Algeria: an “Arab” rabbi?
JFORUM.fr
July 24, 2012
Zouheir Ait Mouhoub
Here is the strange testimony of a Jewish Algerian, who discovers his Jewishness late, while his father converted to Islam for the sake of an Algeria-Semitic.
The text whose authenticity is not verifiable, and delivers a strange tale plausible, what could be the plot of a novel modern Jewish.
You be the judge.
I Naim, 24, future rabbi of Algeria
Algeria, for which they have participated in the liberation is their homeland.
With the Algerians, they share everything except … religion. Them, are the Jews of Algeria. Today, they still continue to hide for a better life.
Portrait of a young man who chose to break his silence.
I’m only 24 years old. But I’ve spent most of my life hiding. To hide my secret, that of my family, my peers. I am Algerian. With my fellow citizens, I share the sky, the sea, the earth, the joys and sorrows. But not religion.
Today, after law school, I go abroad to integrate a Hebrew school to further my knowledge and to specialize in the study of worship North African and Algerian Judaism in particular.
I want to become the next chief rabbi of Algeria to finally one day we can celebrate faith in Hashem on this earth, in freedom, serenity and sharing, in accordance with the laws of the Republic and living together .
I’m Jewish and I’m Naim toshavim. I was born some 1988 in Algiers. It was beautiful. There was no evidence that the fall would take a dramatic turn in the troubled life of my country. Despite this, my family has always refused to leave Algeria and remained linked to its history for centuries.
In 1962, while many Jews were leaving in haste, carried away by the rumors according to which all Jews would be “killed” my grandfather decided to stay. “Here, this is our land. She was born your parents and grandparents and we have nowhere to go, “he repeated to each discussion.
My parents were very tempted to make aliyah to Israel, but my grandfather has deterred them. “In 1963, Israel was forbidden to make aliyah Algerians like other Jews of the world. The lawsuit Algerian Judaism and Jews of Algeria in 1963 Jerusalem was a shame and contempt for us. Pretext that we have not made aliyah en masse and we were special.
But we are proud to be what we are. Do not expect from others. Trust our Algerian brothers. Promise me you will stay here no matter what, my son, “he said to my father.
Commitment.
My grandfather, at the time in shopping Znikat Laârayass in Lower Casbah, helped his mujahideen brothers. His brother was even in the Army of National Liberation. This is a shaheed. Today, the old and the old Casbah remember the commitment of my family in the Revolution. France we harmed because she was then assimilated by sordid Anglicized * Cremieux decree. “France forbade our Jewish brothers to be buried in its soil. With this decree, she wanted to separate us from our Muslim brothers and embarrass us, “explained learnedly my grandfather. He wore Algeria in his heart and saw no other heaven than that of Algiers. He was proud to be Algerian and did not accept any other name, refusing labels “Jews of Algeria”, “Jews of Algerian origin” or “Israelite or Jewish community of Algeria.”
He loved lamhadjab, and zlabia makrout. El Hadj El Anka brightened her days and evenings. Chaabi music was his favorite and Yafil Edmond, one of his great friends. My father was a quiet man who had scared all the time. It was an ambitious officer who, unfortunately, was removed from high office in the state because of his Jewishness, discovered after lengthy investigations eligibility made by the security services.
There we learned nothing from the halakha. I always remember this story. I was six years and one day I accompanied him to the fishery, we passed the large mosque Sahat Echouhada. Bearded men were protesting in front of the Grand Mosque. I watched this beautiful white mosque, ornaments, when suddenly I saw the six-pointed star: “Look at that star, it’s weird, it has six branches!, It looks like on the wall of your room! “” One day you will understand, my son! “My father gave me the shifty eyes after a long moment of silence.
Like no other
I remember from school, the first lessons of Arabic alphabet. And Islamic education classes. We began to recite the Fatiha and Echahada. Something unusual to my ears. The tone was the same, but the words were different from those my mother used to pray at night or Shabbat. In the evening, at dinner, my mother felt disturbed. She asked me, but I could not tell him anything. I expect when I see her sit and pray in front of a candle. It is at this point that I realized that my mother did not recite the Quran and spoke good a language other than Arabic.
She did her dafayoumi. Before my obstinate silence, believing me haunted by a spirit, she decided to treat me with the word of God. She recited dafa and threw water everywhere until I crack and I told him: “At school, we learned the Quran and how to pray. But I’ve seen and you did not do what we are told to do in school! “She stood stunned and then burst into tears:” We’re not like the others! We’re Jewish, my son! May God protect you! ‘
The warning.
The small window of my room, I watched the sky. Blessed Chema Israel, Adonai Elohenou, Adonai Echad (the people of Israel: Adonai is our only God, Adonai is one). It is our echahada to us, the Jews. I began to pray alongside my mother. Faith has become the priority of my life. My mother had taken care to warn me: I would never reveal my religious affiliation. Especially in this period.
