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Lecture

Lyn Julius
The Jews of Tunisia

Tuesday 26.10.2021

Summary

Tunisian Algeria came under Turkish control in the 16th century and remained so for the next 300 years. In this lecture Lyn Julius takes an in depth looks at the lives and stories of the Tunisian Jews and also discusses their link to the Medicis and the Ottoman Empire.

Lyn Julius

Lyn Julius was born in the UK and educated at the French Lycée in London and the University of Sussex. The daughter of Jewish refugees from Iraq, she is a journalist and founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (www.harif.org). Lyn blogs daily at Point of No Return (www.jewishrefugees.org.uk). Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Huffington Post, Jewish News, and Jerusalem Post. She has a regular column in the Times of Israel and JNS News. Her book Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight has been translated in to Norwegian, Portuguese and Arabic, and a Hebrew version is in progress.

Families, I don’t know, but there’re only just over a thousand Jews.

That’s a good question because Tunisia has had a problem with terrorism. There was a terrorist attack on the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba in 2002 and 2019, mainly German tourists died there, there were recent attacks, I think there was a man who went on the rampage shooting tourists on the beach not so long ago. There was something at the Bardo Museum.

I’ve heard of Rabbi David Kimchi.