Born | Cairo, Egypt, 1941 |
Today | Retired physicist living in Palo Alto, California |
Expertise | Jewish life in Cairo; the 1956 Suez crisis and the departure of Egypt's Jews; life as stateless refugees in France |
Speaks to | High schools, universities, Jewish day schools, and synagogues |
Albert Bivas was born in Cairo in 1941 into a prominent Sephardic Jewish family. His father was a stockbroker who founded a textile factory and export business, and Albert grew up in Zamalek, an elegant neighborhood on an island in the Nile. French was his first language, and he attended a French lycée where students learned both French and Egyptian history. He remembers family picnics at the pyramids, visits to relatives in the busy Jewish Quarter, and a grandfather who spoke Turkish, Arabic, and Ladino.
As pressure on Egypt's Jews grew under Gamal Abdel Nasser, the family's situation became dangerous. In 1956 Albert and his siblings were sent to France, and their parents followed. His father was forced to sell the factory far below its value, the family's property was lost, and they left on one way travel papers with no right to return. In France the family of seven lived as stateless refugees for eight years with very little money, while relatives scattered to Israel, England, the United States, Australia, and Brazil.
Albert later settled in the United States, married, and built a career as a physicist before retiring in Palo Alto, where he lives with his wife, Natalie. He has long been part of JIMENA's Speakers Bureau, answering questions from San Francisco high school students as early as 2010 and speaking at universities, synagogues, and schools. He speaks for the roughly one million Jews displaced from the Middle East and North Africa, and he encourages students to understand how a thriving community disappeared.
Speaking Topics
What Albert talks about
1. Growing up in cosmopolitan Cairo
French speaking Jewish family life in Zamalek in the 1940s and 1950s.
2. 1956 and the end of a community
How Egypt's Jews lost their homes, businesses, and citizenship after the Suez crisis.
3. Stateless in France
Eight years as refugees without citizenship, and the family's scattering across the world.
4. One million displaced
The wider story of Jews who left the Middle East and North Africa in the twentieth century.
Select Talks
Selected talks and appearances
2019 | The New Yorker: interviewed by Peter Kessler for My House in Cairo, on his family's building in Cairo (summarized by Point of No Return) |
2017 | Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, Palo Alto (JIMENA) |
2016 | Stanford University; Congregation Shir Hadash, Los Gatos (JIMENA) |
2014 | University of Pittsburgh, JUC Hillel: film screening and talk (JIMENA) |
2011 | J. The Jewish News of Northern California: interviewed by Dan Pine on Bay Area Jews from Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia watching the Arab Spring |
These are a selection of Albert’s talks. Albert has given many more, at high schools, universities, Jewish day schools, synagogues, and national press in the United States.
Publications and Media
Read, watch, and listen
Article
Bay Area Jews from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia worry about their former Arab homelands
J. The Jewish News of Northern California profiles Bivas and other Bay Area Jews from North Africa, September 2011. Read in J.
Article
Tales of the spiderweb building in Cairo
Point of No Return summary of Peter Kessler's New Yorker essay about the Cairo apartment building where the Bivas family lived, May 2019. Read the summary
Video
Albert Bivas taking questions from high school students
JIMENA Media recording of Bivas speaking with San Francisco high school students, 2010. Watch on Vimeo
Affiliations
Organizations
- JIMENA Speakers Bureau
- JIMENA Oral History and Digital Experience Project
Book Albert
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To invite Albert Bivas to your school, university, congregation, or organization, use the Book Speaker button above or email info@jimena.org.