Zionism, Assimilation, and Antisemitism in North Africa

European imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reshaped Jewish identities in the Middle East and North Africa. In North Africa, French colonialism brought major cultural and social change, in part through the Alliance Israélite Universelle’s schools, which sought to steep the region’s Jews in French culture. The schools enrolled Muslim and Christian children alongside Jews in an effort to encourage religious tolerance and understanding. Letters from Alliance teachers in Tunis, Sousse, and Tangier reveal the mixed loyalties these encounters created. Unlike Algerian Jews, most in Morocco and Tunisia were denied French citizenship. Westernization deepened internal divides, while rising nationalism and anti-Jewish violence exposed these Jews’ precarious position between Europe and the Arab world.