A history of the Jews of North Africa

In his work, The Jews of the Maghreb. Birth of a colonial historiographyColette Zytnicki, professor of contemporary history at Toulouse-Le Mirail University, submits to us an analysis of the historiography of Maghreb Jews. To do this, she guides us through a reading of historical literature, its authors, its sources, its methods and its audiences. His study aims to explain the reasons for the quasi-mutism which surrounds the history of the Maghrebi Jews, born with their entry into Western modernity (via colonization).

“ Moroccan Jews, it is understood, do not play politics », writes Edmond El Maleh in his story Motionless course. We are in 1980, more than a century after the first historical accounts of the past of North African Jews. A century during which the idea of ​​their exclusion from history persists. It is this cliché that the author attacks, in a successful attempt, which allows us to revisit the relationships between literature, history and politics.

A teleological story ?

From its birth, the writing of the history of the Jews of North Africa responded to political expectations, linked to the project of integration of Algerian Jews into French citizenship. Inscribing their story in universal history is part of the project of the metropolitan Israelites, keen to extend the achievements of the Revolution to their co-religionists for “the regenerate “. It is in this perspective that, for example, Jews in North Africa (1867) by Abraham Cahen. Certainly, the author’s stated intention is to write a forgotten history in a fair and truthful manner, to break with precolonial and colonial representations nourished by travel stories not devoid of ambiguity where the Jews – both members from Muslim society and outside it – are crowded into Jewish neighborhoods and mistreated, often because of their supposed “ nature “.

But the scientific themes developed, such as that of the Jews “ intermediaries » between Europe and Africa, quickly became arguments in the political debate between supporters and detractors of the Crémieux decree. Because, precisely, at a time when metropolitan Jews are successfully completing the process of integration, the tendency is rather to confine them to the margins of colonial societies, as evidenced by the rewriting of their history by some anti-Semitic intellectuals. This is evidenced by that of Henri Garrot, in the years following the promulgation of the decree in 1870. These formats are themselves followed by responses from Jewish intellectuals, such as Jacques Cohen or Jacques Chalom. Outside this community, defense is rare ; Western scholars are more curious to discover the Berbers or Arabs, dominant peoples opposed to colonization. The history of the Maghrebi Jews will therefore above all be the business of their European co-religionists.

Among them, we find in particular teachers or founders of the Universal Israelite Alliance, an institution founded in 1860 by French Israelites to “ bring a ray of Western civilization to environments degenerated by centuries of oppression and ignorance “. Thus, David Cazès, in a political project, published in 1888 a Essay on the history of the Israelites of Tunisia from the earliest times until the establishment of the protectorate of France in Tunisia. At a time when the status of the Jews is being discussed, the objective is to convince France to rely on the Jewish community in its mission in Tunisia. His work also adopts a teleological trajectory of which the French presence constitutes the ultimate goal.

Jews, Christians and Muslims

Writing history then amounts not to seizing an object of investigation – we will have to wait until the 1960s – but to making a demonstration to explain or justify a contemporary reality. This is well illustrated by the issue of the origins of Jewish communities in the Maghreb. If popular stories take it back very far, no direct or indirect source confirms it beyond the Roman era. The archaeological excavations, undertaken to investigate the Christian past and which brought to light the Hebrew sites of Hammam Liff and Gamart, are also part of a project that is in reality eminently political: to certify the civilizing role of the first Christian civilizations, otherwise “ Latin ”, would make it possible to minimize the civilizing role of Islam and its legitimacy on North African soil. In this regard, even if Colette Zytnicki highlights the motivations of the authors to establish a connection between the Hebrews and the North African Jews, we remain unsatisfied on the subject of “ Latinity », one of the ideas put in place by the French colonial power to establish its legitimacy.

Attached to demonstrating this historical continuity, several of these authors advance on hazardous ground, such as Nahoum Slouschz who published in 1906 a Study on the history of Jews and Judaism in Morocco. Jewish origins in Moroccoa work that he documents mainly on Arab, Berber or Jewish legends. A committed Zionist, the author associates Arab influence with barbarism, light with Europe. Although his work met with mixed success, his theses endured and were taken up by numerous Jewish authors, including Maurice Eisenbeth. Let us emphasize that it is sometimes non-Jewish authors, like Paul Monceaux, who, within the framework of an investigation into the history of Christianity, succeed in placing it within a broader field, that of universal history.

The mythical story of the Kahéna constitutes another avatar of a demonstration with a political vocation. The figure of this Judeo-Berber princess in fact made it possible to found the legitimacy of the colonial power, as the liberator of the indigenous Jewish and Berber peoples from the domination of the invading Arabs. She became a privileged figure for colonial historians as well as many writers, including contemporary ones.

It was not until the end of the colonial period that we saw the emergence of a change in outlook on the Jews of North Africa and the beginning of a more scientific historiography. But despite more critical and analytical studies, popular literature remains. The exodus of Jews from Islamic countries, after the upheavals of decolonization, modifies the image of coexistence alongside Muslims: the theme of a Judeo-Berber or Arab symbiosis begins and will also be taken up in the summary work by André Chouraqui, March towards the West. Jews of North Africapublished in 1952.

Literature and collective past

It is often to non-scientific literature that, in the postcolonial period, the role of telling the story of the history of Jewish communities, an element of context which remains hollow in the work of Colette Zytnicki. Indeed, in the absence of a strong anchoring in the historiography of Maghrebi Jews, providing testimony on a world in the process of disappearing seems to motivate – beyond its dimension “ therapeutic » facing exile – most literary authors of Judeo-Maghrebi origin in France. This literature, which borrows individual memory to bring a collective past to life, does not escape nostalgic visions of the presence of Jews on the other side of the Mediterranean, often drawing on stereotypical constructions developed by early historians of their history: we thus see the continuation of themes such as that of Kahéna, of peaceful coexistence alongside Muslims, of France as an emancipatory horizon, etc. The historical validity of these accounts and their subjectivity is obviously subject to questioning.

Ultimately, Colette Zytnicki’s desire to “ break with this quasi-mutism » which surrounds the historiography of North African Jews proves relevant and his work particularly useful. This silence undoubtedly results from the fact that, despite numerous articles, the reflection on the construction of a Jewish past in the Maghreb – too recent and imported by colonization – did not immediately form a historical movement structured around a project . Its authors – whether Jewish or not – all evolved within the framework of colonial cultural institutions. Despite the quality of their work, the colonial period lacked key works comparable to those of certain great European historians. It is precisely this slow emergence of a historical trend, led today by researchers in France, Israel or the United States, that Colette Zytnicki has seized. Successfully, she breaks this silence which still surrounds today the writing of the history of North African Jews, who “ that’s understood, don’t make a fuss »…