Abstract
In the mid-twentieth century, Algerian Jews who left their home country forged a transnational community with their former countrymen that spanned France, Israel, and Algeria. As these émigrés moved from a colonial to a nation-state context, they brought with them an expertise in traversing “in-between” spaces they had cultivated in Algeria across religious, cultural, and geographic lines. In contrast to prior histories of migration, this chapter contends that integration into new host countries involved contacts and economic opportunities that connected people across state territorial boundaries via cultural and religious ties, and that these ties were often far more important to the lives of the émigrés than the top-down visions of governments.
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Notes
- 1.
Samuel Taleb, interview by the author, June 4, 2009.
- 2.
Joseph Taleb, interview by the author, December 6, 2012.
- 3.
For a larger discussion on North African laborers in France, see Jennifer Hunt, “The Impact of the 1962 Repatriates from Algeria on the French Labor Market,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 45, no. 3 (1992): 556–72; Neil MacMaster, Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900–1962 (London: Macmillan, 1997); Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006); Benjamin Stora, Ils Venaient D’algérie: L’immigration Algérienne En France (1912–1992) (Paris: Fayard, 1992).
- 4.
Samuel Taleb, interview by the author, June 4, 2009.
- 5.
Joseph Taleb, interview by the author, December 6, 2012; Samuel Taleb, interview by the author, June 4, 2009.
- 6.
Joseph Taleb, interview by the author, December 6, 2012.
- 7.
Samuel Taleb, interview by the author, June 4, 2009.
- 8.
See Benjamin Stora, Les Trois Exils Juifs D’algérie (Paris: Stock, 2006); Sarah Sussman, “Jews from Algeria and French Identity,” in Transnational Spaces and Identities in the Francophone World, ed. Hafid Gafaïti, Patricia M. E. Lorcin, and David G. Troyansky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 217–42.
- 9.
Joshua Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010); Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). Schreier follows the efforts of the army, beginning in the early years of colonial rule, to disrupt Jewish and Muslim relations in order to create colonial hierarchies. He documents how Jewish communities resisted these efforts and argues that scholars should not mistake the adoption of French language, clothing, or educational opportunities for Jews wholeheartedly embracing French culture. Schreier demonstrates that Jews used this system to their advantage in order to maintain their own rabbis, synagogues, and schools.
- 10.
Jessica M. Marglin, “Mediterranean Modernity through Jewish Eyes: The Transimperial Life of Abraham Ankawa,” Jewish Social Studies 20.2 (2014): 34–68.
- 11.
Stein, Saharan Jews. Stein’s study of the M’zab valley, located 600 km south of Algiers, shows that not all Algerian Jews experienced colonialism in the same manner. Since the M’zab valley was not conquered by colonial forces until 1882, the Jews living in this area did not receive citizenship under the decree. In fact, by this time, the decree was deemed a mistake by most bureaucrats and colonial administrators, and the conscious decision not to extend it to this population was made.
- 12.
Rebecca Kobrin makes a similar argument in Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 244–52.
- 13.
Michel Abitbol and Alan Astro, “The Integration of North African Jews in France,” Yale French Studies, 85 (1994): 248–61.
- 14.
Zeynep Çelik, Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830–1914 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008).
- 15.
Under the law of 1901 that “separated church and state,” the government would provide funding for different religious social groups. The ledger housed in the department (wilayah) of Algiers archives holds the membership records, requests for funding, and some agenda notes of the clubs that received funding under this law. Series Z, Répertoire numérique des fonds: Associations déclarés (lois de 1901) des associations libres (loi de 1865) conservés aux Archives de la Wilaya d’Alger.
- 16.
Series Z, Répertoire numérique des fonds: Associations déclarés (lois de 1901) des associations libres (loi de 1865) conservés aux Archives de la Wilaya d’Alger. 337, 337, Féderations des sociétés juives d’Alger; Alger, 1931 (1931–1934) 1Z46/1774; 242, Société de bienfaisance israélite: Mohar-habbetouloth-Alger 1930 1Z41/1623 (1930–1957); 689, Eclaireurs israélite de France, section d’Alger Alger, 1933 1Z52/2061 (1933).
- 17.
Agenda, April 4, 1933, 689, Eclaireurs israélite de France, section d’Alger Alger, 1933 1Z52/2061 (1933); Series Z, Répertoire numérique des fonds: Associations déclarés (lois de 1901) des associations libres (loi de 1865) conservés aux Archives de la Wilaya d’Alger.
- 18.
224, Comité des fêtes de bienfaisance Israélite d’Alger-Alger 1927 1Z34/1893 (1927–1935). To obtain funding each year for a festival, the committee needed to write a petition and have eight to ten members sign it.
- 19.
“Statistiques des Departs et Retours pour la Communauté Juive,” 1950–1958, Archives Wilaya d’Oran, Collection Affaires Musulman, 1837–1961, BP 195 (Rapports Mensuels sur les Problemes Religieux (1936–1940, 1950–1958).
