Isaac Ben Jacob Alfasi

ALFASI, AL FASSI, ELFASSI

Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a toponymic (derived from a geographic name of a town, city, region or country). Surnames that are based on place names do not always testify to direct origin from that place, but may indicate an indirect relation between the name-bearer or his ancestors and the place, such as birth place, temporary residence, trade, or family-relatives.

The surname Alfasi means "from Fez" in Arabic. A Jewish presence in Fez, Morocco, is recorded since as early as the 8th century.

Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Alfassi include the Moroccan-born codifier Isaac Alfassi (1013-1103) and the Karaite scholar Alfi Ben Avraham Alfasi who lived in the 10th century.

Distinguished 19th century bearers of the family name Al Fassi include Rabbi Messaoud Raphael Al Fassi (born in Fez, Morocco, died 1775), who was Av Beth Din ("head of rabbinical court") and chief rabbi in Tunis, and then settled in Eretz Israel. Rabbi Massoud Rephael Al Fassi and his sons published an important work called 'Mishha Diributa' (Livorno, 1805).

Lucena

Hebrew sources: Alisana al-Yahūd (Lucena of Jews). Originally: Eliossana – possibly from the Hebrew אלי הושענא (Elí hoshanna), “May G-d save us”. Arabic: Al Husseine (translation: the handsome one), Lujjāna, Lūsana, Alyāna

Other name: Pearl of Sepharad

A city and municipality in Andalusia, in southern Spain, S. of Cordoba

According to popular Jewish custom, probably from the old tradition of Passover cleaning, in Lucena the house was cleaned on Saturdays and houses were white washed prior to the Holy Week.

21st Century

The Jewish Necrópolis, a Jewish cemetery from the Andalusian era (7 11-11th century), Middle Ages was discovered in 2006 when a ring road was being built in Lucena. It is the largest uncovered Jewish cemetery in Spain. The Andalusian era or Al-Andalus is probably named for the Vandals who were located in that area in the 5th century. The Vandal were Germanic populations who were rulers of a North African Kingdom (beginning of 5th-beginning of 6th century). The Andalusian era which followed was the Muslim Kingdom which lasted until power was handed over to the Umayyad dynasty.

An elevated path was constructed for the Necrópolis and provides a view of the area. The 2006 finding included over 300 graves which provide information about life and burial traditions of the Jews of the area at the time. A rare finding was a Jewish gravestone with Hebrew lettering dating from around the 8-9th century. A fountain was installed for purification as provided in Sepharadi tradition and a Wailing Wall reconstructed.

In the El Moral castle, Archaeological Museum which is a fortress likewise from the Middle Ages reproductions of the gravestones of Rabbis Amicos and Lactosus can be found. A bust of Rabbi Yitzhak Alfassi, the Rif (1013-1103) who headed Lucena’s notable yeshiva is also on exhibition there. In one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, the site of an old synagogue lies which was replaced by a parish church. Lucena’s Jewish history continues to live through the cities’ crafts of traditional Channukiah lighters and bowls which were typical for the 11th century.

Lucena was named “City of the Jews” between the 9-12th centuries by Jewish and Islamic scribes alike. It was one of the few as renown Jewish communities in Andalusia. The Palace of the Counts of Santa Ana exhibits different Jewish burials, stages of life and culture of Lucena’s Juderia. The old walls of the city with the Vela tower came to protect Lucena’s Jewish quarter to which entry was made accessible through the Blanca gate. The northern wall with the Cordoba gate was a further access point. On the perifery of the Juderia was located the Muslim quarter. The old synagogue of Lucena was replaced by a mosque and eventually with the mid-13th century subjugation by the Christians with the Church of San Mateo.

The Parroquia de Santiago, the Gothic-Mudejar church built in the early 16th century, was probably formerly a synagogue. 

