Tunisian Jews Research Articles

Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form by Richard C. Jankowsky

Reviewed by: Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form by Richard C. Jankowsky Rachel Colwell Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form. Richard C. Jankowsky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2021. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. xix + 244 pp., 9 figures, 10 tables, 20 musical examples, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN: 9780226723334 (hardcover), $95.00; ISBN: 9780226723471 (paperback), $27.50; ISBN: 9780226723501 (e-book), $26.99. Accompanying website: https://sites.tufts.edu/ambientsufism/. Richard Jankowsky’s much-anticipated monograph, Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form, delivers an impressive, in-depth examination of an array of Tunisian ritual musics considered from within a framework of musical ecology. It constitutes the first substantial literature on several of the genres described, especially in the English language. It is the first book of its kind to critically address complex political subjects like race and musical timbre in Tunisia and to discuss the place of music in contemporary conflict between Sufis, Islamic extremists, and the state. This book is at once a valuable resource for scholars specializing in Tunisian or Sufi musics and an approachable introduction for novices interested in learning about Tunisia’s sacred musical traditions and the religious, social, historical, and political elements with which they are intertwined. The central unifying concept of the text is “ambient Sufism,” Jankowsky’s term for the sacred topography of Sufi saints—remarkable historical figures whose shrines punctuate Tunisian cities and countryside—that resonates, however differently, in the musical practices of many Tunisian ritual communities. Ambient Sufism speaks to the palpable ways that this sacred-sonic complex serves as a shared resource and common structure that undergirds the interconnected sounds, practices, and ideas of various groups. Each religious ritual community uses these resources in their own way, applying aesthetics, timbres, and textures particular to their practice. Jankowsky shows how musical form and sonic mechanisms such as intensification do social work negotiating tensions around similarity and difference among neighboring religious communities. Ambitious not only in musical scope but also in its range of theoretical inquiry, the book also provides analyses of reflexivity, hospitality, alterity, and convergence in Tunisian ritual musics. [End Page 151] In a gesture toward poetics, the book’s organization mirrors the formal structures described in its text, the large-scale musical forms of the silsila and ḥaḍra. Each chapter examines a single case study, allowing for focus on the musics of each community, comparisons among the practices, and a cumulative effect across the book as a whole. The ritual musics discussed are (1) the ḥaḍra of the ‘Īsāwiyya, a widely known Sufi order, (2) the silsilas of the Mannūbiyya, a women’s Sufi healing troupe, (3) sṭambeli, a trance healing music developed by Tunisians of sub-Saharan descent, and (4) rebaybiyya, a healing music practiced by Tunisian Jews. Following the introduction and four case-study chapters, Jankowsky explores the recontextualization of Tunisian ritual musics today—the remnants of Jewish rebaybiyya in the mezwid genre and the staging of Sufi ḥaḍra in concert-like settings. The careful arrangement of the book’s chapters also affords synthesis across two important themes: the ritual and social work undertaken through the musical forms of the ḥaḍra and silsila and contemporary Tunisians’ concerns regarding major contextual shifts in performance. Jankowsky provides ample evidence for the importance of sonic intensification, foregrounding and attending to musical phenomena that have previously been overlooked as trivial and mundane (for example, repetition, consistency, and gradually increasing tempo and volume). He demonstrates the value, complexity, nuance, and potential that are alive in these sonic elements, how they influence each other, and how they enhance the ritual at hand. Ambient Sufism supplies a veritable toolbox of useful terms for the ethnomusicologist’s study of intensification including discrete, sequential, and global forms that operate through tempo, texture, density, timbre, and volume. The text is complemented by high-quality audio, video, and photographic materials, which are available online on the accompanying website. Its rich multimedia resources lend the text well to teaching, whether for an area-studies course or one focused on Sufism, sacred musics, musics and healing, or musics and...

La diáspora sefardí en Túnez: de finales del siglo XV a mediados del siglo XVIII

Este artículo revisa la historia de los judíos sefardíes en Túnez, conocidos también por los nombres de grana, liorneses o portugueses. En la primera parte, presentamos el estado de la cuestión de la historiografía relativa a los sefardíes tunecinos. A continua­ción, investigamos los itinerarios de los sefardíes que fueron expulsados a Túnez. Se puede hablar de dos principales itinerarios: el primero, de los que marcharon a Túnez después la expulsión de España y de Portugal a fines del siglo XV y principios del XVI; el segundo, de los que llegaron al país en el siglo XVII principalmente desde Livorno. Por último, estudiamos los diferentes aspectos del asentamiento de los sefardíes en Túnez, es decir, la llegada de los expulsados al país y la posición del Estado Hafsí y los beyes; sus relaciones y comunicaciones sociales y económicas con la mayoría musul­mana, los moriscos, y los judíos locales (tuansa). Este estudio se basa en una rica bibliografía sobre los judíos tunecinos en general, además de otras fuentes: principalmente, el diario inédito de fray Francisco Ximénez, pero también otros textos españoles, así como documentos producidos por la comunidad portuguesa junto con algunas fuentes tunecinas locales.