January 23, 1994, my maternal uncle visited us to tell us the murder of Raymond Louzoum. An optician Tunisian Jewish origin of the current street Didouche Mourad, foully murdered in front of the Fine Arts library. My father hurried back to his work. He spent the evening talking with my mother. I heard him shout: “No! I am still here! I would not go anywhere else! “My uncle came back a few days later and took me to the synagogue. Finally, let’s say a room converted into a place of prayer. During the 1990s, the Jews of Algeria were forced to do even more discreet. It was risky in this bloody period of Algeria. We used to pray in a small mosque where the imam had allowed us to do for Shabbat.
I learned some years later that the authorities were informed and they watched the scene for our safety. We were not numerous and were lacking the necessary accessories to our office. My uncle introduced me and taught me the Jewish tradition according to the rite of the great rabbis Algerians.
Protection.
January 22, 2005, counsel Joseph Belaiche was assassinated. Algiers became morose. The new killings of intellectuals, journalists and artists came to us every day. My uncle was visited by terrorists at his home in Saint-Eugène, who asked him to pay fidya. “And we’ll leave you alone,” they ceased not to tell him. A pressure force, despite the strength of my mother, we ended up leaving Algiers to Oran.
People I did not know came to the house to talk to my father. My uncle revealed to me a few years later it was the security authorities. They had advised us to leave Algiers and tell the neighbors that we left for abroad. According to my uncle, the authorities did not exactly this scenario. “They do not want the Jews to leave the country en masse. They care about our situation and do everything to protect us, “he told me.
That summer, so we settled into a new apartment in the center of Oran. I discovered how much we were a great community! The rest of my family had followed us. The instructions were the same: we should reveal anything. After detachment, my father was hired in local government. My mother, meanwhile, never went out, except to visit family and friends. We spent a lot of time in Beni Saf, where my uncle had a house by the sea For him, it was Shabbat and I attended my first hayloula. A magical and full of emotion.
My mother told me: “These are our traditions, we must live fully and you have to perpetuate the glory of God. “At home, we speak Arabic and French force to attend the” community “where my uncle was one of the organizers. Oran was a haven of peace. I learned Hebrew in an underground school, and Judeo-Arabic, strange and poetic, and the Torah. I lived so fully my Jewishness. But between my parents, tensions were increasingly visible. Doubt took over. They parted and my father converted to Islam.
At the start, I headed back to school with the feeling of having been abandoned by my father. He had hidden the fact that I was Jewish.
Conversion.
I can understand, but he betrayed the halakha. At school, it was difficult to deal with so much hatred, contempt and denial of all that is Jewish. I learned the Koran in spite of myself, even though I respect this religion and its divine teachings, values of tolerance and coexistence between peoples. But the Algerian school as xenophobes, anti-Semites. How many times have I heard: “The Jews are hated by God. “They are” bad, “” infidels, “” hypocrites, “” dirty. ” “This is a test among others, sacrifice my son,” said my mother, who has always been very supportive. She greatly respected his fellow lived a full Algerianism.
One day I dared to admit to a classmate my religion, but I was not taken seriously. For him, it was inconceivable that I am Jewish. Because of my faith in Hashem, I could spend many trials as I continued the evening to attend Hebrew school. In reality, the image of the synagogue, the school was opened “illegally” by the descendant of a family of rabbis in Algeria.
They entered the garage fitted with a discreet door located in an impasse. A member of our community was on the watch and watching the scene. Our meetings resembled the secret meetings of certain guilds! “We have to protect ourselves. We are not acting in secret, but the situation in the country does not allow us to expose ourselves. There are too many dangers.
Always be alert and discreet “, repeated incessantly our teacher. In 1999, when President Bouteflika was elected a wink in his speech gave hope to the Jews of Algeria.
Secret meetings.
Aunt Sarah, Enrico, businessmen … were finally able to return. I remember seeing my mother crying and praying for Bouteflika be blessed. And then the dream turned into a nightmare. After a hate campaign directed against us, Bouteflika turned back under pressure. We continued to keep silence, to pray in secret and compromise sometimes contrary to our religion. Like the time I attended the funeral of an “old” in our community. Discretion requires, the body was brought at night in the cemetery of Tlemcen, in an ambulance accompanied by a police van, contrary to the Jewish tradition.
This man, who has long supported the struggle for national liberation, deserved better than that. This scene will remain forever engraved in my memory. When the internet came to the house, all my early research concerned the history of the Jews of North Africa. I discovered the Algerian specificity of Judaism, its practices, its peculiarities. I subscribed Panacha courses, teaching the Sefer Torah. Zlabia.com site (official site of Algerian Jewish community in Algeria and abroad) count myself among the most active. I made many Jewish friends in Algeria and abroad, which today still, I say how much I believe in my country, where I fed a lot of hope and ambition.
I pray every morning and evening to Hashem that Algeria finally recognizes his children, his plurality. That it respects, as it always has, its minorities, without distinction. Algeria belongs to all Algerians. Amen.
* In 1870, the Cremieux decree grants automatic citizenship to 35,000 French Jews in Algeria. In the aftermath, the settlers from Europe are also Anglicized. Muslims in Algeria are maintained in their native status.
Read More