“Like all Tunisians, we care for the need for there to be a real democracy,” he said, “where struggles between people are fought with words and minds, not with weapons.”
This approach was also evident in the Tunisian Jewish community’s rejection in early April of the government’s proposal for a reserved parliamentary seat for the Jewish community. Roger Bismuth, president of Tunisia’s Jewish community, recounted telling the government, “Forget it, and stop talking about religious minorities.”
Like Lellouche, Bismuth does not want his community to be seen as separate: “We have the same problems as all Tunisians; we — all of us — are living through a difficult period.”
Those difficulties don’t only involve violence. Since Ben Ali’s 2010 ouster, Tunisia’s economy has tanked. Unemployment has spiraled upward, and the tourists who used to flock to the country, with its picturesque Mediterranean coast, have yet to return. This has dealt a big blow to a country where tourism accounts for 7% of the GDP and 400,000 real jobs in the economy.
Now, some Tunisians, Lellouche among them, are seeking to rebuild the tourism industry from the bottom up, with boutique hotels, new restaurants and new cultural centers. Late last year, Lellouche opened up a Jewish heritage museum on the top floor of the building that houses Mamie Lily.
The rooms upstairs highlight Jewish contributions to Tunisian heritage: literature, handicrafts, music, politics and cinema. There’s a section dedicated to Albert Samama-Chikli, one of the world’s earliest cinematographers, who brought the first film screening to Tunisia in 1897. There is also some detail about Testour, a town in northern Tunisia that was jointly rebuilt by Muslims and Jews after Christians forced them into exile from Andalusian Spain in 1492. The museum broadly outlines the history of Tunisia’s Jewish community, which dates back three millennia, preceding both Islam and Christianity. Before World War II it was a community that numbered more than 100,000. Those figures dwindled following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the end of French rule in Tunisia in 1956. Both factors drove Jewish migration to Israel and, in greater numbers, to France in the succeeding years.
Among Lellouche’s prized pieces in the collection — which includes beautiful old hamsas, menorahs and Judeo-Arabic scripted books — is an old key to an Andalusian Jewish home, carefully passed down a family line in Tunisia.
When the museum opened in December of last year, Lellouche said, young Tunisians of all faiths were curious to visit. “They told me they felt like Tunisia was a chair with only three legs, and that after seeing this museum, the picture was complete.” The visitors, he added, realize that this Jewish museum is essentially about Tunisian heritage. “A country, and the love for one’s country, does not have a religion,” he said.
I don't think people writing about the reserved seat proposal appreciate that Islamists believe that such a seat is a requirement of Islamic law. The idea is that Christians and Jews get one seat only for the purpose of raising concerns about the proper application of Islamic law to their communities. It isn't a progressive thing.
ReplyDeletei am sorry to say that Jews in Arab countries are delusional. They no longer have a place in Arab countries!
ReplyDeletesultana