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Tunisia’s Jewish pilgrimage and Tuesday’s shooting, explained
(JTA) — When a security official opened fire outside a Tunisian synagogue during a pilgrimage on Tuesday night, killing two Jewish pilgrims and two security guards, he shattered what was meant to be a day of sacred celebration for the country’s Jews and their compatriots around the world.
The shooting at the synagogue in Djerba, an island in Tunisia, is the deadliest attack on the holy site in more than 20 years. It brought tragedy to a public celebration of Jewish life at Africa’s oldest Jewish house of worship.
Here’s an introduction to the Jews of Tunisia, the annual pilgrimage to Djerba and how the community is reacting to Tuesday’s attack.
Who are the Jews of Tunisia?
Jews have lived in Tunisia since ancient times. Archaeological evidence has shown that there was a Jewish community in the area that once surrounded the Roman city of Carthage, and Jewish life continued to exist there as the territory was conquered by Muslim empires, France and Nazi Germany. During the Holocaust, the Nazis seized Jewish property, put thousands of Jews in forced labor camps and persecuted them in other ways.
Tunisia gained independence in 1956. During and after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War in 1967, Jews endured an increasingly hostile environment, including antisemitic riots and the torching of a synagogue in Tunis. In the years that followed, the vast majority of the country’s Jews emigrated, shrinking a Jewish population that once may have numbered more than 100,000 to around 1,000-1,500 today.
What is the Djerba synagogue, and why does it host an annual pilgrimage?
Tradition has it that the synagogue on the island of Djerba was founded at the time of the destruction of the First or Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in either 586 BCE or 70 C.E., and contains a stone from the temple. Today the synagogue, which was rebuilt in the 19th century, has rows of benches, brilliant white-and-blue arches as well as an outdoor arcade and other resplendent design features.
The synagogue’s name, El Ghriba, means “the isolated one” and comes from another legend. According to “A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations,” published in 2013, local Jews long ago found the body of a girl who lived and died alone — but whose body was miraculously preserved.
That incident was also the inspiration for the annual pilgrimage on the holiday of Lag B’Omer, which takes place each spring, a little more than a month after the beginning of Passover. Pilgrims who come to the synagogue pray, dance, sing, feast, light candles and write their wishes on hard-boiled eggs.
In the 1990s, the pilgrimage attracted some 10,000 people, according to a report in The Conversation, and attracts thousands today. Since 2011, Israelis have been able to enter the country for the pilgrimage even though Israel and Tunisia do not maintain diplomatic relations. Attendance dipped in the years following the 2011 Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia, and the pilgrimage was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Djerba Jew praying at the El Ghriba Synagogue in 2012. (Wikimedia Commons)
Has the synagogue ever been attacked before?
Yes. In 2002, al-Qaeda set off a truck bomb near the synagogue that killed 20 people, most of them German tourists, about six weeks before the pilgrimage. Tunisia’s government denounced the attack and paid to restore the damage.
And in 2018, five men were arrested in connection with a firebomb attack at the synagogue. A suspicious fire also broke out at the synagogue in 1979.
How will this attack affect the pilgrimage?
Tuesday’s attack, and the fact that it was perpetrated by a security official, have led to despair among current and former pilgrims to the synagogue. Avi Chana, who has gone on the pilgrimage, told the Times of Israel, “I think it’s a death blow, at least for the foreseeable future, to a beautiful tradition and pilgrimage, and it is causing palpable pain. This is dealing the pilgrimage a mortal blow.” Another former pilgrim opted not to organize a group this year out of fears of an attack.
Tunisian President Kais Saied, who has been accused of gutting Tunisia’s democracy, is seeking to reassure future visitors that the country will be safe, and condemned the attack as “criminal and cowardly.”
“I want to reassure the Tunisian people and the whole world that Tunisia will remain safe despite this type of attempt intended to disturb its stability,” Saied said, according to the Times of Israel.
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The post Tunisia’s Jewish pilgrimage and Tuesday’s shooting, explained appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Jewish Bund Was Popular — But It Couldn’t Save Lives Like a Jewish State Could
Participants with Israeli flags look at the landmark Birkenau extermination camp gate in Auschwitz Museum – former Nazi German Concentration Camp during the International March of the Living (MOTL) in Oswiencim, Poland on April 14, 2026. Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
If you are a fan of klezmer music, you may be familiar with a catchy up-tempo Yiddish song “Barikadn” (barricades), recorded by the popular band The Klezmatics. The song is about a strike by workers in the Polish city of Łόdź, in which men, women, and children join together to erect barricades in the streets of the city.