Notable Figures

The Lucena Juderia (in Ladino: לה ג'ודיריה, Jewish quarter) was a dominantly Jewish town which saw the Jewish population grow to become a majority in Moorish (Muslim) days. Renowned for its large yeshiva and the director the Rabbi Yitzhak Alfassi who was a famous scholar of Talmud. Rabbi Alfassi had exchanges with both the communities of Babylon and Palestine in the form of Responsa on halacha (Jewish law and tradition) providing for intellectual flourishing of the largest Jewish communities of those days.

History

Important Jewish community in the 11th century. During the period of Muslim rule Lucena was famous as "the entirely Jewish city," and a tradition states that it was founded by Jews. Several prominent families, including that of the historian Avraham Ibn Daud, claimed that their settlement in Lucena dated from the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

Isaac Abrabanel linked the derivation of the name of the town with the biblical town of Luz. Until the 12th century Lucena was a cultural center of Andalusian Jewry. In 853 Natronai Gaon wrote "that Alisana (Arabic for Lucena) was a Jewish place with no gentiles at all." In another Responsum the Gaon asked, "is there a gentile who prohibits your activities? Why do you not establish an eruv chatzerot? " (Teshuvot Ge'onei Mizrach U-ma'arav (1888), para. 26). The 12th-century Arab geographer Idrisi also commented on the Jewish character of Lucena and stated that while Muslims lived outside the city walls, Jews generally lived in the fortified part within the walls. Menahem b. Aaron Ibn Zerah reports the same information at the end of the 14th century (Tzeidah La-Derekh (Ferrara, 1554), 150). The Jews earned their living from olive groves, vineyards, agriculture, commerce, and crafts. Lucena was distinguished by its scholars.

In the mid-ninth century Amram Gaon sent his prayer book in response to a question by a scholar of Lucena. His contemporary Eleazar b. Samuel Churga of Lucena received the titles alluf (demin ispania) and rosh kallah, and became famous in the Babylonian academies. In the 11th century Isaac b. Judah Ibn Ghayyat taught in the yeshivah of Lucena. He was succeeded by Isaac Alfasi who was followed by Joseph Ibn Migash. In 1066 the widow of Joseph b. Samuel Ha-Nagid and her son Azariah were among the refugees who came to Lucena in the wake of the anti-Jewish outburst in Granada (Abraham Ibn Daud, Sefer Ha-Qabbalah The Book of Tradition, ed. G. Cohen (1967), 77).

The last King of the Zirid dynasty, Abdallah, reported an uprising of the Jews of Lucena during his reign - at the time of the expedition against the Almoravids (c. 1090). At the turn of the century a contemporary of Ibn Migash, the Almoravide ruler, Yusuf Ibn Tashfin (1061-1106), demanded that the Jews convert to Islam. But the community was saved in exchange for a heavy bribe. The grammarian Jonah Ibn Janach and the poets Moses and Abraham Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, and Joseph Ibn Sahl were active in Lucena at some time during their lives. The 11th-century Hebrew poet Abu-Ar-Rabia b. Baruch, known throughout Andalusia, lived in Lucena. In 1146 during the Almohad wars, the Jews were persecuted and many were forced to convert to Islam. The community was not able to recover. Lucena was conquered by Castile in 1240. The fate of its Jewish community during the riots of 1391 resembles that of the other Andalusian communities.

Fez

In Arabic: فاس‎‎ 

A city in northern Morocco.

Jews were among the first settlers of the town at the end of the 8th century.

The Jewish community rapidly became influential and respected. They lived in their own quarter (Al-Funduk Al-Yahudi). Fez became a cultural and commercial center of prime importance, largely as a result of the Jews' presence. Such scholars as David Ben Abraham Alfasi and rabbi Solomon Ben Judah - who became head of the Jerusalem academy - went on to Palestine, and grammarians of the stature of Dunash Ben Labrat and Judah Hayyuj went to Spain. During the golden era in Fez, three deported to Ashir (Algeria) in about 987; 6,000 Jews were massacred in 1035 by fanatics who conquered Fez; and the town was ruthlessly sacked in 1068 by Almoravides. In about 1127 a pseudo-Messiah, Moses Dari, brought afflictions upon the community. A few decades later attempts at forced conversion led to the death of the Dayyan rabbi Judah Ha-Kohen Ibn Shushan and the emigration of Maimonides and his family.