L’émigration des Juifs de Tunisie en Palestine dans les années 1940. L’impact de l’idéal sioniste

From 1943 to 1948-49, at least 4 000 Tunisian Jews left North Africa for Palestine and then the State of Israel, just like tens of thousands of European Jewish survivors after the war. Situated in the particular conditions of colonial North Africa, these departures, usually illegal and clandestine, were the fruit of Zionist propaganda that had been disseminated for decades among the Jewish youth of Tunisia, the effects of which were amplified under Vichy and the German occupation. Utilizing sources from the Tunisian Protectorate, this article will focus on the ideological factors behind departures, but will also shed new light on how departures were organized (often by Algerian Zionists, who were not numerous) and the ambivalent attitude of French authorities.

Divide et Impera: Public health and urban reform in Protectorate-era Tunis

By the late nineteenth century, Jews and Muslims increasingly shared the neighbourhoods of Tunis; however, the enforcement of colonial segregationist practices under the guise of public health and urban reforms halted and reversed this trend between the First and Second World Wars. French officials stymied what they perceived as the two greatest threats to their supremacy in Tunisia: inferior numbers and indigenous unity. As a direct result of policies to combat these threats, French urban reforms erased the continuities of multi-cultural Tunis and rehoused the population into discrete zones based on ethnic, religious, and class distinctions. While Tunisian Jews were recast as French subjects and their former neighbourhoods destroyed, Muslim neighbourhoods were preserved as representative of indigenous Maghribi tradition.

The Jewish Quarters of Interwar Paris and Tunis: Destruction, Creation, and French Urban Design

This article investigates the political and social environments in Paris and Tunis at a time of heightened anxiety concerning the ghetto in each city. Examining the Saint-Gervais ghetto in Paris and the hara ghetto in Tunis, I find that two dramatically divergent strategies of municipal sanitary intervention emerge. In Paris, city officials' approach to cleansing Saint-Gervais was halting, haphazard, and ultimately occurred under tragic circumstances during World War II. In contrast, the Tunis Municipal Council, at the behest of French and Tunisian Jews, acted swiftly and compassionately (at least in their view) to expropriate and raze the hara and rehouse the displaced Jews. Whereas the primary concern of Paris's municipal officials was maintaining the socioeconomic status quo of landowners and their wealthy allies, their Tunisian counterparts were envisioning a bold, almost utopian, Jewish quarter modeled on an idealized concept of French modernity and bourgeois domesticity.

A Mutation Analysis of the Phenylalanine Hydroxylase (PAH) Gene in the Israeli Population

Hyperphenylalaninemia (HPA) is a group of diseases characterized by a persistent elevation of phenylalanine levels in tissues and biological fluids. The most frequent form is phenylalanine hydroxylase deficiency, causing phenylketonuria (PKU). Among 159 Israeli patients (Jews, Muslim and Christian Arabs and Druze) with HPA, in whom at least one of the mutations was characterized, a total of 43 different mutations were detected, including seven novel ones. PKU was very rare among Ashkenazi Jews and relatively frequent among Jews from Yemen, the Caucasian Mountains, Bukhara and Tunisia. The mutations responsible for the high frequency were: exon3del (Yemenite Jews), L48S (Tunisian Jews) and E178G, P281L and L48S (Jews from the Caucasian Mountains and Bukhara). Among the non-Jewish Israeli citizens, the disease was relatively frequent in the Negev and in the Nazareth vicinity, and in many localities a unique mutation was detected, often in a single family. While marked genetic heterogeneity was observed in the Arab and Jewish populations, only one mutation A300S, was frequent in all of the communities. Several of the other frequent mutations were shared by the non-Ashkenazi Jews and Arabs; none were mutual to Ashkenazi Jews and Arabs.

