Stories
Here you will find extracts of interviews with the Jews of Sudan. They are arranged in a vaguely chronological order, although this is by no means exact.
All of these 'stories' come from interviews with members of the community that I carried out between 2015 and 2019. I have redacted, edited and in some cases rearranged their content, to make them easily readable online. I haven't added or changed any information from the original conversations, and I hope that each person's voice comes through in these very short extracts.
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All stories have kindly been translated into Arabic by the Sudan Memory Project.
While buying shoes was the norm, most women in Sudan tailored their own dresses.
Shoe Shops and Dress Makers
Some stories of daily life in Sudan
Every Day A Man Comes In The Morning With His Donkey
I love a good love story, and these are three of my favourites
Weddings
Rabbi Massoud Elbaz arrived in Sudan in 1956 from Egypt, where he served until the formal end of the community
A Very Simple, Very Modern Rabbi
Juju Abboudi, my grandmother, told me stories of wonderful day trips by the Nile
The Garden Between the Niles
In 1956 public and political attitudes began to change, with antisemitism fuelled by Nasserism starting to take hold in Sudan
Miss Khartoum 1956