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Most sociological and ethnographical studies of Israeli Mizrahim are disconnected from those of Sephardic and MENA Jewish communities worldwide. Rooted in academic cultures that predate the country's establishment, Mizrahi history in Israel is often deemed either a success story or a shameful story of marginalization in these communities' global histories, and as a sui generis case of Jewish migration. We trace the early origins of this seemingly arbitrary disconnect to nineteenth-century European scholarship on "Sephardic" turned "Oriental" Jews and follow its subsequent entrenchment not only in Mandate Palestine and Israel but also in the United States. By focusing on key scholars working across transregional networks, we show how a Sephardic bias evolved into disciplinary divisions that have constrained the development of MENA Jewish studies. Finally, we call for renewed attention to the historical and contemporary patterns of separation, diffusion, and diasporic mobility that have long characterized MENA Jewish communities.

Family of Aliza Mamo, soon turning 106, shares her inspiring journey from Djerba to Israel.

Dozens of Tunisians have demanded accountability for a Tunisian-Israeli citizen who served in the Israeli occupation army during the war on the besieged Gaza Strip. Photos and videoclips of a Tunis…

Le chanteur tunisien d’origine juive, identifié comme Sahi Maimoun, est au centre d’une vive controverse après la diffusion d’images le

‘Comme à Tunis’ was an evening curated by Victoria Jonathan around the work of Tunisian artist Rafram Chaddad, on 14 October 2024 at the Book Bar (Hôtel Grand Amour), in conjunction with Paris Art Week. Drawing on everyday life and investing public spaces, Rafram’s work evokes exile, migration, the fragility of borders, and the mutability of identities. This roundtable, co-chaired with Joseph Hirsch (mahJ), focuses on Rafram Chaddad’s book The Good Seven Years, a deeply original artistic work on the traces of Tunisia’s Jewish minority that almost disappeared in the twentieth century.

The article describes Jewish communities’ stances in relation to Zionist movements in France and in territories administered by France that were primarily populated by Muslims. It considers the actions of North Africa Jews in the Zionist movement, particularly during the Second World War, and how the war influenced Zionism. The Jewish communities in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia had different statuses influenced by and mirrored in the various colonial administrations, local authorities, and populations. Besides, those differences related to their degree of involvement with Zionism, which was anything but homogeneous and ranged from strong support to a lack of interest. Based on material collected from various archives (mainly Yad Vashem and the Central Zionist Archives), the article uses a selection of testimonies that describe the diversity of North African Jewish communities and their different levels of engagement with Zionist activities. In this way, the stories of these actors and witnesses will directly reveal the heterogeneous worlds of Judaism and Zionism in North Africa. The article also confirms the diversity of the French Empire despite the shared concept of assimilation and the impact of the colonial administration, that was organized in different ways depending on the local situation and on social relations in North African societies.

The article examines the Jewish Arabic dialects of Gabes and Djerba, two geographically proximate yet linguistically distinct varieties spoken in southern Tunisia. The study highlights significant phonological differences, such as the vowel inventory and the realisation of sibilants, with Jewish Gabes featuring three phonemic vowels and retroflex sibilants, while Jewish Djerba exhibits a reduced vowel system and fronted palatal sibilants. Syntactically, the dialects differ in their future tense markers; Jewish Gabes employs both the particle bāš and the grammaticalised participle ḥabb, while Jewish Djerba uses ḥa, possibly derived from ḥabb. Both dialects also display topicalisation strategies, including left dislocation and non-resumptive topicalisation akin to the ‘Chinese-style topic construction’. The study combines linguistic analysis with field recordings and offers insights into the diachronic and sociolinguistic aspects of these dialects, reflecting the cultural and historical dynamics of Jewish communities in North Africa.

In North Africa, the long-term coexistence between Jews and Muslims generated many interfaith crossings. It was not uncommon for the followers of one religion to visit a shrine of the other, in order to obtain baraka (divine grace). This phenomenon has mostly disappeared throughout the Maghreb, but it persists on the island of Djerba (southern Tunisia), where over a thousand Jews are still living. Every year, for the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, a pilgrimage gathers together thousands of Jewish pilgrims in the Ghriba synagogue. Many come from abroad, notably from France and Israel, where many Tunisian Jews migrated after the mid-20th century. Some Muslims also participate at different moments of the pilgrimage. Based on historical research and on ethnographic work carried out in 2014 and 2022, this article elucidates a series of paradoxes that make the singularity of this holy place. Here the interactions between Jews and Muslims at the shrine are characterized by an intense conviviality. Yet, during the last decades this site has been affected by tangible eruptions of bloody violence by Islamist terrorists. The structure of the pilgrimage seems to rest on a delicate balance between local and external forces. More generally, the Ghriba pilgrimage is crossed by major political dynamics, and is recurrently affected by the turmoil of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This article examines the applicability of mathematical models traditionally utilized in marketing innovation to the planning and analysis of urban events, with the Ghriba Pilgrimage in Djerba serving as a case study. Marketing innovation models, incl

Des autocars déversent des grappes de visiteurs à l’entrée de la Ghriba en cette après-midi mbre. Des Tunisiens des quatre coins du pays, des touristes de l’Algérie voisine et d’ailleurs raffolent...

