There are only three Jewish women left in Egypt, the youngest of whom is 70. But Egypt has, in recent years, restored five synagogues to their former glory, with seven or eight more still in disrepair.
The most recent restoration was the Ibn Ezra Synagogue which re-opened last week. To tourists only, of course.
While Egypt is presiding over these multi-million dollar restorations, Egypt's Muslims are complaining that the government is destroying Islamic historic sites to make way for development projects.
Muslims are seeing not only Jewish but Christian, Roman, Greek, and Pharaonic antiquities being preserved, while laws to preserve Islamic sites are apparently much more onerous. Resentment is being expressed in Arabic news media.
Egyptian media lists three reasons why Egypt's government is spending so much money and time restoring Jewish synagogues and preserving the Jewish cemetery even as a Muslim cemetery is being relocated for development work.
One reason is that the Egyptians want to stay on the good side of the US, and they think (probably because Jews run the world) that restoring synagogue will pay political dividends.
The second is that it is simply to promote tourism. Tourism went down after the last coup, and they want to attract Jews to Cairo..
The third reason is to make President Sisi look moderate to the world and to his own people. This is the sort of no-risk move that makes him look tolerant of a virtually nonexistent minority. And in 2018, Sisi passed a law allowing him to stay in office until 2030, and the optics were bad - he wants to change them
All three of the reasons are using Jews as a means to an end.
