LIFE Magazine photographer Frank Scherschel took a series photographs of Jews in Tunisia. (Part 1 is here.)
As look at these photos I am overwhelmed with the beauty of this tribe. Perhaps it’s an island thing, Djerba being an island. Like Manhattan the confines created a microcosm. By you can see that these people lived intensely relating to others and the power of this community still drives the descendants, decades later in the cosmopolitan Paris or Tel Aviv. This very quality of our existence that we crave so much in the unconnected world.
Photos licensed for personal non-commercial use only by LIFE.
Further Reading:
LIFE of Djerba Jews in Tunisia – Part 1
LIFE in Israel in 1948 – Part 3
Jews and the Great Recession
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Have you ever considered how this all ended? Can the destruction of this community and ten thousand like it be compared to the destruction of Jewish communities ten years before in Europe? It's all to easy too say -they lived happily ever after in Israel.Some communities refused to come along quietly and through a ruthless policy of state terrorism were forced to self-destruction {the Lavon Affair -in which the Egyptians were informed of the identity of the bombers by the people who ordered the bombing} What happened to these people who came to Israel really? We all know the answers- the suicides, the broken lives, the loss of identity and perversion [substitution] of basic values into what was acceptable to the prevailing ideology -but we find it hard to even think about these ideas since we attribute their sufferings to a messianic theology we've so conviently adopted. Too many “Wes” -am I being presumptuous? But then have you ever considered the difficulty in tying to speak about these things here in Israel? Or anywhere in the Jewish world for that matter.The hysterical lynch mob attitude ;the McCarthy era persecution; the social exclusion, the charges of anti-Semite that are thrown at anyone who even dares to talk about these things. I'm appealing to your sense of justice that I've found in this blog; to a higher truth- am I insane to think in terms of a second holocaust- this one not of people but of communities, of traditions? I've come to doubt my own sanity since everyone considers these thoughts heretical.Who am I defending and why? These people themselves consider their coming to Israel as an ascendancy.What are my inner motivations -perhaps I am a anti-Semite?One more thought – the only place in Asia Africa where a sizable Jewish community can say I've lived in this house for for 500 years is Iran [perhaps Turkey] does that make the Islamic state the guardian of Jewish continuum?
This is obviously a huge subject. I am under no illusion to what happen to this and other tribes. Although you can't compare it to Turkey or Iran and even within Turkey itself there were different tribes with vastly different cultures. But I am also under no illusion how suffocating it must have been to live inside there for someone who wanted to be different or was different. And this applies to an individual and to an entire tribe like this one.
similar pictures just less exotic can be taken in boro park, williamsburg, bnei brak and jerusalem places we all rail against. if by some chance a copy of shakespeare made its way into the hands of a djerban jew and s/he wanted to know more s/he'd curse this idyllic community. shtetl nostalgia. nothing more.
Agreed to a point. These are no Hungarians. The sun, the ocean really do make a difference. All Sephardi tribes and this one especially had joe de vivre about them that the dark, hopeless and mean Ashkenazy culture never knew.
vi si christelt zikh azoy yidelt zikh. jews were always profoundly affected by the peoples they were living amongst.
Part of it is the surroundings but also big part is the internal chain reaction that gets out of hand within tribe itself. Boro Park, etc, would fine example of the latter.
Ben, were they really urged to leave? What really happened there? I know some went to France and some to Canada. And yes here in Israel many have lost their identity, the traditional professions were forgotten etc.
i visited Djerba in 1988, and it looked exactly the same. Same structures, same garbs, same faces… the photos r great!
I don't know the exact details but I suspect it was not much different than the rests of the tribes.
Nice.
Subject too huge, or too controversial?You're saying that these “tribes” are changing due to the influence of modernism. And Jewish “tribes”[now there's a funny sounding phrase]are being modernized by coming to Israel-in the same way that North African tribes are being faced with similar radical lifestyle changes brought on by the 2021 century. And in addition there are advantages to these changes.However is this a valid comparison?Were these other peoples transported [with the cooperation of both the Arab and Israeli governments] to another country; robbed of their possessions{how much easier it is to deal with penny-less refugees} had their children sold, medically experimented on,-all for a political agenda disguised as a religious renewal? Might we conclude that this is a unique case far different that what was experienced by our unfortunate neighbors? Your vision of things has a Zionist's ring to it-France for the French- Israel for the Israelis.Also saying that things were suffocating in this indigenous community and therefore the change was for the best is arrogant white mans talk based on nothing but your assumptions at best, something a 7fat-cow would say not a fair arbiter- by the way is Ben Atlas your real name or is that too dangerous to ask?All in all I would like to thank you for your reply to my post-as dishonest and evasive as it might have been. And then it struck me -have you applied for any Federation money lately? Have you any plans to dig into the public till as have most of my friends here in Old Katamon?That would surely explain your reluctance to be critical of Israel per say or of the great Zionist experiment in general.By the way loved the pictures of a fighting Israel of 1948 but was wondering where are the pictures of the thousands of Arab women and children who lost their lives as refugees from the conflict?
