The Sahara is famous as the largest hot desert in the world. It hardly seems like a place where any life could flourish, let alone a Jewish community. And yet, for six centuries, Jews lived and thrived amid the sand and heat. Read on for 11 facts about the Mzab Jews and their oasis of Jewish life in the Sahara.
1. The Mzab Valley Is a Saharan Oasis
In the northwestern corner of the Sahara, in the country of Algeria, lies the Mzab Valley, an oasis of life surrounded by miles and miles of sun-scorched sand. Five walled towns scale the slopes of this valley. The largest of them, Ghardaïa, was home to a Jewish community for hundreds of years.
2. Jews Have Lived There Since Medieval Times
No one knows exactly when Jews first settled in this remote location. According to one theory, the first Jews arrived in Ghardaïa in the 1300s from Djerba, an island off the coast of Tunisia that is famous for its millennia-old Jewish community. In the centuries that followed, more Jews arrived from other parts of North Africa.
3. Almost Everyone Was Family
Whenever halachic questions arose in Ghardaïa, the Jewish leaders naturally looked to the scholars of the great Jewish communities along the North African coast. Among them were Rabbi Abraham Ibn Tawwah and Rabbi Shlomo Duran, both of whom lived in Algiers in the 1500s.1
One question is especially revealing. The Jewish community of Ghardaïa was small and close-knit, so almost everyone was related to everyone else. Relatives are halachically unfit to testify, so the question arose: could the community make a common agreement to accept relatives as witnesses? Rabbi Shlomo Duran replied that they could do so in monetary matters, but not for marriage and divorce.2
4. They Had Their Own Sign Language
Because so many marriages were between relatives, certain hereditary traits became more common among the Jews of Ghardaïa. One of these was a relatively high rate of deafness, affecting about 2.5% of the Jewish population. In such a small community, nearly everyone interacted with deaf people every day, and this led to the development of a unique sign language used only among Ghardaïa’s Jews.
Want to learn some Ghardaïan sign language? Here are the signs for three Jewish holidays:
- Rosh Hashanah: Hold the fingers of one hand together and make a dipping motion onto the open palm of your other hand, as if dipping an apple in honey.
- Yom Kippur: Cover your mouth with your hand, to show that no food passes the lips on this day.
- Shavuot: Mimic spilling water, following the North African custom of pouring water on Shavuot.
5. The Kittab Was a Month-Long Celebration
Ghardaïa’s Jews developed many unique customs, but none was as elaborate and lavish as the kittab, the ceremony celebrating a five-year-old boy’s entry into the world of Torah study. The celebration stretched over several weeks and included many special rituals. For example, twenty days in, a bowl of peanuts and dates was covered with a white cloth. Guests took turns making a cut in the cloth, from which a shirt was made for the boy to wear.
On the final day of the ceremony, the boy wore this shirt along with an embroidered overcoat and a specially crafted turban. His hands and feet were dyed with henna, and his forehead was marked with soot and olive oil. He sat on an armchair holding a sword, as relatives took turns kissing his turban and giving him gifts.
6. They Read a Megillah on Chanukah
On Purim, we read Megillat Esther to recount the Purim story, but most communities have no parallel practice for Chanukah. Ghardaïa (and certain other communities) was different. On the Shabbat within Chanukah, after the Torah reading, a special book called “Megillat Antiochus” was read aloud, along with an Arabic translation so that everyone could understand. Reading the text was considered a special honor, auctioned off to the highest bidder. Their descendants still keep this practice today, with women and girls (who might not attend regularly) attending synagogue especially to hear the reading.
(Note that while Megillat Esther is one of the books of Scripture, Megillat Antiochus is from a later era and does not have the sanctity of Scripture.)
Read: Esther vs. Antiochus
7. French Rule Didn’t Change Much
In 1830, France invaded Algeria and began a long process of colonizing the region. The Mzab Valley came under French rule in 1882. French policy toward the Jews, however, differed between northern and southern Algeria. In the north, as in France itself, Jews were granted full French citizenship. But in Ghardaïa and other southern towns, Jews were classified as “indigenous” residents who could not become French citizens.
Though this policy seemed restrictive, it actually helped preserve the religious life of Ghardaïan Jewry. While the Jews of northern Algeria were exposed to the secular influences of French culture, the Jews of Ghardaïa kept their traditions intact into the modern era. This led some visitors in the 1950s to consider the community the only “shtetl dwellers” left after the Holocaust.
8. They Weren’t the Only Saharan Jews
The Ghardaïan Jewish community was the largest of its kind in the Sahara, but it was far from the only one. Small outposts existed in other Saharan oasis towns in Algeria and beyond, such as Touggourt, Guerrara, and Ouargla.3
The desert town of Tamentit, several hundred miles south of Ghardaïa, was home to a prosperous Jewish community in medieval times. However, in the late 15th century, under the influence of a radical Muslim scholar, the Jews there were persecuted as enemies of Islam and their synagogue was destroyed. The surviving Jews fled elsewhere, some of them joining the community in Ghardaïa.
9. They Practiced Polygamy Longer Than Most Jewish Communities
Torah law does not forbid polygamy, but in the 11th century, Rabbeinu Gershom Me’or Hagolah famously banned the practice for all Ashkenazi communities. Sephardic (and Yemenite) communities were never bound by this enactment, and many continued to practice polygamy for centuries afterward.
In the modern era, most Sephardic communities came to live in societies where polygamy was illegal, and the practice faded away. The same was true for most of Algerian Jewry, who lived under French law. But the Sahara was not governed by the same rules as northern Algeria, and the Jews of Ghardaïa were left free to run their own marital affairs. As a result, polygamy persisted in the community until the early 1960s.
10. Algerian Independence Led to a Mass Departure
In the first half of the 20th century, some Ghardaïan Jews immigrated to the Land of Israel, while most stayed. But in 1962, after eight bloody years of conflict, Algeria declared its independence from France. Facing growing hostility, the Jews no longer felt safe, and the entire community left its centuries-old home for France and the Land of Israel.
11. Signs of Jewish Presence Remain
Today, visitors to Ghardaïa can still see traces of the Jewish presence that once thrived there. The Jews lived in a separate Jewish quarter called the mellah. On a narrow street within the mellah, known as Jerusalem Street, stands the synagogue, now empty and in disrepair after decades of abandonment. The Jewish cemetery still remains, which is also where the Jews buried their holy books and manuscripts on the eve of their departure.
But while Ghardaïa today is empty of Jewish life, the descendants of this fascinating community live on, proud of their identity and keeping many of their unique traditions alive.
