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North African Jewish Heritage: Ancient Roots Face Modern Decline
Monday 2 September 2019, by
The presence of the Jewish community in North Africa dates back to the 3rd century BC. The fruit of several waves of immigration, North African Judaism has left a significant imprint on Jewish history, even if its origin is little known and continues to be debated among historians. But after several millennia of presence and resistance in North Africa, the Jewish community seems to be slowly dying out.
It is in Carthage, today a suburb of Tunis, that we find the first traces of a Jewish presence in North Africa. It will have to wait until the 6th century BC to see Jews landing in Djerba, not far from Carthage, fleeing Judea after the destruction of their first temple by Nebuchadnezzar. Several thousand of them found refuge in this city which houses, moreover, the oldest synagogue on the African continent (the Ghriba). It has remained until today a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Jews.
In Cap Bon, 110 km away, remains have been discovered, thus proving the immigration of Jews in the region between the 4th and 5th centuries BC.
Egypt has also known this immigration on its territory. 100,000 Jews were deported from Israel to Egypt. This was in the 3rd century BC. The work of Flavius Josephus gives a good account of the history in "The Jewish War".
According to francetvinfo, between the persecutions of Christians and resistance to the Arab invader, the different Jewish communities dispersed around the Mediterranean. The massive arrival of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, driven out by the persecutions of the Inquisition, on the coasts of Morocco and Algeria, allowed Judaism to revive in North Africa. The families bearing the names of Toledano, Cordoba, Berdugo testify to these Iberian roots.
In 1948, many Jews left Morocco and Tunisia and scattered in Israel, Canada and the United States. Others, more precisely those from Algeria, will be "repatriated" to metropolitan France. With the 1960s, in the midst of the fervor of independence, they left the Maghreb. There are now only some 5,000 scattered throughout North Africa.