The Jewish Community of Algeria

Algeria

الجمهورية الجزائرية الديمقراطية الشعبية  - People's Democratic Republic of Algeria

A country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. 

The Jews of Algeria

200 | The Phoenician Mariners

Like many of the Jews who wound up in North Africa, the first Jews to disembark on the shores of Algeria arrived there in Phoenician merchant ships. These galleys were the pinnacle of technology in the second and first millennia BCE, and their trademark – the figure of a horse at their prow – was to be seen at any port that mattered in the ancient Near East. At these ports the ancient Phoenicians unloaded their wares – purple-dyed fabrics, gemstones, ivory and glass tiles.
The Bible identifies the Phoenicians as the people of the cities of Tyre and Sidon, in Southern Lebanon, and describes warm relations between King Solomon and Hiram, King of Tyre and Sidon. The Bible even tells that the latter provided the cedar wood used to build the First Temple in Jerusalem. The biblical narrative is consistent with a well-known tradition held by the Jews of Algerian city of Constantine (known in antiquity as Cirta), according to which Jews lived in the city as early as the First Temple era and maintained trading ties with the Hebrew kingdom.

The earliest archeological evidence dates the existence of a Jewish community in modern-day Algeria to the early Roman period. Jewish tombstones dating to the second century CE were found in the cities of Constantine and Setif. Other cities have yielded remains of synagogues dating to the fourth century CE.

693 | Jews and Dhimmi

In the seventh century a new chapter began in the annals of the great religions with the Islamic conquests, which spread out from the Arabian peninsula, reaching as far as North Africa and Spain. Standing against the armies of the Muslim general Uqba bin Nafe were forces from the Byzantine Empire as well as Berber tribes led by Queen Dahia al-Kahina, who was of Jewish extraction. According to legend, the death in 693 of the Queen, whose beauty and courage were the subject of many tales, marked the dawn of Muslim rule in the lands of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.)
Under Muslim rule the Jews were awarded the status of dhimmi (a protected, if inferior class). This status allowed them to maintain their religion, but limited their legal rights and laid various obligations and restrictions on them, among which were the requirement to host and feed any Muslim traveler for three days and a prohibition on riding horses, a right reserved for Muslims alone.

During the Muslim conquest Jewish communities formed in Algeria, particularly in the coastal cities of M'Sila and Tlemcen. These communities maintained close religious ties with Jewish congregations around the world, from Fez in Morocco, through the Geonim groups of Jewish sages who resided in the Land of Israel all the way to the famous yeshivas of Sura and Pumbedita in the territory of modern Iraq to the east.

Two Jewish sages of Algerian origin have greatly influenced Jewish thought throughout the ages: philologist Judah ibn-Kuraish, who lived in the tenth century and was the first to comparatively study the Semitic languages (including Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic); and Rabbi Isaac Alfasi (aka Rif), who lived in the 11th century and is considered, along with Maimonides and Rabbi Asher Yechiel (Rash) to be one of the leading authorities of Jewish halacha.


1121 | The Jewish Trail of Gold

In 1121 the Muslim religious preacher Abdallah ibn Tumart gave a sermon in which he claimed to be the Mehdi, which means “The one guided by God”, and that his destiny was to save the world from violence and injustice. As typical historical irony would have it, the dynasty founded by Ibn Tumart, known as the Almohad, was the cruelest of all Islamic kingdoms. They reserved the worst of their fury for Jews and Christians, who were required to choose between forced conversion, death, or expulsion. During the reign of the Almohad dynasty, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Jewish community of Tlemcen was completely destroyed.

After the Almohad dynasty crumbled, it was replaced by another Muslim dynasty, the Zianids, whose attitude towards Jews was far more tolerant. Under their reign the Jewish communities in Algeria recovered, mostly thanks to a thin stream of Jewish migrants, fleeing Spain and the Christian Reconquista.

During these years extensive trading ties were forged between the coastal cities of Algeria and the region of Catalonia in Spain, mostly between rich Jewish merchants from Barcelona and Majorca who had settled on the Algerian coast and the Spanish kings. The trust of the latter in the Jews was so great, that they appointed some of them as delegates to the Muslim courts of law in Africa. Among the most famous of these delegates were the brothers Abraham and Samuel bin Jalil. In the late 14th and early 15th centuries the city of Tlemcen rose to prominence, being the final stop on the “Sudanese Gold Trail,” which the traders dubbed “The Jewish Road” due to Jewish predominance in the region.


1391 | Kn”a Brings Wisdom

In the year 1391 severe pogroms broke out in Spain, known in Jewish historiography as the Massacres of 5151 (after the number of the year according to the Jewish calendar) or Massacres of Kn'a (after the Hebrew name for year 5151), which led to a large wave of emigration by Jews from Spain to Algeria. Most immigrants came ashore in the city of Algiers, on the Mediterranean coast, and this city soon became preeminent among the Jewish communities of North Africa. But the different mentalities of the two groups – new arrivals from Spain and the local Jews – created a cultural barrier between the two populations. The elitist Spanish immigrants lived in a separate part of town and even built their own synagogue and cemetery. The gaps were evident even in local fashions. Unlike the native Jews, who wore turbans, the Spanish immigrants wore berets and hoods. However, even the greatest detractors of the Spanish immigrants admitted that their organizational skills and devotion to the study of Torah greatly strengthened the community institutions.

