Djerba ג'רבה

Djerba has two Jewish quarters: Hara Kebira, the Big, and Hara Sghira, the Small. The Small was inhabited almost entirely by kohanim, and there were no levites there at all; tradition explains this by Ezra's curse on those who would not go up with him from Babylon. It cannot be verified, but a whole quarter of kohanim on a small island is a rare thing, and the community treasured it: a kohen on Djerba took his wife from his own quarter.

The Ghriba. The El Ghriba synagogue stands in the Small quarter. Tradition says that kohanim fleeing after the destruction of the Temple brought a stone here (in other tellings, a leaf of its gates) and laid it in the foundation; the present building is of the nineteenth century, while firm evidence for Jewish Djerba begins in the Middle Ages. On Lag BaOmer pilgrims came, and still come, from all over the Maghreb and from France.

What it was. Djerba lived not by trading in ideas but by stubbornness: its own yeshivot, its own judges, its own custom, its own melodies. From 5663 (1903) David Idan ran a Hebrew press here, and the books of Djerban rabbis went out across North Africa—Djerba supplied rabbis to Tunisia, Libya and southern Algeria.

Today. In 5706 (1946) there were some 4,900 Jews on the island; by 5753 (1993), about 670. They left for Israel and France. But unlike Tripoli, Algiers and almost all the Maghreb, Djerba did not empty: there is still a minyan there, a heder, a shochet, and the Ghriba, to which people come on Lag BaOmer.