The Jews of Tunisia

The Last Remnant of Arabic Jewry: My Recent Trip to Djerba

The tiny island of Djerba remains the largest outpost of Arabic-speaking Jews today. Found off the coast of Tunisia, Djerba boasts a small but steady Jewish population of around 1,200 people. On the surface, a description of Djerba might resemble what one might see on a present-day tour of other Sephardic countries like Morocco. However, after visiting Djerba with my father this past June, I discovered that Djerba is not merely a unique side of Sephardic Jewish history or the artifacts of a lost community. In fact, Djerba is a thriving community infused with youth and culture, effectively serving as a window into the otherwise forgotten group of Arabic-speaking Jews. 

While massive populations of Jews once inhabited the regions of North Africa and Arabia, in the twentieth century, following persecution in the wake of events like the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, many of them were forced to flee to countries like Israel, the United States and France. Despite this mass emigration, the Djerba community has successfully maintained its 2,000-year-old community, its rich Sephardic and Tunisian culture and its fusion of tradition and modernity. 

Aside from its remarkable endurance, the Djerbian Jewish community is distinct in a multitude of ways, even from the communities of nearby North African countries and mainland Tunisia. This unique nature manifests itself most clearly within the island’s minhagim. For example, while Ashkenazic Jews outside of Israel only recite Birkat Kohanim on holidays and Sephardim and Israelis perform it every day, Djerbian Jews say it every Shabbat. Additionally, the person taking the Torah out of the Aron removes his shoes, and in the great El Ghriba shul, the island’s oldest shul and where tourists from all over the world come to visit, the practice is to take off one’s shoes before entering the sanctuary. Djerba is also the only place in the world where the shofar is blown before Shabbat, notifying the residents to stop working. Interestingly, except for when they are eating or davening, most Djerbian Jews do not wear a kippah outside of the Jewish area, despite all of them being Shomer Shabbat (observant of the Sabbath), most going to minyan and many learning Torah regularly. While some people may have heard of Djerba for its famed city of Kohanim, today, only a few families of Kohanim remain, and remarkably, there is not a single Levi on the entire island. 

What I found most interesting is the community’s simultaneous adaptation to modernity while in some areas holding strong to the practices of its ancestors. On the one hand, one might assume that if most people have smartphones that the same acceptance of modernity would apply to the educational system as well. However, most boys in the cheders were not learning any secular studies. On the other hand, many yeshivas in the U.S. and Europe that do not place an emphasis on secular studies do not teach Hebrew well either; however, the schools in Djerba teach everyone to speak modern Hebrew fluently, which made it very easy for us to make conversation with everyone. 

The practices regarding the interactions between men and women present another fascinating aspect of the community. While the Djerbian custom of unmarried men and women not speaking to each other and arranged shidduchim is found to various degrees in many other contemporary communities, the custom of couples not interacting at all within a one or two-year engagement period is not found even in the most Hasidic communities of Brooklyn. In general, Djerbian women do not go to shul, and many of the shuls do not have women’s sections. Ironically, though, the Djerbian women are more modern than one might have anticipated. For instance, some women spoke to us at Shabbat meals, and the girls learn English and other secular studies in school.