Jacques Hassoun was born in Alexandria in 1936 and died in Paris in 1999. He was a psychoanalyst and a political activist with Marxist leanings. Born into an observant family, he was knowledgeable in Jewish law and remained attached to Judaism and to Egypt throughout his life. He spoke Arabic and French fluently. A militant from the age of fifteen, Hassoun was member first of Dror, a Marxist Zionist group and later of Hadeto, the clandestine movement for the liberation of Egypt led by Henri Curiel. His Communist activities led to his arrest at eighteen, a six-month jail sentence…