Forward.com

On the third floor of a brown, battered Cairo apartment building sits an institution that few Egyptians have heard of; it’s called the “Israeli Academic Center in Cairo.” The center is one-of-a-kind: It is the largest collection of Hebrew-language texts in Egypt, and the only place in the Middle East beyond Israel’s borders where Arab students and scholars and Israeli scholars meet on a regular basis and discuss Israeli history, literature and culture — in Hebrew. The center itself, however, is small and anonymous, facts that reflect a central aspect of Israeli-Egyptian relations. More than 25 years after peace was established, there is virtually no cultural exchange between the two countries.

The Israeli Academic Center takes up prime real estate in Egypt’s capital. Next door to the Cairo Sheraton in the upper-middle-class Doqqi neighborhood, the IAC has a beautiful Nile view and is pleasantly quiet — extremely rare characteristics for an office in Cairo’s bustling and overcrowded central districts.

But despite the center’s prime location, it’s difficult to find. There are no signs on its building’s entrance. There is no Web site. There are no announcements in newspapers of the center’s biweekly lectures. “If you ask the security people, they will be happy,” Gabriel Rosenbaum, the center’s director since last fall, said with a laugh. “The less people know about the place, the better for them.”

But among the academic community here, among scholars and students of Hebrew studies, the center is well known, Rosenbaum insisted. “Not all of them come,” he admitted. “There are many, sometimes psychological, sometimes political, obstacles, but there are several who come on a regular basis.”

Those who do come to the center are generally students and academics involved in master’s theses or doctoral dissertation research at one of the three universities in Cairo that have Hebrew-language departments: Al-Azhar, Ein Shams and the nation’s top public institution of higher learning, Cairo University. Researchers study a variety of topics, from medieval Hebrew literature in Muslim Spain to such current Israeli authors as Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua. Occasionally groups of students come from universities in Egypt’s south, but Rosenbaum says that such visits are rare. Cairo is a city of more than 17 million people. At Cairo University alone, there are more than 1,000 students majoring in Hebrew studies. On an average day, Rosenbaum says, between two and seven people will come to the center.

There are obvious reasons that the institution maintains a low profile. Despite the long-standing peace between the two countries, most of Egyptian society seethes at what it considers Israel’s continued occupation of Arab land. The Public Opinion Poll Center, an organization funded by the Egyptian government, released a study last November finding that 92% percent of Egyptians consider Israel to be either a “hostile” or “very hostile” state. The survey was conducted in the wake of Israel’s recent war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, a war that most of Egyptian society considered illegitimate and aggressive. As relations between Israel and the Palestinians have deteriorated since the second intifada broke out in 2000, the work of the center has become more difficult. “Our center depended a lot on the climate around us,” said David Kushner, the IAC’s director from 2001 to 2003. “The climate [depends on] Egyptian-Israeli relations, the situation in the region. We came in a difficult time during the intifada,” he said, referring to himself and his wife. “That was not an easy period.”

The IAC is open 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., Sunday through Thursday (the Muslim communal day of prayer is Friday, and thus the weekend in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab Middle East is observed Friday and Saturday), and the jobs of Rosenbaum and his wife, Michal, consist primarily of maintaining the library’s collection of texts, scheduling biweekly lectures, and helping students track down documents and books in Israel and elsewhere that are not held in the library. The center has five full-time Egyptian employees and one part-time employee, and it is now in its 25th year. While a new director is appointed every two or three years, several members of the local staff have worked there for years, including one who has been on staff since the institution’s founding in 1982.

Rosenbaum is the center’s 10th director, and before accepting his current post last September he headed the Arabic language and literature department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As an academic, his research focused on the language, literature, drama and folklore of contemporary Egypt, a concentration that brought Rosenbaum to Cairo more than 25 times. “Every time I came, people would ask me, ‘When will you come here to be the head of this place?’” he said. Rosenbaum said that he has good relations with the staff, as well as many of the researchers who come to the center. “There are some people here who I’ve known for more than 15 years, since I was a Ph.D. student myself. I knew them when they were young and I was younger. I have good relations with them.”

Rosenbaum’s face lights up when he talks about his work. The IAC, he said with pride, is perhaps the only bridge between Israeli and Egyptian society. “Many, in fact, have told me, ‘You are the first Israeli that I’ve ever met,’” he said. But Rosenbaum also admitted, somewhat forlornly, that the center’s employees have not become his friends “in the usual sense.” “We do not socialize together,” he said simply. The Egyptian security services undoubtedly keep tabs on the center, and the fear of Israeli spying is widespread. But Rosenbaum prefers to talk about the positives: “There are some students and teachers who I have kept in very good contact with over the years.”

Every two weeks the center sponsors a lecture, given in English on Tuesday and in Hebrew on Wednesday. It is attendance at these lectures that is most affected by current events in the region. The lecturer is almost always an Israeli scholar, and the topics are wide-ranging. Recent titles include “Israeli Theater as a Mirror of Society,” “Musical Variety in Israel and Interrelations With Oriental-Arab Music” and “Jerusalem in the Eyes of Its Ottoman Governors.” When relations between Israel and the Palestinians are good, or at least quiet, anywhere from 20 to 25 people will show up. But when relations are bad, sometimes the lecture is canceled altogether. Israel’s decision in early February to repair a damaged walkway leading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem has caused an outcry throughout the Arab world. In reaction to the construction work, which many Arabs consider a thinly veiled attempt to destroy one of Islam’s holiest sites, opposition politicians in Egypt’s parliament have called for the destruction of Israel and for the cancellation of the partial free-trade agreement among Israel, Egypt and the United States. Sitting in the center’s reading room on a Tuesday afternoon, Rosenbaum admitted that events in Jerusalem might affect the week’s lectures. “I don’t know what will happen today and tomorrow. It may affect the audience. It is possible that [fewer] people will come.”

But turnout is good, and 22 people ultimately arrive for the 5 p.m. lecture. The crowd is varied: two American employees of the United States Agency for International Development, a consular officer from the Turkish Embassy, a member of Egypt’s small Jewish community and several other Egyptians. Among the attendees is Esmat Hassan, a middle-aged, heavy-set Egyptian who worked on an Egyptian-Israeli joint agricultural project and has traveled to Israel extensively on business. Hassan admits that many of her friends find her interest in Israeli culture strange. “You are sitting in front of a special person,” she said with a wry smile. “I have my own point of view in life, my own philosophy in life, in friendship. I don’t care what is going around.”

“We come here to encourage peace,” said another attendee, an Egyptian in his late 20s. “I think my presence is a proof of peace…. What is not accepted today, it will be accepted tomorrow.” Despite his optimism, the young man asked that his name not be revealed, as he feels that speaking publicly about the center could lead to harassment from the Egyptian government.

Reuben Heyman-Kantor is a freelance journalist and a CASA fellow at the American University of Cairo. He is also a frequent contributor to “War News Radio.”

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