Identity in Crisis: Maghrebi Jewish Heroines Caught Between Modern French Ideals and Local Traditions

• In Event: Jewish Literatures in South America and North Africa

Abstract

Through a close reading of two North African Jewish novels written in French, LES JUIFS OU LA FILLE D'ELÉAZAR, by Elissa Rhaïs, published in 1921, and MAZALTOB, by Blanche Bendahan, published in 1930, I explore the difficulties that North African Jewish women faced within the French colonial period. When France began colonizing North Africa, beginning with Algeria in 1830 and spreading to Morocco and Tunisia before the turn of the century, the Jewish community of France eagerly participated by adopting the French colonial civilizing mission and bringing a uniquely French form of Judaism to the local Jewish communities across North Africa. Consistory schools were established in Algeria while the Alliance Israélite Universelle created schools in Morocco and Tunisia. Despite resistance, the majority of Jewish children in North African benefitted from a typical French education, including Jewish girls. Fluent in French, enlightened to modern Western ideas, able to write and read and carry on intelligent and intellectual discussions, the female students often struggled to return to the traditional Jewish lifestyle of North Africa after their French colonial educational experience. In the novels of Elissa Rhaïs and Blanche Bendahan the traditions of the Jewish communities of two North African cities, Algiers and Tétouan, respectively in Algeria and Morocco, are juxtaposed with and shown as being menaced by the modernity of France. The heroines of these two novels, Debourah and Mazaltob, are caught between the traditional Jewish culture and customs of North Africa and the temptations of Western culture. The image of the female figure as seen as anchoring the household firmly in Jewish traditions is threatened by the secular education taught in the Alliance and Consistory schools. Just as France’s famous heroine, Emma Bovary, becomes dissatisfied with her provincial life in rural 19th century France through the novels of the exciting and fast-paced city life of Paris in Flaubert’s novel, MADAME BOVARY, Debourah and Mazaltob are introduced to new ideas and modern possibilities through their French education, reading French literature of course. However, is their French-taught knowledge more condemning than liberating for these Jewish heroines of North Africa?

Author

• Christina Leah Sztajnkrycer, University of Washington, Seattle