Hi, my name is Sharona Zilberstein, I am a doctoral student in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in University of Haifa. Supervised and guided by Prof. Emeritus Uri Kupferschmidt.

I explore the narrative and memory design of the exodus of the Jews of Egypt from their private point of view, as documented in private photographs and family albums, within the historical context of the history of the Jews in twentieth-century Egypt. The main research question is: What can be learned from private photo albums of Jews from Egypt about their lives before they left, and the circumstances of their departure from Egypt, and how was the memory of immigration and the memory of the country of origin (Egypt) shaped in these albums?The study of the visual narrative and the memory design of Egyptian Jews based on family photo albums will allow, I hope, an innovative, original and special quality look at the way of life of Egyptian Jews in the twentieth century, and the process of their departure and ‘descent’ of life in Egypt. The analysis of the albums contributes a new and ‘bottom-up’ look at the history written so far about the Jews of Egypt who relied, for the most part, on official and institutional textual sources.