Jewish Immigration to Israel from Independent Morocco and Tunisia

DISPLACEMENTS OF JEWISH COMMUNAL LIFE IN ISLAMIC LANDS AND CULTURAL RECONSTRUCTION IN ISRAEL Editors: Dr. Joseph Ringel and Dr. Shimon Ohayon; 1 With thanks to: The Ministry for Social Equality and The Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their help in organizing the international conferences that served as the basis for this collection of articles. 2 DISPLACEMENTS OF JEWISH COMMUNAL LIFE IN ISLAMIC LANDS AND CULTURAL RECONSTRUCTION IN ISRAEL Introduction 7 I THE GRIM ENDING OF FLOURISHING COMMUNITIES 9 Noam (Norman) A. Stillman Prelude to Exodus: The Jews of Arab Lands in the Face of the Challenges and Transformations of the Modern Era 10 Shaul Regev The Decline of a Flourishing Community 15 Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman The Ancient Jewish Community of Yemen and the Process of its Emigration to Palestine 22 Nahem Ilan 28 The Egyptian Jewish Community in the Modern Era: A Grim Ending to a Fascinating Story Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah From Integration to Dissolution: The End of the Jewish Communities of Egypt and Iraq 38 Joseph Ringel A Short History of Jewish Education in the Lands of Islam 55 II JEWISH REFUGEES – THEIR STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION 72 David Mattas Jewish Refugees from Islamic Countries 73 Stanley A. Urman The Relationship of the United Nations to Jewish Refugees and their Property in Comparison to Arab Palestinian Refugees 82 Carole Basri Iraqi Jewish Archives and the Emergency Protection Act: Memorandums of Understandings and Emergency Red List of Cultural Objects at Risk in Yemen 92 3 III IMMIGRATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 99 Avi Picard Jewish Immigration to Israel from Independent Morocco and Tunisia 100 Reuven Gafni Memory and Re-creation: The Commemoration of Synagogues of the Islamic World in Israel 107 Yamit Armbrister Displacement of Jewish Communal Life in Islamic Lands and Cultural Reconstruction in Israel through the Historical Novel One Moroccan Woman 115 4 Introduction The present volume is dedicated to the rich history of the Jewish communities in the Islamic lands, their tragic demise, and their difficult rebirth in the State of Israel and elsewhere. If the Jewish communities of the classical Islamic world regarded themselves as the scattered remnants of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea, their flight and expulsion from most modern Islamic lands in the mid-twentieth century created yet another diaspora. This new diaspora was composed of the descendants of those same Jews – who endeavored to revive their diasporic heritage in the State of Israel, as well as in such Western democratic countries as Canada, France, and the United States. For Jewish tradition, the diaspora proffered a silver lining, one in which the variety of Jewish communities could rejuvenate themselves and flourish. In the classical Islamic world, Jews had contributed greatly to the vibrant intellectual, economic, political, and literary climate in ways that reflected what Bernard Lewis famously termed a “symbiosis” between Jewish and Islamic culture. Arguably, this symbiosis was achieved because of and despite the Jews’ complex legal status as dhimmis, namely, as those “protected” by, but subservient to, their Islamic rulers. Theoretically, protection ensured that the Jewish community’s place in society was permanent and well-defined, engendering a sense of security that enabled Jews in some places and times to transcend their status and achieve real political influence, as in the case of Samuel ibn-Naghrillah, or Samuel ha-Nagid (d. c. 1055), Granada’s famous Jewish general and poet. At the same time, Jewish subservience, which occasionally led to anti-Jewish violence in unstable times, arguably provided fuel for those like Judah ha-Levi (d. c. 1141), who argued forcefully for internal Jewish authenticity in his famous Kuzari, or In Defense of the Despised Faith. The decline of classical Islam in the late thirteenth century, which provided its own unique challenges for dhimmis, was accelerated by the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the late fifteenth century. The Empire’s rise coincided with one of the largest Jewish migrations up until that time – the flight of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, who came and found new opportunities in Ottoman lands, where they established new communities, revived old ones, engaged in trade and crafts, established printing presses that would eventually help herald modernity, and, in the early years, advised sultans. The decline of the Ottoman Empire heralded the rise of Western colonialism, which injected alternative political, cultural, and economic