In 1244 the Merinides established themselves in Fez and treated the Jews well, even saving them from an insurrection. However, with the decline of the Merinides and the revival of fanaticism, the Jews were compelled in 1438 to live in a special Jewish quarter. When the Sultan appointed a Jew, Harun, as prime minister in order to straighten out public finances, the town rose in revolt, the Sultan and his minister were assassinated, and most of the Jews were massacred (1465). The community did not recover from this catastrophe until 1492 with the arrival of the Spanish refugees who became dominant. They held the office of "Nagid", established in Fez at the beginning of the 16th century, and their yeshivot were headed by scholars including Nachman Ben Sunbal, Samuel Chagiz, Judah Uzziel, and Saul Serrero (16th-17th centuries), Judah and Chayyim Ibn Atar, and Samuel Sarfaty (18th century). There were famous Dayyanim, such as the Ibn Danans, whose authority was recognized by Jews of the whole country. Many rabbis of Fez went to teach in communities abroad. The preeminence of Fez only ended after the death of Jacob Ibn Zur in 1753.

In the second half of the 16th century Fez lost its political and economic importance. As a result, many wealthy Jews left the town; after about 100 years 1,300 families of the rich Jewish community of Dila were transferred to Fez. With their arrival, these families changed the composition of the community of Fez, which lost its Spanish character. Most of its members worked in goldsmithing, the manufacture of gold thread, lacemaking, embroidery, and tailoring. In 1790 Moulay Yazid destroyed its synagogues, ordered the plunder of the community, and expelled its inhabitants. The return of the Jews was authorized in 1792, but the community was reduced to a quarter of its former size. Life improved and interest in study was reawakened by such men as Abner Sarfaty and Isaac Ibn Danan (d. 1900). The community possessed many schools, five yeshivot, and an important benevolent society. A French school, financially supported by the notables of the community, was founded by the Alliance Israelite Universelle.

In 1912, two weeks after the establishment of the French protectorate, a revolt broke out in Fez. The community of 12,000 was ransacked and their property set on fire by the mob; about 60 people died. The French military authorities had previously confiscated all the Jews' weapons.

From 1925 many Jews established themselves in the new town of Fez - only the poor remained in the old quarter (Mellah). In 1947 there were 22,484 Jews in Fez and its surroundings, including several physicians, advocates, industrialists, and owners of agricultural estates. In 1951, 12,648 Jews lived in Fez - 5.8% of Moroccan Jewry. The town had many Jewish educational institutions run by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Ozar Ha-Torah, and Em Ha-Banim. In 1961 these and other Jewish schools had a total of 2,823 pupils.

Before the emigration of the 1950's and 1960's, there were general Jewish organizations such as the Zionist Bnei Akiva, branches of WIZO, and a branch of the World Jewish Congress. There were also groups for the study of Hebrew and several social welfare organizations.

Most of the Jews who left Fez made their way to Israel; others went to France and Canada.

In 1969 there were approximately 1,000 Jews there.

Among the sites of pilgrimage for Jewish travelers in Morocco, the most popular is the tomb of rabbi Yehouda Benatar in Fez.

In 1997 there were 6,500 Jews living in Morocco, 5,000 of them in Casablanca and only 150 Jews in Fez.

Andalucia

An autonomous region is southern Spain.

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.

Zhitomir

Ukrainian, Russian: Житомир; Yiddish: זשיטאָמיר; Hebrew: ז'יטומיר. Other spellings: Zytomierz (Polish), Schytomyr (German), Zytomyr, Shitomir, Jitomir

A city in northwestern Ukraine, the administrative center of Zhitomir Oblast and the surrounding region.

