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Constantine, Algeria

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Introduction and Geography

The Jewish community of Constantine, once one of the largest and oldest in North Africa, has now declined to only a handful of individuals. Known to Jews as Qesumtayna (‘piece of rock’), the community’s origins can be traced to the Roman and Byzantine periods. [1] Under the Numidian kings, the city – then known as Cirta – flourished under King Micipsa in the second century BCE, fielding sizable military forces and channeling its agrarian wealth into Mediterranean trade networks. [2] In 311 CE, Constantine was destroyed during the civil war between Roman Emperor Maxentius and Domitius Alexander, the former governor of Africa. [3] Rebuilt in 313 CE and renamed Constantine after Emperor Constantine I, the city remained  a diverse urban center through the end of Roman rule (710 CE) and into the early Muslim period. [4] Muslim Arabs entered Constantine in 710, but remained a minority among Berber populations [5]; as a result, Jewish communal life persisted with limited disruption until the Almohad conquest. [6] 

Sources suggest that some rural Berber populations may have adopted Judaism, pointing to an early, locally rooted Jewish presence. [7] Until the twelfth century, Arabs were a minority among the Berbers, allowing Berber tribal leaders to rebel frequently and retain positions of political influence. 

Almohad Conquest

In 1152, the Almohad Dynasty conquered the region, initiating waves of persecution against Jews. The Almohads imposed dhimmi status on non-Muslims, permitting the practice of their religions in exchange for submission to Muslim rule and the payment of  a jizya tax. Before long, however, both Jewish and Christian urban populations were compelled to convert to Islam. Jews who resisted were made to wear dark blue (and later yellow) clothing with large hats; contemporary accounts record instances of mass martyrdom. [8] Those who converted were still required to wear clothing identifying them as Jews, as they were not considered “sincere Muslims.” [9] Many Jews fled inland to mountain villages or coastal cities, while others were forcibly converted or migrated across the Mediterranean. As a result, Constantine’s Jewish population was dramatically diminished.

Ottoman Period

Ottoman influence, consolidated through the beylik of Constantine, reshaped the city’s built environment in the eighteenth century under Governor Salah Bey (r. 1770-1792), who sponsored major building campaigns. [10] During this period, the Jewish community established a distinct quarter in the city’s north – the spatial heart of Jewish Constantine. Under the Ottoman millet system, Jews enjoyed a degree of communal autonomy, under the authority of the Chief Rabbi, though they remained subject to a jizya tax and certain property ownership restrictions. [11] The Ottoman conquest allowed the Jewish community to regenerate, nearly doubling from about 3,000 to 5,000. [12] The community benefited  from revived trade, craftsmanship, and the rebuilding of communal institutions. [13] 

French Period and Crémieux Decree

French forces captured Constantine in 1837, inaugurating a colonial administrative order that would profoundly transform Jewish life. One of the first major changes came with the extension of the Central Israelite Consistory of France,  established by Napoleon in 1808, which expanded its oversight to Algeria. Following the occupation, the Central Consistory viewed Algerian Jews’ local knowledge, communal cohesion, and ties with their Muslim neighbors  as channels for advancing French influence. [14] The  Consistory of Constantine was created in 1849 to coordinate religious, educational, and charitable life, placing long-autonomous midrashim and talmud torah networks under closer French supervision. [15] These institutions had traditionally formed the backbone of Jewish communal learning in North Africa: the midrashim functioned as houses of study where advanced students engaged with rabbinic texts, while the talmud torah schools provided basic religious instruction in Hebrew, prayer, and Torah for young boys. Organized and funded locally, they were integral not only to religious education but also to the preservation of Jewish identity within the broader Muslim-majority society. By absorbing these indigenous structures, the Consistory’s expansion in Algeria signaled a broader cultural shift, from locally rooted Jewish education traditions toward integration within French-controlled institutions. By the late nineteenth century, Constantine’s Jewish community numbered close to 20,000, making it the third-largest in Algeria. [16]

This reorientation of communal life laid the groundwork for the transformative impact of the Crémieux Decree of 1870.

Crémieux Decree and Alliance Israélite Universelle

Spearheaded by the French Minister of Justice, Adolphe Crémieux, the Crémieux Decree of 1870 collectively naturalized some 35,000 indigenous Algerian Jews as French citizens. [17] The  decree accelerated social mobility for many urban Jews, but also deepened settler resentment and Muslim grievances over the two-tiered system of citizenship. The state’s commitment to secular education reshaped Algerian Jewish life, as French schooling became compulsory and was widely perceived as a route to socioeconomic advancement. Institutions like the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) positioned themselves as a bridge between Jewish identity and integration into French civic life. In Constantine, Judeo-Arabic was preserved as a literary language, but gave way to French in everyday matters.

While the Alliance’s leaders maintained that “Jews must remain Jews,” they believed assimilation and religious fidelity could be mutually reinforcing. [18] Most Jewish children attended Alliance schools; only a small minority advanced to elite institutions such as the Lycée d’Aumale. In 1931, Jews constituted 22% of Constantine’s primary school pupils but only 2.6% of its co-educational high school students. At the Lycée d’Aumale, they outnumbered Muslim students yet remained a minority in a predominantly European student body. [19] 

City Quarters and Interwar Period

By the early twentieth century, Constantine’s urban core comprised three distinct quarters: Jewish (northwest), Arab (southwest), and European (northeast). The Jewish quarter, home to about 12,000 Jews in 1934, lay adjacent to key civic and religious landmarks, functioning as a zone of intercommunal interaction.

