Jewish Community Portrays Tunisian Synagogue Burning as Isolated Incident
Less than a week after taking office amid Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, Interior Minister Farhat Rajhi defended the national unity government against what he said were conspirators intent on sowing disorder by setting fire to a synagogue in the village of El Hamma, some 30 kilometers from Gabès.
The charge, made in remarks to a local television channel, dovetailed with those of Jewish community officials, who were quick to paint the attack as an isolated incident. Still, according to Rabbi Shmuel Pinson, a Belgium-based Chabad-Lubavitch emissary who shuttles back and forth between Europe and the North African country, Jews living in the major cities of Djerba and Tunis are nevertheless anxious for their collective safety.
“I think that the new government is doing its best to protect the Jewish community,” stated Pinson. “But the very fact that a synagogue has been attacked is very serious.
“Even though no one uses the synagogue on a regular basis, a Torah scroll was burned,” added the rabbi. “I hope that those responsible will be brought to justice.”
Built several decades ago, the small synagogue sits in a compound housing the resting place of Rabbi Yosef Maaravi, a student of the 16th-century Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria. A police station is located not far from the compound.
Once home to a sizable community of its own, the southern oasis of El Hamma today is devoid of Jewish families, but people come to visit the rabbi’s tomb. Pinson said he was last there two months ago to mark the anniversary of Maaravi’s passing.
Pinson noted that despite a government order at the beginning of the revolution to close Jewish schools in light of security concerns, the Chabad-run day school in Tunis and the Djerba yeshiva established in the 1950s by his father, Rabbi Nisson Pinson, are once again up and running. A nightly curfew remains in effect for all Tunisians, he said, and on the whole, Jews feel as safe as could be expected.
“In 2002, terrorists bombed the historic Djerba synagogue,” he explained, “so there definitely is apprehension because of past history. But today, police guard every synagogue, and the government is clearly trying to do what it can to institute order.”
In his remarks to Hannibal TV, Rajhi linked the El Hamma synagogue attack with a demonstration outside the Interior Ministry’s offices.
“These are the same people,” he said, according to a report by the French-language Guysen News International. “There is a conspiracy [within the ranks] of the state security services and police.”
For his part, Roger Bismuth, president of the Jewish community in Tunisia, told The Jerusalem Post that he felt the synagogue attack was probably more one of vandalism, than anti-Semitism.
“This is not an attack on the Jewish community,” he said.