trajectories into the Middle East, opening new possibilities (as well as presenting risks) to Middle Eastern minorities. French Jewish activists took it upon themselves to establish the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a network of schools that would provide modern economic training and endeavored to culturally “rejuvenate” Middle Eastern Jewish communities in a quasi-colonialist sense. Jews developed strongly hybrid identities that combined “Western” and “Middle Eastern” elements and often spoke a number of languages, including Arabic and French. Western political movements and ideas spread. While Jews tended to be a-political, a significant minority became involved in a variety of movements, often combining such affinities (such as Egyptian and Jewish nationalisms) in ways that seemed natural before World War I but that became politically untenable as violence increased. Rising pan-Arab and Islamist sentiment combined with Zionism’s success in achieving Jewish independence in the Land of Israel eventually spelled the end of many of these ancient Jewish communities. Today, a mere tens of thousands of Jews are left in an Islamic world where almost 5 one million Jews lived in 1947, and which contained 98 percent of world Jewry back in the ninth century, when our story begins. This volume provides a variety of perspectives and topics that relate to the wide tapestry that makes up the Jewish communities of the Islamic world. We can clearly see the three sections of this volume, which describe the decline of the flourishing Jewish communities in the Islamic lands, the Jewish refugees and their struggle for recognition, and finally the section that deals with immigration and reconstruction in Israel. Some articles deal with loss and the hardships of rebirth. Others deal with Jewish triumphs and achievements. Some discuss politics, others discuss daily life; yet others discuss literature, and others discuss history. What unites them is the attempt to shed light on a rich and varied community whose contributions to the world at large remain underappreciated, and whose voices are waiting to be heard. Our gratitude goes to Mrs Ora Kobelkowsky for her work and help in collecting the articles. editors: Dr. Joseph Ringel and Dr. Shimon Ohayon; 6 Jewish Immigration to Israel from Independent Morocco and Tunisia AVI PICARD The Jewish communities of Tunisia and Morocco were among the largest Jewish communities in the Islamic world, and they remained in their countries of origin longer than the other Jewish communities. By the twenty-first century, however, they had all but disappeared. This article describes the different stages of the liquidation of these communities. Demography and Aliyah1 After the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jews from Islamic countries represented less than 10 percent of world Jewry. About 51 percent of all Jews in the world lived in America; 33 percent lived in Europe; 5.7 percent lived in Africa, and 3.8 percent lived in Asia.2 Jews in the Islamic world were interspersed among eleven Islamic countries as follows:3 Country Morocco Algeria Iraq Tunisia Iran Turkey Egypt Yemen Libya Syria Lebanon Total Jews 250,000 130,000 125,000 100,000 90,000 80,000 65,000 50,000 40,000 20,000 5,000 955,000 Aliyah (literally “ascent”) is the Hebrew term for immigration by Jews to Palestine/Israel. The term has both a religious and a political meaning. From the religious point of view, going to the Land of Israel is an ascent in holiness and fulfilment of a Divine decree. From the political point of view, Zionism sees the immigration of Jews to Israel as positive, and their emigration as negative. “Aliyah” is a value-related term, whereas “immigration” is neutral. Some argue that there is a difference between immigrants who are moving from one country to another in an attempt to improve their living conditions and olim (those who make aliyah), whose relocation to the Land of Israel is motivated by ideology or religious belief. For more on the difference see Gur Alroey, An Unpromising Land: Jewish Migration to Palestine in the Early Twentieth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp. 1–19. 2 Moshe Sicron, “The Mass Aliya: Dimensions, Traits, and Influences,” in Immigrants and Ma’abarot, 1948–1952, ed. Mordecai Naor (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1986), p. 35 [Heb.]. 3 Based on Uziel Schmaltz, “The Mass Aliyah from Asia and North Africa: Demographic Perspectives,” Pe’amim, 39 (1989): 19 [Heb.]. 