21st Century

Zhitomir is home to about 5,000 Jews.

There is an active Chabad Center in the community, led by Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm. It runs a day school, youth center with after school programs, and a Kollel adult education program.

In 2007, the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS, with the support of the Keshet and Leviev funds, set up in a Zhitomir suburb the Alumim Children’s Home and Social Rehabilitation Center for Jewish Children.

 In 2016 the community began restoring the only surviving synagogue building from before the Holocaust.  The new complex is designed to include a Jewish Community Center, soup kitchen, “Simcha Home”, communal offices, classrooms, library, and mikveh.

In 2019 a monument, a 12- foot high marker, was unveiled, dedicated to the memory of the thousands of Jews of Zhitomir lying in a mass grave who were murdered during the Holocaust. It was funded by Alex Goldis of Michigan in the US whose grandparents were victims of the massacre.

 

History

Founded in the ninth century, Zhitomer became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the first part of the fourteenth century. The first mention of Jews in the town’s records is in 1486.  Beginning in 1569 it became the district center of Kiev province in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Jews were not officially authorized to live in Zhitomir under Polish rule, but some settled there under the protection of government officials. Jews appear regularly in judicial records after 1580.

In 1753, following a blood libel, fourteen Jews from nearby towns were tried in Zhitomir for ritual murder and executed, while others were compelled to convert.

In 1765, 460 Jews, including 114 living in neighboring villages were registered as members of the Jewish community.

In 1789 the Jewish community numbered 882, about a third of the total population. The Jews were innkeepers, merchants, and craftsmen.

 By the time of the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, when the town became part of the Russian Empire, there were 1,300 Jews living in Zhitomer.  By 1847 their number had risen to 9,500.  Zhitomir had become the largest Jewish community in the province of Volhynia, and  a center of the Hassidic movement.

Among the first preachers of Hassidism in the town were two disciples of the Maggid of Mezeritch. They were  Ze'ev Wolf of Zhitomir (d. 1800), author of Or ha-Meir, dealing with the history of Hassidism and the teachings of its founders, and Aharon of Zhitomir (c. 1750- 1820), author of the Toldot Aharon, Kabbalistic homilies on the torah.  Another Hassidic leader was Avraham Dov Ber of Avritch, Rabbi of Zhitomir between 1826-1830, later Rabbi of Safed, and author of the Bat Ayin.

In the 19th century Zhitomer became a center for the publishing of Jewish books. The first Hebrew printing press in the city was established in 1804 by the wandering printer Tzevi Hirsch B. Simeon Ha-Kohen, who came from Zolkiew (Zholkva), where he had worked as a typesetter. He had worked in the printing press in the town of Nowy Dwor, and subsequently owned presses in Kopel (1796), and in Brezitz (Beresty) between 1803-04. Tzevi Hirsch operated his printing press in Zhitomir until 1806, and during the three years of its existence at least nine books were published, of which five were Hassidic and Kabbalistic works.

In 1847 a second printing press was established in Zhitomir by the three brothers Chanina Lipa, Aryeh Leib, and Joshua Heschel Shapira, sons of the printer Samuel Abraham Abba Shapira of Slavuta, whose family business had been the victim of bitter in-fighting within the Jewish community as well as persecution by the government authorities.  Until 1862 the Shapira’s Zhitomer press was one of the only two Hebrew presses (the other being in Vilna) that the government permitted to operate in the whole of the Russian Empire. This press had 18 hand presses and four additional large presses. In 1851 Aryeh Leib broke away and established his own printing press in Zhitomir. These two establishments printed only religious books. During the years 1858-64 the press of the two brothers Chanina Lipa and Joshua Heschel printed a deluxe edition of the Babylonian Talmud together with the commentary of the Rif (Rabbi  Isaac Alfasi), while between 1860 and 1867 Aryeh Leib printed an edition of the Jerusalem Talmud.

