A Synagogue in Ma'adi

Meyr Biton Temple from Road 13

A dusty, forlorn synagogue stands in Ma'adi just where Road 13 meets Orabi Street. From the pavement you can barely see the temple for all of the trees, reeds, and weeds. Look above the treetops though, and you can see the second story, the butternut colored blocks, the central dome. Walk around the building. Here and there you catch a glimpse of stained glass windows and inlaid Stars of David. See the hastily built brick walls surrounding the temple, the locked gate in front, the padlock encrusted with sand and dust. Tarry too long in front of the gates, and one of the bowabs from across the street will rise from his perch to shoo you away. Try to take a picture and you may be met with a vigorous shaking of the head, a wagging of the index finger, and a "la, la, la!" (no, no, no!). Even if you are not shooed away, you will be suspiciously watched. Given the bowabs' withering stares, you won't linger, and you will probably leave with many more questions than answers.

― That looked like it used to be a synagogue. What happened?

― Do you think it is abandoned?

― Does anyone still pray there? Does anyone take care of it?

Meyr Biton Temple, 1934
Courtesy, Bassatine News

In 1934, times were very different in Cairo and in Egypt. Howard Carter had discovered Tutankhamen's tomb just a a little over a decade before. Fuad was king. British influence was still strong. Those were the days before World War II and the pograms, before the Six Day War and the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

In 1934, landscaper and developer Meyr Yehuda Biton had a synagogue built for a burgeoning Jewish community in Ma'adi. It was not built to be grand or imposing. It was built as a place where a small but growing community could gather together to celebrate and pray. In 1934, the Meyr Biton Temple was finished and services began. Those services would come to an end just thirty short years later.

Barricades blocking all the streets around the temple

Today the streets around the synagogue are barricaded, blocked by palisades of police barriers, twisted metal bars, and recumbent spiked metal poles that look as is if they belong in a medieval weaponry museum. At half-block intervals, bowabs sit in their makeshift, metal stands warding off all but the most stalwart passerbyes. Overgrown trees and weeds choke the median between the street and the temple walls. It appears as though the same is true on the other side of the walls. At irregular intervals throughout the week, a policeman stands guard on the street in front. Motorists drive past, oblivious to the building's significance, its history, its legacy.

Jewish communities have been a part of the Egyptian social fabric since the days of Alexander the Great. Some Ottoman rulers in Egypt enjoyed the counsel of Jewish ministers and advisers. For hundreds of years, Alexandria and Cairo were renown for their vibrant Jewish communities. Just before the outbreak of the first Word War, the Jewish community in Egypt had been estimated at 80,000 strong; this according to most religious demographers.

But then the First World War was followed by another one. Pograms in Egypt's larger cities were not unheard of. And then came the creation of Israel. Some Egyptian Jews, Zionists dreaming of a Jewish state in the Middle East, left. Conflict between the people of Israel and the people of Egypt followed. More Egyptian Jews left, emigrating to Europe, South America, the United States. Then Nasser came to power, proclaiming Jews as enemies of the state. An exodus ensued.

According to a U.S. State Department report on international religious freedom published in 2007, only 200 native-born Jews remained in Egypt. Until this month, only 12 of the 200 were still here. Last week, Nadia Haroun, the sister of the President of the Jewish Community Council (JCC) of Cairo, passed away. The remaining 11 members of the Jewish community are all female and quite past child-bearing age. The future of the Egyptian Jewish community looks bleak.

But thanks to the work of the JCC, the interior of Meyr Biton Temple has recently been refurbished and is open to the public. It is advisable to contact the JCC first so that someone from the JCC office can contact the local caretaker, but entrance to the synagogue can be arranged. One blogger recounts his experience inside the temple,

In the entry, I saw a photo of the congregation from the early 1930s: women in old fashioned dresses and men wearing Turkish fezzes. Signs reminding the ladies to keep quiet still hung on the wall, in both French and English, as if the people from the photograph still gathered here. The bookshelves were filled with prayer books, many of which were close to 100 years old. I prayed that night from a siddur issued to soldiers in the British army during World War II. While this army prayer book did not contain a complete Shabbat service, it did include a prayer for going into battle, another for the wounded, and a special blessing for the royal family including Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II).

Although the synagogue's facade suggests otherwise, a light still shines inside the Meyr Biton Temple. One hopes that the light emanating from the altar will continue to shine on.

