A native of Tanta (Ṭantah), Egypt, Félix Benzakein was born on September 30, 1895 to a family from Morocco that had arrived in Egypt around the year 1865. He attended the Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Tanta, and in 1916, after graduating from the Faculty of Law at Cairo University, embarked on a prosperous legal career, accredited by both the Egyptian law courts and the mixed-courts. Benzakein defended Maurice Fargeon in the defamation suit brought against him by the German embassy in 1934 and earned widespread admiration for his speeches during the t…