Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Management

Conservation and Revival of the Marginalized Jewish Cultural Heritage of Alexandria, Egypt, through Digitization Technology
Manal M. Abdelhamid

Abstract
Protecting the cultural heritage has become an important global issue that led many organizations to launch different initiatives for achieving this objective. Alexandria is a Mediterranean city that was founded by Alexander The Great in 331 B.C. and continued as a great port until the modern era, hence owning a rich various cultural heritage. The Jews constituted an essential dynamic portion of the Alexandrian society, they integrated with the others, exercised important economical activities and participated in the urbanization of Alexandria, its streets still bear features of the Jews‟ existence including great synagogues, schools, hospitals, stores, villas as well as hundreds of documents and ceremonial artifacts. There were about fifteen synagogues in the city, but recently there are only two, the grand synagogue of Eliyaho Hanabi and Menasce temple in addition to the three Jewish cemeteries in Shatby and Azarita and some other buildings, but unfortunately, they are not documented, suffering vandalism and complete negligence because of the complicated political situation in the region that created hatred towards anything Jewish. The study reviews this priceless Jewish heritage of Alexandria, aiming to provide a new technological option to safeguard and revive it through creating a complete digital accessible database with broad customized applications that can be easily used by both researchers and tourists, hopefully that this idea can be adopted by the government to highlight this missing part of Alexandria‟s cultural identity and hence enriching Alexandria‟s image and attractiveness as a tourist destination.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jthm.v8n1a3