Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on May 18, 2014

Every year hundreds if not thousands of Jewish pilgrims travel to Djerba island in Tunisia, where an ancient Synagogue is believed to contain a stone from the destroyed First Temple in Jerusalem. This year, controversy has come with them.

Pilgrims were crowding into the sanctuary, votive candles were glowing under the arches, and a singer from Jerusalem named Moshe Giat was atop a low bench, leading the men in an old and rousing song in Hebrew that ended, Hear, O Israel!

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Jerusalem? No. This scene took place in Tunisia, where about a thousand Jews are gathered this weekend for an annual Jewish pilgrimage and festival on the island of Djerba. The presence of Israeli visitors like Mr. Giat has become the focus of a sharp controversy among Tunisias political leaders.

On May 9, legislators at a raucous parliamentary hearing cited support for the Palestinian cause, opposition to Israel, and Israeli attacks on PLO figures in Tunisia in the 1980s as grounds for removing two government ministers and reversing a recent decision to formalize procedures for Israelis visiting Tunisia, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. The government says the move will boost Tunisias struggling tourism industry by projecting a message of openness.

The polemic is quintessentially Tunisian, combining fears for an economy battered by the countrys 2011 revolution, evocations of the Arab worlds most enduring cause clbre, and the tumultuous politics of an emerging democracy. For Tunisians, its also an occasion to weigh their countrys priorities.

According to tradition, Jews fled from ancient Israel to Djerba bearing a stone from the temple following its destruction in 586 B.C. by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Today the stone rests in the foundation of the La Ghriba synagogue.

Tunisias Jewish community has dwindled to about 1,000 since the mid-20th century as regional tensions over Israel and the prospect of jobs abroad led many to emigrate. But the La Ghriba pilgrimage for the Jewish festival of Lag Baomer has remained a big draw for Jews of diverse origins.

One is Mr. Giat, who is attending for the sixth time since 1992. After singing, he is seated at a courtyard table in a building beside the synagogue where food is being served and a band is in full swing, eating almonds with fellow Israeli Alan Debasc.

Read the original:

In Tunisia an ancient Jewish pilgrimage, controversy and hope

Category: Synagogue
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