An all-girls, STEM school in Cairo

Both in the U.S. and in the UK, "STEM" is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and is currently a hot topic in educational circles and debates. The use of STEM as an acronym goes back at least to the early 2000s where it begins to pop up in the academic and periodic literature associated with America's competitive technological edge or lack thereof. By 2006 the acronym wormed its way into George W. Bush's State of the Union address and not long after, STEM wriggled its way into the American Competitive Initiative and the America Competes Act. These initiatives promoted the increase of funding - both public and private - into state and local education programs designed to elevate student proficiencies in math and the sciences. They have have been surprisingly successful as hundreds of STEM programs throughout the U.S., backed by federal block grants, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, NASA, Siemans, the Battelle Memorial Institute, and almost all sizable state-funded universities, are now very well established.

I am just a bit surprised then when I get a call from my school head wanting to know whether I am interested in going with him and another colleague to visit an all-girls, STEM school located within a few kilometers of our international school in Cairo.

"Count me in," I say. Inwardly and arrogantly, I am thinking that there is no way in hell that there is really any such thing as a local, all-girls, STEM school. All-girls, yes; but STEM, no way. I log the date and time in my calendar, thinking that this visit will be good fun; arrogant ass that I sometimes am.

The day of the tour arrives, and we pile in one of our school's sedans along with Mohammad, our driver. The STEM school is close, less than 10 km, but having driven half that distance, I discover that we are a world away. After we drive out of the green, tree-lined streets of affluent Ma'adi, we motor into the dusty residential blocks that make up much of Cairo's southeastern dwelling enclaves. We pass by square after monotonous square of partially finished, cinder block hulks, rebar sprouting from tops like ungainly tufts of hair. Here and there we see a finished porch, either freshy painted or newly tiled, in the middle of an obviously unfinished building, the sign of a family having already moved in amidst the debris of a construction site. Or maybe just squatters making themselves at home. Nothing here is finished. Sand covered construction materials litter the streets and the entrances to almost every one of the buildings, the visible signs of an aborted construction boom that met its demise along with ousted president, Hosni Mubarak. 

After experiencing some difficulties navigating the streets in this immense tangle of cement and metal, we finally find our destination, the Girls' School for Science and Technology. The school is mostly finished, which is in stark contrast to the taller buildings that surround it. The school occupies an entire city block, wholly surrounded by a high, cement wall. Atop the wall at odd intervals, electric cables sheathed in plastic look like clots of oddly colored weeds. At some point there will be light fixtures atop these walls but not now; the school is not yet completely finished ... or paid for ... or both. We pull into a paved courtyard, driving right up to the front of the school. I note that there is no security detail or member of staff to stop us. We simply drive up, exit our vehicle, walk into the school, and begin looking around.

After several awkward minutes, a woman in modern dress, her head covered by a tight fitting, brightly colored a scarf, emerges from an office and greets us. She introduces herself as Nagla and tells us that Jan is ready to meet with us.

Jan? Who the hell is Jan? I have never heard of an Egyptian named Jan.

Nagla leads us through a couple of secretarial offices and into what appears to me to be a board room. Oblong oak table with matching matching chairs with padded leather seats and backs - check. Digital overhead projector - check. Large pull-down screen at the far end of the table - check. A couple of oak, three-tiered bookshelves - check. Inspiring and heavily romanticized art prominently displayed on three walls - check. Yep, board room. Except that some woman's large purse has vomited its contents all over the middle of the table. A leather satchel has commited the same atrocity on the floor just in front of the pull-down screen. Jan is sitting at a chair toward the center of the table, sifting through the stuff that the purse spewed up.

Sandy haired, feisty and bespectacled, Jan is the founder and CEO of the Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM or TIES for short. TIES is a STEM centered consulting firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. Back when the STEM debate began in U.S., Jan saw an opportunity to move away from her thirty-year career in private education. She left her principal position and founded TIES. Since then TIES has worked with all kinds of schools to create STEM programs. Because of the success TIES enjoyed with those early partnerships, Jan has served as a STEM consultant to both Presidents Bush and Obama, a rare feat in and of itself. Jan is here now at the behest of the Egyptian Ministry of Education, opening STEM centered schools in Cairo. We are standing in the board room of the girls' school. The boys' school is across town. I cannot be more shocked.