1 100 There were only four communities with over 100,000 Jews – three in North Africa. Morocco was the largest Jewish community in the Islamic world. The Jews of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco comprised 50 percent of the “Forgotten Million,” the Jewish refugees of the Islamic world. In the first three years after its independence, 680,000 Jews immigrated to Israel. The following is a breakdown of the numbers of Jewish immigrants according to their countries of origin:4 Islamic countries Iraq 123,300 Yemen 48,300 Turkey 34,400 French North Africa (Morocco, 45,400 Algeria, and Tunisia) Libya 31,000 Iran 21,900 Egypt 8,800 Europe Romania Poland Bulgaria Czechoslovakia Hungary Germany and Austria Soviet Union 118,000 106,400 37,300 18,800 14,300 10,800 8,200 Country of birth of immigrants arriving from 1948–51 While the North African communities were among the largest Jewish communities in the Islamic world, the proportion of North African Jews who left for Israel was among the smallest among the Jews of Islam, as indicated in the following chart: Country Iraq Yemen Libya Turkey Iran Syria Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Lebanon Rate of Aliyah 1948–51 95 percent 88 percent 80 percent 43 percent 24 percent 15 percent 14 percent 12 percent 7 percent 1 percent 0 percent The Jews of the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria) comprised 50 percent of the Jews in the Islamic world, and Jews from Islamic countries amounted to 50 percent of the participants in the mass immigration to Israel. Yet, only 7 percent of those Jews who immigrated to Israel from 1948–51 came from the Maghreb. 4 Sicron, “The Mass Aliyah,” 34. 101 The Jews of North Africa did not participate in the first post-independence mass immigration. Israel’s mass immigration policy involved promoting mass immigration from countries in which the lives or liberty of Jews were endangered. The French administration in the countries of the Maghreb ensured the security of the Jews. The State of Israel therefore adopted a policy of “pausing” the immigration from the Maghreb during these years. In addition to Israel’s policy, the Jews of French North Africa themselves were not so interested in immigrating to Israel. Some of the Jews who did immigrate to Israel during those years returned to North Africa. The harsh conditions in Israel, absorption difficulties, and prejudice against them in Israel made aliyah less and less attractive. This further reduced the desire of others to immigrate.5 The Immigration from the Maghreb under French Administration Jewish immigration to Israel from Tunisia and Morocco and the associated activities of the local branches of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) were coordinated with the French authorities during the early years of the State of Israel (1948–56). The quota of immigrants per month was determined by local demand for aliyah and the needs of the State of Israel. The French authorities usually did not interfere in the process.6 Nevertheless, Zionist activists feared that when the French left the Maghreb, the rights of Jews to emigrate would be limited. S.Z. Shragai, head of JAFI’s Aliyah Department, said, “Just as we today regret that we lost out on the opportunity for the Jews of Syria and Egypt to immigrate to Israel, I am concerned that we will lose the Jews of [French] North Africa. These countries will soon become independent. Independent states will not let the Jews leave, just like other independent Arab states.”7 Most Moroccan and Tunisian Jews anticipated that, in the worst-case scenario, Israel would save them as it had the Jews of Iraq and Yemen, by flying them out “on eagles’ wings” and bringing them to Israel.8 In the summer of 1954, the situation in North Africa changed. The defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu (May 1954) and their retreat from Vietnam was a sign to other peoples under French rule that the end of the French empire was quickly approaching. The struggle for independence in the Maghreb accelerated, and independence for Tunisia and Morocco would soon follow.9 5 Yaron Tzur, A Torn Community: The Jews of Morocco and Nationalism, 1943–1954 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001), p. 273 [Heb.]; Avi Picard, Cut to Measure – Israel’s Policies Regarding the Aliyah of North African Jews (Sede Boker: Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, 2013), pp. 64–69 [Heb.]. 6 Picard, 225–31. 7 Minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive (hereafter JAE), 15 February 1954, Central Zionist Archive (hereafter CZA), S100/92. 8 Picard, 295. 9 Jean Baechler, “Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary War: Some Political and Strategic Lessons from the First Indochina War and Algeria,” Journal of International Affairs, 25/1 (1971): 70–90. 