Juifs de Tunisie / Jews of Tunisia

For over two thousand years, Jewish communities were an integral part of the cultural, intellectual, and social fabric of Tunisia. This double issue of CELAAN Review examines the history, literature, and culture of Tunisian Jews — a community whose presence shaped Tunisian civilization profoundly, and whose near-total emigration in the decades following Tunisian independence represents one of the great cultural upheavals of twentieth-century North Africa.

Contributors explore the literary production of Tunisian Jewish writers in French, Arabic, and Judeo-Arabic (Judeo-Tunisian); the history of Jewish-Muslim-Berber coexistence in Tunisia from antiquity through the colonial period; the experience of the wartime occupation and its aftermath; and the complex question of memory and identity for Tunisian Jews now living in Israel, France, and the Americas.

The issue includes original fiction and poetry by Tunisian Jewish writers, critical essays, historical documents, and testimonies, making it both a scholarly contribution and a work of cultural memory — a tribute to a civilization that, though largely vanished from Tunisia itself, continues to shape the identities of its descendants around the world.