ABSTRACT An analysis of the content and membership profile of the Facebook group “From Egypt and Back,” one of the biggest and most active groups of Egyptian Jews, in or out of social media, reveals the alternative that it has created to the dominant narrative in Egyptian Jewish collective memory, particularly in Israel. Whereas the dominant narrative has glorified the bourgeois, Frenchified, urban life of Egyptian Jews, “From Egypt and Back” has given voice to lower-middle-class and lower-class Jews and their experiences of Cairo, in particular. Its members have created a different mental map of Cairo that features its non-bourgeois neighborhoods, immersed in Egyptian-Arabic culture. This has generated high feelings of nostalgia, whose role as an emotion that affirms identity and cultural heritage, one that connects group members to their parents and family, and creates a community, will also be explored.
issue 27 / n.1 (2025)