Questo contributo si prefigge lo scopo di presentare uno fra i più noti di questi casi: il pellegrinaggio alla sinagoga della Ghriba a Djerba per la festa ebraica di Lag Ba’Omer . Si tratta di un rituale religioso in un certo senso condiviso, attraverso il quale è possibile rintracciare aspetti plurali per quanto concerne le nazionalità e le componenti religiose, incoraggiati dalla perifericità intesa in senso geografico, religioso e politico (Albera, Couroucli, 2009; Albera, Pénicaud, 2017). Lo Stato tunisino sostiene il pellegrinaggio, che trasmette un’immagine positiva del paese, in quanto luogo di tolleranza e fraternità nella diversità (Boissevain, Isnart, 2017) e favorisce un certo tipo di turismo religioso (Riecou, Souissi, 2016). Questa immagine si impone nonostante l’evento festivo sia stato macchiato a più riprese dal sangue a causa di attacchi terroristici, come quelli del maggio 2023 (Dumas, 2023), del 2002 e del 1985, oltre che percorso dai riverberi delle tensioni israelo-palestinesi, al punto che Dionigi Albera e Manoël Pénicaud (2022) riferiscono di un «Paradoxical Pilgrimage». Il capitolo si compone di tre paragrafi. Nel primo si intende analizzare i miti fondativi della Ghriba. Il secondo è dedicato alle connessioni tra dimensione religiosa e quella sociale di tale pellegrinaggio, soffermandosi sulla convivenza tra gli ebrei e i musulmani a partire dalla condivisione dei riti e delle cerimonie. Nel terzo paragrafo si vuole evidenziare come il pellegrinaggio alla Ghriba possa essere inserito in una serie di tappe che “preparano” a esso, e dunque che è inscritto in un percorso più ampio e in un processo più generale, di cui è il culmine, per altro il più importante e il suo ruolo nel potenziamento del turismo tunisino. Quello conclusivo sintetizza la multidimensionalità del pellegrinaggio e il suo ruolo nella promozione dell’economia tunisina.

Le workshop international « Connectivités djerbiennes : Globalisations méditerranéennes des Juifs de Djerba » que nous avons co-organisé, initialement prévu en mars 2020 à l'IMéRA à Marseille, s'est finalement tenu en présentiel les 27 et 28 juin 2022. Son objectif était d'inaugurer une recherche collective et pluridisciplinaire menée dans le cadre d'un programme financé par l'A*Midex (Aix-Marseille univ.) en partenariat avec le Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (CRFJ) et l'Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (IRMC) à Tunis. Les difficultés d'organisation d'événements internationaux durant la pandémie COVID-19 ont conduit à reporter cet atelier au terme de ce programme, même si un certain nombre d'événements intermédiaires 3 ont permis de jalonner la mise en dialogue des différentes recherches effectuées par les membres du groupe. Celui-ci se compose d'universitaires français, israéliens et tunisiens, en mesure d'appréhender la diaspora des Juifs de Djerba dans ses points d'ancrages principaux, qui établissent entre eux diverses connectivités, et dessinent de façon originale une globalisation méditerranéenne nourrie d'échanges sud-sud.

For the past 14 years, the JDC-supported Kanfei Yonah school in Djerba, Tunisia, has given young girls and women access to education.

Each egg, a wish on the Jewish pilgrimage to the strange Tunisian synagogue

The Berber people, natives of the Maghreb region, are located on the island of Djerba, where Jewish culture is firmly established. In addition, traces of connection with Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish community, persist throughout the island. The island of Djerba is the only holy place for Jews outside Jerusalem. It is also well known as the ‘Antechamber of Jerusalem’ and preserves its traces relatively well. Therefore, Djerba Island is a very meaningful place as it can look at the exchanges of Jewish diaspora civilization, coexistence, and win-win relationship between Islam and Jews, and Berber. In order to understand the meaning of ‘Antechamber of Jerusalem’, this paper aims to briefly examine the Jewish situation in three Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) before and after French colonial rule, and to examine the current situation of Jews in the region developed in history. Next, we will assess the characteristics of the Jewish community on the island of Djerba, called the ‘Antechamber of Jerusalem’. Like the rest of the Maghreb region, the island of Djerba is also a place of cultural division. Nevertheless, the memory of Jerusalem remains the strongest in history on the island of Djerba. In this sense, it seems meaningful to examine the issue of epistemological ‘rupture or 'continuity’. This shows how Jews were able to coexist and co-exist on the island of Djerba, the ‘Antechamber of Jerusalem’, and how the French colonization and subsequent process led to a conflict and a ‘rupture’ in the coexistence. Therefore, through this paper, we will be able to understand the Jewish cultural identity of the island of Djerba, coexistence, and conflict of civilization