It was a fine achievement to bring together at the Sorbonne, from 22 to 25 March 1999, so many researchers, Jewish and non-Jewish, of Tunisian origin or not, Muslim Tunisians and Israelis, and to draw a collective work from a sum of individual contributions.1 The blending of all these papers managed to avoid cacophony and also, through the sincerity of the speakers, to leave an impression of objectivity, of unity and even of great reverence across the various approaches to a painful past.
Two opening addresses set the tone. That of Professor Emeritus Mohamed Talbi: “we all need a theology of pluralism” and “The Eternal is One. It was Israel that laid the first milestone on this path.” That of Chief Rabbi René-Samuel Sirat, taking up the thought of Yitzhak Rabin, recently recalled by Ariel Sharon: “The Jewish people has no moral right to dominate another people.” Earlier, René-Samuel Sirat had observed: “The half-century that has just passed has not known a single day of peace between Israel and Ishmael. That is why, on the Jewish side too, there has been no opportunity to apply the fundamental principles that the Bible lays down regarding the rights of the stranger.” As for Claude Nataf, President of the Society for the History of the Jews of Tunisia, he called for “respect for each person in their difference.”
Tolerated but humiliated
Setting aside chronological order for once, let us leave until later the golden age of Kairouan, in which the Jewish community of Tunisia, enriched by prestigious Eastern and Iberian contributions, played a large part. What is striking in the Tunisian studies of the Jewish condition is, on the whole, the scientific rigour of researchers who, rejecting any naïve idealism, show us that the tolerance granted to Jewish and Christian minorities in Africa and the East was always accompanied by humiliations and constraints. Radhi Dagfous regrets that some emphasise vexatious and contemptuous texts while concealing the positive aspects of Judeo-Muslim coexistence; and, certainly, the situation that prevailed before emancipation in the Christian world should invite us, by way of contrast, to set anachronisms aside. It is true that everywhere reasons of state struck, in one way or another, those who refused the religion of the prince; yet between the demonisation – or total expulsion – suffered by Jews and Muslims in Christian Europe and the contemptuous tolerance granted to Jews and Christians in Islam, the choice seemed clear. In medieval terms, and even later, the Muslim variant was distinctly more liveable. Things would change with the Enlightenment.
Ridha Ben Rejeb shows us how, in the period preceding the Protectorate, Tunisian elites drawn to modernism found it difficult to impose on their people the full emancipation of religious minorities. The liberal reform of 1852 was repealed following the veritable revolution that broke out in 1864. We might observe that, a century later, the sympathy shown by Habib Bourguiba towards the Jewish minority, which he would have liked to keep in Tunisia, would come up against the inertia of a public opinion weighed down by its cultural heritage. We knew this situation well in Western Europe after the emancipation of 1791.
Modern times, the quest for emancipation
Directly or indirectly, the emancipation movements that stirred Jewish society in Tunisia, from the middle of the 19th century to the interwar period, are linked to Enlightenment France. The role of France, through the local influence of its consuls and through the Algerian model, a close point of reference, was certainly paramount. Ridha Ben Rejeb on the one hand and Georges Weill on the other show us how foreign protection was supported by an elite of Livornese and French Jews who relied on the Alliance Israélite Universelle. But this Franco-Livornese duality should not mislead us. Since the 18th century these Livornese had been imbued with French ideas. As for the families of French Jews, they were closely intertwined with the Livornese families within one and the same community woven together by kinship, including a few so-called Marseille families (Carcassone – or Carcassonna (sic) –, Crémieux, Mossé and others) found as early as 1780 in the Portuguese community of Marseille and in Livorno itself.2 We shall see, with regard to the Alliance Israélite Universelle and then the “Justice” movement, that elites of both communities were able at all times to overcome communal divisions. Finally, if the leadership of the emancipation movements was apparently assigned to Jews enjoying foreign citizenship or protection, this was largely because of the legal disabilities that affected Tunisian Jews. But was it not an act of solidarity, for the holders of legal privileges, to place them at the service of those who were deprived of them?
When, within Tunisian Jewish society, elites eager for modernity sought, through the movement behind the review “Justice”, cultural and legal assimilation with the French, Jews of French and Italian nationality also contributed to its editorial work. Claude Nataf cites among others Jules Debbasch, Jules and Aline Scialom, all three Italians, after 1930. But it is clear, and Nataf demonstrates it, that it was within this movement that the modern Tunisian Jewish elites would assert and renew themselves.
The claim, by the members of the “Justice” group, to French judicial jurisdiction for Tunisian Jews may have been interpreted by their Muslim compatriots as a kind of betrayal. Yet Tunisian researchers all acknowledge that the quality of the so-called “native” courts offered little guarantee in general, and even less to Jews. Some, adopting the position taken at the time by Tunisian notables, believe it would have been preferable to undertake a reform of local justice rather than to rely on the French courts. Objectivity would suggest that such an improvement may then have seemed a very long-term undertaking. It is also fair to say that the nationalist barrier did not operate in the same way among Jewish Tunisians as among Muslims in their approach to this problem, and that, from the standpoint of the time, the prospect of Tunisian independence seemed, moreover, quite utopian.
Lucette Valensi’s fine paper “la culture politique des juifs du Maghreb” has the great merit of analysing all the nuances of this drive of the Tunisian Jewish elites towards the Enlightenment, notably distinguishing their own acculturation from that of their Algerian cousins.
