Albert Gabbai

Gabbai then traveled to Jerusalem to the Shehebar Sephardic Center under Rabbi Sam Kassin to be ordained a rabbi in the Sephardic tradition. He graduated SSC in 1989.

Rabbi Albert E. (Abraham) Gabbai is an American rabbi, serving as the rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue Congregation Mikveh Israel since 1988. Mikveh Israel was founded in 1740, and is the second-oldest active congregation in the United States.

Since 1988 Gabbai has been the rabbi of the Spanish-Portuguese Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia.

From 1983 to 1986 Gabbai was the assistant hazzan of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York. Congregation Shearith Israel is a Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. It is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States.

In Paris Gabbai met his family and applied for refugee status to come to the United States. After about a year Gabbai arrived in New York City in 1971.

In June 1970 under pressure from the outside, they were let go. They were taken from the prison camp directly to the airport, there was no time to stop at home to collect their possessions and were flown to Paris. Their mothers, wives and children followed a few weeks later.

Gabbai is a native of Cairo, Egypt. Following the Six-day War in 1967, Gabbai, who was 18 years old at the time, was arrested and sent to prison in Egypt for three years. After being released he went to France and then to the United States.

In 1967 Gabbai was 18 years old and in high school. He and the rest of the family were awaiting visas to be permitted to leave Egypt when the Six-Day War broke out.

After the war broke out, and before they could leave, Gabbai and his three brothers were rounded up by the secret service and put in prison camps. First, they took two of his older brothers in June 1967 and a few weeks later they came back for him and another brother. There was no due process, no charges, no trial, and no right to an attorney, they remained in prison till June 1970.

Gabbai was born in Egypt in 1949 to Jewish immigrant parents. His father was born in Baghdad to a family of rabbis. He came to Egypt as a child with his family, and traded in silk shirts. Gabbai's mother came from a family originally from Leghorn, Italy. They met and married in Egypt.

Life in Egypt was generally good for Jews up until the 1940s and 50s. The situation became more strenuous until eventually, the Jews started to leave and immigrate to other countries. Gabbai's four brothers left before 1967 and went to the USA where they became US citizens. Gabbai, three brothers, two sisters, and their widowed mother stayed behind. Their father had died years earlier.