History of the Jews in Algeria

The history of Jews in Algeria goes back to antiquity, although it is not possible to trace with any certainty the time and circumstances of the arrival of the first Jews in what is now Algeria. In any case, several waves of immigration helped to increase the population. There may have been Jews in Carthage and present-day Algeria before the Roman conquest, but the development of Jewish communities is linked to the Roman presence. Jewish revolts in Judea and Cyrenaica in the 1st and 2nd centuries certainly led to the arrival of Jewish immigrants from these regions. The vast majority of scholarly sources reject the notion that there were any large-scale conversions of Berbers to Judaism.

The Muslim conquest of North Africa, which was completed in Algeria in the 8th century, brought North Africa into the realm of Islamic civilization and had a lasting impact on the identity of local Jewish communities, whose status was henceforth governed by the dhimma.

New immigrants later strengthened the Algerian Jewish community: Jews fled Spain during the Visigothic persecutions of the 5th and 6th centuries, and again during the persecutions linked to the Spanish Reconquista of the 14th and 16th centuries. Many Jews from the Iberian Peninsula settled in Algeria, mixing with the local Jewish population and influencing its traditions. In the 18th century, other Jews, the Granas of Livorno, were few in number, but played a role as commercial intermediaries between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Later in the 19th century, many Jews from Tetouan arrived in Algeria, strengthening the ranks of the community.

After the French colonization of Algeria in 1830, Algerian Jews, like other Algerians, faced discrimination by the colonial state. Like Muslims, they were given the status of "indigène" (indigenous) and were barred from gaining French citizenship unless particular conditions were met. However, the dhimma was abolished, and Jews became equal to Muslims under French law. Indeed, the Muslim law that governed the country put the former at a distinct disadvantage to the latter, especially in the legal sphere and their treatment as inhabitants of the country. This changed in 1870, with the Crémieux Decree granting Algerian Jews French citizenship (except for Mozabite Jews), while Muslims remained under the second-class indigenous status. Algerian Jews increasingly identified with metropolitan France, and despite a period of forced return to second-class indigenous status during World War II, they opted en masse to be repatriated to France on the eve of Algerian Independence—when even the formerly excluded Mozabite Jews were granted French citizenship—with a minority choosing Israel. This virtually put an end to more than 2,000 years of presence on Algerian soil. A few dozen very discreet Jews still live in Algeria.

Algerian Jews are unique in that they are the only community of North African Jews that did not overwhelmingly emigrate to Israel during the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries; instead, the majority of Algerian Jews chose France as their destination. Their "repatriation" represents a unique case in the history of Jewish migration given that even though they were psychologically uprooted, they "returned" to France as citizens and not as refugees. Epitaphs have been found in archaeological excavations that attest to Jews in the first centuries CE. Berber lands were said to welcome Christians and Jews very early from the Roman Empire. The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE, and thereafter by the Kitos War in 117, reinforced Jewish settlement in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Early descriptions of the Rustamid capital, Tahert, note that Jews were found there, as they would be in any other major Muslim city of North Africa. Centuries later, the letters found in the Cairo Geniza mention many Algerian Jewish families.

Muslim dominance era

In the 7th century, Jewish settlements in North Africa were reinforced by Jewish immigrants that came to North Africa after fleeing from the persecutions of the Visigothic king Sisebut and his successors. They escaped to the Maghreb, which was at the time still part of the Byzantine Empire. It is debated whether Jews influenced the Berber population, making converts among them. In that century, Islamic armies conquered the whole Maghreb and most of the Iberian peninsula. The Jewish population was placed under Muslim domination in constant cultural exchanges with Al Andalus and the Near East.

