Bibliography

Explore the references, sources, and research that support Algeria's stories and cultural content.

• Literature and folktales

  Stories and Writers of the Jews of Algeria

  Algerian Jews left a literary trail that runs from the law books of medieval rabbis to some of the best known French writers of the twentieth century. Along the way, families passed down legends in Judeo Arabic and French that are still told today.

  Medieval voices

  Rabbis who wrote for a whole region

  After 1391, two refugees from Spain made Algiers a center of Jewish learning. Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet and Rabbi Simeon ben Zemah Duran answered questions sent from across North Africa, and their collected responsa, letters on Jewish law and daily life, are still studied. They are also a window into the lives of ordinary families six hundred years ago.

  Folktales and legends

  The rabbi who rode a lion

  The most famous Algerian Jewish legend tells of Rabbi Ephraim Enkaoua, who fled Spain and arrived in Tlemcen riding a lion, with a snake for reins. In the story he heals the king's only daughter, refuses any gold, and asks only that the Jews around Tlemcen be allowed to form a community. For centuries, Jews from across Algeria made a pilgrimage to his tomb in Tlemcen, and families retold the tale wherever they settled.

  Modern writers

  Writing between languages

  In the twentieth century, Algerian Jews wrote mostly in French, and several became world famous. The philosopher Jacques Derrida, born in El Biar in 1930 and expelled from school under the Vichy laws, reflected on his Algerian Jewish childhood in Monolingualism of the Other. The writer Hélène Cixous, born in Oran in 1937, returned again and again to Algeria in books such as Reveries of the Wild Woman. The historian Benjamin Stora told the community's story in Les Trois Exils, and the cartoonist Joann Sfar, of Algerian Jewish descent, brought 1930s Algiers to life in the graphic novel The Rabbi's Cat.

  Read with students

  Start with these

  • The Rabbi's Cat, Joann Sfar (graphic novel, high school)
  • Undesirables: A Holocaust Journey to North Africa, Aomar Boum and Nadjib Berber (graphic novel, middle and high school)

  See all books on the Jews of Algeria in JIMENA's bibliography →

  Sources: Isaac ben Sheshet; Simeon ben Zemah Duran; Ephraim Enkaoua; Jacques Derrida; Hélène Cixous.