Mapping of a Gene Causing Brittle Cornea Syndrome in Tunisian Jews to 16q24

To map the gene that causes brittle cornea syndrome (BCS). Five patients from four families, all of Jewish Tunisian origin, were recruited into the study. Four of the five patients had red hair. DNA from the five patients and 104 control chromosomes was typed with seven 16q polymorphic markers surrounding the hair color gene, MC1R. A common haplotype in the homozygous state, comprising five markers spanning 4.7 Mb on chromosome 16q24, was found in all five patients but in none of the control subjects (P < 0.00001). The gene that causes BCS maps to a 4.7-Mb interval, between the markers D16S3423 and D16S3425 on 16q24.

‘Nekba’ or boon: When the 1948 Arab–Israeli war unveils the unsaid in Tunisia

This article contends that just as the 1948 Arab–Israeli War shook Judaism in Tunisia and pushed to the forefront a 40-year-old fierce disagreement among the Tunisian Jews, it exposed, in an unprecedented manner, the Tunisian Muslims' mixed reactions to the Palestinian conflict and lifted the lid over an unceasing discord between the secular, Western-educated and the religious, Zitouna mosque-educated, Tunisians. A survey of a selection of editorials from Muslim papers having different ideological orientations – assimilationist, reformist, Islamist, neutral, communist, nationalist – demonstrates that reactions ranged from backing Arab troops ‘invading’ Palestine to condemnation of Western apathy to ‘prudent’ reticence to complete silence or indifference.

Fanconi anaemia group A (FANCA) mutations in Israeli non‐Ashkenazi Jewish patients

Fanconi anaemia (FA) is a genetically heterogeneous disease with at least eight complementation groups (A–H). In the present study, we investigated the molecular basis of the disease in 13 unrelated Israeli Jewish (non‐Ashkenazi) patients with FA. All 43 exons of the Fanconi anaemia A (FANCA) gene were amplified from genomic DNA and screened for mutations by single‐strand conformation polymorphism and DNA sequencing. We identified four ethnic‐specific mutations: (1) 2172–2173insG (exon 24), the first ‘Moroccan mutation’; (2) 4275delT (exon 43), the second ‘Moroccan mutation’; (3) 890–893del (exon 10), the ‘Tunisian mutation’; and (4) 2574C &gt; G (S858R), the ‘Indian mutation’. The tetranucleotide CCTG motif, previously identified as a mutation hotspot in FANCA and other human genes, was found in the vicinity of 2172–2173insG and 890–893del. According to our study, the four mutations account for the majority (88%) of the FANCA alleles in the Israeli Jewish (non‐Ashkenazi) FA population. A screening of 300 Moroccan Jews identified three carriers of the first ‘Moroccan mutation’, but we did not find any carrier of the second ‘Moroccan mutation’ among 140 Moroccan Jews, nor any carrier of the ‘Tunisian mutation’ among 50 Tunisian Jews. Two ‘Indian mutation’ carriers were identified among 53 Indian Jews. All carriers within each ethnic group had the same haplotype, suggesting a common founder for each mutation.

Fanconi anaemia group A (FANCA) mutations in Israeli non-Ashkenazi Jewish patients.

Fanconi anaemia (FA) is a genetically heterogeneous disease with at least eight complementation groups (A-H). In the present study, we investigated the molecular basis of the disease in 13 unrelated Israeli Jewish (non-Ashkenazi) patients with FA. All 43 exons of the Fanconi anaemia A (FANCA) gene were amplified from genomic DNA and screened for mutations by single-strand conformation polymorphism and DNA sequencing. We identified four ethnic-specific mutations: (1) 2172-2173insG (exon 24), the first 'Moroccan mutation': (2) 4275delT (exon 43), the second 'Moroccan mutation'; (3) 890-893del (exon 10), the 'Tunisian mutation'; and (4) 2574C > G (S858R), the 'Indian mutation'. The tetranucleotide CCTG motif, previously identified as a mutation hotspot in FANCA and other human genes, was found in the vicinity of 2172-2173insG and 890-893del. According to our study, the four mutations account for the majority (88%) of the FANCA alleles in the Israeli Jewish (non-Ashkenazi) FA population. A screening of 300 Moroccan Jews identified three carriers of the first 'Moroccan mutation', but we did not find any carrier of the second 'Moroccan mutation' among 140 Moroccan Jews, nor any carrier of the 'Tunisian mutation' among 50 Tunisian Jews. Two 'Indian mutation' carriers were identified among 53 Indian Jews. All carriers within each ethnic group had the same haplotype, suggesting a common founder for each mutation.