Later many Sephardic Jews were forced to take refuge in Algeria from the persecutions in Spain of Catalonia, Valencia and Balearic Islands in 1391 and the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. Together with the Moriscos, they thronged to the ports of North Africa, and mingled with native Jewish people. Abraham Lévy-Bacrat, a rabbi and one of the Jewish refugees from the 1492 expulsion from Spain, recorded that around 12,000 Jews arrived in the Kingdom of Tlemcen in what is today northwestern Algeria. In the 16th century there were large Jewish communities in places such as Oran, Bejaïa and Algiers. Jews were also present in the cities of the interior, such as Tlemcen and Constantine, and as far as Touggourt and M'zab in the south, with the permission of the Muslim authorities. Some Jews in Oran preserved Ladino language—which was a uniquely conservative dialect of Spanish—until the 19th century.

The fear of Spanish invasions in the 18th century caused Jews in Algeria to face potential expulsion and confiscation of property, similar to what had occurred in Spain.

Jewish merchants did well financially in late Ottoman Algiers. The French attack on Algeria was provoked by the Dey's demands that the French government pay its large outstanding wheat debts to two Jewish merchants. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, richer Jews from Livorno in Italy started settling in Algeria. Commercial trading and exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman Empire reinforced the Jewish community. Later again in the 19th century, many Sephardic Jews from Tetouan settled in Algeria, creating new communities, particularly in Oran.

On the eve of the conquest of 1830, Algerian Judaism was as far removed culturally from the France of the Enlightenment as Islam. Three features characterise this distance.

The first is civilisational. Algerian Judaism, and more broadly North African Judaism, is a traditional Judaism that bases its social and religious order not only on the law of God and rabbinical teaching, but also on a foundation of values, beliefs, and practices common to all North African ethnic groups. The centuries-long cohabitation with Islam has given rise to an original culture, as evidenced by the Judeo-Arabic language, fertility rituals, and the practice of maraboutism. mostly congregated in the coastal area. As a frontier population, natural intermediaries between Europeans and Muslims and fluent in Arabic, Jews were recruited as a priority to accompany French troops in the operations of conquest. However sympathetic some Algerian Jews were to the conqueror, the first priority was to subjugate the ‘indigenous’ populations. In this respect, the Jews were no exception. Such oversight was an example of the French Jews' attempt to "civilize" Jewish Algerians, as they believed their European traditions were superior to Sephardic practices.

This marked a change in the Jewish relationship with the state. They were separated from the Muslim court system, where they had previously been classified as dhimmis. As a result, Algerian Jews resisted those French Jews attempting to settle in Algeria; in some cases, there was rioting, in others the local Jews refused to allow French Jewish burials in Algerian Jews' cemeteries. The importance of the decree lies in the massive and compulsory nature of the change in status. That decree met with resistance from hostile Algerian Jewish circles, especially from traditional Algerian rabbis faced with the intrusion of French Judaism. French citizenship in 1870 under the Crémieux Decree, while maintaining an inferior status for Muslims who, though technically French nationals, were required to apply for French citizenship and undergo a naturalization process. For this reason, they are sometimes incorrectly categorized as pieds-noirs. The decision to extend citizenship to Algerian Jews was a result of pressures from prominent members of the liberal, intellectual French Jewish community, which considered the North African Jews to be "backward" and wanted to bring them into modernity.

Within a generation, despite initial resistance, most Algerian Jews came to speak French rather than Arabic or Judaeo-Spanish, and they embraced many aspects of French culture. In embracing "Frenchness," the Algerian Jews joined the colonizers, although they were still considered "other" to the French. Although some took on more typically European occupations, "the majority of Jews were poor artisans and shopkeepers catering to a Muslim clientele."

The Crémieux decree, which brought so-called ‘indigenous’ Jews into the fold of French citizenship, de facto separated Muslims and Jews on a legal and civic level. The latter, albeit with apparent differences depending on the region, welcomed the French policy of assimilation, into which many threw themselves wholeheartedly, and which accelerated the march towards Westernisation. In everyday life, however, relations were often cordial and even fraternal, with Jews not being assimilated into the colonists and frequently acting as intermediaries between Muslims and Europeans. In the end, the naturalisation decree of October 1870 was a measure devised by the ruling circle of French Judaism. It was in no way the consecration of a de facto state of affairs—namely the spontaneous francization of Algerian Jews—but a measure to encourage them to enter (willingly or by force) into French normality.