102 Arab Independence and Jewish Immigration Why did the independent Arab states prevent the emigration of the Jews? The members of the Arab League argued that the emigration of Jews from Morocco and Tunisia would increase Israel’s military might, which they saw as directed against the Arab world.10 Many Israeli and Zionist leaders argued that the policy adopted in Iraq, in which the Iraqi authorities essentially forced the Jews out, had changed.11 One British diplomat felt that the religious nature of the Moroccan struggle for independence, as well as the place of Jews in the Moroccan economy, would limit the possibility of a mass emigration of Jews from Morocco. Morocco would limit Jewish emigration in order to prevent damage to the Moroccan economy and to enable Morocco to identify with the other Arab countries.12 This analysis was unrealistic, however. In 1955, a Moroccan nationalist party, the PDI (Parti démocratique et de l’Indépendance) described aliyah as a “crime against the Moroccan people.” The party called on the Jews to liberate themselves from their inclination to flee the country.13 Similarly, many observers feared that the Tunisian authorities would limit Jewish emigration, since a mass exodus would damage the Tunisian economy.14 These analyses caused Jews to vote with their feet. As the struggle for independence in Tunisia and Morocco intensified, more and more Jews registered for aliyah.15 A small group of Jews in Morocco, who came from the more Westernized part of the community, identified with the “Istiklal” (the Moroccan Independence Movement), and demanded the closure of the JAFI offices. They regarded aliyah as a means of preventing the integration of Jews into Moroccan society.16 At one Istiklal meeting (at which an Israeli journalist was present), a Moroccan Jew active in the movement was the only one to demand an end to aliyah.17 After Morocco’s independence (March 1956), Leon Benzaquen, the Jewish minister in the Moroccan government, asked Israel to “leave the Moroccan Jews alone” for four or five years so as to allow them to integrate into an independent Morocco. Benzaquen, who was the past head of the OSE, demanded that the OSE stop dealing with those intending to immigrate to Israel. Other Jewish doctors stopped working with JAFI out of fear of harming their regular employment.18 10 Michael M. Laskier, North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria (New York: New York University Press, 1994), p. 177. For more on the issue of emigration, see Yigal Bin‐ Nun, “The Contribution of World Jewish Organizations to the Establishment of Rights for Jews in Morocco (1956– 1961),” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 9/2 (2010): 260–61. 11 Picard, 339–40. 12 Cited by S.Z. Shragay, JAE, 29 August 1954, CZA, S100/95. 13 Picard, 301–302; Laskier, 177. 14 Easterman to Avner, 8 September 1954, ISA-mfa-Minister-000ac2s. 15 Picard, 178–85. 16 Duvdevani Report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 February 1956, ISA-PMO-PMO-000w3g6 [Heb.]. 17 Shabtai Teveth, “A Jew in the Istiqlal Congress,”Ha’aretz, 23 December 1955, 3 [Heb.]. 18 Laskier, 178; Picard, 306–309. 103 Morocco – The Closing of the Gates When the responsibility for providing passports moved from the French to the Moroccan authorities (May 1956), collective passports – used by JAFI to facilitate Jewish emigration – were no longer issued. After a short time, JAFI’s activities were terminated, and its workers were ordered to leave Morocco.19 Emissaries from the Aliyah Department who were still present in October 1956 were forced to flee in a variety of creative ways. Their arrest was likely to expose the underground emigration that had begun to develop. Lengthy negotiations allowed the departure of those Moroccan Jews already in the transit camp near Casablanca in September 1956.20 The official Moroccan position was that every Jew was free to leave and could request a passport. However, in the first two years of Moroccan independence, only 2,000 Jews managed to obtain passports in this manner.21 By comparison, in the year before Moroccan independence, more than 2,500 Jews had left each month. After 1958, when Morocco joined the Arab league, the situation became even worse. Passports were no longer issued to Jews. A Jew who came to government offices had to stand like “a poor man at the door,” and receive humiliating treatment.22 International Jewish organizations, like the World Jewish Congress, ran an international campaign against the Moroccan government’s restrictions on Jewish emigration.23 The Mossad began organizing clandestine emigration for Jews who wished to leave by engaging in a wide variety of activities: •   Forging passports; Smuggling Jews to Ceuta and Melia, which were under Spanish control, and organizing the transport of Jews from there to a camp in Gibraltar; At a later stage, obtaining small boats for Jews to use in order to reach Gibraltar; they would board the boats on isolated beaches in Morocco.24 These activities were hampered by the Moroccan security agencies. Workshops in which passports had been forged were discovered, departure routes from Morocco were exposed, and Zionist activists were arrested.25 The Moroccan government’s successful ability to force aliyah to go underground severely limited emigration possibilities for the multitude of Moroccan Jews interested in aliyah, which became expensive and dangerous. Over the course of five years following the Moroccan government’s crackdown, a mere 18,000 Jews were able to emigrate illegally.26 19 Laskier, 180. Picard, 341–44. 