We sit down, and Jan tells us a little of her story. Initially invited to Egypt by a forward-thinking minister in the Mubarak regime, Jan came to offer her expert advise on the feasibility of opening STEM centered schools in a developing nation. She is now working with her fifth or sixth Education Minister, she cannot quickly recall which. Two STEM schools offering a three-year program to promising, Egyptian teens are in operation with another ten schools in various stages of planning. The boys' school is in its third year of operation and will graduate its first class at the end of this academic year (2014). The top boy in the school has aleady garnered scholarship offers from many of the Ivies in the U.S. The girls' school is in its second year of operation, and Jan tells us that the school's top female students will probably enjoy similar offers.

"We don't hire math teachers and science teachers," she says proudly, "we hire successful Egyptian engineers and then train them in the best educational practices in the States. The Ministry made it clear to us from the outset that aside from the American tertiary education training that some of its teachers receive, that this is a program for Egypt and Egyptian students. We are not recreating a little America here, but rather planting the seeds of a educational reformation with a curriculum designed by Egyptians to specifically help to solve the problems Egypt faces."

She tells us a little more about what makes these schools special. All of the students are on 100%, merit-based scholarships provided by the Egyptian government and the corporate sponsors partnering in this endeavor. Both schools have basic dormitory units to house the 300-or-so strong student body. Classes run for ten months out of the year with students receiving instruction in STEM, English, Arabic, and religion ... in that order. The schools are mandated by a special decree that allows them to operate independently of the Egyptian public school curriculum, and this decree has been staunchly supported by the Mubarak administration, the transitional government that followed Mubarak, the Morsi administration, and the current transitional government administration. The schools and the decree that bestows upon them the special license to operate are not going anywhere; they are here to stay.

Dumbfounded, we thank Jan and leave her to her planning. She has only a couple more days to spend here in Cairo before jetting back to Cleveland. Leaving the board room behind, we tour the school. We are led by one very proud school principal. He shows us around the cement and cinder block facility. For the most part, the school is basic. We walk through hallways of unpainted, gray cement. Many of the language classrooms are small and packed with desks. It is not uncommon, says the principal, to have class sizes of up to 50. There is a large courtyard that doubles as playing field and open-air cafeteria. What makes this school a little different is its fabrication labs. These are large classrooms jammed with every piece of equipment that I would expect to see in a state-of-the-art design technology school. The principal tells us that this is where most of the students like to spend their time. I do not blame them. The fab-labs are very, very cool.

We look into a couple of more classrooms, and we encounter four of the school's teachers, two men and two women. The principal tells us that they are collaborating in grading part of the final semester examinations that the second-year girls are just finishing. It is here that I become amazed at what I am seeing; and just a tad bit envious. Here are four teachers collaborating and obviously enjoying themselves while examining and assessing student work. This is something that most of my teachers can't/won't/don't do; and there are all kinds of reasons as to why not. Mostly to do with institutional constraints, for sure, but I am not here to fight that battle. I am astounded by what am observing in this all-girls, STEM school in Cairo, an element of teaching and assessment that I find so lacking in the U.S. and international schools that I have seen.

I ask about the final exam the teachers are assessing. One of the teachers tells me that the examination is divided into several parts. What we are seeing is the written portion of the exam, the part reserved for assessing a student's basic learning. The other part of the exam is designed to assess how well the student can relate her learning to real world situations. I ask the teacher for an example. She tells me that the other parts of the final examination are project-based. In one project, for example, a team of students has designed and built a model for a better sanitation system for this building and others like it. Another team of students has built a mock-up of an air purifier. Still another team is trying to design a better engine for Cairo's notoriously dirty tuk-tuks. She directs my attention to some of the "art" on the classroom walls; student created blueprints for the various designs she has just described. The students are graded by a team of teachers and experts from the corporate world, some skyping in for the students' final presentations.

I am floored. And I am suddenly feeling very small and very ashamed of myself. 

We thank the teachers for their time, bidding them goodbye. They tell us that they are quite pleased to have met administrators from "the famous international school in Ma'adi." 

Okay, now I really feel small.

The three of us walk silently back to Mohammad and our school's waiting sedan. I cannot speak for my two colleagues, but I am feeling very humbled and more than a little ashamed of myself. I came today thinking that I would have a laugh, or maybe that I would have some kind of grand wisdom to pass on to this developing school out here in the boondocks of Cairo's dusty residential suburbs. Instead, I am walking out of a school that is in some ways, years ahead of any school I have known. 

And I am hoping that someday soon, a couple of teachers from the all-girls, STEM school in Cairo can visit us and maybe teach us a thing or two.