In 1865 a Hebrew printing press was established by Abraham Shalom Shadov, and in 1870 another one by Isaac Moses Bakst. In 1888 the Hebrew press of Brodovitz was founded, which in 1891 passed into the possession of his successors. In 1890 a printing press was founded by Joseph Kesselman which in 1902 passed into the possession of his widow Rachel, who entered a partnership with Elijah Feinberg. These three presses printed many Hebrew and Yiddish books.
 

 In the 1830s and 1840s the Haskalah movement took hold in the town.  In 1847 the Russian government established a rabbinical seminary in Zhitomir (as it did in Vilna), as part of its plan to enforce the teaching of secular studies in Jewish educational institutions.  The first headmaster appointed by the Russian government was the Maskil Jacob Eichenbaum (1796-1861), an educator, poet, and mathematician. He was succeeded in 1862 by Hayyim Zelig Slonomski (1810-1904), an author, scientist, and inventor. Notable teachers in the seminary included Avraham Ber Gottlover (1811-1899), poet translator and historian, and Lazar Zweifel (1815-1888), journalist and writer of Hebrew and Yiddish poetry.  Students who were to become famous include Mendele Mocher Seforim (1836-1917), known as the “grandfather of Yiddish literature”; Abraham Jacob Paperna (1840-1919), poet and literary critic; and Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908), poet, playwright, stage director, and founder of the first Yiddish language theatre group.

 In 1873 the rabbinical seminary, due to its failure to produce rabbis with a secular education who were acceptable to Jewish communities, was converted into an institute to train teachers for the Jewish government schools. It was closed in 1885.

The first Jewish vocational school in Zhitomir was established in 1862. It was initially successful, but it was closed in 1884 due to the belief of the authorities that its instruction helped give the Jews economic advantage over their gentile neighbors.  In 1898 a Jewish vocational school for girls was established. In the early years of the 20th century the community had a Talmud torah, a government school, private schools for both sexes, and a Musar Yeshiva established by Rabbi Yosef Hurvich of Nowogrodek.

One of the most celebrated Jewish figures associated with Zhitomir is Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934), the pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry, who spent his childhood there.

In the 1860s 90 per cent of the town’s tradesmen and 70 per cent of its artisans were Jewish. In the 1870s and 1880s, the community shared in the general economic decline of the town due to the dispossession of the region's Polish landowners and the construction of the railroads, which initially bypassed Zhitomir.  Jews, however, benefitted from the flourishing of the printing business during this period.

In 1897 there were 30,748 Jews living in Zhitomir who formed 46.6% of the total population; their number rose in 1910 to 38,427. There were two synagogues, about 50 prayer houses, a public library and a Jewish bank. There were active Bund and Zionist organizations

 In the spring of 1905 pogroms broke out in the town, instigated by the government. The Jewish youth, Zionists and socialists, organized a self-defense unit that fought with the rioters. About 15 Jews were killed, along with the Russian Christian student Nicholas Blinov, who joined the Jewish self-defense action. Ten Jewish youths from the town of Chudnov were murdered while traveling to Zhitomir to assist the Jewish community. After the massacre a committee was organized to collect funds for the families of the victims; it received about 33,000 rubles from Russia, 9,500 from England, 1,500 from Germany, and 6,000 from the United States.

During World War I, there was an influx of refugees into Zhitomir.

In 1918, in the civil war following the Russian Revolution, Zhitomir became part of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and the national capitol. In January 1919 pogroms were perpetrated by the Ukrainian army aided by a mob from the neighboring villages during which 80 Jews lost their lives and much property was looted. In March 1919, the soldiers of the Cossack commander Simon Petlyura, head of the breakaway Ukrainian state, instigated riots and 317 Jews were murdered.  When the Poles held the town for a brief period in 1920, the Jews suffered from the brutality of the Polish soldiers. When the Soviets gained control of the town later in the same year, the organized community was disrupted and Jewish life disintegrated.

