Les synagogues dans l'Algérie coloniale du XIXe siècle

Résumé 0

Secluded places of worship under the Turkish rule, often tiny and decaying, mainly private, but most of the time full of a rich religious and historical past and thus actual places of memory, the Algerian synagogues after the French conquest were victims of huge destructions because of road works needed by the French administration, military as well as civilian. When Algerians consistories were created synagogues became ideological and political stakes for the consistorial administration and the rabbis coming over from France, and the problem got more complicated because of the appropriation of the places of worship by the State which provided grants and had the right to inspect the works. Building synagogues was then submitted to the ambiguous look of the colonial administration upon the Jews. The great many new synagogues did not appear sufficient to keep up with the demographic burst of the Jewish population, the rules were far from being obeyed, and, on the spot, worshipping remains in the hands of the indigenous rabbis. Even if, by the end of the century, a new trend is initiated because of the constitution of a middle-class aiming at assimilation, the ritual practices remain widely traditional.