The Alliance Israélite Universelle
The recent history immediately preceding the Protectorate, notably the events of 1864, could give cause for concern. At that date, following unrest that had shaken the country, the liberal reforms of 1857 were repealed. Ridha ben Rejeb analyses the consequences of this revocation, which called into question the few advances then made in judicial practice. It amounted, in a sense, to an internationalisation of the problem of the condition of the Jews in Tunisia: first through the increasingly frequent intervention of the consuls of the European powers, and finally through the establishment of a Committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. With great objectivity, ben Rejeb observes: “after the failure of the reforms, (the Jews) no longer had any hope of an emancipation coming from within.”
The Gallicisation of the Jews of Tunisia thus became inevitable in the long run, especially when, amid colonial rivalries, the teaching of Italian was discontinued from the start of the Protectorate at the instigation of Livornese of French nationality, such as Raymond Valensi. Baron Giacomo di Castelnuovo, Cavour’s éminence grise but at the same time a correspondent of Adolphe Crémieux, found himself removed from the management of the schools he had initiated. Let us note the complexity of the situation in which this Castelnuovo, an Italian patriot, had nonetheless given priority to the most effective solution for the uplifting of the Jewish people of Tunisia, that of the AIU, knowing full well that he was thereby favouring French influence, and even incurring for it the harsh criticism, at the time, of the Piedmontese nationalist press. He was to remind Crémieux of the programme the latter had suggested to him, not without a certain prophetic sense: “fusion of the communities through the school.”
Georges Weill, president of the Société des études juives, in a very substantial paper, recalls the beginnings of the Alliance in Tunisia, twenty years before the Protectorate, and describes its fruitful activity, punctuated by a few “tragicomic” incidents. Regarding the role of a French banker, Victor Garsin, whom he cites as the first president of the Committee, let us point out, as a footnote to Sephardic history, the close Tunisian roots of his family, one of whose ancestors, of Marrano origin, appears in 1696 in Tunis at the foot of a. collective acknowledgement of debt by twenty-six Livornese merchants in favour of the Consul of France. The Garsins, the maternal family of Amedeo Modigliani, spread to Livorno and then to Marseille at the end of the 18th century, but had never lost contact with Tunis.
Between Spain and Babylon
Since Carthage, history, dependent on geography, has made Tunisia the maritime and caravan stopover between East and West. The Jews of Tunisia thus found themselves at the heart of a Hispano-Arab world in full cultural ferment, rubbing shoulders in Kairouan with the scholars of Córdoba and Babylon. Neji Jelloul’s paper on the Jews of Kairouan in the Middle Ages is extremely rich. It highlights the links that existed at that time between Tunisian and Italian Judaism on the one hand and the Spanish communities on the other. We recently discussed the close relations between the Jews of Sicily and Tunisia at the crossroads of Muslim and Christian cultures. But this conference offers a true abundance, with the papers of Paul Fenton, Khaled Kchir, Ibrahim Jadla, Eleazar Gutwirth and Radhi Daghfous. Culture, said Anatole France, is what remains when one has forgotten everything. And it is true that history confirms things long buried but dimly present in the collective memory, despite all acculturations and declines. What remains from the study of civilisations is that they grow great through exchanges and borrowings and ossify through isolation and rejection.
Zionism and Judeo-Muslim relations
This delicate problem is addressed without cant by Haïm Saadoun, an Israeli researcher.
He notes that periods of crisis in the history of Zionism harmed the relations of the Jews of Tunisia with their Muslim fellow citizens. He nevertheless admits that, in general, outside periods of crisis, this problem had little influence, unlike what happened in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Aden, even though Zionism was more powerful in Tunisia than in those other countries. Saadoun explains this by the more moderate character of Tunisian nationalism. He also sees in it an effect of Bourguiba’s personality. Finally, he observes that Tunisian Zionism, in its early days, did not call on Jews to leave their country for Israel. For his part, Larbi Chouikha, a Tunisian researcher, acknowledges that half of the Tunisians of La Goulette have a negative idea of Jews because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while others, fewer in number, emphasise the economic and cultural advantages that have always accompanied good understanding between communities. In short, if we understand the author correctly, it is rather as a “Westerner”, a member of the dominant group, that the Gallicised Jew would suffer from a poor image. The image is ambiguous, for there also appears an attraction to this kindred world: the aromas of Jewish cooking, the generosity of the restaurateur Bichi, the devotion of doctors Lellouche or Finzi.
The benefits of knowledge
Let us end on a Spinozist note. The merit of these studies lies in the knowledge they bring us of one another. Baruch Spinoza, in the Maimonidean tradition, never ceased to repeat that hatred stems from ignorance alone, whereas knowledge is the very condition of love. These fascinating studies are therefore very precious, even if they fulfilled their aim only partially. As Rabelais said: “time is the father of truth”.
Lionel Levy
Notes:
1 List of the authors of the papers:
Michel Abitbol, Robert Attal, Ridha Ben Rejeb, Larbi Couika, Guy Dugas, Taoufik El Ayadi, Sonia Fellous, Paul B. Fenton, Eleazar Gutwirth, Claude Hagège, Ibrahim Jadla, Neji Jelloul, Habib Kazdaghli, Khaled Kchir, Abdelhamid Larguèche, Albert Memmi, Abdelwahed Mokni, Claude Nataf, Catherine Nicault, Laurence Podselver, Haïm Saadoun, Amnon Shiloah, René-Samuel Sirat, Jacques Taïeb, Mohamed Talbi, Claude Tapia, Zivia Tobi, Hasna Touati, Yaron Tsur, Lucette Valensi, Georges
2 From the outset this community in Marseille brought together Livornese from Livorno and from Tunis, Tunisians, Gibraltarians and “Sephardised” Comtadin Jews. “Carcasson” families appear in 1809 in the Livorno census, and “Carcassona” families are in Marseille in the Spanish-speaking community known as Portuguese in 1780. The many Cremisi of Livorno since the 18th century may be Sephardised Crémieux.