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PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron not too long ago attended the opening in Paris of an exhibition organized by the Arab World Institute (IMA).

“Jews of the Levant, a Millennial Historical past,” now open to the general public, covers 1,100 sq. meters of exhibition area and has been billed as a cultural occasion of worldwide significance.

Documenting centuries of Jewish presence in Arab nations, it contains shows of archaeological stays, liturgical objects, jewellery, costumes, historical manuscripts, work, and pictures, together with music and audiovisual installations.

Gadgets have been introduced collectively from worldwide collections in France, the US, Spain, the UK, Belgium, Brazil, and Morocco, to focus on the ancestral cohabitation between Jewish and Muslim communities. Reveals mark intervals of wealthy inventive and mental creations in addition to erratic violence.

Normal curator of the exhibition, Benjamin Stora, a college professor and historian specializing within the Arab Maghreb, is from the historic metropolis of Constantine, in northeastern Algeria.

He famous that Jews have been current in North Africa earlier than the arrival of Christianity and that the Arabic language was imposed on the Jewish neighborhood from the ninth century.

“The Jewish neighborhood within the Arab Maghreb spoke solely in Arabic, besides in sure areas the place they both spoke Berber or Latin, a combination of Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic,” he mentioned.

Stora identified that there was an interpenetration of the three languages that mirrored the cohabitation of the 2 communities which included expatriate rabbis from Andalusia who settled in Tlemcen, Constantine, and different cities within the Maghreb nations.

An plain imprint

He added that the Jews left an plain imprint on the cultural heritage of the area, particularly when it got here to craftsmanship. “My members of the family, initially from Constantine, have been jewelers and made snake-shaped objects that ladies wore at events and weddings.”

On political and spiritual clashes between the 2 communities, he mentioned: “The interval of French colonization and the Cremieux Decree of 1870 (granting French citizenship to Algerian Jews however to not Muslims) marked the separation between the 2 natives, Muslim and Jewish.”

He added that the outbreak of the warfare of independence noticed 4 generations of French Jews place themselves alongside France, finishing the rupture in relations between Muslims and Jews.

Preservation of recollections

Stora, who has labored for greater than 40 years on the historical past of the up to date Arab Maghreb, highlighted the theme of the preservation of historical reminiscence.

He mentioned: “We can not scale back this important query of clashes to the Palestinian subject, the colonization, or the departure of the Jews. It is usually a query of preserving recollections, which can not look ahead to all political inquiries to be resolved.”

Denis Charbit, a professor of political science on the Open College of Israel and member of the exhibition’s scientific council, is accountable for the hyperlink between the IMA, the Israel Museum, and the Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Institute.

A specialist in Twentieth-century Jewish historical past, he mentioned the exhibition had an vital function to play within the struggle in opposition to ignorance and identified that the Jewish presence alongside the Arab and Berber populations dated again 2,000 years.

He famous that it was essential to combine the disruption and exile of Jews from Arab nations into the exhibition and that whereas relationships weren’t all the time easy, they weren’t a part of a black guide both.

On the explanations behind the rupture, Charbit mentioned that Arab nationalism had not proven itself to be sufficiently inclusive. “It was thought of that the Jewish populations, who have been additionally indigenous, Arab, and non-Muslim, weren’t a part of the Algerian, Tunisian, Iraqi, or Yemeni nations.”

He added that the start of Zionism and creation of the state of Israel offered Jews with the likelihood for a last departure. Others who’ve benefited from the cultural and linguistic undertaking of the Alliance Israelite Universelle group in Baghdad, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and different elements of the Mediterranean, have gone into exile in France.

Stora mentioned it was mandatory to guard the heritage and guarantee its transmission to future generations. “It’s not a query of a single historical past, a single faith, a single tradition, however a plurality of interventions, cultures, civilizations of languages, in addition to a passage of populations,” he added.

Bridges

Charbit mentioned: “In Israel, the Jews have a historical past with the Palestinians, even whether it is written in pressure and in blood. There are bridges and issues in frequent.”

The Jews of the Levant in Israel had a candy and bitter relationship with their nations of origin, partly as a result of a sense of exile, however additionally they felt nostalgia for the tales of a as soon as harmonious social life, he added.

“The Holocaust black gap didn’t forestall European Jews from remaining linked to their European heritage. Sustaining this hyperlink is the good ambition of this exhibition,” Charbit mentioned.

• This story initially appeared in French on Arab Information en Francais