Many welcome Egyptian government’s decision to restore the Eliyahu Hanavi in Alexandria, but some question the motives

Alexandria’s historic synagogue has very few visitors. In a city once home to almost 25,000 Jews, Alexandria’s Jewish community is now said to number fewer than eight people, most of whom are elderly.

Originally built in 1354, the Eliyahu Hanavi’s grand facade and cavernous interior welcomed thousands of worshippers until the departure of Egypt’s Jews after the creation of Israel. It then fell into into disrepair and water damage led to the collapse of the ceiling on its upper floor.

In a rare mark of respect for the country’s religious minorities, and an even rarer choice to preserve a piece of the country’s Jewish history, the Egyptian government has pledged to repair the building as part of a 1.27bn Egyptian pound (roughly £55m) package to restore eight monuments.

But the decision has struck many as odd, given the size of the country’s Jewish population, believed to be fewer than 50 people, and the government’s unwillingness to engage with Egyptian Jewry.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The grand facade and cavernous interior of the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue welcomed thousands of worshippers for centuries. Photograph: Ruth Michaelson

When the Guardian visited, a lone foreign visitor to the synagogue selected a bright blue satin kippah from a box, and wore it to meander through the the main prayer hall. Engineers from the state-backed Arab Contractors company carried out surveillance work around him, examining marble floor tiles thrown askew by seeping groundwater, or peering at the stained glass windows that cast a rose-tinted glow over the abandoned pews. The dark wood still bears metal plaques with the names of former congregants who left decades ago.

“This is a great project for all Egyptians,” said one engineer, who declined to give his name. “The project should last an entire year. We’ll be restoring the entire building,” said another, identified only as Mohammed.

Yet this handful of engineers was the largest group of visitors the neglected synagogue has seen in some time. The move to restore the building, as well as other Jewish sites in Alexandria, comes after months of pressure from Jewish exiles around the world, fearful that the city’s diverse past would otherwise be erased.

Alec Nacamuli, a member of the Nebi Daniel Association campaigning to protect Egypt’s Jewish heritage, welcomed the move, adding that the organisation has been “more aggressively” pushing for the restoration of Eliyahu Hanavi since the ceiling collapsed because of water damage.

Nacamuli, whose grandfather was the president of Cairo’s Jewish community, is now exiled in London from his native Alexandria. “There have been some frustrations,” he said of the efforts to get the Egyptian authorities to heed the needs of Egypt’s Jewish diaspora.

Egypt has a poor track record of protecting its religious minorities and their houses of worship, notably the country’s largest religious minority of Coptic Christians, who make up an estimated 10% of the population.

Security around Alexandria’s synagogue is so tight partly because of fears after a recent spate of Isis assaults on Coptic Christian churches.

A long-awaited law in 2016 clarified the rules around church building and provided some aid to the beleaguered Christian minority, although observers such as Human Rights Watch argued that the state has done little to protect Christian citizens from violent attacks. In a country where religion is marked on each citizens’ identity card, Egypt’s Shia and Bahai minorities also face daily persecution and are prevented from building places of worship.

But Egypt’s Jewish past is more fraught with geopolitical sensitivity than other minorities. Once a community of almost 80,000, numbers began to dwindle after the creation of Israel in 1948 sparked conflict between Egypt and its new neighbour.

This resulted in increasing pressure on Egypt’s Jewish citizens, including incarceration. About 25,000 Jews were formerly expelled in 1956, after being presented with a one-way travel document to leave and a demand to cede their property to the government. The number of Jews in Egypt is commonly estimated to be fewer than 50.

Covert efforts to upgrade the country’s synagogues in 2009 were met with widespread reports in the international press that the true motive was Egypt’s push for then-culture minister, Farouk Hosny, to lead Unesco.

Egypt is once again running to head the United Nations’ cultural and heritage body after nominating former politician and ambassador Moushira Khattab in 2016. But it insists there is no ulterior motive for the restoration.

“There has always been an appreciation of Jewish history and monuments,” said Niven al-Araf, a spokeswoman from Egypt’s ministry of antiquities. “This will continue in the future, as these are part of Egypt’s heritage.”