Life in Absentia: Jewishness in Tunisia

Life in Absentia: Jewishness in Tunisia examines enduring forms of Jewish presence in contemporary Tunisia, despite the near-total absence of Jewish communities. In the mid-twentieth century, French colonialism, Zionism, and Arab nationalism led nearly all 120,000 Tunisian Jews to immigrate to France or Palestine/Israel, ending a millennial presence. Today, there remain one thousand Jews in Tunisia. Through two years of fieldwork in boxing gyms, photography studios, synagogues, cemeteries, and Hebrew classes, this historically informed ethnography investigates the century-long de-nativization process by which Jews went from being Ottoman or Tunisian subjects to “nonnative” outsiders. While the historical Jew anchors an idealized “Golden Age” of conviviality, the contemporary Jew appears as both anachronism and subject of curiosity—or hostility through their association with Israel. Drawing on Freud’s “narcissism of minor differences,” this book develops “minor differences” as an analytical framework for understanding how people construct Otherness in everyday life: from how one orders beer to minor variations on cuisine. Life in Absentia contributes to North African Studies, interdisciplinary work on “Arab-Jews,” and memory studies, challenging postwar European memorialization models while examining how the narcissism of minor differences both divide communities and foster connection.