21 Laskier, 193; Picard, 344. 22 Isser Harel, head of the Mossad, at the coordinating committee, 13 February 1961, Ben Gurion Archive. 23 Laskier, 202. 24 Raphael Israeli, “Pisces”: Out of Morocco and the Saga of the Clandestine Jewish Exodus (Unites States and Singapore: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Company, 2016), pp. 88–97; Bin‐ Nun, “The Contribution of World Jewish Organizations,” 261. 25 Laskier, 227–33. 26 Samuel Segev, Operation “Yachin” – The Secret Immigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel (Jerusalem: Ministry of Defense, 1984), pp. 133–55 [Heb.]; Picard, 345. 20 104 Operation Yakhin After five years of illegal immigration, which reached its tragic peak in the sinking of the Egoz, in which all forty-four olim drowned (January 1961), illegal emigration was stopped.27 International pressure was put on Morocco’s government to allow Jewish emigration. The rise to power of King Hassan II facilitated the exit of Jews from Morocco. Large bribes (25 million dollars) to the government of Morocco allowed the Jews who wished to leave to depart. This aliyah was “semi-legal.” The Moroccan government stipulated the conditions for this semi-legal aliyah: the final declared destination would not be Israel; the aliyah would receive no coverage in the news media; and no Zionist or Israeli-connected bodies could be involved in this aliyah.28 Instead, the aliyah was facilitated by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), an American Jewish organization. However, many of the HIAS workers were in fact JAFI and Mossad employees under cover. From 1962–64, 100,000 Jews left Morocco for Israel en masse. After this mass departure of Jews from Morocco to Israel (as well as a significant but smaller departure of Jews to France and Canada), emigration continued over the decades. Only a few thousand Jews remain in Morocco today.29 Independent Tunisia Tunisia’s attitude to immigration to Israel depended largely on the figure of Habib Bourgiba, who was the unchallenged leader of the Tunisian independence movement. Bourgiba, a proWestern secularist, distanced himself from the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and, before independence, maintained contacts with the Israeli government.30 After Tunisia’s independence, no real change in aliyah activities took place. JAFI offices continued to function legally. The Zionist Federation closed its offices, not due to government demands, but due to panic on the part of the local Zionists.31 In November 1956, after the Sinai Campaign, a change took place in Tunisia’s attitude toward emigration. The Egyptian ambassador to Tunisia noted that Tunisian citizens who immigrated to Israel were drafted into the IDF, which would inevitably result in citizens of one Arab country’s fighting the citizens of another Arab country. The Tunisian government responded to this warning by forbidding immigration to Israel and by cancelling passports already issued to Jews. The government made the issuing of future passports to Jewish citizens conditional on their not going to Israel.32 This policy lasted only a short time, however. In December 1956, Jewish emigration was permitted once again. In order to avoid Egyptian criticism, Tunisia did not issue passports, but rather “laissez-passer” documents, and thus denaturalized emigrating Jews. Later, Tunisia issued 27 Segev, 174–88 and 240; Laskier, 228–33. Laskier, 238. 29 Laskier, 212 and 238–43; Segev, 234–50. 30 George W. Shepherd, “Tunisia and Arab Nationalism.” Current History (Pre-1986), 37 (1959): 30; Filippo Petrucci & Marisa Fois, “Attitudes towards Israel in Tunisian Political Debate: From Bourguiba to the New Constitution,” The Journal of North African Studies, 21/3 (2016): 392–410. 31 Dobkin at JAE, 14 May 1956, CZA, S100/108. 32 Picard, 347. 