Projecting Algerian Judaism, Formulating a Political Identity

Zionism in Algeria during the War of Independence (1954-62)

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3979592
AutoresKeren Rouche (autor correspondente)
Ano2007
Volume12
Fascículo2
Páginas185-201
Data de publicação2007-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of North African Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1362-9387 • E-ISSN: 1743-9345
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13629380601149461
OpenAlexW1999002568
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas13

The traditional historiography about Algerian Jewish history usually contends that, given the low immigration of Algerian Jews to Israel, the role of Zionism and Zionist activities in Algeria was negligible. By narrowly focusing on Algerian Jews' immigration and attachment to France, this body of literature has obscured the complex relationship among Algerian Jews, Zionism, Israel, and the French colonial state during the particularly tumultuous period of the Algerian war of independence (1954–62). This essay shows that, contrary to the general wisdom of traditional narratives, there was a significant Zionist influence in Algeria. It further aspires to open up new horizons in Algerian Jewish history and in approaches to comprehending the construction of Algerian Jews' political subjectivities. Notes 1. According to David Cohen's estimates (2003, p. 469), ‘in all fifteen thousand Algerian Jews settled in Israel between 1943 and 1963’ as opposed to ‘more than 100,000 of the 140,000 Algerian Jews’ who immigrated to France from 1962 to 1963. 2. Doris Bensimon (Citation1990, p. 542) recognises efforts made by Algerian Zionists to convince Algerian Jews to immigrate to Israel. She nevertheless posits that considering Algerian Jews' massive immigration to France, the choice of France was actually predetermined by the ‘logic of their Frenchification process’. While the argument of historical inevitability is highly debatable, the same could be said of its underlying belief: the exclusivist conceptions of French identity and national sentiment. 3. For instance, Haim Musicant (today's Director-General of the CRIF, Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France, the Council of French Jewish Institutions) argues that Zionism was no more than an ‘abstract idea’, and in no way part of Algerian Jews' everyday life. 4. During the Second World War, Lazarus was the chief of the Parisian group of the Organisation juive de combat, a Jewish resistance movement. In 1947, he was sent to Algiers to open a branch of the technical school ORT (Organisme juif international d'enseignement professionel). From then on, through his activism, he cumulated various functions within Algerian Jewish institutions and acted as the main representative of the community. 5. Respectively, Haim Cherqui was the Secretary general of the CCJA (Comission Culturelle Juive d'Algérie, Jewish Cultural Commission of Algeria). Aizer Cherqui was an emissary of the immigration department of the Jewish Agency. André Narboni was the juridical counsel of the CJAES (Comité Juif Algérien d'Etudes Sociales, the Algerian Jewish Committee of Social Studies). Benjamin Heler was the president of the FSA (Fédération Sioniste Algérienne, Algerian Zionist Federation). 6. The idea of recreating Judaism through Zionist values and activities was not the project of the Algerian Jewish leadership only: the World Jewish Congress (WJC) was promoting the idea of a revivified Jewish life worldwide where Israel would stand as the centre of Jewish activity. See the WJC president Nahum Goldmann's address at the Executive session of the WJC held in Geneva on 23 July 1958, reproduced in IJ (August–September Citation1958c). 7. Although this suggests that Zionism was already present on the Algerian Jewish political scene, as David Cohen explains, the Algerian Zionist Union's activities were quite limited in scope while ‘confined to helping the Jewish National Fund, whose emissaries came to Algeria to collect money’ (2003, p. 469). 8. Adolphe Crémieux was the driving protagonist behind the collective imposition of French citizenship on Algerian Jews through the 24 October 1870 decree bearing his name. 9. Paul Silverstein (Citation2004, p. 10) makes a similar argument about Berberist and Islamist political subjectivities in France nowadays while he asserts that ‘policies of assimilation are ... always balanced by nostalgic practices of cultural preservation’. 