 In 1939 there were 29,503 Jews in the town (38% of the total population).


The Holocaust Period

After the outbreak of World War II many Jewish refugees from Nazi occupied Poland came to Zhitomir. When the Germans occupied the town in July 1941, many of the Jews fled. The Nazis made Zhitomir Heinrich Himmler’s Ukrainian headquarters with the task of implementing Hitler ‘s plan to eradicate the Jews and Slavs from the East and resettle the land with members of the pure Aryan race. About 400 Jews were shot soon after the Nazi arrival.  In August about 1000 more Jews were murdered.  In September those that remained were forced into a ghetto outside the town where many died of starvation and disease, and the others (approximately 6000 persons) were executed on September 19, 1941.

Postwar

After the end of the war several thousand Jews, former inhabitants as well as others, returned to Zhitomir.

In 1945 a local synagogue was officially registered, headed by Rabbi Motel Voshilo, and in 1955 the baking of matzo was organized. The Jewish cemetery was maintained.  During high holidays thousands congregated in and around the synagogue, and Yiddish was often heard in the streets.  According to a 1959 census, there were about 14,800 Jews (14% of the total population) in Zhitomir, but it was estimated that the real number was probably closer to 25,000.

The rebirth did not last, and in 1962 authorities closed the synagogue.  The community resorted to holding illegal prayer services in private homes. In 1975, with the opening of a common municipal cemetery, burials in the Jewish cemetery were suspended.

The community began to develop once more in the 1980s and 1990s.  The synagogue was reopened in 1980.  A Jewish Cultural and Education Society was established in 1989.  At the beginning of the 1990s a Jewish Sunday school and evening school were set up. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 and the establishment of an independent Ukraine, many Jews from Zhitomer immigrated to Israel, Germany, and the United States. A local office of the Jewish Agency and a Shahar Young Persons’ Club were opened.   In 1992 a Chabad Lubavitch community was officially registered and attracted 100 members. In 1996 the Joint Distribution Committee sponsored the establishment of Hesed Shelomoh, a welfare organization.

In 1997 there were approximately 5,500 Jews living in Zhitomir, of which more than 2,300 were pensioners.

Jaén 

A town in Andalucia, southern Spain.

A Jewish community existed there in the Muslim period. The Ibn Shaprut family originated in Jaen, whence Isaac b. Ezra, the father of Hisdai Ibn Shaprut, moved to Cordoba. The Jews in this period engaged in all branches of commerce, and especially in tanning. In the 11th century Jews from Jaen even emigrated to Eretz Israel. After the murder of Joseph Ha- Nagid, the son of Samuel Ha-Nagid, when a rebellion broke out in Jaen, the Jews had to pay a heavy indemnity.

At the end of the 11th century the community was headed by Rabbi Isaac who corresponded with Isaac Alfasi. The community was brought to an end during the Almohad persecution.

In 1246 Jaen was captured by Ferdinand III of Castile. It was not until 1290 that the Jews of Jaen were required to send a representative to the King to negotiate on the amount of annual tax for which the community was liable.

The Jews in Jaen pursued the same occupations as the rest of Andalusian Jewry, cultivating vineyards and engaging in crafts and commerce. As customary in that period, many had business partnerships with Christians. The community suffered during the civil war between Pedro the Cruel and Henry of Trastamara in the 1360s. Pedro, who called the Muslims of Granada to his aid, permitted them to take the Jews of Jaen captive and sell them into slavery. The community then numbered 300 families.

No details are known about the fate of the Jews in Jaen during the persecutions of 1391, but the number of Jews who left the faith increased. In 1473 riots against the conversos in Jaen broke out. Ten years later an edict of expulsion was issued against the Jews in Jaen as in all the other Andalusian communities. In that year the inquisition established a tribunal at Jaen. Apparently the tribunal did not continue to sit in Jaen but returned there in 1509 and was reconstituted as a district court. In 1526 it was amalgamated with the tribunal in Cordoba.