28 105 passports indicating that the emigrating Jews were headed to France, even though they knew that they were headed to Israel. The short pause in the issuing of passports left a profound impression on the local Jews, many of whom avoided contact with JAFI. Aliyah activists found it hard to reverse this process.33 Moreover, from 1957–61, there was a slowing of demand for aliyah due to positive factors as well, such as Bourgiba’s actions against Salah-bin-Yousuf, an opposition leader who identified with Nasserist views. Bourgiba reinforced his actions with public pro-Jewish declarations, thereby reassuring the local Jews of their place in Tunisian society. The reduction in demand for aliyah created a situation in which the aliyah offices no longer pressured the Tunisian government. The desire of the Tunisians to maintain good relations with the Western world created a more considerate attitude among the Tunisian government toward Israel.34 However, in 1961, a conflict between Tunisia and France erupted over the port of Bizerte, a strategic point hold by the French army. This conflict led to a rapprochement between Bourgiba and Nasser, as a result of which Bourgiba made a strongly anti-Israel speech in the UN, and postal connections with Israel were curtailed. During the crisis and before the French troops left Bizerte, French battleships were used to organize a special operation to rescue 250 Jews who lacked French passports from Bizerte. During the ensuing years, large numbers of Tunisian Jews began to feel the brunt of antiJewish discrimination, as many were eased out of the public positions they held in the civil service. Many middle-class Jews sought to immigrate to France, but had difficulty disposing of their businesses and homes. Heavy taxes and distressing inspections also made emigration to Israel difficult. Inhabitants of southern Tunisia found it extremely difficult to get passports.35 At a certain stage, Jews were allowed to take only thirty dinars and the clothes they were wearing when they left Tunisia. Although the Tunisian government was not friendly toward aliyah, aliyah was not declared illegal. Aliyah did not stop, and JAFI activity operated openly and was not forbidden. In fact, JAFI was registered as a Swiss Jewish agency to protect the emissaries and to avoid problems for the Tunisian government.36 Jewish emigration continued, until the community’s numbers had shrunk drastically. By the end of the twentieth century, Jews in the Maghreb numbered 6,000 in Morocco and about 1,700 in Tunisia.37 Most of the Algerian Jews, all of whom held French citizenship, left Algeria when it became independent in 1962.38 By the 1970s, no Jews remained in Algeria.39 33 Ibid. Shmuel Markuza, JAFI emissary in Tunisia to S.Z Shragai, 12 August 1957 CZA S6/6010. 35 Laskier, 299–300. 36 Ibid., 301–309. 37 Sergio Della Pergola, “Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History,” in Papers in Jewish Demography, 1997, ed. S. Della Pergola & J. Even (Jerusalem:The Hebrew University, 2001), pp. 11–33. 38 Laskier, 334. 39 Ibid., 344. 34 106 Memory and Re-creation: The Commemoration of Synagogues of the Islamic World in Israel REUVEN GAFNI In describing the deep and far-reaching social significance of the Jewish synagogue in the Middle Ages, Simcha Goldin wrote things that seem to be true in almost every place and time in which a Jewish community exists: Apart from being a place of worship, the synagogue is mainly a public stage on which the drama of the group is performed, an institution in which the hidden desires of the group are realized, power struggles between groups or status holders take place, and of course the value-based activities of its members are reflected.1 Similarly, Jacob Katz, referring to nineteenth-century Jewish communities, described the growth and varied importance of the synagogue in modern times: And just as social circumstances determined the extent of participation in public prayer, the emphasis on public prayer shaped local realities. The synagogue was given multiple secondary functions as part of the communal administration: It was there that warnings were issued, decrees of excommunication pronounced, and oaths taken. […] And the synagogue also fulfilled less obvious social functions. As a regular meeting place for members of the community, it provided an opportunity for purely secular conversations and even for business negotiations. […] The synagogue also provided a method of marking off the social strata within the community […] and offered the well-to-do various methods of displaying their wealth.2 While both Goldin and Katz referred primarily to synagogues in Europe, it is clear that the synagogues in the Islamic world – during the Middle Ages but especially from early modern times onward – likewise served both as a ritual center for prayer, study, and religious gatherings, and as a social and communal center of dramatic significance.3 The multi-dimensional essence of the synagogue in Islamic countries was expressed even in the various denominations used to refer to the synagogue in the Islamic sphere: Knesset/Knissa (‫כניסה‬/‫כנסת‬, “a place of assembly”);4 Salat (‫צלאת‬, “a place of prayer”); and 1 Simcha Goldin, Uniqueness and Togetherness: The Enigma of the Survival of the Jews in the Middle Ages (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1997), p. 102 [Heb.] (my translation – R.G.). 