10. In this essay, I draw on Deborah A. Kapchan's definition of performance (1995, p. 479): ‘Performances are aesthetic practices—patterns of behavior, ways of speaking, manners of bodily comportment—whose repetitions situate actors in time and space, structuring individual and group identities. Insofar as performances are based on repetitions, whether lines learned, gestures imitated, or discourses reiterated, they are generic means of tradition making. Indeed, performance genres play an essential (and essentializing) role in the mediation and creation of social communities, whether organized around bounds of nationalism, ethnicity, class status, and gender. Yet performances provide an intricate counterpoint to the unconscious practices of everyday life insofar as they are stylistically marked expressions of otherness, lifting the level of habitual behavior and entering an alternate, often ritualized or ludic, interpretative “frame” wherein different rules apply.’ 11. As Alice Conklin explains (Citation1997, pp. 1–2), French politicians believed that their government ‘had a special mission to civilize the indigenous peoples now coming under its control’. Furthermore: ‘the notion of a civilizing mission rested upon certain fundamental assumptions about the superiority of French culture and the perfectibility of humankind. It implied that France's colonial subjects were too primitive to rule themselves, but were capable of being uplifted. It intimated that the French were particularly suited, by temperament and by virtue of both their revolutionary past and their current industrial strength, to carry out this task.’ It further assumed that France ‘had a duty and a right to remake “primitive” cultures along the lines inspired by the cultural, political, and economic development of France’. 12. For an account of French Jewish reformers' perceptions of Algerian Jewish marriage, divorce and polygamy, see Schwarzfuchs (Citation1981, pp. 289–93). Joshua Schreier (Citation2003, p. 237) also explains that, in the eyes of these reformers, ‘one of the first steps in the process of civilizing the Jews ... was to europeanize the wedding ceremony itself’. From the middle of the 1850s, there was increasing consistorial pressure to put an end to ‘scandalous’ native practices that were considered ‘costly, noisy, and indicative of Islamic influence on Algerian Judaism’. 13. Algerian Jewish leaders nevertheless opposed resistance to the French Central Consistory's imposition of the état civil in the aftermath of the Décret Crémieux. For an account on this affair and on the Consistory's threatening response, see Elizabeth Friedman (Citation1988, pp. 10–13) and Schreier (Citation2003, pp. 287–97). 14. For references on anti-Semitism in colonial Algeria, see Geneviève Dermenjian Citation(1983), Emanuel Sivan Citation(1980) and David Prochaska Citation(1996). 15. David Cohen (Citation1996, p. 46) makes a sharp comment along this line: ‘The Jews of Algeria will thus have wasted, between 1870 and 1961, a great deal of their energy and intelligence to defend and save their rights as French citizens’. 16. Younsi Rochdi Ali Citation(2003) demonstrates the Algerian Jewish urge to reassert their Frenchness as French citizens when their survival was under threat during the pogrom of Constantine and Vichy era. Younsi's approach delineates the contours of Algerian Jews' identification with the French model as a political strategy for survival. His contribution is extremely valuable since the literature on Algerian Jews does not question the political significance of being French for Algerian Jews but rather takes their Frenchness for granted. 17. On 1 October 1956, the FLN published the Appel de la Soummam as a result of the August 1956 Congrès de la Soummam. In this letter addressed to the grand rabbi of Algiers, Maurice Eisenbeth, to the members of the Jewish consistory and to all the representatives of the Jewish community in Algeria, the FLN asked the Jews of Algeria to take a firm political stance on the conflict: ‘It is because the FLN considers Algerian Israelites the sons of our nation, that it hopes that the leaders of the Jewish community will have the wisdom to contribute to the edification of a free and genuinely brotherly Algeria ... It is the leaders’ duty and in the best interest of the Jewish community not to stay neutral (au-dessus de la mêlée), and to condemn the agonizing French colonial regime, and to overtly proclaim their choice of Algerian nationality' (Stora, Citation2004, p. 301). 