Egyptian Jews constitute both one of the oldest and one of the youngest Jewish communities in the world. The historic core of the Jewish community in Egypt mainly consisted of Egyptian Arabic speaking Rabbanites and Karaites. Though Egypt had its own community of Egyptian Jews, after the Jewish expulsion from Spain more Sephardi and Karaite Jews began to migrate to Egypt, and then their numbers increased significantly with the growth of trading prospects after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. As a result, Jews from many territories of the Ottoman Empire as well as Italy and Greece started to settle in the main cities of Egypt, where they thrived. The Ashkenazi community, mainly confined to Cairo's Darb al-Barabira quarter, began to arrive in the aftermath of the waves of pogroms that hit Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.
In the 1950s, Egypt began to expel its Jewish population (estimated at between 75,000 and 80,000 in 1948), also sequestering Jewish-owned property at this time.
, the president of Cairo's Jewish community said that there were 6 Jews in Cairo, all women over age 65, and 12 Jews in Alexandria. , there were 5 in Cairo. As of 2022 the total number of known Egyptian Jews permanently residing in Egypt is 3.
Ancient times
In the Elephantine papyri and ostraca, caches of legal documents and letters written in Aramaic amply document the lives of a community of Jewish soldiers stationed there as part of a frontier garrison in Egypt for the Achaemenid Empire.
Established at Elephantine in about 650 BCE during Manasseh's reign, these soldiers assisted the Twenty-sixth Dynasty pharaoh Psamtik I of the Nile Delta in his campaigns against the Twenty-fifth Dynasty pharaoh Tantamani of Napata. Their religious system shows strong traces of Babylonian religion, something which suggests to certain scholars that the community was of mixed Judahite and Samarian origins, and they maintained their own temple, functioning alongside that of the local deity Khnum. The documents cover the period 495 to 399 BCE.
The Hebrew Bible also records that a large number of Judeans took refuge in Egypt after the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah in 597 BCE, and the subsequent assassination of the Jewish governor, Gedaliah. (, ) On hearing of the appointment, the Jewish population that fled to Moab, Ammon, Edom and other countries returned to Judah. () However, before long Gedaliah was assassinated, and the population that was left in the land and those that had returned ran away to Egypt for safety. (, ) The numbers that made their way to Egypt are subject to debate. In Egypt, they settled in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Noph, and Pathros. ()
Ptolemaic and Roman
Further waves of Jewish immigrants settled in Egypt during the Ptolemaic dynasty, especially around Alexandria. Thus, their history in this period centers almost completely on Alexandria, though daughter communities rose up in places like the present Kafr ed-Dawar, and Jews served in the administration as custodians of the river. As early as the third century BCE, there was a widespread diaspora of Jews in many Egyptian towns and cities. In Josephus's history, it is claimed that, after Ptolemy I Soter took Judea, he led some 120,000 Jewish captives to Egypt from the areas of Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and Mount Gerizim. With them, many other Jews, attracted by the fertile soil and Ptolemy's liberality, emigrated there of their own accord. An inscription recording a Jewish dedication of a synagogue to Ptolemy and Berenice was discovered in the 19th century near Alexandria. Josephus also claims that, soon after, these 120,000 captives were freed from bondage by Philadelphus.
The history of the Alexandrian Jews dates from the foundation of the city by Alexander the Great, 332 BCE, at which they were present. They were numerous from the very outset, forming a notable portion of the city's population under Alexander's successors. The Ptolemies assigned them a separate section, two of the five districts of the city, to enable them to keep their laws pure of indigenous cultic influences. The Alexandrian Jews enjoyed a greater degree of political independence than elsewhere. While the Jewish population elsewhere throughout the later Roman Empire frequently formed private societies for religious purposes, or organized corporations of ethnic groups like the Egyptian and Phoenician merchants in the large commercial centers, those of Alexandria constituted an independent political community, side by side with that of the other ethnic groups.