History of the Jews in Tunisia

The history of the Jews in Tunisia dates back nearly two thousand years to the Punic era. The Jewish community of Tunisia grew following successive waves of immigration and proselytism^[1] before its development was hampered by the imposition of anti-Jewish measures in the Byzantine Empire in late antiquity. After the Muslim conquest of Tunisia, Tunisian Jews experienced periods of relative freedom or cultural apogee^[2] which were followed by periods of more marked discrimination and persecution;^[3] under Muslim rule, Jews were granted legal status as dhimmi, which legally assured protections of life, property, and freedom of religion, but imposed an increased tax burden on them. The community developed its own dialect of Arabic, but the use of Judeo-Tunisian Arabic has declined due to the community's relocation from Tunisia.^[4] The arrival of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, often through Livorno, greatly influenced the community's composition, inter-group relations, and customs.

The economic, social and cultural position of the community was significantly compromised during the Second World War due to the occupation of the French protectorate of Tunisia by the Axis powers.^[5]

The Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 and the ensuing 1948 Arab–Israeli War provoked a widespread anti-Zionist backlash in the Arab world, to which was added nationalist agitation, the nationalization of enterprises, the Arabization of education and the Arabization of part of the administration. Jews left Tunisia en masse from the 1950s onward because of the problems which were caused and because of the hostile climate which was created by the Bizerte crisis in 1961 and the Six-Day War in 1967.^[6] According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Jewish population of Tunisia was estimated at 105,000 individuals in 1948.^[7] These Jews lived mainly in Tunis, with communities also present on the island of Djerba. The 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom by the U.S Department of State stated that "according to members of the Jewish community, there are approximately 1,500 Jewish citizens in the country".^[8][9][10]

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 law and customs, but retaining its own specific characteristics.^[11] Djerbian Judaism in particular is considered to be more faithful to tradition because it remained outside the sphere of influence of the modernist currents.^[12] The Tunisian Jews who have relocated to Israel have switched to using Hebrew as their home language.^[4] 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.^[13]