Le passé juif de l’Algérie et l’enjeu des archives

Résumé 0

In the climax of the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) a variety of international parties, including officials in France, Algeria, and Israel, fought to gain control over documentation of and about a small Jewish community in the Algerian Sahara. This essay considers why decolonization radically changed the fate of the papers of a community long fetishized as marginal by social scientists, policy makers, and the demographic bulk of North African Jewry. To do so, it looks back to a history of colonial law that segmented southern Algerian Jewry off from Jews of the north and explores the fierce archival battle, a component of the Algerian war of independence, over who would control the documents of Algeria’s past. Finally, this article reaches into the present day, probing how documents of the North African and Middle Eastern past continue to be used to serve various, conflicting nationalist agendas. All told, this research teaches that when it comes to studying Algerian Jewish history, the historian inevitably bumps up against an active and highly politicized, multi-party contest over the sources of the Jewish past — one laced through with the complex history of Jews’ relationship to the colonial and postcolonial order, and, indeed, power itself.