Ancestral Origins and Worldwide Distribution of the PRNP 200K Mutation Causing Familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) belongs to a group of prion diseases that may be infectious, sporadic, or hereditary. The 200K point mutation in the PRNP gene is the most frequent cause of hereditary CJD, accounting for >70% of families with CJD worldwide. Prevalence of the 200K variant of familial CJD is especially high in Slovakia, Chile, and Italy, and among populations of Libyan and Tunisian Jews. To study ancestral origins of the 200K mutation-associated chromosomes, we selected microsatellite markers flanking the PRNP gene on chromosome 20p12-pter and an intragenic single-nucleotide polymorphism at the PRNP codon 129. Haplotypes were constructed for 62 CJD families originating from 11 world populations. The results show that Libyan, Tunisian, Italian, Chilean, and Spanish families share a major haplotype, suggesting that the 200K mutation may have originated from a single mutational event, perhaps in Spain, and spread to all these populations with Sephardic migrants expelled from Spain in the Middle Ages. Slovakian families and a family of Polish origin show another unique haplotype. The haplotypes in families from Germany, Sicily, Austria, and Japan are different from the Mediterranean or eastern European haplotypes. On the basis of this study, we conclude that founder effect and independent mutational events are responsible for the current geographic distribution of hereditary CJD associated with the 200K mutation.

Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York

Nancy L. Green offers a critical and lively look at New York's Seventh Avenue and the Parisian Sentier, in this first comparative study of the two historical centres of the women's garment industry. Torn between mass production and 'art,' this industry is one of the few manufacturing sectors left in the service-centred cities of today. Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work tells the story of urban growth, the politics of labour, and the relationships among the many immigrant groups who have come to work the sewing machines over the last century. Green focuses on issues of fashion and fabrication, as they involve both the production and consumption of clothing. Traditionally, much of the urban garment industry has been organised around small workshops and flexible homework, and Green emphasises the effect this labour organisation had on the men and mostly women who have sewn the garments. Whether considering the immigrant Jews, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Chinese in New York or the Chinese-Cambodians, Turks, Armenians, and Russian, Polish, and Tunisian Jews in Paris, she outlines similarities of social experience in the shops and the unions, while allowing the voices of the workers, in all their diversity, to be heard. A provocative examination of gender and ethnicity, historical conflict and consensus, and notions of class and cultural difference, this innovative volume breaks new ground in the methodology of comparative history. Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including those engaged in labour, immigrant, and women's history.

Hereditary properdin deficiency in three families of Tunisian Jews.

Hereditary properdin deficiency is a rare genetic disorder of the complement system. Three propositi and six additional family members with properdin deficiency have been found following analysis of the hemolytic activity of the classical (CH50) and the alternative (AP50) complement pathways in the sera of 101 survivors of meningococcal infections and 59 survivors of severe pneumococcal and Haemophilus influenza infections. All the properdin-deficient individuals had undetectable levels of properdin by radial immunodiffusion and by Western blotting. They belonged to three non-related families of Tunisian Jews who came from different parts of Tunisia. Two patients had a meningococcal infection at 15 and 16 years of age, respectively, and one had Haemophilus influenza meningitis at 1.5 years of age. In contrast to the fulminant and fatal course of meningococcal infection which was previously described in some properdin-deficient patients, our patients had a relatively mild disease. Properdin deficiency may not be as rare as previously thought. Analysis of AP50, in addition to CH50, in sera of patients who had meningococcal infection, will probably disclose many more cases of hereditary properdin deficiency. In addition, our findings indicate that, as in other complement abnormalities, hereditary properdin deficiency may also be associated with the ethnic origin of the patient.

Syndrome of brittle cornea, blue sclera, and joint hyperextensibility

In 3 families 4 patients were affected with the syndrome of brittle cornea, blue sclera, and hyperextensible joints (brittle cornea syndrome). From the review of 17 affected patients described previously and our cases, it appears that this rare autosomal recessive syndrome has variable expressivity. Two different groups of patients may be distinguished: one includes 5 families, all of Tunisian Jewish origin. All patients in this group also have red hair. In the second group, 9 families are from various ethnic origins; affected patients in this group have a normal distribution of hair color. A possible explanation for the existence of these 2 different group of patients is that the locus of the gene responsible for the syndrome is closely linked to the locus for a gene responsible for hair color with linkage disequilibrium in Tunisian Jews (Sepharadim).

Familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in France: epidemiological implications.

