History of the Jews in Algeria refers to the history of the Jewish community of Algeria, which goes back to the 1st centuries CE. In the 14th century, many Spanish Jews moved to Algeria. Among them were respected Jewish scholars, including Isaac ben Sheshet (Ribash) and Simeon ben Zemah Duran (Rashbatz).[1]
Following Algerian independence in 1962, most of Algeria's 140,000 Jews, having been granted French citizenship in 1870, left with the pied-noirs for France. The 10,000 or so who remained largely resided in Algiers, and to a lesser extent Blida, Constantine, and Oran. In the 1990s, the trials of civil war led most of the thousand-odd remaining Jews to emigrate. Two decisive events were the rebel Armed Islamic Group's 1994 declaration of war on all non-Muslims in the country, and the abandonment of the Algiers synagogue that year.
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According to some scholars, Jews have been present in Algeria at least since late Roman times, probably since the destruction of the First Temple nearly 2600 years ago in 586 BCE.[2] Early descriptions of the Rustamid capital Tahert note that Jews were to be found there, as in any other major Muslim city, and some centuries later the Geniza Letters (found in Cairo) mention many Algerian Jewish families.
However,in the seventh century the Jewish population was largely augmented by Spanish Jewish immigrants, who, fleeing from the persecutions of the Visigothic king Sisebut² and his successors, escaped to the Maghreb and settled in the Byzantine cities and laterly following the Reconquista, when the Spanish Inquisition expelled the Jews from Spain from 1391 to 1492 [1]. Together with the Moriscos, they thronged to the ports of North Africa, forming large communities in places such as Oran and Algiers. Some Jews in Oran preserved their Ladino language – a uniquely conservative dialect of Spanish – until the 19th century. Jewish merchants did very well financially in late Ottoman Algiers; the French attack on Algeria was initially "provoked" by the Dey's demands that the French government pay its large outstanding wheat debts to two Jewish merchants, Bacri and Busnach. In the 17th century, Granas (i.e Jews from Livorno , Italy) started settling in Algeria. They were highly involved in commercial tradings and exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman Empire , renforcing the rows of the Jewish community.
After the conquest in 1830, the French government rapidly restructured the Ottoman millet system. At the time, the French government distinguished French citizens (who had national voting rights, were subject to French laws, and, for the males, had to go to military service) from Jewish and Muslim "indigenous" people, who each kept their own laws and courts. By 1841, the Jewish courts (beth din) had been abolished, and all cases involving Jews were instead heard by French courts. In 1845, the communal structure was thoroughly reorganized, and French Jews were appointed as chief rabbis for each region, with the duty "to inculcate unconditional obedience to the laws, loyalty to France, and the obligation to defend it."[2] In 1865, liberal conditions were laid down so that Jewish and Muslim "indigenous" people could become French citizens if they requested it. This facility was, however, not much used — since it meant renouncing certain traditional mores and thus was perceived as a kind of apostasy.
In 1870, the French government granted the Jews French citizenship, under the décrets Crémieux of 1870 . (For this reason, they are sometimes lumped together with the pieds-noirs.) This decision was due largely to pressures from prominent members of the French Jewish community, which considered the North African Jews to be "backward" and wanted to forcefully bring them into modernity. Within a generation, most Algerian Jews had come to speak French rather than Arabic or Ladino, and embraced many aspects of French culture. After WW2, and the subsequent struggle for independence, the great majority of Algeria's 140,000 Jews left the country for France together with the pied-noirs.
The Algerian nationality law of newly independent Algeria, promulgated in 1963, granted citizenship only to Muslims, requiring that only those individuals whose fathers and paternal grandfathers had Muslim personal status could become citizens of the new state. All Jewish and Christian residents were driven into exile, even though the Jewish community was considered indigenous to Algeria, as it had been in Algeria long before Islam. It could trace its presence to the year 586 BCE.[3]
In 1931, whereas Jews made up less than 2% of Algeria's population, the largest cities of Algeria – Algiers, Constantine, and Oran – had Jewish populations of over 7%, as did many smaller cities such as Ghardaia and Setif; one smaller town, Messad, had a Jewish majority. The Jews who remained after the Revolution lived mainly in Algiers, with some families in Blida, Constantine, and Oran.
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