French antisemitism set down strong roots among the expatriate French community in Algeria, where every municipal council was controlled by anti-Semites, and newspapers were rife with xenophobic attacks on the local Jewish communities. Much of this was encouraged by the French colonial administration, in particular by the militant antisemitic Max Régis. In Algiers when Émile Zola was brought to trial for his defense in an 1898 open letter, J'Accuse…!, of Alfred Dreyfus, sympathy for whom was widespread in the Arabic press, over 158 Jewish owned shops were looted and burned and two Jews were killed, while the army stood by and refused to intervene (see 1898 Algerian riots). Hannah Arendt was to comment later that,'that pogroms against Jews in Algeria were carried out not, as it was claimed, by “‘backward Arabs’” but by “thoroughly sophisticated officers of the French colonial administration” and by the mayor of Algiers, Max Régis.'

Under French rule, some Muslim anti-Jewish riots still occurred, as in 1897 in Oran.

thumb|Sephardi Jews of Algiers c.1905

In the late 19th century and during the 1930s, mayors elected on anti-Jewish agendas sought to disenfranchise Jewish voters in their municipalities, as seen in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, when they could not directly repeal the Crémieux Decree. In these municipalities, Jewish voters were required to provide proof that they or their ancestors had been born in Algeria before 1830. Failure to provide such proof was considered attempted fraud and resulted in removal from the electoral rolls.

Zionism had a marginal presence under French rule. A 1920 communication from a 250-strong local Zionist association to the World Zionist Organization said that in the upper echelons of Algerian Jewry, "the wealthy and influential Jews of Algeria are opposed to Zionism and so far we have not counted on their support"; because they consider themselves "French first and foremost, they have no interest in the question of Zionism and are happy here"

Holocaust in Algeria, under the Vichy regime

After the Nazi German occupation of Northern France and the creation of the pro-Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime in Southern France during the Second World War, Algeria was under the control of the Vichy regime. One of the first moves of the regime was to revoke the effects of the Crémieux Decree, on October 7, 1940, thereby abolishing French citizenship for Algerian Jews, affecting some 110,000 Algerians. Under Vichy rule in Algeria, even Karaites and Jews who had converted to another religion were subject to anti-semitic laws, known collectively as Statut des Juifs. The Vichy regime's laws ensured that Jews were forbidden from holding public office or other governmental positions, as well as from holding jobs in industries such as insurance and real estate.

The Vichy regime also limited the number of Jewish children in Algeria's public school system, and eventually terminated all Jewish enrolment in public schools. These prisoners formed the "Jewish Work Group," and worked on a Vichy plan for a trans-Saharan railroad; many died from hunger, exhaustion, disease, or beatings. Throughout the Independence War, violence remained palpable and relations deteriorated following clashes and assassinations, such as that of the rabbi of Nédroma in November 1956, the chief rabbi of Médéa in March 1957, and the great singer Cheikh Raymond Leyris. hoping to attract their support. Algerian Muslims had assisted Jews during their trials under the Vichy régime in WW2, when their citizenship rights under the Crémieux Degree had been revoked. For others, memories of the 1934 pogrom, and incidents of violent Muslim assault on Jews in Constantine and Batna, together with arson attacks on the Batna and Orleanville synagogues, played a role in their decisions to turn down the offer.

In 1961, with the French National Assembly Law 61-805, the Mozabite Jews, who had been excluded from the Cremieux Decree, were also given French citizenship.

Between late 1961 and late summer 1962, 130,000 of Algeria's approximately 140,000 Jews left for France, while about 10,000 of them emigrated to Israel. Moroccan Jews who were living in Algeria and Jews from the M'zab Valley in the Algerian Sahara, who did not have French citizenship, as well as a small number of Algerian Jews from Constantine, also emigrated to Israel at that time. The fact that Israel was unable to attract more Jewish immigrants from Algeria dismayed Zionist representatives in Algeria as well as the Israeli authorities;

The OAS and the right-wing in Algeria reached out to Jews and portrayed them as French, while the FLN reminded Jews of the Vichy years and urged Jews to follow the Jews of Morocco and Tunisia in embracing the "liberty," "prosperity" and "dignity" of the FLN. Despite the appeals, Jews became victim of attacks from both groups. The FLN became uninterested in outreach and began assassinating Jewish leaders. The OAS for their part also assassinated Jews perceived as supporting independence. Jews were caught in the middle and began to leave the country.

