Free Republic

Dignitaries from Israel and abroad fly in for Sunday’s rededication. After a year-and-a-half of careful restoration work by the Egyptian authorities, the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo is set to be rededicated on Sunday. The 19th-century synagogue and adjacent yeshiva, which stand on the site where Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the Rambam, worked and worshiped more than 800 years ago, was restored by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). According to the Egyptian press, the restoration of the synagogue is part of a plan by the SCA to restore all the major religious sites in Egypt, including 10 synagogues. The...

(IsraelNN.com) The Egyptian government has announced that it will not allow Jews to pray in Cairo's newly-restored Maimonides Synagogue, in retaliation for Israel's security response to Arab rioting on the Temple Mount. “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is part of the heritage of the Palestinian Arabs and Israel is not entitled to block them from it,” said Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. A Qatari newspaper quoted Hawass in a telephone interview late last week as saying the Maimonides Synagogue would be treated an an Egyptian antiquity, not a Jewish house of worship. Nor will he allow the...