18. Todd Shepard (Citation2006, p. 170) notes that de Gaulle's declaration came across a conversation with SFIO (Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière, French Section of the Workers' International) leader and former prime minister Guy Mollet who reported it in an article in spring 1961. 19. Richard Ayoun (Citation1982, p. 115) explains that this official recognition was the result of the Alliance Israélite Universelle's president delegate Admiral Louis Kahn's mediation between the CJAES and de Gaulle to have the government accept ‘the idea that the Israelites do not constitute a separate community in Algeria and that their destiny is intimately tied to the Europeans’ one'. For an excellent discussion about Algerian Jews' ‘repatriation’ and the whole debate about the repatriate status in official French discourses and laws, see Shepard Citation(2006). 20. Typically André Chouraqui (Citation1968, p. 114) asserts that Algerian Jews enthusiastically welcomed ‘French forces who were to establish peace and justice’. 21. Chouraqui (Citation1968, pp. 113–14) often emphasises the positive aspect of French colonialism for the Jews in Algeria in contrast to the miserable state of ‘restrictions and discriminations imposed upon them (...) by a population that subjected them to indignity and oppression’ under Ottoman rule. 22. In an article quoted by Michel Abitbol (Citation1994, p. 252), Henri Chemouilli posited that ‘the best they (the Algerian Jews) had gotten from France was their emancipation, their introduction to modern life, their accession to Western culture’. 23. In his book about Egyptian Jewry, Joel Beinin (Citation1998, p. 59) makes a similar argument about ‘exclusivist conceptions of national identity and national sentiment’ and stresses that they ‘do not conform to previously existing forms of political community in Egypt’. 24. This word combines two French words: nostalgie (nostalgia) and Algérie (Algeria). 25. Remember WJC President Nahum Goldmann's address on the 23 July 1958 Executive session of the WJC in which he promoted the idea of a revivified Jewish life worldwide where Israel would stand as the centre of Jewish activity (IJ, August–September Citation1958c). 26. On 19 April 1943, the Nazis entered the Warsaw Ghetto following Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler's January order to liquidate it. In a desperate last stand, Jewish insurgents began a hopeless battle against the Nazis. It was the first time during the war that resistance fighters in an area under German control had staged an uprising. It ended in the complete destruction of the ghetto. On 19 April, the Nazis surrounded the ghetto and the battle began. By 15 May, the shooting had become so intermittent that it was clear the ghetto fighters had been defeated. All in all, several thousand Jews had been buried in the debris, and more than 56,000 had been captured. About 30,000 of them were either immediately shot or transported to death camps. The remainder was sent to labour camps. 27. The Jewish Agency, Aide à Israël (Support for Israel), the CJAES, the CCJA (Comission Culturelle Juive d'Algérie, Jewish Cultural Commission of Algeria), the WJC and its North African Bureau, the Consistory of the city where the celebration was taking place, the FCIA (Fédération des Communautés Israélites d'Algérie, Federation of the Israelite Communities of Algeria), the FSA (Fédération Sioniste Algérienne, Algerian Zionist Federation), the KKL (Keren Kayemet Leisrael, Jewish National Fund) and the WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organisation). 28. Dipesh Chakrabarty's argument (1998, p. 18) on minority history is applicable to our case: ‘The problem of “minority histories” thus leads us to the question of what may be called the “minor-ity” of some particular pasts, ie constructions and experiences of the past that stay “minor” in the sense that their very incorporation into historical narratives converts them into pasts “of lesser importance” vis-à-vis dominant understandings ...’ 29. Concerned with demonstrating the existence of a timeless and universal Jewish spirit, Djian (IJ, May–June Citation1957, p. 3) also used the Cold War situation to stress the similarities between European Jews' reactions vis-à-vis Nazism and the Israeli people's ones vis-à-vis Communism, for, Djian argues, in both situations Jews fought for ‘justice and freedom’. 