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Gerard Attal, interview by the author, March 3, 2009. Avram’s son Gerard notes that his father and his family were indeed lucky. He is not sure whether his father read the writing on the wall concerning the imminent German invasion and subsequent treatment of the Jews or if it was plain dumb luck that Avram left right before the 1940 war.
- 22.
Gerard Attal, interview by the author, March 3, 2009.
- 23.
Memmel family, Attal Family, Atlani Family, and others, Interviews by the author, 2009–2013.
- 24.
Memmel family, Attal Family, Atlani Family, and others, Interviews by the author, 2009–2013.
- 25.
Stein, Saharan Jews.
- 26.
Albert, Ra’anana, interview by the author, February 2, 2013; Joseph Taleb, interview by the author, December 6, 2012; Nedjma, interview by the author, March 11, 2013; Haim, interview by the author, January 3, 2013.
- 27.
For a larger discussion of settlement towns and the subsequent segregation and hierarchies that formed, see Schwartz Sharon et al., “Separating Class and Ethnic Prejudice: A Study of North African and European Jews in Israel,” Social Psychology Quarterly 54.4 (1991): 287–98. See also Ben-Porath and Yoram Ben-Porath, “On East-West Differences in Occupational Structure in Israel,” in Israel: Social Structure and Change, ed. Michael Curtis and Mordecai S. Chertoff (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1973); Deborah Bernstein, “Immigrants and Society – a Critical View of the Dominant School of Israeli Sociology,” The British Journal of Sociology 31.2 (1980): 246–63.
- 28.
Elizabeth D. Friedman, Colonialism & After: An Algerian Jewish Community (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1988), 102–28.
- 29.
Olim is the Hebrew word for immigrants.
- 30.
Between 2009 and 2012, I interviewed more than 80 individuals from 23 different families. Each informant shared tales of multiple trips and journeys between France and Israel, mostly for the purpose of business and/or visiting family.
- 31.
Layla Atlani, interview by the author, June 7, 2009.
- 32.
Layla Atlani, Atlani Family Business Records, circa 1964–1965, Private collection of Layla Atlani, Marseille, France.
- 33.
Layla Atlani, interview by the author, June 7, 2009.
- 34.
Nedjma, interview by the author, March 11, 2013.
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Layla and Nedjma, interview by the author, July 25, 2013.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Layla Atlani, interview by the author, June 7, 2009.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
See the December 1963, February 1964, and October 1965 editions of Fonds Social Juif Unifie’s L’Arche, Private collection of Centre Diocésan in Algeria.
- 43.
Profonds Jacques Lazarus, circa 1930–1985, Borenstein-Eisenberg Collection, Alliance Israélite Universelle, RG 406, Dossier V.
Works Cited
Abitbol, Michel, and Alan Astro. 1994. The Integration of North African Jews in France. Yale French Studies 85: 248–261.
Bernstein, Deborah. 1980. Immigrants and Society—A Critical View of the Dominant School of Israeli Sociology. The British Journal of Sociology 31 (2): 246–264.
Çelik, Zeynep. 2008. Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830–1914. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Friedman, Elizabeth D. 1988. Colonialism & After: An Algerian Jewish Community. Bergin & Garvey Publishers: South Hadley.
Hunt, Jennifer. 1992. The Impact of the 1962 Repatriates from Algeria on the French Labor Market. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 45 (3): 556–572.
Kobrin, Rebecca. 2010. Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
MacMaster, Neil. 1997. Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900–62. London: Macmillan.
Marglin, Jessica M. 2014. Mediterranean Modernity Through Jewish Eyes: The Transimperial Life of Abraham Ankawa. Jewish Social Studies 20 (2): 34–68.
Porath, Ben, and Yoram Ben Porath. 1973. On East-West Differences in Occupational Structure in Israel. In Israel: Social Structure and Change, ed. Michael Curtis and Mordecai S. Chertoff, 215–223. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
Schreier, Joshua. 2010. Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Sharon, Schwartz, Bruce G. Link, Bruce P. Dohrenwend, Guedalia Naveh, Itzhak Levav, and Patrick Shrout. 1991. Separating Class and Ethnic Prejudice: A Study of North African and European Jews in Israel. Social Psychology Quarterly 54 (4): 287–298.
Shepard, Todd. 2006. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Stein, Sarah Abrevaya. 2014. Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stora, Benjamin. 1992. Ils Venaient D’algérie: L’immigration Algérienne En France (1912–1992). Paris: Fayard.
Stora, Bejamin. 2006. Les Trois Exils Juifs D’algérie. Paris: Stock.
Sussman, Sarah. 2009. Jews from Algeria and French Identity. In Transnational Spaces and Identities in the Francophone World, ed. Hafid Gafaïti, Patricia M.E. Lorcin, and David G. Troyansky, 217–242. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
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Jay, S.T. (2019). Movement After Migration: The Cultivation of Transnational Algerian Jewish Networks, 1962–1973. In: Linhard, T., Parsons, T.H. (eds) Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77956-0_8
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