

You can find more information on this video in the accompanying blog entry here.

Related Heritage ExpertsZahi Hawass, Sandro Vannini

CreditsDr Zahi Hawass, Sandro Vannini, Nico Piazza

Transcription

People always say that the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation doesn't care about the Jewish temples. Some people even wrote in the paper saying to UNESCO that the Egyptians are not caring about these monuments.

But I want to say that Jewish temples are part of our history. If we don't care about the Jewish temples, we don't care about our history. And this is why since I came to this position, in 2002, I have really cared about the Jewish temples. I'm really proud. This cannot happen in any other place in the world, It can happen in Egypt, because the Jews lived in this area, and they remember all the neighbours - the Muslims and the Christians.

We do have ten buildings in Egypt: nine in Cairo, and one in Alexandria. At the moment, we are restoring the Temple of Moses Ben Maimon and another temple in Abbassieh. You know, when you start restoring a temple, it takes at least two years to make a study of restoration, after which we did the study of the restoration of the temple of Moses Ben Maimon and started our work in June 2009.

Moses Ben Maimon is a very important temple - all the Jews care about this temple, and its birth of all the Jews, they come here to this area and this temple is unique because it has a place for the worship, and has a place for his burial, and next door to this place is the area that cured people, because Moses Ben Maimon used to cure people who came to the temple. After that, we have the well, and the third section of the temple is the area that the priests of the temple and the workmen used to come to pray.

At the end of Ramadan, this will be sealed, and water will be sucked, drained like this one, and the floor will be treated. All the walls will be injected and restored.

I truly believe the restoration that we are doing is really unique. On March 30th, on the celebration of the moment which is the birth of Moses Ben Maimon, we will open this to the world. We hope that all the Jews that lived in this alley can come back to their home when it is finished and look at it again.

I'm very happy to say that we are restoring the Jewish temple. It's a part of our history.