History of the Jews in Alexandria

The history of the Jews in Alexandria dates back to the founding of the city by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE.^[1] Jews in Alexandria played a crucial role in the political, economic, cultural and religious life of Hellenistic and Roman Alexandria, with Jews comprising about 35% of the city's population during the Roman Era.^[2][3] Alexandrian Jewry were the founders of Hellenistic Judaism and the first to translate the Torah from Hebrew to Koine Greek, a document known as the Septuagint.

Many important Jewish writers and figures came from or studied in Alexandria, such as Philo, Ben Sira, Tiberius Julius Alexander and Josephus. The position of Alexandria's Jewry began deteriorating during the Roman era, as deep antisemitic sentiment began developing amongst the city's Greek and Egyptian populations. This led to the subsequent Alexandrian pogrom in 38 CE and the Alexandria riot in 66 CE, which was in parallel with the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War. Alexandria's Jewry began to diminish, leading to a mass immigration of Alexandrian Jews to Rome, as well as other Mediterranean and North African cities. By the beginning of the Byzantine era, the Jewish population had again increased, but suffered from the persecutions of the Christian Church.

During the subsequent Muslim conquest of Egypt, the number of Jews in Alexandria increased greatly, with some estimates numbering around 400,000.^[4][5] Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and the ensuing Six-Day War in 1967, almost all of Alexandria's Jewish population were expelled from the country and emigrated to Israel.^[6]