Barikadn was popular with the Bund (General Jewish Labour Bund), a secular Marxist Jewish political movement established in 1897 in Vilna (then in the Russian Empire), just two months after the First Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland.
The Bund was one of the first socialist political movements in Russia. It played an important role during the lead up to the Russian revolution, but disbanded in the early 1920s, in response to pressure from the Communist Party. However, it continued to be an influential Jewish voice in Poland and Lithuania until the outbreak of World War II.
The Bund promoted the use of Yiddish, rather than Hebrew as a Jewish national language. The concept of “doikayt” (Yiddish for “hereness”) was a central feature of Bundist ideology. It discouraged Jewish nationhood (Zionism), advocating instead for Jewish communities to remain dispersed but culturally autonomous and politically engaged within their host countries.
Before the outbreak of World War II, the Bund was the most popular Jewish political force in Poland, with a party membership of close to 100,000. Its members were central to the vibrant secular Yiddish cultural life of pre-war Poland. However, as recorded by Yad Vashem, the Bund suffered the same fate as all the Jews of Poland. Only 1,000 members survived the war.
Today, in the aftermath of October 7, and now the Iran war, the Bund is enjoying something of a revival, as exemplified by Molly Crabapple’s new book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. The book highlights the universalist hope of Bund ideology, versus the perils associated with following the Zionist plan, including eternal war with Israel’s Arab neighbors and an increasingly chauvinist agenda.
Crabapple’s book has received a number of positive reviews, including one in The Forward and another in The Guardian (“For Leftist Jews the Bund is a Model”). However, one reviewer in Commentary Magazine has pointed out the fatal flaw in the Bundist program. He writes “We’ll never know if the Holocaust would have happened as it happened had there been a State of Israel at the time. Instead, the Holocaust happened during the time of the Bundists. That isn’t to blame them, obviously, for what happened. It is merely to say that Bundism wasn’t a plan for Jewish survival.”
As noted earlier, very few of the Bundists survived the Holocaust, so we don’t really know their views in the aftermath. However, Isaac Deutscher was a prominent Polish-Jewish socialist, writer, and journalist, a biographer of Trotsky.
Before World War II, Deutscher opposed Zionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism. But after the Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, saying, “If, instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s, I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were to be extinguished in Hitler’s gas chambers.”
The Bund wasn’t a plan for Jewish survival. Zionism was, and still is. Unlike other nationalisms, modern Zionism is a survivalist imperative, a rescue mission. In this, it has been remarkably successful; a refuge for Jews from the DP camps of Europe, from the Arab/Muslim world, and from the Former Soviet Union.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
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Tidbits: Traces of a ghetto bunker uncovered in Będzin, Poland
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
אַ גרופּע אַרכעאָלאָגן, וואָס האָט געהאַלטן אין מיטן אויסגראָבן אַ בונקער פֿון דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה אינעם פּוילישן שטעטל בענדין, האָט אַנטדעקט שפּורן פֿון אַן אונטערערדישן באַהעלטעניש און טונעל, וואָס ייִדן האָבן געניצט קעמפֿנדיק קעגן די דײַטשן אין 1943.
„מיר האָבן אַנטדעקט שטיינערנע טרעפּ, וואָס פֿירן אַרײַן אין אַ באַהעלטעניש אונטער אַן אַמאָליקער געבײַדע,“ האָט די אַרכעאָלאָגישע פֿירמע „וויקאָפּ נאַ פּאָזיאָמיע“ געמאָלדן אויף פֿייסבוק. זיי האָבן אויך אַנטדעקט אַ טונעל, וואָס האָט געדינט ווי אַ זיכער אָרט אונטער ד׳רערד.
די אַרכעאָלאָגן האָבן געזאָגט, אַז זיי האָבן זיך געריכט צו געפֿינען „אַרכעאָלאָגישע עלעמענטן“ אָבער זענען געווען דערשטוינט, וואָס אַלץ האָט זיך אַזוי גוט פֿאַרהיט. אינעם טונעל קען מען נאָך זען די פֿריִערדיקע הילצערנע פּאָדליגע און שפּורן פֿון די ווענט.