Of 329 patients dying of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in continental France between 1968 and 1982, 19 (6%) were familial cases. Genealogical investigation permitted the identification of 19 additional cases, bringing the total number of familial CJD cases reported here to 38. There are 6 definitely affected families, yielding an average of 6.3 cases per family. Mediterranean Jews account for one-third of all the cases, with Tunisian Jews constituting two-thirds of this ethnic group. Males and females are equally affected. The overall rate of occurrence (47.3%) is consistent with autosomal dominant transmission, but wide variations in individual pedigrees (26.7%-80%) leave this hypothesis open to scrutiny. Age at death is 10 to 15 years lower in familial than in sporadic CJD, suggesting the possible inheritance of "short incubation" genes in certain CJD families. Disease duration is longer in familial than in sporadic CJD, but this could be the effect of ascertainment bias. There is no evidence for maternal lineage. While members of a given family tend to die within the same age bracket, our data fail to discriminate between vertical transmission and common source exposure as hypothetical transmission mechanisms within affected families. CJD occurrence in a woman related by marriage to an unaffected branch of a CJD family, but who was raised in early childhood by the affected branch, argues in favor of horizontal transmission early in life. Analysis of death intervals and geographic/temporal separations suggests minimal incubation periods of up to 43 years. A family combining clinico-pathological features of CJD and the Gerstmann-Straüssler syndrome (GSS) indicates a nosological relationship between the two. The "genetic susceptibility" of members of CJD-affected families may be due to accelerated derepression of normally repressed host genes, coding for abnormal amyloid-type proteins. Accumulation of these proteins may play an important role in the pathogenesis of CJD and scrapie, and constitute a common pathogenetic mechanism in several neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD) and senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT).

The Identity of Religious Minorities in Non-Secular States: Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel

Since 1972 I have been conducting a study of Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel. This study included interviews with stratified quota samples of Tunisian and Moroccan Jews from August 1972 to August 1973 and conversations with community leaders during these thirteen months, as well as my participation in the life of the Jewish communities. From May through August 1974 I carried out field work in Israel, surveying a stratified quota sample of Israeli Arabs and meeting regularly with Arabs from all walks of life. After my departure, research assistants completed the survey. Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel were selected for study because they are religious minorities in non-secular states. While they bear some resemblance to minorities the world over, there are additional factors defining their position in society which make their circumstances relatively unique. I have elsewhere described them as ‘non-assimilating’ minorities. The purpose of this paper is to examine two questions pertaining to the groups I am studying: (1) What factors account for the unnarrowed cultural distance between the three minorities and their respective host societies? (2) How do the three minorities understand their respective sociocultural identities? In responding to the second of these questions, some findings from the surveys will be presented.

Tuberculosis in Tunisia

IN his inaugural thesis (Thése de Paris, No. 365 ; 1938), Dr. M. H. Thamer states that in Tunisia, which is a country of 2,608,313 inhabitants with a mixed population consisting mainly of Tunisian Mussulmans (2,335,623) With Tunisian Jews (59,485) and Europeans (213,205), the mortality from tuberculosis is much higher among the Mussulmans than in the other two groups. In Tunis alone there are about 4,000 tuberculous Mussulmans, and tuberculosis alone is responsible for more than a third of all the deaths from epidemic diseases. Further proof of the high incidence of tuberculosis among Mussulmans is furnished by army statistics, according to which 0*59 per cent of the Mussulman soldiers are affected as compared with 0-25 per cent of the Europeans. Moreover, all the Tunisian practitioners are agreed that the number of tuberculous subjects is increasing yearly in enormous proportions, and that the immense majority of the cases are highly infectious and run a rapidly fatal course. At the present time, the means for combating tuberculosis in Tunisia are quite inadequate. The only institution for detecting cases is the Mussulman Dispensary at Tunis, while barely 84 beds are available for all the cases of pulmonary tuberculosis in a population of more than two millions, among whom there are more than 6,000 deaths from tuberculosis yearly. There are at present no institutions in Tunisia for the prevention of tuberculosis among Mussulman children. The following measures, according to Dr. Thamer, are urgently required: (1) for children, the creation of open-air schools, holiday colonies and a preventorium ; (2) for adults, the establishment of five sanitary districts for Tunis, Susa, Sfax, Ket and Bizerta respectively, in each of which there should be a tuberculosis dispensary and the provision of about fifty hospital beds ; (3) there should also be a sanatorium of about a hundred beds in the suburbs of Tunis ; (4) afterwards the anti-tuberculosis campaign should be extended to the smaller towns and the rural districts which constitute about three quarters of the total population of the country.