Described schematically as “ good students » of colonial assimilation, the Jews of Algeria have much more complex trajectories, in particular because they provided numerous anti-colonialist activists – until independent Algeria defined itself as an exclusively Arab-Muslim nation.
In 1962, approximately 130,000 Jewish French citizens left Algeria following the Evian Accords and the construction of independent Algeria on exclusively Arab-Muslim bases. A nodal event in their life journeys, this mass exile also constitutes a founding trauma in their collective memory. In view of this event, historiography has relayed a fatalistic and anachronistic vision of history, in which their fate seems sealed long before decolonization.
However, the study of the trajectories of a few hundred anti-colonialist Jews shows that this is not the case. She underlines the interest of an approach “ candid listening », to use Alain Corbin’s expression, an approach to listening to the actors which allows us to understand, as closely as possible to past realities, the conditions for developing discourses, commitments, identity affiliations. This is what Jean-Pierre Le Foll-Luciani invites us to do.
Plural Judaicity
Drawing on various sources – archives, interviews, memoirs and published stories – the author endeavors to reconstruct the plurality of Algerian Jewry before the country’s accession to independence. From this perspective, if the trajectories of anti-colonialist Jews prove to be dissident, they no longer appear as simple “ historical anomalies » relating to trajectories « impossible “.
To understand the making of these commitments, he returns to the relationships of Jews to colonial reality. As soon as the French arrived in Algeria, “ there was, among community notables as among “common” Jews, an extremely varied range of immediate reactions – from rejection to approval, including indifference or more or less negotiated accommodation. » (p. 13), which is confirmed by the work of Joshua Schreier.
These stories run counter to the dominant historiography of North African Jews which emerged in the 1860s and immediately resonated with French expectations, by presenting their destiny as underpinned by a future “ assimilation “. Indeed, from its birth, the writing of the history of the Jews of North Africa responded to the project of their integration into French citizenship, by presenting them as “ smugglers » of crops. They are, it is said, endowed with the “ admirable aptitude for assimilating the principles of the civilization that is brought to them, an intelligence which, excited by persecution and by the difficulties of remaining under the iron yoke of the Arabs, has almost always taken on a marvelous development “.
A century later and despite efforts made to historicize the condition of Jews in precolonial society, this vision where Westernization constitutes the “ sense of history » continues to dominate, as illustrated in the classic work of André Chouraqui, The Jews of North Africa. March to the West (Puff, 1952). Take it seriously the journeys of anti-colonialist Jews who wanted to be “Algerians” » (p. 15) therefore allows – beyond the objectification of these activist journeys – to return to this non-linear history, in which French acculturation is no longer the only horizon of expectation.
Still with the aim of opposing teleological visions of history, the second contribution of Le Foll-Luciani’s work is to restore the conditions for the emergence of commitments, which amounts more broadly to showing that, in this colonial society largely underpinned by racial principles, other thinkables of “ become-algerian » may have existed before the crystallization of the Arab-Muslim conception of Algerianness.
At the heart of the Algerianness »
The Vichy period and the repeal of the Crémieux decree (which, in 1870, had collectively naturalized the Jews of Algeria) undoubtedly constitute the first matrix moment in the initiation of political commitment. This rupture fuels resistance which will result in the adhesion of some to the Zionist or communist movements. “ Beyond their differences, both have in common that they question the primary identification with France and reject, for one, the Jewish condition in colonial Algeria and, for the other, the colonial situation itself. » (p. 258).
To the Algerian Communist Party (PCA), in the final years of the war, commitment was built against anti-Semitism and around anti-fascist and anti-racist patriotism. Even if the term “ colonialism » does not yet appear officially, non-Muslim activists are widely encouraged to take an interest in the inequalities produced by the colonial order. This discovery is part of anti-colonialist radicalization, even before the PCA officially changes line to adopt a project falling within the “ national liberation “.
The Communist Youth and the PCAjust like the Union of Algerian Democratic Youth (UJDA) or even language groups of Algerian students in student exile in Paris, constitute privileged places for unprecedented political and emotional socialization between Muslims and non-Muslims. In this wake, diverse and competing conceptions are being developed around the definition of Algerianness. If the Arab-Berber referent pole is central in this construction of identification, it is at the time open to other identity components. From this perspective, the commitment of anti-colonialist Jews appears not as an imitation of Muslims, but as a full and complete expression of an Algerianness “ which they hope is common to the greatest number of inhabitants of Algeria » (p. 339).
The outbreak of war in 1954 disrupted the landscape of these political counter-societies and forced these activists to redefine themselves in the light of the internal contradictions of the anti-colonial movements, exacerbated by the racial policies of the colonizer. The majority of Jews involved in the war were communist militants. But some of them join the FLNat least comes close, especially after the vote on the law on special powers by the communist deputies, a position which provoked serious controversies. Some provide connections between the PCF and the FLNothers write leaflets and brochures, commit themselves as “ suitcase carriers “. At the beginning of 1957, the FLN creates the Committee of Algerian Israelites for Negotiation, then the Group of Algerian Students of European Origin, linked to the General Union of Algerian Muslim Students, which intervenes publicly and clandestinely in favor of the FLN. Still others participate in the clandestine organization of PCAbanned by the French authorities from September 1955.
In terms of armed struggle and taking into account political competition within the anti-colonial movement, which resulted in the rejection of communists in the maquis, autonomous groups, the Liberation Fighters (CDL), were created from the first half of 1955 and would then integrate the National Liberation Army (ALN). But Jewish participation in the armed struggle is minimal ; their commitment is mainly deployed in political networks. This is because their position – with the exception of a few activists like Daniel Timsit – is based on the one hand on the fear of suffering the same fate as certain communists who were physically liquidated within theALNon the other hand on the rejection in principle of attacks against civilians.
“ Becoming Algerian » versus “ national identity »
The independence of Algeria, followed by the massive departure of Europeans and Jews, did not lead to the multicultural society that these anti-colonial Jewish activists defended. This does not prevent them from fully sharing the victory with the Muslims and from living “ more than ever like Algerians “.
If all the ministers of the new government are Muslim – unlike Tunisia and Morocco – some Jews participate in important political responsibilities. The field of possibilities for this “ become-algerian » is therefore always open ; it will remain so between the signing of the Évian agreements, on March 18, 1962, and the vote on the law on the Nationality Code, on March 12, 1963. The latter signs a definition based on the exclusive criterion of origin : Algerian nationality “ original », non-existent until then, concerns “ any person with at least two paternal ascendants born in Algeria and enjoying Muslim status there » (Chapter VIparagraph 1, article 34 of Law No. 63-96 of March 27, 1963 on the Algerian Nationality Code.).
The others – Europeans and Algerian Jews – must acquire this nationality. This new code legalizes the exclusive character of the Algerian nation. European anticolonialists and Jews feel less and less legitimate as full members of the new society, in which they must adopt a certain civic reserve. In this new configuration, they are imposing an almost complete withdrawal from political life, a withdrawal that the leadership of the PCA. The coup d’état of June 19, 1965, which was accompanied by repression against a backdrop of xenophobic discourse, caused the departure of these last anti-colonialist Jews.
Through this story from below », Jean-Pierre Le Foll-Luciani allows us to examine the socializing journeys of these Jewish activists, crossed by tensions and contradictions fueled by the diversity of their cultural homes. But it is also the entire social and political history of the Jews of Algeria, of Algerian communism, and even of Algerian society during the colonial era, which can be seen. This impressive study opens the way to a new historiographical conception of the Jews of the Maghreb, as close as possible to lived realities.