Young Teacher Promotes Jewish Continuity in Ancient Community

At a JDC-supported girls' school in Zarzis,

Tunisia, students get the unique opportunity to

study Judaism, Torah, Talmud, and Hebrew.

Photo: Chrystie Sherman (via JDC Website)

Geula is 21, born and raised in Djerba, Tunisia, to a Jewish family whose roots here go back for centuries. But in the spirit of the times—and her country—she isn't spending much time looking at the past. Instead, she sets her sights on her work as a teacher, equipping her female students with the tools to be the next link in the unbroken chain she believes makes her community special.

"I think it is very important to be a teacher. I see myself as a leader and a guide to my students," says Geula. "Parents give life; teachers give knowledge. I take a lot of pride in fulfilling my role."

Geula teaches at Torah v'Hinuch, the first Jewish girls' school in Djerba that was founded in the 1950s. Today approximately 130 girls are enrolled in the school, where she teaches Judaism, Torah, Talmud, and Hebrew. Students attend class six days a week, getting time off only on Jewish calendar holidays; there is no summer vacation.

JDC Update from Tunisia

From Irv Smokler, JDC President and Steve Schwager, CEO

With turbulent political events occurring in Tunisia, we share with you how the situation is impacting the small, but vibrant Jewish community there.

Tunisia is essentially shut down by a general strike, with massive anti-government demonstrations appearing everywhere. But the Jewish community -- 300-500 in Tunis, 100 in Zarzis, 60-80 living in Sfax and Sousse, and approximately 1,000 Jews on the island of Djerba -- is not the focus of any demonstration thus far.

As a precaution, police buses now block the entrance to the Jewish Quarter in Djerba. Although there was a large demonstration of workers in nearby Houmt Souk today --- Jewish life in Djerba remains calm and continues almost as usual.

The government has intensified heavy police protection for the Grand Synagogue of Tunis and the central building of the Jewish community. A massive street demonstration on the main boulevard passed by the synagogue without incident; the focus of the protesters remains the current government.

Security forces protecting the Jewish Old Age Home in La Goulette have been increased; no incidents have been reported.

All schools and universities were shut down earlier this week as a precaution against violence and protest vandalism. Although the Jewish schools in Djerba continue to function normally, the Chabad School in downtown Tunis closed so that it would not to be viewed as different from any other educational establishment there. Prayer services at the school continue as usual.

Yechiel Bar-Chaim, JDC’s Country Director for Tunisia, reports his main concern for the small 100-member Jewish community in Zarzis on the Tunisian mainland.

On Thursday, four non-Jewish civilians were killed during the protests there and a Jewish shop was among the many that were looted in the city center. Their funerals today will most probably be followed by an outpouring of public grief and anger.

The Jews of Zarzis live in a two-square block area just off the town center, surrounded by their synagogue, Jewish schools, the mikveh, and the place where chickens are kashered. On an adjoining street are the jewelry stores where most of the members of the Jewish community earn their living.

Until today this self-imposed “ghetto without walls" was carefully protected 24/7 by the Tunisian police. But the police have simply disappeared from the streets of Zarzis and the army presence there is basically a passive one. In fact the police have reportedly disappeared in many places throughout Tunisia. But the Jews in Zarzis will be vulnerable if the demonstrations after the funerals take a wrong turn. And in fact, four Jewish families from the town have already taken temporary refuge in Djerba.

JDC has been active in Tunisia since 1950, but Jewish communal life there dates back at least 2,300 years, when 30,000 Jews were forced to move from Palestine to Tunisia by the Romans under the Emperor Titus. After World War II, estimates of the size of the Jewish population in Tunisia range from 105,000 to several times that number. The community declined to 23,000 by the end of 1967 and to 9,000 by 1990. And so we call its estimated 1,500 members a remnant, yet still thriving Jewish community.

We will continue to monitor the situation closely and will update you as necessary.

Looking to the Future in Djerba, Tunisia

From Steve Schwager, CEO

Decades ago, when malnutrition still afflicted Jewish children in Djerba, Tunisia, JDC ran a school canteen serving approximately 200 meals per day. Early each morning JDC also served glasses of milk—and with each glass came a piece of Swiss chocolate. Those willing to drink a second vitamin-packed glass received a second piece of chocolate.

Sweet moments are rarely forgotten—even amidst great change.

Recently, a young teacher in Djerba told Yechiel Bar Chaim, JDC’s Country Director for Tunisia, that his father “still remembers the tasty olive oil” that JDC used to distribute to the poor 35 years ago. Even the current community president, Youssef Ouezzen, who is now a prosperous businessman in his mid-forties, reminisces fondly about the “incredibly durable shoes” and “long-lasting trousers” the Joint would hand out to the needy when he was a boy.