The Arab quarter (village Arabe) lay to the southwest, with tightly packed houses and winding streets. The European quarter occupied higher elevations with newly built French-style homes, alongside institutions such as École Normale de Filles, École Normale de Garçons, and École Michelet. Historically, Algerian Jews served as intermediaries between European and Arab communities, and the city’s spatial divisions reflected and reinforced this role.

The decades after World War I saw a rise in French settler antisemitism in Algeria. Publications such as La Tribune in Constantine and Le Petit Oranais in Oran circulated hostile tropes; political figures like Dr. Jules Molle and Abbé Gabriel Lambert rode antisemitic platforms to office. [20] In Constantine, La Tribune regularly published anti-semitic articles, and its editor, Dr. Léon Suret-Canale, was notorious for incitement. [21] Some European agitators, with connections to the press, deliberately spread rumors and encouraged tensions, seeking to mobilize Muslim discontent against Jews. [22] These tensions came to a head between August 3-5, 1934, when violence erupted following a disputed altercation near the Sidi Lakhdar Mosque. Muslim crowds, believing a Jewish soldier to have insulted Islam, attacked the Jewish quarter. [23] Over three days, twenty-five Jews and three Muslims were killed; roughly 200 were injured, over 200 Jewish-owned shops looted, and violence spread to surrounding towns like Batna and Biskra. [24] The colonial authorities failed to act decisively, and the perceived impunity of the assailants deepened Jewish mistrust of the French administration. [25] The 1934 Constantine pogrom marked a turning point in Muslim-Jewish relations in Algeria. Under colonial rule, coexistence had been strained but not broken; the riots shattered it. Fear and disillusionment from this event echoed into the Vichy years and Algeria’s War of Independence.

Vichy Rule and World War II

The rise of antisemitism in France during the late 1930s, intensified by political anxieties over Jewish refugees and associations between Jews and the political left, set the stage for systemic exclusion under the Vichy government. Within weeks of the German invasion of France in May-June 1940, Vichy implemented measures excluding Jews from public life. [26] On October 4, 1940, the Vichy government adopted the first statut de Juifs, tightening racial definitions of Jewish identity and excluding Jews from nearly all public roles. 

By October 7, 1940, the seventy-year old Crémieux Decree was revoked, stripping Algerian Jews of their French citizenship. Jewish enrollment in schools, such as the École Normale, Lycée d’Aumale, and École Diderot, was strictly limited by a numerus clausus, first to fourteen percent and later to seven percent. [27] Jewish children were expelled from primary and high schools across Algeria, effectively barring them from institutions that had long served as gateways to social mobility and French integration. [28]

This policy abruptly excluded generations of Jewish students from the rigorous academic and social opportunities that had historically marked their entry into the French colonial elite. In response, Grand Rabbi Maurice Eisenbeth, Consistory Secretary General Elie Gozlan, and Professor Robert Brunschvig organized a network of private schools to educate the expelled Jewish children. By 1942, approximately twenty thousand Jewish students across Algeria were enrolled in seventy-five such schools, ensuring continuity of education despite the Vichy regime’s restrictions. [29]

After WWII and Independence

After World War II, Algerian Jews occupied an increasingly precarious position within a reconfigured colonial order. Though they had lost their French citizenship under the Vichy regime in 1940, the Crémieux Decree was reinstated in 1943 after the Allied liberation of  Algeria, restoring their legal status as French citizens. [30] Jewish students who had enrolled in Rabbi Eisenbeth’s network of private education during World War II were now able to return to their schools. The restoration also reimposed a two-tiered citizenship system – Jews as French citizens, and Algerian Muslims as “indigenous” subjects without full civil rights – tightening the juridical link between Algerian Jews and the privileges of colonial rule. Though Jewish families remained in Constantine after 1943, many began emigrating to France and Israel as tensions rose in the lead-up to Independence. As the Algerian War of Independence escalated after 1954, the Jewish minority was caught between an ascendant Muslim nationalism and the violence of a collapsing colonial state. 

The Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), the principal nationalist movement fighting for Algerian independence, initially courted Jews as fellow Algerians and invited them to join the struggle for liberation. [31] Yet other FLN currents cast Jews as complicit in French domination–an inference strengthened by Jewish communal leaders’ public affirmations of loyalty to France. [32] In Constantine, attacks increasingly targeted Jewish neighborhoods; while many initially blamed French security failures, they ultimately felt besieged from multiple directions. Despite longstanding social, cultural, and commercial ties with Algerian Muslims, many Jews concluded that an independent Algeria offered limited prospects for communal security. [33] 

By 1962, when Algeria gained independence, approximately seventy-five percent of Algeria’s roughly 130,000 Jews had departed. [34] In Constantine, once home to 15,000–20,000 Jews, only about 1,000 remained after 1962; within a few years, nearly all had departed. [35] Most sought refuge in metropolitan France, a country they had long fought to be recognized as their true homeland. Some Jewish institutions were repurposed into mosques, gymnasia, bookstores, and political centers with the authorization of the Algerian Federation of Jewish Communities. [36] Others were nationalized, while still more simply fell into disrepair.

Constantine, Algeria