30. The El Maleh Rahamim precedes the Kadish, the prayer for the dead. 31. See the picture accompanying the article (IJ, May Citation1958, p. 5). 32. However, the positions of the Frenchified Algerian Jewish elite tended to fluctuate around unchanging tendencies: (1) the unconditional support for Israel; (2) the demonstration of their belief in French values; and (3) the acknowledgement of their French citizenship, a cornerstone in their strategy to preserve it by all means in the face of political challenges. 33. In his article, Gad Chahar Citation(1958), an Algerian immigrant living in Israel since 1946, who changed his name from Sebaoun to a more Israeli sounding name, promoted ‘alyat hanoar (immigration of the youth) to Israel and praised the virtues of the kibbutz as ‘the social, economic, defensive formula’ that best responds to all the needs of the Israeli state: new immigrants' absorption and integration, economic independence, and strategic defence in a hostile environment. Through the promotion of ‘alyat hanoar and while trying to seduce young potential newcomers, Chahar endorsed the terms of the selective Israeli immigration policies imposed on North African immigrants. 34. See, for instance, the call of I. M. Toledano, great rabbi of the Sephardi community of Tel-Aviv, in which he summoned every Algerian Jew to participate in the fundraising campaign organised by the Keren Hayessod (United Israel Appeal) in Algeria in support for Israel (IJ, April Citation1959, p. 5). Moreover, decrying wealthy Algerian Jews’ indifference vis-à-vis Jewish activities in general and the Keren Hayessod's campaign in particular, IJ published a declaration on its front page in which its signatories—Marcel Attal, Aïzer Cherqui, Ernest Dadon, Edmond Gahnassia, Joseph Hassoun, Jacques Lazarus, André Narboni, Paul Said, Claude Sultan, Ange Zaffran—criticised this indifference as a shame for the reputation of the Algerian Jewish community (May 1959, p. 1). Some historians would probably argue that such attitudes evidenced Algerian Jews' lack of interest for Zionism and Israel, as well as their high degree of assimilation to France. However, being knowledgeable of Israeli discriminatory practices toward North African immigrants, Algerian Jews' unwillingness to support a fundraising campaign for Israel might also reflect their disagreement with Israeli policies. 35. For instance, see the North African delegation's declaration at the Zionist Conference in Amsterdam, in which they expressed their ‘wish that the regime of immigration and absorption be the same for all the olim, whatever their country of origin’ (IJ, April Citation1959, p. 5). 36. The long-accumulated tensions and frustrations of Maghrebi Jews in Israel ended by erupting into violence in July–August 1959, and the slum of Wadi Salib in Haifa, populated almost exclusively by Maghrebi Jews, became the stage for their outburst of anger. 37. Examining the intense Algerian Zionist activism also debunks a widespread belief in the Israeli political imaginary of the 1950s that North African Jews were not true Zionists, but came to Israel purely out of need. Despite the fact that there were fervent Zionists among those who settled in Israel, such focus on the lack of sincerity of North African Jewish immigrants may also have served as a discursive strategy to obscure Israel's political interests in the Maghreb and its use of the Maghrebi Jewish element in regional political struggles and domestic Israeli politics. Moreover this argument was used to justify the geographic ‘aliyah, policies of segregation favouring Ashkenazi Jews at the expense of Sephardi Jews in the regime of Israeli immigration and absorption. As Beinin (Citation1998, p. 16) posits, in addition to the negative official Israeli interpretation of Middle Eastern Jews’ motives to establish in Israel, ‘minimal participation in the Zionist movement was considered yet another expression of the backwardness of Mizrahim’. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKeren Rouche Keren Rouche, Rue des Beaux-Arts 5, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Email: [email protected]

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Historiography · Identity (music · Immigration · Independence (probability theory · Jewish history · Jewish identity · Jewish state · Jewish studies · Judaism · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · War of independence · Zionism · African history and culture studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · North African History and Literature · Philosophy