Jewish Tunisian history, Synagogues in Tunisia, Tunisian Jews, Tunisian rabbis, History of the Jews in Tunisia, Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, Max Azria, Albert Memmi, Berber Jews, Moshe Hacohen, André Chouraqui, Silvan Shalom, Menachem Mazuz
Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 23. Chapters: Jewish Tunisian history,
Synagogues in Tunisia, Tunisian Jews, Tunisian rabbis, History of
the Jews in Tunisia, Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, Max Azria, Albert
Memmi, Berber Jews, Moshe Hacohen, André Chouraqui, Silvan Shalom,
Menachem Mazuz, Georges Adda, Nissim Ben Jacob, Gisèle Halimi,
Aharon Uzan, Victor Perez, Chananel ben Chushiel, Avraham Tiar,
Joseph Sitruk, Ghriba synagogue bombing, Mathilda Guez, El Ghriba
synagogue, Nissim Zvili, Jacob ben Abraham Faitusi, Claude Challe,
David Cazès, Kobi Oz, Joseph Bismuth, Beit Knesset Kohanim
HaDintreisa, Jacob ben Nissim, Dany Brillant, Judah ben Jacob
Najar, Serge Moati, Zarzis Synagogue, Mordecai Baruch Carvalho,
Hara Seghira Synagogue, Isaac Lumbroso, Shemariah Catarivas, Ariel
Zeitoun, Mouansa Synagogue, Chaim Madar, David Najar, Alain
Mamou-Mani, Nine Moati. Excerpt: The history of the Jews in Tunisia
goes back to Roman times. Before 1948, the Jewish population of
Tunisia reached a peak of 110,000. From the 1950s, half this number
left for Israel and the other half for France. In 2011, 700 Jews
were living in Tunis and 1,000 on the island of Djerba. A tradition
among the descendants of the first Jewish settlers was that their
ancestors settled in that part of North Africa long before the
destruction of the First Temple in the 6th century BCE. The ruins
of an ancient synagogue dating back to the 3rd-5th century CE was
discovered by the French captain Ernest De Prudhomme in his
Hammam-Lif residence in 1883 called in Latin as sancta synagoga
naronitana ( "holy synagogue of Naro" ). After the fall
of the Jewish Commonwealth, many exiled Jews settled in Tunis and
engaged in agriculture, cattle-raising, and trade. They were
divided into clans governed by their respective heads (Mokdem), and
had to pay the Romans a capitation tax of 2 shekels. Under the
dominion of the Romans and (after 429) of the fairly tolerant
Vandals, the Jews of Tunis increased and prospered to such a degree
that African Church councils deemed it necessary to enact
restrictive laws against them. After the overthrow of the Vandals
by Belisarius in 534, Justinian I issued his edict of persecution
in which the Jews were classed with the Arians and the Pagans. Like
else where in the Roman Empire, Jews of Roman Africa are romanized
for a more or less long period and would have bear Latinized names,
wear the toga and spoke Latin even if they kept knownledge of
Greek, language of the Jewish diaspora at that time. In the seventh
century the Jewish population was largely augmented by Spanish
immigrants, who, fleeing from the persecutions of the Visigothic
king Sisebut and his successors, escaped to Mauritania and settled
in the Byzantine cities. Al-¿airuwani relates that at the time of
the conquest of Hippo Zaritus (Bizerta) by in 698 the governor of
that district was a J
