Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1992, page 60

Maghreb Mirror

North Africa's Oldest Synagogue

By Jamal Amiar

Every year, on the 33rd day following the Passover observance, hundreds of Tunisian Jews flock to North Africa's oldest synagogue, located on the island of Djerba, 350 miles southeast of Tunis. This year, journalists were invited to attend this pilgrimage, with a 400-year tradition, which also attracts Jews with Tunisian roots from Morocco, Algeria, France and Italy.

Jews are said to have lived in Djerba for more than 2,500 years. The Djerba synagogue is built around a stone believed to have come from the First Temple of Jerusalem, after its destruction 25 centuries ago. The synagogue celebrates the memory of a Talmud master, Shimon Bar Yoshai, and it contains one of the world's oldest Torahs.

There were 100,000 Jews living in Tunisia at the beginning of the century. Most left after the creation of Israel in 1948, or during the Arab-Israeli wars that followed. Of 3,000 still in Tunisia, 700 live in Djerba.

This year a striking feature of the pilgrimage was the great diversity among the visitors. Old Jewish women came back to thank the local saint for fulfilling some wish of their past. Younger Jewish women still come to Djerba to pray for a good husband. They bring with them eggs on which they have written their names and leave them in the synagogue overnight. If the eggs are in good shape the following day, it augurs well for their wish to come true.

Most younger visitors to the island of Djerba wanted also to enjoy the beaches, take a break from the "big city" and bring their own children for an initiation into Tunisian Jewish culture. Still others came for reunions with former classmates or neighbors. A young woman from Paris was in Djerba to organize package tours for Americans to the sunny and spiritual island.

Nor were politics totally absent from this pilgrimage to a Jewish synagogue on an Arab island. "The Djerba yearly pilgrimage might give some good ideas to the Arabs and the Israelis presently negotiating for peace in the Middle East," a young man from Paris told journalists. In fact, Tunisian Muslims are increasingly interested in the history and traditions of their Jewish neighbors and Tunisian Jewish emigres in other countries.

Present in Djerba this May was the Tunisian-born rabbi of Paris, Jacob Madar, who expressed "the wish that violence and war come to an end in the Middle East now that peace talks are underway after decades of conflict." From Djerba, the rabbi of Tunis, Haim Madar, thanked the Tunisian government "for making Arab-Jewish coexistence possible in Tunisia" and praised the "brotherhood and climate of security that characterizes relations between the different communities of the country."

Tunisian authorities did not miss the opportunity to point out that their policy is one of tolerance and freedom. There is talk that the Tunisian government may soon authorize Israeli citizens of Tunisian descent to visit the land of their own or their parents' birth. Moroccan Israelis have been free to visit Morocco since 1979, and more than 5,000 Israelis have been touring Morocco annually for the past decade.

Although Tunisians strongly support the Palestinians, still dying in their struggle for their rights in Gaza and the West Bank, the government of Tunisia obviously has taken seriously Secretary of State James Baker's call for mutual confidence-building measures.

The invitation to journalists to participate in what traditionally has been a relatively unpublicized annual Jewish pilgrimage to Tunisia, and the talk of allowing Tunisian Israelis to visit their ancestral haunts, are in the context of developing Egyptian-Israeli relations, the Palestine Liberation Organization's recognition of the right of the state of Israel to exist, and the excellent relations Morocco maintains with Moroccan Jews living around the world, including Israel. Clearly Muslim and Jewish Tunisians are opening a new page in their relations, in anticipation of a better Arab-Jewish future. Good politics start with good ideas.

Jamal Amiar is a U.S.-educated radio journalist based in Tangier, Morocco.

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