Over the years, as the Jews of Djerba have become better educated (with the help of JDC-supported schools) and living conditions have generally improved, JDC closed the canteen and no longer distributed goods-in-kind. A community tax imposed on the sale of kosher meat soon enabled our local partners in Djerba to take over the discreet payment of monthly cash assistance to needy Jews. And just recently, the community took the initiative to build and furnish a small one-room apartment for the last of the Djerban Jewish beggars.

These developments, made possible through JDC’s work with the local community, have allowed us to shift our priorities toward the community’s future—the flourishing Jewish education system. Largely funded by designated gifts, JDC’s Djerban agenda focuses on training teachers and modernizing the curricula for the 300 children who now study in the Jewish kindergarten, schools, and yeshivot.

The only other remnant of JDC’s welfare activities on the island is that we reimburse the community’s bikkur holim fund (bikkur holim literally means visiting the sick) half the cost of medications for Djerba’s neediest Jews.

JDC Program Update: Tunisia

The latest news from our programs in Tunisia:

Welfare Programs

After a long search to fill an aching vacancy, the Jewish Community of Tunis was finally able to employ a very capable person to look after the needs of the elderly survivors. JDC then sent a professional social worker from Marseilles to Tunis for a training and supervision visit.

Most of the elderly Jews in Tunis are living alone without any educational background or conventional work experience (some have lived as professional beggars). Given their nearly total destitution on the one hand and rising living costs on the other, JDC and the Community strive to improve their modest living standards in any possible way. Thanks to two special donations, we were able in the past year to raise their monthly cash assistance by 20 percent and to finance certain improvements in their living conditions.

Lag B’Omer Pilgrimage to La Ghriba Showcases Jewish Life in Djerba

On the small Mediterranean island of Djerba, located just off the Tunisian coast, can be found what may be the most ancient observant Jewish community in the Diaspora. Approximately 1,000 Jews—nearly half of them children enrolled in JDC-sponsored educational institutions—study Torah, keep the commandments (sometimes according to pre-Talmudic customs), and pray daily in more than a dozen active synagogues. Known as Arab Jews, they have been indigenous to Djerba for millennia and their mother tongue is Arabic.

There are two settlements here: Hara Kebira, the large Jewish Quarter, and Hara Seghira, the small Jewish Quarter. It is the smaller community, and its famed La Ghriba (“the wondrous”) synagogue, that was the center of attention during the holiday of Lag B’Omer (May 11-12).

Throughout most of the Jewish world, Lag B’Omer celebrations honor ancient Jewish scholars Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, as well as the memory of the Bar Kochba uprising—the last great Jewish revolt against the ancient Roman Empire. In Tunisia, however, Lag B’Omer inspires a unique pilgrimage to La Ghriba.

Each year, the handful of Jewish families still living in Hara Seghira welcome thousands of Jews from France, Israel, and elsewhere to their gleaming white synagogue on the hill to participate in a colorful, buoyant festival unlike any in modern Jewry. They come because La Ghriba is supposed to be a synagogue of miracles. A tiny opening in the back of the synagogue leads to a crawl space where infertile women come to place eggs on a stone said to have been brought 2,600 years ago from the portals of Solomon’s Temple.

Of course, the timely focus on Djerba provides visitors—which this year included U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, Robert Godec—the opportunity to observe how JDC has worked its own transformations in this ancient, but vibrant, Jewish community.

JDC has had a presence in Tunisia since 1950, and today works with the local community to support Jewish education and other programs, including both the Torah v’Hinuch network schools and two yeshivot in Djerba which have a combined enrollment of approximately 450 students. With JDC assistance, upgrades including a nursery, new classrooms, a dining hall, library, and computers were made to the local yeshivot. JDC also focuses on teacher training and curriculum development for the Jewish nursery and kindergarten as well as the Girls’ School.

At the same time, JDC’s International Development Program works with the broader community in Tunisia to build interfaith cooperation among the Jewish population and their neighbors in serving the most vulnerable local citizens. JDC-IDP’s flagship effort in Djerba is a farm which offers therapy and vocational training for mentally impaired individuals.

One of the few institutions in the region that serves Arab Muslims, Jews, and Berbers, the new farm has greatly expanded the program of the parent-led UTAIM (Tunisian Union to Aid the Mentally Impaired) Day Center in the Djerban capital of Houmt Souk. The project is conducted in partnership with the Tunisian Union for Social Solidarity (the semi-governmental national federation of charities) and the Committee of Cooperation for the French Rhone Delta Region, and is funded by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The official inauguration of the farm will take place in November 2009.

This year, pilgrims who came to La Ghriba for Lag B’Omer arrived with renewed hope that this ancient remnant community, one of the few still thriving in Arab lands, will continue to grow and prosper with the help of JDC.