The sole legacy bequeathed by Algeria's exiled 130,000 Jews turns out to have been a sausage, claims Albert Bensoussan:
In his essay in Information juive (July/August 2008), Albert Bensoussan muses on what the Jews and Muslims of Algeria had in common: shared surnames - Guedj, Taieb, Touati, Khalfa, Said, Bahloul, Haddad, Tabet, Akoun, Hanoun, Bakoush, Habib. Jewish women had 'Muslim' first names - Sultana, Mariem, Mah'a. Jewish men could be named Mesod, Makhlouf, Saadia, Ichoua. Muslims were just as likely to have 'Jewish' names: Ishak, Sarah, Rahal, Lea, Yacoub. Berbers favoured Kahina ( after the Berber queen who converted to Judaism).
The Jews of Algeria continued to speak Arabic even after the French conquest. They corresponded in Judeo-Arabic: Arabic written in Hebrew characters. The Algerian Haggadah of Bensoussan's childhood, re-issued in 2001, was printed in both Hebrew and Arabic. His parents spoke French, but their mother tongue was Arabic.
Today there is not a single synagogue in Algeria. Cemeteries are wrecked and abandoned. Young people today have no idea that 130,000 Jews once lived in Algeria. The Jews left everything behind. What happened to Bensoussan's piano? His book collection? His family's everyday possessions?
Bensoussan says he was invited to take part in various seminars in Algiers. Each time, he was disinvited on one pretext or another. His stories of Algiers are in publishing limbo. It's as if the ink with which he writes his fading childhood memories has dried up forever.
One day, however, while lamenting the disappearance of Algerian Jewish life to Algerian friends, Bensoussan blurted out the expression 'cachir sausage' (not kosher but cachir), immortalised in a 1930s novel, Mouna, cachir et couscous by Fedinand Duchene. This successful novel celebrated the gastronomic union of three religions.
For the last 45 years, Algerian Arabs, who like Jews, do not eat pork, have been eating cachir sausage. Thus a sausage is all that's left to recall 2,000 years of Jewish-Berber-Arab coexistence.
WHO'S TO BLAME,
ReplyDeleteI am an Algerian Muslim living in the USA lived most of my life in Algeria, growing up I always had a bad ideas about Jews that they are wises and never to be trusted, but after I came to the USA I realized That I was thinking wrong and the whole mentality back home is either terrible or confused and there is good and bad everywhere in this wild world, I have a couple Jewish friends we get along very well, so I said to myself should I blame my family for that! Of course not, because they are also a victim of a whole system which create this ignorance. A system who made the people confuse the word ISREAL with the word JEWISH, now! Wither I support or I am against what's happening in Israel, that's not the point! What I am saying here is the people and how they get along, but in the mean time I met some Jews that could not stand a Muslim or an Arab person and that made be upset and more disappointed, specially those were born and raised here in the USA. So I was trying to balance that in my mind and I come up with an answer that no matter where you were born or raised you could always be ignorant or confused.
Religions could be the source of this hatred and ignorance between the Arabs and Jews and even everybody in this life or if I may let me rephrase that! Religious could be the source for all that, with all the respect for all religions.
I believe that we’re only a guests in this world so I will always try to be a good guest in this life, why can we just get along and live in peace and harmony if we just change the way we think everything will be all right as they say: the quality of your thinking will determine the quality of your life.
In the end I just want to share something I red with you : ONLY ONE LIFE THAT’S SOON IS PASSED, ONLY WHAT’S DONE WITH LOVE WILL LAST.
Thanks for sharing your meaningful message. Jews are like everybody else, only more so...and I suspect Arabs too. INSHALLAH there should be an end to ignorance and hatred.
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