The accords led to a mass exodus of pieds noirs in the early 1960s, while North African Jews faced a wave of anti-Semitism in the Maghreb. Moreover, Algerian Jews also identified more with their attachment to France, which Algerians discovered in the nineteenth century in their fight for French naturalization. Moreover, the anti-Semitic violence that had been manifesting itself in the colony since the last quarter of the nineteenth century affected every aspect of daily life in minute detail. although some went to Israel. ascribes the flight not only to their greater identification with France, but to having faced violence and anti-Jewish sentiment during the Algerian War as a response to the community's general stance of neutrality. By 1969, fewer than 1,000 Jews were still living in Algeria. By 1975, because of a lack of worshippers, all but one of the country's synagogues were closed, having been converted into mosques or libraries.

After the Evian agreements of 19 March 1962, the vast majority of the remaining Jews in Algeria were among the 800,000 French people who crossed the Mediterranean at in the space of a few months. Regarded as repatriates in the same way as the pieds noirs, they gradually integrated into the French Jewish community, which they helped to reshape,

Following the mass departure of Algerian Jews in 1961–1962, the 1963 Nationality Code granted Algerian citizenship to those with Muslim civil status. While the Évian Accords provided a three-year window for French citizens in Algeria, including the remaining Jewish population, to apply for Algerian nationality, few chose to do so. Johannes Heuman and Delphine Perrin note that because the 1963 code explicitly defined the new nation in terms of Muslim status, it effectively alienated the non-Muslim population. Consequently, almost all the remaining Jews felt excluded from the new Arab-Islamic national identity and retained their French citizenship.

Since 2005, the Algerian government has attempted to reduce discrimination against the Jewish population by establishing a Jewish association and passing a law that recognized freedom of religion. They also allowed a relaunching of Jewish pilgrimage, to the most holy Jewish sites in North Africa. In 2014, the Minister of Religious Affairs Mohammed Eissa announced that the Algerian government would foster the reopening of Jewish synagogues. However, this never came to fruition, with Eissa stating that it was no longer in the interest of Algerian Jews. In 2017, there were an estimated 50 Jews remaining in Algeria, mostly in Algiers. As of 2020, there were an estimated 200 Jews in Algeria.

Synagogues in Algeria

Synagogue Algiers.jpg|Grande Synagogue, Algiers

Great Synagogue of Algiers dedication.jpg|Grande Synagogue, Algiers

SynagogueAlger.jpg|Grande Synagogue, Algiers

Sanya Synagogue Alger.jpg|Sanya Synagogue, Algiers

V11p625001 Synagogue.jpg|Synagogue, Algiers

Belcourt Synagogue.jpg|Belcourt Synagogue, Algiers

Houma Keramane, Béjaïa.jpg|Houma Keramane, Béjaïa

Sétif synagogue.jpg|Sétif synagogue

Sétif synagogue interior.jpg|Sétif synagogue interior

Tlemcen postcard.jpg|Tlemcen synagogue

היכל בית הכנסת של הרב אפריים אנקאווה בתלמסאן.jpg|Rabbi Ephraim Ankawa Synagogue in Tlemcen