Among the Spanish refugees were some great scholars, among them R. Simeon ben Tzemach Duran (also known by the Hebrew acronym of Rabshatz) and R. Isaac ben Sheshet (Hebrew acronym of Ribash). The Rabshatz was famous for his love of medicine and philosophy, which he also passed on to his son, R. Solomon ben Simeon Duran (Hebrew acronym of Rashbash), who was considered one of the great sages of Algeria. Another important figure to arrive in Algeria with those fleeing the Kn”a pogroms was the physician R. Samuel al-Ashkar, who settled in Tlemcen, was a confidante of the Muslim ruler and served as the senior medical expert of the city.

Algerian economy also grew thanks to the Jewish immigrants from Spain, with the Jewish merchant unloading capes, grains and wool from a European ship docking in one of the ports often turning straight around to load it with ostrich feathers and African gold before it returned to Europe.


1541 | A Second Purim

The rulers of the Ottoman Empire made sure to exploit every possible resource of the countries they had conquered, and this principle was strictly adhered to in Algeria as well. In the early 16th century, the Turkish authorities began to enact harsh laws against Muslims and Jews alike. These laws stemmed not from any religious ideology, but from sheer greed.

The lot of Algerian Jews was even worse than that of Jews in other countries ruled by the Turks. They were accused of inciting against the authorities, were forced to quarter Ottoman soldiers in their homes and lived under constant existential threat. As Rabbi Solomon ben Simeon Duran wrote back in 15th century: “Murders of Jews are a frequent occurrence which goes utterly unpunished, and the killers walk free and boast of their deeds."

In the early 16th century Spanish and French forces invaded Algerian port cities, waging fierce battles against the local rulers and the ascendant Turkish forces. In 1509 the Spaniards conquered the city of Oran, in which a large Jewish community lived, and turned it into a Christian city. Thus, in bitter historical irony, the descendants of the Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492 found themselves once again living under Spanish rule. The Spanish conquerors treated the Jews of Oran harshly: The city's synagogue was turned into a church, and many soldiers rioted following the conquest, slaughtering the Jewish residents and raping their women. Many Jews abandoned the city.

In 1541 Charles V of Spain embarked on a campaign to conquer the port city of Algiers, but a rare sequence of natural disasters thwarted his designs. The Jews, fearful of the Spanish king who was notorious for his hostility to their faith, believed that God had intervened on their behalf and set the day of the failed invasion, the 4th of Cheshvan, as a second Purim and a holiday.


1700 | Elder of the Jews

Until the mid-19th century, the internal organization of the Jewish community in Algeria was under the control of the community leader, known as the Elder of the Jews. The mandate he received from the authorities was a broad one – from carrying out punishments decreed by rabbinical courts (in civil matters only; criminal law was in the hands of the authorities) to management of the synagogues and the various charity institutions.

The availability of rabbinical courts did not greatly impress Algerian Jews, who mostly preferred to take their cases to the Muslim civil courts. This phenomenon was condemned by the local rabbis, who published excoriations and even bans against those preferring Muslim law to Jewish halacha.
However, not every dispute was settled in the courts. Disagreements regarding prayer customs and texts, for instance, were solved through the “ttakanot” or “regulations” system, which gave each community the power to set its own customs. This system, zealously preserved for centuries, created an immensely rich cultural and religious variety, manifested in prayer versions, hymns and prayer collections composed in various languages, from the Jewish-Arabic, through Hebrew, to Ladino


1827 | All for a Debt

On April 30th 1827, several foreign consuls were gathered in the palace of Algerian ruler Hussein Dey. During the formal gathering, open to the general public, Hussein Dey asked the French consul, in a seemingly casual manner, when his country intended to pay its immense debt to the Algerian authorities – some 14 million francs. The Consul replied that no progress had taken place on the matter, and the Algerian ruler became furious and struck the envoy in the face with a fan handle. Another version of the story holds that Hussein Dey was trying to shoo away a bothersome fly and mistakenly hit the envoy. In any event, the diplomatic incident drew the anger of the French, who demanded that the Algerian ruler apologize. Hussein Dey refused, which the French took as casus belli. They consequently did indeed invade and conquer Algeria.

The story of France's debt to Algeria began 150 years earlier, with two Jewish families, the Bakris and the Busnachs. These two families were part of a large wave of Jewish immigrants who arrived during the 17th century from Livorno in Italy to the Algerian port cities in search of economic opportunity. At the end of the 18th century the descendants of the Bakri and Busnach families established one of the largest business concerns in Algeria, specializing in the wheat trade. Their main client was the government of France, which in the early 19th century desperately required food due to Napoleon's many wars.