2 Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (New York: New York University Press, 1993), pp. 152–53. 3 For initial overviews of various characteristics of synagogues in Islamic countries, see for example David Cassuto, “Jewish and Muslim Places of Worship: Mutual Influences,” in Jews and Muslims in the Islamic World, ed. Bernard Dov Kupperman & Zvi Zohar (Maryland: University Press of Maryland, 2013), pp. 119–43; idem, “Synagogue Architecture in Muslim Mediterranean Space and in Asia,” Mahanaim, 11 (1995): 204–19 [Heb.]. 4 The adoption of this term may be due to the Muslim use of the Arabic term jam‘a (‫ )ג'מאע‬to refer to “gathering” at the mosque on Fridays. 107 Midrash (‫מדרש‬, “a place of study”).5 In addition, synagogues were places in which communal traditions were reinforced; the fallen were commemorated; friends and donors were honored; and, as in the case of the great synagogue in Aleppo – where the oldest manuscript of the Bible, the Keter (‫)כתר ארם צובא‬, was kept – were places in which the community’s most precious holdings were deposited for safe-keeping.6 Exploring the synagogue, as well as the way it was perceived (and later described or commemorated) by its community, therefore, allows us to better understand the society in which it was established, designed, and operated; that society’s aesthetic, spiritual, and ideological preferences; and that community’s changing relations with its surroundings and with the local government. It is obvious, of course, that there were great differences between the major synagogues established in the large cities, and the hundreds of local synagogues that served small rural communities. It is equally clear that there were considerable differences between the way in which synagogues were designed and operated in Islamic countries over the centuries, and the way the synagogues’ design and function changed from the mid-nineteenth century onward. However, given the dramatic significance of the synagogues in the shaping and strengthening of the social character of the community and in consolidating its religious and spiritual identity, it is hardly surprising that many Jewish communities in Islamic countries that were uprooted from the mid-twentieth century onward sought to preserve the image and memory of the synagogues that were left behind, and to commemorate them in their new places of residence – both in Israel and in the Diaspora. To a certain extent, this desire to preserve and commemorate lost institutions among the Jews of the Arab countries parallels the same desire among Jews from European lands, who have likewise sought to re-establish or commemorate European synagogues destroyed in the Holocaust even in non-European countries, most notably in Israel.7 In this brief paper, I aim to describe some of the ways in which a few of these Middle Eastern and North African synagogues – usually the more prominent and significant ones – were (or are) commemorated today in Israel by members and descendants of their original communities, who were uprooted almost seventy years ago. In this context, it should be noted, I do not intend to deal at length with common and non-specific commemorations, consisting only of a basic commitment to the customs and halakhot that were practiced in a certain synagogue or ethnic community, but rather to the specific and clear commemoration of particular synagogues in Israel. Commemoration by Name: From Cairo to Bat-Yam The most common form of commemoration of the abandoned synagogues is the use of their name when establishing new synagogues by members or descendants of the original community. 5 For a brief survey of synagogue denominations through the ages see Shmuel Kruess, The History of the PrayerHouses in Israel (New York: Histadruth Ivrith of America, 1955), pp. 223–25 [Heb.]. 6 On the deep and varied communal importance of the great (“Al-Safra”) synagogue in Aleppo see David Sutton, Aleppo: City of Scholars (New York: Artscroll, 2005), pp. 21–30. 7 To date, no systematic study of the commemoration of synagogues that were destroyed in the Holocaust, in Israel or abroad, has been conducted. For one specific example see Reuven Gafni, “The Attempt to Found a Synagogue in Memory of Rabbi Moshe Isserles and the Martyrs of Krakow in Kfar Etzion, 1947,” Al Atar, 18 (2014): 59–75 [Heb.]. For early references to this subject in Eretz Israel during the Mandate period, see idem, Synagogues and Jewish Nationalism in the Yishuv during the British Mandate (Sede Boker: Ben Gurion University Press, 2017), pp. 102–103 [Heb.]. 108