REMEMBERING THE OTHER: POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES ON RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN JEWS AND MUSLIMS IN FRENCH ALGERIA

Abstract

In July 1962, Algeria ceased to be a French colony and became an independent nation prompting the departure of almost all the land's 120,000 Jews, most of whom migrated to France. Half a century on from this “exodus,” a diverse and growing body of testimony is appearing in the form of memoirs written by Jews who grew up in colonial Algeria. Laying claim to a specific Algerian-Jewish identity, this relatively new body of work emphasizes the unique historical position and trajectory of the Algerian-Jewish community. Using this material, this article will focus on how interaction between Jews and Muslims has been reconstructed and represented from a postcolonial vantage point. Exploring the collective narrative of shared ethno-religious sensibilities created by centuries of cohabitation that were then progressively undermined by an accelerating process of cultural and socioeconomic elongation instituted by the French presence in Algeria reveals a complex and constantly shifting set of negotiations between proximity and distance that characterized Judeo-Muslim relationships. The position the authors assign to themselves and to their community within this reconstructed history is instructive for thinking about present-day issues of identity within the Algerian Jewish diaspora.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Jackie Clarke, Adrian Sewell, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful advice in the preparation of this article.

Notes

Guedj, Ma mère, 21.

Sussman, Changing Lands.

The population statistic is taken from Sussman, Changing Lands. The Crémieux Decree was not universally welcomed either by French statesmen or by Algerian Jews. Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith, 8, 173–6.

Anti-Semitism was a consistent feature of French Algeria, with particularly virulent peaks around the time of the Dreyfus Affair, during the 1930s and the Vichy years.

Hélène Cixous, So Close, 7.

For Cixous, see also: “Letter to Zohra Drif” and “My Algeriance.” For Derrida, see Monolingualism of the Other; Fathy, D'ailleurs Derrida.

See: Sussman, Changing Lands; Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith; Shurkin, French Nation Building; Godley, Almost-Finished Frenchmen; Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, 169–82; Zytnicki, Les Juifs du Maghreb.

Guedj, Ma mère; Macias, Mon Algérie; Macias, Non, je n'ai pas oublié; Arcady, Le petit blond.

Zakine, Ma mère; Favret, Les tribulations; G. Bensimon, Soleil perdu; J. Cohen, Chronique; Bénichou, Les larmes sechées; Guénoun, Un sémite.

Draï, Le pays d'avant; Attal, Constantine au loin…; Attal, Constantine: le coeur suspendu; Bensoussan, L'echelle algérienne; A. Cohen, Géographie des origines.

Timsit, Algérie; Ben, Quand les cartes sont truquées; Akoun, Né à Oran.

Although a range of political opinions are present across the memoirs, it should be pointed out that the majority of the authors considered here have leftist leanings.

To my knowledge, the only other scholar to have begun to exploit these memoirs is Robert Watson, “Memories (Out) of Place.”

For an overview of the position of the Jewish community during the War of Independence see: Benjamin Stora, “L'impossible neutralité des Juifs d'Algérie.”

Bahloul, The Architecture of Memory; Friedman, Colonialism and After; Wood, “Remembering the Jews of Algeria”; Allouche-Benayoun and Bensimon, Les Juifs d'Algérie; Stora, Les trois exils; Katz, “Between Emancipation and Persecution.”

Ayoun and Stora, Mon Algérie.

Ayoun and Stora, Mon Algérie, 45.

This is a role Macias clearly considers both a blessing and a curse. See: Ayoun and Stora, Mon Algérie, 100.

Sussman, Changing Lands, 22–3.

From the 1970s until the 1990s a range of academic works appeared focusing on the integration of the newly arrived Jews of Algerian into the wider French Jewish community. See for example: Bensimon, L'intégration des juifs nord-africains en France; Tapia, Les Juifs Sépharades en France; Tapia, “North African Jew in Belleville”; Allouche-Benayoun, “Une histoire d'intégration”; Zytnicki, “L'accueil des Juifs d'Afrique du Nord.”

For discussion of the different theories regarding the roots of the revived Algerian-Jewish identity see: Sussman, Changing Lands, 347; Spire, “Des écrivains juifs du Maghreb,” 265; Stora, “Exils multiples des Juifs d'Algérie,” 17.

Wood, “Remembering the Jews of Algeria,” 254.

The well-established influence of the present upon representations and understandings of the past mean that this reflection can also hopefully contribute to the expanding literature on relations between Jews and Muslims in contemporary France. See in particular: Katz, “Jews and Muslims in the Shadow of Marianne”; Benbassa, La République face à ses minorités; Davidson, Muslims only as Muslims.

Guénoun, Un sémite, 21–2.

Cohen, Chronique, 14–15.