Due to Napoleon's obsession with conquest, France incurred massive debts to the Bakri-Busnach concern. Since the firm financed its operations with loans taken from the ruler of Algeria, the ruler became the owner of its debt. Thus the affair became a prolonged economic conflict between the two countries, which deteriorated throughout the first three decades of the 19th century, ending with an occupation that lasted for 130 years.


1895 | A Jewish Francophile

In accordance with the policy guiding most enlightened European countries in the 19th century, which held that Jews were to receive all rights as individuals and none as a people, the French awarded the Jews of Algeria full equality under the law, and at the same time sought to blur their religious identity and assimilate them into the French nation.

Among all the Jewish communities in North Africa, none underwent such a radical and rapid cultural revolution as did the Algerian Jews under French rule. Many of the members of the Jewish community turned their backs on the world of tradition, adopting the garb, customs and language of the French, no longer using the two main languages associated with them until then: Hebrew and Jewish-Arabic.
One of the reasons for the rapid assimilation was education. Despite the establishment of chains of religious schools and the Alliance israélite universelle school network, which combined traditional studies and secular learning, many Jews sent their children to the French public schools, thus shaping their future identities.

The identification with French culture was expressed in the fields of literature and poetry as well. Many Jewish-Algerian poets and authors wrote in French.
Among the women who distinguished themselves in this field in the early 20th century were Elissa Rhaïs, Berthe Bénichou-Aboulker and Blanche Bendahan. By the early 20th century, the number of Jews in the professional class – lawyers, physicians, engineers, public officials, senior officers in the French military and more – significantly exceeded their share of the population. Concurrently, expressions of anti-Semitism never ceased, especially from the French settlers, who viewed the Jews as inferior and as a threat to their status. The escalation of anti-Semitism was also aided by the echoes of the Dreyfus affair, and parties with anti-Semitic ideologies which won elections in Oran and Constantine in 1897.


Number of Jews in Algeria Year
1830 26,000
1850 26,000
1866 38,500
1881 52,000
1914 96,000
1931 110,000
1948 120,000
1960 130,000
1963 4,000
2005 150


1940 | Unsung Heroes

In 1870 Adolph Cremieux, the Jewish-French Minister of Justice, signed an edict granting French citizenship to the 35,000 Jews of Algeria. In 1940 the “Cremieux Edict” was canceled by the Vichy regime, and the French nationality of the Jews of French colonies in North Africa, Algeria among them, was revoked. This was the signal for the campaign of de-legitimization waged against the Jews of Algeria during World War 2.

The Vichy regime, which was known for its collaboration with the Nazis and which controlled Algeria, gladly embraced the German race laws. Jewish students were expelled from universities and public schools. To illustrate: In 1941 Jews constituted 2% of the Algerian population, but over 37% of medical students, 24% of law students, 16% of science students and 10% of art students. Many Jews were dismissed from their jobs as doctors, lawyers, teachers and public officials.

On November 21, 1941 a law was passed banning Jews from owning real estate and calling for all their other property to be confiscated by the government in order to “remove all Jewish influence over the Algerian economy.” The Jews were cast out of Algerian society and left to the mercy of Muslims and French settlers, the latter of whom were glad to take revenge for decades of envy and hostility.

In reaction to this oppressive climate, several youngsters banded together and established a Jewish resistance movement. This movement had a crucial part to play in one of the boldest and most important operations of World War 2, Operation Torch. This was the code name for the Allied landing at Morocco and Algeria, as part of the overall campaign in North Africa. According to arrangement between the Jewish resistance and Allied agents, on November 8th, 1942 the resistance members were supposed to take control of Algiers and its beaches in order to enable the Allies to land and take the city from the Vichy regime.

The British and Americans doubted the ability of the Jewish resistance to carry out its task, but the underground movement was crowned with extraordinary success as 400 of its members took over military and government installations and held them until the Allied invasion, at the cost of only a single casualty. The success of the operation opened the gates of North Africa to the Allies and paved the way for their conquest of Italy and southern Europe.


2005 | The Jews Leave Algeria

Despite the anti-Semitic treatment they had received during the Second World War, the Jews of Algeria maintained their allegiance to the French regime. During the Algerian struggle for independence most of the Algerian Jews supported France and refrained from taking part in the Algerian national movement. During the Algerian War of Independence, Algerian nationalists carried out many violent acts against Jews, as they did against French settlers. These attacks, which included bombings in synagogues and assassinations of Jewish community figures, shocked the community and drove them further away from identifying with the Algerian National Movement. The murder of famous Jewish singer Raymond Leyris known as Cheikh Raymond on June 22nd 1961 signaled the end of Jewish life in Algeria for many. In the early 1960s, as it became clear that Algerian independence was nigh, many of the local Jews emigrated to Israel and France.

In 1962, the year Algeria won its independence, 99% of the Jews still remaining in it left the country – over 160,000 people. Some 85% percent of them went to France and 15% to Israel. Members of the Algerian diaspora founded several settlements in Israel, among them Zohar, Ein-Hod, Ptachia, Beit Gamliel, Tzrufa and others.

In 2005 only 100-200 Jews lived in Algeria.