דער בונקער איז גלײַך לעבן דעם „הויז פֿון די געטאָ־קעמפֿער“, וואָס געפֿינט זיך הײַנט אויף 24 רוטקאַ־לאַסקיער גאַס. בשעת דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה, ווען די נאַציס האָבן פֿאַרטריבן די ייִדן אין געטאָ, איז דער בנין געוואָרן דאָס געהיימע פֿאַרזאַמלונג־אָרט פֿון די ציוניסטישע יוגנט־גרופּעס און דער „ייִדישער קאַמף־אָרגאַניזאַציע“. די מיטגלידער פֿון דער אָרגאַניזאַציע, מיט פֿרומקע פּלאָטניצקאַ בראש, האָבן דורכגעפֿירט אַ ווידערשטאַנד אין אויגוסט 1943, בעת די דײַטשן האָבן אָנגעפֿירט מיט די לעצטע דעפּאָרטאַציעס און מיט דער פֿאַרטיליקונג פֿונעם געטאָ. דרײַ טעג האָבן די ייִדן געקעמפֿט, ביז די דײַטשן האָבן דעם ווידערשטאַנד אײַנגעבראָכן.
אין 2024 האָט די צוקערמאַן גייט פֿונדאַציע געקויפֿט דאָס אייגנס, כּדי דאָרט צו בויען אַן אָנדענק־מוזיי. די פֿונדאַציע איז שוין יאָרן לאַנג אַקטיוו אין בענדין און האַלט דאָרט אויף אַ פּריוואַטע שיל אין אַ טעמעמענט־בנין.
לייענט דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש.
The post Tidbits: Traces of a ghetto bunker uncovered in Będzin, Poland appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu, IDF condemn Israeli soldier’s bludgeoning of Jesus statue in Lebanon
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is denouncing an incident in which a soldier bludgeoned a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon, igniting criticism at a time when some Christians believe Israel discriminates against them.
A photograph of the incident spread widely on Sunday after being shared by a prominent Palestinian journalist, Younis Tirawi. The photograph shows a soldier in an Israel Defense Forces uniform smashing a statue of Jesus, which has fallen from its cross and is lying partially on the ground.
The IDF said it had examined the photograph and determined that it was real. “The IDF views the incident with great severity and emphasizes that the soldier’s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops,” it said in a statement.
Netanyahu said the photograph had shocked him.
“Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms,” he said in a statement on Monday. “Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender.”
The incident took place in Debel, a Christian village in the region of Bint Jbeil, where Israel said it killed 150 Hezbollah operatives, including a commander, on the day before a ceasefire was imposed last week. A church in Debel posted a picture of the statue when it was intact, along with the line, spoken by Jesus in the New Testament during his crucifixion, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The incident comes comes as Israel fends off criticism from even its allies that it is discriminating against Christians. Tensions flared last month when the Israel Police, citing wartime safety regulations, blocked top Catholic clergy from holding a Palm Sunday service in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, eliciting oblique criticism from the pope. Netanyahu said in response that he had ordered that the clergy be given full access to the church.
In his statement about the statue incident, Netanyahu emphasized that Christians in the Middle East face danger from Islamic fundamentalists, including in Lebanon.
“Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing. Israel is the only place in the Middle East that adheres to freedom of worship for all,” he said. “We express regret for the incident and for any hurt this has caused to believers in Lebanon and around the world.”
The Lebanon incident adds to a number of incidents in which Israeli soldiers have been photographed or filmed desecrating religious objects or sites in areas where they have been fighting, including in Gaza. (The IDF has urged soldiers not to take or share photographs of their activities.) The Israeli army has denounced the incidents, but even those who have resisted the most strident criticisms of Israel say a pattern is adding up.
“The lack of discipline, professional conduct, and antagonizing of Christians in Lebanon and elsewhere is an entirely unnecessary and deeply harmful behavior that will further erode support for Israel and fuel those who believe this is a religious war of conquest,” tweeted Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian writer and advocate in the United States who has criticized both Hamas and Israel.
The Lebanon incident also comes amid a number of incidents suggesting growing influence by religious Jewish leadership in the IDF. In recent days, soldiers were jailed for barbecuing on their base on Shabbat, when traditional Jewish law prohibits cooking; women soldiers were penalized for wearing immodest clothing to their discharge ceremonies; and the army was accused of barring women from wearing shorts while running in a race associated with the Jerusalem Marathon.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netanyahu, IDF condemn Israeli soldier’s bludgeoning of Jesus statue in Lebanon appeared first on The Forward.