File:Tiaret, Synagogue.jpg|Tiaret Synagogue

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Notable Algerian Jews

Ariella Azoulay, author, curator, and decolonial scholar recognised for developing the theory of ‘potential history’
Jean-Pierre Barda, singer, actor, make-up artist
José Aboulker, member of the anti-Nazi resistance
Alon Abutbul, actor
Franck Amsallem, jazz pianist and composer
Françoise Atlan, French singer
Yvan Attal, film director, actor (Algerian-born parents)
Jacques Attali, economist, writer
Danny Ayalon, politician
Jean-Pierre Bacri, actor
Myriam Ben, activist and novelist
Baruj Benacerraf, immunologist, Nobel prize (1980) (Algerian Jewish mother)
Paul Benacerraf, philosopher (Algerian Jewish mother)
Maurice Benayoun, artist
Jean Benguigui, actor
Éric Benhamou, businessman, CEO of 3Com, venture capitalist, philanthropist
Michel Benita, double bass player
Daniel Bensaïd, philosopher and trotskyist (Jewish Algerian father)
Richard Berry, actor
Lili Boniche, musician
Eliyahu Zini, Algerian-born rabbi and head of a Hesder Yeshiva in the Israeli town of Haifa and doctor of mathematics from the Technion.
Yosef Ben David Renassia, Constantine-born rabbi, writer, and preservationist. Moved to Israel in 1962 and died in Dimona.
Patrick Bruel, singer, actor
Alain Chabat, actor
André Chouraqui, writer
Élie Chouraqui, French film director and scriptwriter
Hélène Cixous, feminist writer
Robert Cohen, boxer: World Bantamweight Champion
Annie Cohen-Solal, academic and biographer of Jean-Paul Sartre
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, physicist, Nobel prize (1997)
Jean-François Copé, (Algerian Jewish mother), President of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) Group in the French National Assembly
, author, wrote the first theatre play in Arabic (1847)
Gérard Darmon, actor
Jacques Derrida, post-structuralist philosopher
Pascal Elbé, actor
Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, journalist
David Foenkinos, French born author and screenwriter.
Eva Green, actress (mother was of Algerian Jewish descent)
Alphonse Halimi, boxer: World Bantamweight Champion
Roger Hanin, film actor & director
Marlène Jobert, actress
Judah Kalaẓ, cabalist and moralist
Oded Kattash, Israeli basketball player, a superstar in Israel and Greece, currently head coach of Israel's national team and Panathinaikos
Haim Korsia, Chief Rabbi of France (Algerian parents)
Claude Lelouch, film director (Algerian Jew father)
Bernard-Henri Lévy, philosopher
Reinette L'Oranaise, singer
Enrico Macias, singer<!--
Alfred Nakache, swimmer
Camille Pissaro-->
Shiri Maimon, singer
Elissa Rhaïs, novelist
Martial Solal, jazz pianist and composer
Benjamin Stora, historian
Avraham Tal, Israeli singer
Patrick Timsit, humorist, actor
Shmuel Trigano, sociologist and philosopher
Éric Zemmour, journalist
Claude Zidi, film director

Genetics

The largest study to date on the Jews of North Africa has been led by Gerard Lucotte et al. in 2003. Sephardi population studied is as follows: 58 Jews from Algeria, 190 from Morocco, 64 from Tunisia, 49 from the island of Djerba, 9 and 11 from Libya and Egypt, respectively, which makes 381 people. This study showed that the Jews of North Africa showed frequencies of their paternal haplotypes almost equal to those of the Lebanese and Palestinian non-Jews when compared to European non-Jews.

The Moroccan/Algerian, Djerban/Tunisian and Libyan subgroups of North African Jewry were found to demonstrate varying levels of Middle Eastern (40-42%), European (37-39%) and North African ancestry (20-21%), with Moroccan and Algerian Jews tending to be genetically closer to each other than to Djerban Jews and Libyan Jews. According to the study:<blockquote>"distinctive North African Jewish population clusters with proximity to other Jewish populations and variable degrees of Middle Eastern, European, and North African admixture. Two major subgroups were identified by principal component, neighbor joining tree, and identity-by-descent analysis—Moroccan/Algerian and Djerban/Libyan—that varied in their degree of European admixture. These populations showed a high degree of endogamy and were part of a larger Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish group. By principal component analysis, these North African groups were orthogonal to contemporary populations from North and South Morocco, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. Thus, this study is compatible with the history of North African Jews—founding during Classical Antiquity with proselytism of local populations, followed by genetic isolation with the rise of Christianity and then Islam, and admixture following the emigration of Sephardic Jews during the Inquisition."