SAVING A CEMETERY WHERE OUR ANCESTORS ARE BURIED
CLEMENT SOFFER
HASHEM HAS A VERY EFFICIENT AND WELL-EXECUTED PLAN FOR US TO FULFILL HIS WISHES. HE PROVIDES US WITH OPPORTUNITIES TO WIN REWARDS, BUT IT IS UP TO US TO RECOGNIZE HIS MESSAGES AND THEN TO TAKE THE BALL AND RUN WITH IT—THUS SCORING A HOME RUN!
In the spring of 1989, I received a call from a dear friend of mine, Jack Rosenthal. He asked me to join him at a brunch with our local Congressman, Bob Mrazek, at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, to help him with his reelection campaign fundraising. At the time I was living in Sands Point, NY. I attended the brunch and met the Congressman’s family. We had a long and warm discussion for several hours. We clicked well, as we had many common thoughts and ideas.
Several months later I received a visit at my office from Rabbi Eliyahu Castro of Tel Aviv and Rabbi Eliezer Stern, President of Asra Kadisha from Monsey, NY. They informed me that in Cairo, Egypt, the El Bassatine Jewish Cemetery, where many of our ancestors are buried, was about to be destroyed. The government of Egypt was building a road that would go through El Bassatine to ease the movement of traffic around Cairo. The Rabbis hoped that I would be able to stop the Egyptian government from demolishing this holy, precious ground where hundreds of thousands of Jewish souls were buried. Truth be told, I was a clothing manufacturer with no idea how to stop the bulldozers from destroying that cemetery.
I promised to look into it, but I did not know where to start. I called upon Congressman Steven Solarz from Brooklyn. He was the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee. I asked him to connect me with either President Hosni Mubarak or any of his ministers. Two weeks later I went with Congressman Solarz to meet Osama El baz, the personal adviser to President Mubarak, at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, DC.
I was given ten minutes for the meeting. It lasted an hour and a half. We discovered that Osama El baz was born in the same city that I was born in, Heliopolis, and he went to the same schools, country clubs, and cinemas as I did. We reminisced about nostalgic times until I finally asked him to save the cemetery.
He said in order to reroute the highway he would need 100 million dollars from me! I explained that I did not have that kind of money. He then named 10 of the richest Jews in the world (at that time) and told me to ask them to pay ten million dollars each. My response was that they might donate that money for Jews that were alive and in need of help, but that they would probably not give money for the deceased.
I walked out of the embassy devastated, crying in my soul, knowing that my failure would condemn my ancestors to oblivion! I walked with Congressman Solarz across the street and down stairs to the government public people movers used by Congressmen and their staff to circulate between the congressional buildings. The cars are self-moving, seating 4 people in each. The doors opened in front of us and sitting in that car was Congressman Bob Mrazek. He recognized me and expressed surprise that I was in Washington and had not visited him. I explained the devastation I just suffered. He then explained to me that he sits on the House Appropriations committee, and he signs the check for the 2.3 billion dollars that Egypt receives yearly from the US. He explained that while Congressman Solarz, as Foreign Relations Chairman, must deal diplomatically with the Egypt government, he was capable of punishing them.
Only Hashem could have orchestrated my meeting with Congressman Mrazek that day. First, I had to attend a brunch a few months earlier with a Congressman that I knew very little about. My ten minute meeting at the Embassy had to last an hour and a half. Then Congressman Solarz had to take me to the people movers, which had to stop right in front of the car that Congressman Mrazek was in. Congressman Mrazek had to leave the halls of Congress at exactly the right moment and sit in the right car for him to see me standing on the platform. No one can time a reunion so meticulously and so perfectly except Hashem.
You make an effort and Hashem will do the rest! The end result was Congressman Mrazek and I lobbied the rest of the House Appropriation Committee members to threaten Egypt with losing the 2.3 billion dollars they receive as aid from the USA, if they did not save the Jewish cemetery. I received a unanimous vote that same day from the entire committee. I was so happy—but it was short lived, as I was told I needed the approval of the Senate Appropriations Committee to become effective. I didn’t know any senators who sit on the Appropriation Committee. I appealed to Hashem to guide me. This time help came in a different format. That Shabbat, (I had moved to Manhattan), I prayed at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in the Sephardic minyan. My dear friend, Edmond Safra A”H, was there. I sat next to him and I expressed my sadness at being so close to accomplishing this mitzvah of Hesed Shel Emet yet so far from completing it—as I could not get the Senate approval. He explained to me that he was the chairman that year of a huge party for the global IMF, International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. It was in two weeks and many senators and congressmen, even the vice president, would be there. He invited me and my wife to attend and assured me we would find a senator to assist me.
Two weeks later I was standing next to Edmond in that glorious reception line to greet the guests. The first senator who came along was Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. Edmond asked him if he sat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he answered affirmatively. Edmond then introduced me as his relative and told him that I wished to speak with him. Senator Lautenberg invited me to visit him the following day. During my visit I explained that I had obtained unanimous approval from the House of Representatives and needed the senate to do the same to save a huge ancient Jewish cemetery in Egypt. I told him that destroying the cemetery was a blatant violation of human rights. He agreed and so did all the senators on his committee. I had the unanimous approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives!
Senator Daniel Inouye and Senator Bob Kestin informed the Egyptian Embassy that they would no longer receive the 2 billion 300 million dollars that they received each year if they destroyed the cemetery.
Ten days later I had an appointment at the Egyptian Embassy. Egypt agreed to safeguard the cemetery and to build a suspension bridge with no poles in the cemetery and to evict over 5,000 squatters living on top of the graves.
When I visited the cemetery for the first time I was disheartened to see that all the marble and granite slabs identifying the names on the graves had been stolen. I gave instructions to have walls and gates built and to clean up the massive amount of garbage left by the squatters at a very prohibitive cost. I was helped with these funds by two angels, Mr. Edmond Safra A”H and Mr. Nessim Gaon of Geneva A”H.
Asra Kadisha (The Committee for the Preservation of Gravesites) Rabbi Chizkiya Kalmanowitz was instrumental in overseeing the entire restoration of the cemetery and the construction of the suspension bridge according to Din halacha. Without his management I do not know how I could have accomplished this mitzvah. I visited Egypt numerous times just to see the progress.
In 1992 I left this cemetery very clean and gave the keys and the responsibility to Carmen Weinstein, then president of the small Jewish community in Egypt, to maintain. Unfortunately she passed away several years later.
The lesson to learn: Hashem assigns a mitzvah, and lucky is the person who recognizes this and acts on it, for he (or she)will open all the doors necessary to succeed as long as he has the will to see it through.
Clement Soffer was expelled from Egypt in 1957 and came to the USA by himself. He was sponsored by Mirrer Yeshiva. He was instrumental in building Ahavah ve Ahva, as well as synagogues in Florida. He helped secure the freedom of 4,500 Jews from Syria and has salvaged Jewish Egyptian cemeteries, as well as other cemeteries around the world.
