Sha'ar Hashamayim Synagogue Susan with Samy Ibrahim, Ms. Haroun’s chief of staff, son of a Jewish father and Muslim mother. His father felth the brunt of Egyptian anitsemitism and also spent 11 years in prison because he was an avowed Communist. Magda Haroun who was away travelling became president of the country’s Jewish community in 2013. The community still owned several properties, including schools, synagogues and the vast Bassatine cemetery. The synagogues, many abandoned decades ago, were filled with rubbish and had decaying walls and interiors. But the cemetery was in especially dire condition, vulnerable both to squatters and vandals. She enlisted a group of Egyptian Muslims and Christians to help in her efforts. to repair the dozen or so Cairo synagogues that are still viable and turn some of them into cultural centers to attract Muslim and Christian—and Jewish—visitors. Another goal is to create a library to house several thousand Hebrew books that were abandoned when the Jews left Egypt. And of course there is the cemetery.