Grave connections: Algeria’s Jewish cemeteries as sites of diaspora-homeland contact

Abstract

In the midst of the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, one Jewish family attempted to lay their slain father to rest in the Jewish cemetery of Algiers, which had been closed to the public since 1962. This article explores the process in which the family not only gained access to the cemetery, but also essentially became its caretaker. Through caring for the abandoned graves, the family of three brothers has cultivated new connections with their own Algerian Jewish past as well as the greater community of Algerian Jews living abroad.