Zakine, Ma mère, 67; A. Germaine cited in Allouche-Benayoun and Bensimon, Les Juifs d'Algérie, 103.

Macias, “Constantine, Juifs, Arabes, Chrétiens…,” 77.

Guedj, Ma mère, 22.

Taoufik Bestandji, “Voyage musical,” 79. Enrico Macias and his father, the violinist Sylvain Ghrenassia, both played in this orchestra. In June 1961, Leyris was assassinated by the FLN, precipitating the rapid departure of a significant proportion of Constantine's Jewish inhabitants.

Draï, Le pays d'avant, 141.

Cohen, Chronique, 24. Robert Watson makes the interesting point that although advancements in socio-economic status within the Jewish community were spatially manifested by relocation from indigenous to European quarters of cities, many families preferred to remain in “boundary areas.” This allowed them easy access to their former neighbourhoods, which in turn enabled them to maintain previous economic and religious ties. Watson, “Memories (Out) of Place,” 6.

Gilles Achache quoted in Fargues, Mémoires des Pieds-Noirs, 77; Attal, Constantine au loin…, 27.

Guedj, Ma mère, 22.

Attal, Constantine au loin…, 36; Guedj, Ma mère, 56.

Amsallem, peuple de la paix, 34.

Abitbol, “La Cinquième République,” 289.

Abitbol, “La cinquième République,” 296.

Timsit, Algérie, 13.

Guénoun, Un sémite, 24. It should be noted that several authors do retain the ability to speak Arabic, such as Draï, Macias, Ben, and Bénichou.

Sussman, Changing Lands, 5.

As Friedman writes, “The family was a safe space of identity––one could claim a family that was morally superior and different and still not jeopardize a claim to European standing” (Colonialism and After, 60).

Given that as a whole the memoirs have a strong focus on childhood, school emerges as the most common site where individual Muslim Algerians are encountered. Interactions in the commercial sphere come a close second, reflecting the fact that for all the socioeconomic advancement facilitated by the Crémieux Decree, some 35 per cent of Algerian Jews' livelihoods continued to be based on small scale commercial activities. Sussman, Changing Lands, 199. For a much fuller discussion of Jewish Muslim interactions in markets, school and leisure spaces than is possible here, see Watson, “Memories (Out) of Place,” 5–17.

Guedj, Ma mère, 21.

Sétif, for example, was notable for its lack of geographical distinctions along religious lines, in contrast to Constantine which is mentioned in several memoirs as possessing an “invisible frontier” that signalled the division between communities. Bahloul, The Architecture of Memory, 12; Draï, Le pays d'avant, 17; Attal, Constantine: le coeur suspendu, 63.

Bahloul, The Architecture of Memory, 79.

Laloum, “Portrait d'un Juif du FLN,” 65.

Attal, Constantine au loin, 77–9.

Timsit, Algérie, 13.

Guénoun, Un sémite, 96.

Friedman, Colonialism and After, 40.

Guénoun, Un sémite, 96.

Cohen, “Viridiana My Love,” 67.

Cohen, Chronique, 49.

The one exception to this is Hubert Zakine who, when writing about his old neighbourhood Bab-el Oued for a pied-noir association, goes to great lengths to deny the existence of differences between the various inhabitants of the quartier. However, even he is forced to concede that you could count the number of mixed marriages on the fingers of one hand. Zakine, “Il était une fois…,” 133–4.

Akoun, Né à Oran, 26.

Akoun, Né à Oran, 27.

Cohen, Chronique, 63.

Timsit, Algérie, 16.

Jean Daniel, “Dwelling on Images,” 97.

Guénoun is here invoking the stories other families told their children, in contrast to his own family where “We had no fear of Arabs.” Guénoun, Un sémite, 95; Attal, Constantine: le coeur suspendu, 68.

Cohen, Chronique, 85.

The notion of a safe and familiar individual Arab versus the menacing faceless mass is also common in pied-noir depictions of colonial relationships. For further analysis of this within a specifically Algerian context see in particular: Sivan, “Colonialism and Popular Culture in Algeria.”

Cole, “Antisémitisme et situation colonial,” 3, 15–17. Cole is also an excellent source for discussion of the context out of which the riots emerged, and their wider significance. A further key accounts of the riots is: Ageron, “Une émeute anti-juive à Constantine.”

Bensimon, Soleil perdu, 69.

Attal, Constantine au loin…; Attal, Constantine: le coeur suspendu.

Drai, Le pays d'avant, 44.

Attal, Constantine au loin…, 12, 219.

Bensimon, Soleil perdu, 69.

Doris Bensimon, “La perception de l'Autre,” 121.

Watson, “Memories (Out) of Place,” 3.