Yes this is my real name.And to properly frame the conversation I expect the same from you and the rest of the commentators.Truth is no an abstraction. Every injustice has a face. Imagine you are someone from these families. I would have a c certain type of response. Now imagine you are some crazy NK type, trying to score some argument points and don't really care about the Tunisians or anyone else for that matter. My response would be much different.
Well Ben I'm certainly impressed as to the sophistication of your blog but then N.Y.is the big apple. Used to be Paris and London- such are the spoils of war.I noticed some typo-errors does that indicate you were upset?
Do I care about others? Good question.Maybe too much or maybe not at all;can't really know.Anyhow I moved to Israel as a young man and now as an older man can't say I like the norms of society here.Meanwhile 10 kids later there's not much to do about them- haven't joined any group or achieved status- in fact the people who make it here show a ferocious jungle quality I'd rather avoid.They tend to be the biggest liars or best cons.I'm sure its similar all over but here it seems so pronounced; kind of in your face like it or not we've got it arrogance.After all these kinds of way to be are backed by a government in society where peoples feelings just don't rank at all.Whats portrayed as the common good is mostly in favor of a select and privileged few.So where there's corruption everywhere its no where;where everyone agrees on racial norms no one is a racist.Enough said.
I'd like to properly frame my response but then I realize that this space isn't going to be a forum to discuss whether Jews should be killing goyim wholesale and if your ass isn't on line for this.In a world of dismal ability for internal Jewish diaolog heres not the place to change it. Caution may be the byword for n.y. bloggers but a certain price must be played in emotional responce. 3000 years of misery at Gods emotional responces must be enough to quell any outcrys. Ben Atlas is your name.
To start a conversation you need to:
1) Stop presuming things (i.e. I am in Boston, not NY)
2) Write a coherent paragraphs instead of stream of ramblings. This comment is incoherent, I doubt you can write any other way. But would be happy if you prove me wrong.
3) Don't worry about my ass being on the line or not, you have no idea.
Where is yaqov? I hope you haven't turned him off, Ben, with your slightly presumptious (haughty?) rules of communication. Yaqov's previous posts are most interesting and sufficiently coherent for the purposes of this blog. Which is fascinating and enlightening, to say the least, btw. Yaqov, come back and tell us what is on your mind.
Back in the big oh so little town of Jerusalem after a jaunt in the U.S. one can only observe with wonder the world that Ben carries on his shoulders.There is a sacred lie amongst Jews that goes about and around with us like some precious jewel about to be lost yet ever retained-forgotten thus preserved forever. And it goes something like this- let us imagine what Judaism could and should be and if I will bend my mind to this the sacred lie then you too ,my brother, shall be with us all in this most sacred glory- we shall all agree to lie forever to ourselves and to all our most sacred brethren as to what we see and feel and hear.
Of what price does this sliver in cyberspace cost to our soul? Isn't anonymousness our ultimate heritage from the living God?What exactly bothers Ben about religious Jews will we ever know? -does he?Jesus was just a little more open than Ben about his hatred ;the mark of holiness; but is anyone seriously expecting of benatlas what we've come to ask of Jesus -the man you love to hate.
Least I be misunderstood -the issue we discuss here is a little article published in the Swedish press about the possibility that living organs were extracted from soon to be dead or dead already Palestinians which go for 160000$. Given the moral status of people living within the modern state of Israel can anyone really reject out of hand the possibility of this having happened even in a small way?But to play the astonished flabbergasted anti-Semite card [which by the way has holocaust on the other side] marking a line in the sand while all the time not addressing the issue at hand is paramount to admitting guilt-except for one thing and one thing only our saving grace -the sacred lie covincing myself of what I know not to be true through the certain knowledge that you'll back me up on this and do the same.If I've not been clear then forgive me Benatlas for what I try to discribe is highly allusive -It's Portnoy's complaint ,the way you are the way I am.
There is something on my mind of corse that I'd like a response from you Ben and that of course is the 1933 Transfer Agreement between the pre-state of Israel and Nazi Germany ; certain aspects of which I fail to understand .For that matter how could the Evitan Conference in 1938 have forseen the eventual need for Jews to flee Europe and blocked that possibility?
A conversation takes time, as I said before I don't understand you or know you. Nor am I familiar with the conference.