The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times

The impact of French colonialism on the Jewish-Muslim heritage of the Maghrib effectively helped lead to the end of Judaism in North Africa. The Jews and Muslims of North Afrifca had lived side by side for hundreds of years prior to French occupation.

According to Jewish tradition, they first arrived in contemporary Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria in B.C. 586, prior to the Islamic influx in the 7th century. Anti-Semitism among the indigenous Muslim population was rare until brought across the Mediterranean by European settlers and aggravated through the reorganization of local communities.

Prior to French rule, Maghribi Jews generally lived with certain imposed restrictions, but were free to form their own communities with autonomous legal and social systems.Several developments led to the mass exodus of Jews in North Africa, the most important and obvious factor being the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The 1940s and '50s, and - in the case of Algeria - the 1960s, saw the majority of Maghribi Jews emigrate to either Israel or France.

Relatively few Jews still remain in the former colonies and organized Jewish life is virtually nonexistent. Jewish life has been basically extinct in Algeria, the first French colony, since the 1970s.

Contemporary Tunisia still contains a small, orthodox Jewish community in Djerba and Tunis with little political influence, though most Jews emigrated by the 1950s. During French colonial rule, anti-Semitic tendencies were brought over to the Maghrib with the European settlers.

Because the Jews were quicker to assimilate to the dominant French culture, resentment developed among the Muslim population. The French restructured the Jewish community, which in Algeria included the opening of French public schools where Jews attended in disproportionate numbers.

In Algeria and Tunisia French citizenship was granted to the Jewish minority, another cause of resentment among the Muslims. Anti-semitic tensions in Algeria began in 1870 with the Cremieux Decree, which granted French citizenship to all Jews.