A Personal Exodus Out of Egypt — Nadia Massuda

Nadia Massuda (Photo by Steve Ruark)

It’s a story that’s been told by generations of Jews for millennia at Passover seders across the world: the exodus of the Children of Israel from the slavery and cruelty of Egypt to the Promised Land, followed by their 40 years of wandering.

But for Nadia Massuda, the story of the Jews hastily leaving Pharaoh’s Egypt while fearing for their lives is far more than a biblical tale.

It’s a personal one.

“We had a joke that we slept through Moses’ alarm,” says Massuda, 62, a Pikesville resident who was born in Egypt and came to the U.S. in 1968. “The Haggadah says every Jew should pretend they left Egypt. We don’t have to pretend.”

Massuda’s “exodus” from Egypt is a modern-day reminder of how harrowing immigrants’ journeys can be.

Before the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952, Egypt’s Jews numbered nearly 100,000, encompassing a mixture of Mizrahim, or Eastern Jews, Sephardim from around the Mediterranean Sea coastline and Ashkenazic immigrants from Eastern Europe. The founding of Israel in 1948 and the regional wars of 1956 and 1967 exacerbated anti-Semitism, prompting the majority of Egyptian Jews to leave their homeland.

By the 1970s, every Jewish school, hospital and club had been closed. (In 2016, Magda Tania Haroun, head of Egypt’s Jewish community, said there were only six Jews remaining in the country, all of them women over the age of 65.)

As a fifth-generation Cairo Jew growing up before 1967’s Six Day War, Massuda spoke French at home and learned some Arabic. While anti-Semitism was always present, she says her family regularly attended synagogue and celebrated all of the Jewish holidays.

“Purim was low-key,” recalls Massuda. “You didn’t want to point out the fact that you were Jewish.”

Massuda vividly recalls how her life drastically changed after the Six Day War, when she was 12.

“The war broke out on a Monday,” she says. “At 2 p.m., armed guards came banging on the door. They gathered up all the men ages 18 to 50. They took my dad.”

Fortunately, Massuda’s family also had Italian citizenship through her grandfather. After being released, her father fled to Italy, leaving Massuda, her mother, younger brother and sister in Egypt.

During that time, Massuda says her neighbors would come to the house to look in on the family.

“People would call us names during the day, but at night they would knock on the door and ask us what we needed,” she recalls. “As soon as we could, we left with just our clothing on our backs. We couldn’t let anyone know we were leaving.”

Massuda and her family arrived in Baltimore in 1968 speaking very little English — “I only knew words like ‘fork’ and ‘spoon,’” she says.

Massuda credits Baltimore’s Jewish Family Services, today known as Jewish Community Services, for easing her family’s transition to life in the U.S.

“JFS really went out of their way to make us feel comfortable. It was a nice, warm reception,” she says. “I was a foreigner, but I did not feel like an outsider.”

Although she uses a wheelchair due to a childhood case of polio, Massuda hasn’t let her disability stop her. She graduated from the University of Baltimore and went on to a successful career with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

In 2002, she represented Maryland in the Ms. Wheelchair America competition, in part as an opportunity to teach children about what it’s like to have a disability.

A member of Chizuk Amuno Congregation for 35 years, Massuda counsels new immigrants to “learn how to speak the language and assimilate as much as you can.”

“Immigrants are the backbone of this country,” says Massuda. “Be part of the melting pot.”

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