North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria (review)

Book Reviews 171 North African]ewry in the Twentieth Century: The]ews of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, by Michael M. Laskier. New York: New York University Press, 1994. 400 pp. $50.00. In the 1950s and the 1960s, more Jews immigrated to Israel from North Mrica than from any other major region of the world. Although Michael M. Laskier's book promises to be a comprehensive study of North Mrican Jewish communities in this century, it is essentially about their process of "self-liquidation." With detailed accounts of the leadingJewish personalities, Laskier takes the reader through the tumultuous years when the Jewish communities of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria were caught in the middle of a triangular struggle involving the nationalist fight for independence from France (and Spain in Northern Morocco), the efforts of the colonial authorities to maintain their control of the situation, and the indigenous and Israeli Zionists' organizing the communities towards 'aliya. On this subject, Laskier has been particularly resourceful in obtaining archival evidence and interviewing key actors involved in the underground operations that contributed to emigration. Building on the extensive documentation from the.AIliance Israelite Universelle used in his previous book on Morocco,I Laskier uncovered important new documents in the archives of other Jewish institutions, especially those of the AmericanJoint Distribution Committee, the AmericanJewish Congress, and the Central Zionist Archives. Some of the Israeli and French government archives, only opened in recent years to researchers and in which access to some of the material still remains difficult, were also exploited in this study. While covering some of the same ground as in his previous work, this study is considerably enhanced by the new documentation and focus on the Zionist underground. The inclusion ofTunisia and Algeria, though they are treated much less extensively, helps somewhat to complete the picture. Laskier does a great service to specialists on the recent political history of North Mrican Jewry by revealing, in some instances for the first time, information about the Israeli· and Zionist underground in North Mrica, and the often contested deliberations of international Jewish organizations and the French and Israeli governments on the question of unrestricted versus selective immigration from North Mrica to the new state of Israel. lThe Alliam:e Israelite Universelle aruJ the]ewish Communities ofMorocco: 18621962 (Albany: Slale University of New York Press, 1983). 172 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 For the non-specialized reader, this book fails in its purpo,se of serving as a general introduction to the modern history of the Jewish communities of North Africa, a goal already achieved in a much more readable manner by Norman StiUman.2 Laskier makes a number of fundamental errors in his description of both the precolonial and colonial political systems, and the status of the Jews in these systems. For example, he does not clearly explain how in Morocco the French authorities developed, under the guise of preserving traditional society, a court system that distinguished between the secular courts of the government (makhzen) that dealt with penal and civil matters affecting both Muslims and Jews, and the shari'a courts whose powers were reduced to religious matters and personal litigation affecting Muslims. Instead of interpretation, Laskier often allows the documents themselves to take over the book, by presenting the reader, in unnecessary detail, the names of numerous personalities and summaries of the reports of the various Jewish organizations. The author asks series of questions which he answers himself by practically paraphrasing the reports with lists of major points made. Consequently, the reader has a difficult time discerning between the important and the trivial. This becomes especially apparent when he attempts to write about the social transition of the Jewish communities. Societal change is often measured according to the yardstick of the AID and the AJDC, and the history of the Jewish communities is represented for the most part as the history of these Jewish institutions and their opinions about the society they hoped to transform. Laskier therefore has little to say about what the cultural or religious life was like for the Jewish communities except as it was perceived by the modernizers of the Alliance Israelite Dniverselle and other foreign Jewish organizations, and...