The Souk

The history of the Jews in Tunisia extends over nearly two thousand years and goes back to the Punic era. The Jewish community in Tunisia is no doubt older, grew up following successive waves of immigration and proselytism before its development was hampered by anti-Jewish measures in the Byzantine Empire. The community formerly used its own dialect of Arabic. After the Muslim conquest of Tunisia, Tunisian Judaism passes from periods of relative freedom or even cultural apogee to times of more marked discrimination. The arrival of Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula, often through Livorno, greatly alters the country. Its economic, social and cultural situation has improved markedly with the advent of the French protectorate before being compromised during the Second World War, with the occupation of the country by the Axis. The creation of Israel in 1948 provoked a widespread anti-Zionist reaction in the Arab world, to which was added nationalist agitation, nationalization of enterprises, Arabization of education and part of the administration. Jews left Tunisia en masse from the 1950s onwards because of the problems raised and the hostile climate created by the Bizerte crisis in 1961 and the Six-Day War in 1967. The Jewish population of Tunisia, estimated at about 100,000 individuals in 1948, was only 1,500 in 2003, less than 0.1% of the total population. These Jews lived mainly in Tunis, with communities present in Djerba, Sfax, Sousse and Nabeul. As of 2011, 700 Jews were living in Tunis and 1,000 on the island of Djerba.The Jewish diaspora of Tunisia is divided between Israel and France, where it has preserved its community identity through its traditions, mostly dependent on Sephardic Judaism, but retaining its own specific characteristics. Djerbian Judaism in particular, considered to be more faithful to tradition because it remained outside the sphere of influence of the modernist currents, plays a dominant role. The vast majority of Tunisian Jews have relocated to Israel and have switched to using Hebrew as their home language. Tunisian Jews living in France typically use French as their first language, while the few still left in Tunisia tend to use either French or Judeo-Tunisian Arabic in their everyday lives.
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