Sousse is a highly developed seaside city that is one of Tunisia’s largest tourist destinations. In 1956, it was home to 6,000 Jews and three synagogues, while today only around 30 Jews still live in the city, serviced by one remaining, functional synagogue. This number fluctuates because many of the residents live part-time in Sousse and part-time in France. The community is sustained by the aforementioned 150 year-old synagogue, usually receiving a minyan for Saturday morning services, but not Friday night (only two people participated in the Friday services), and a shochet that comes to Sousse once a month from Djerba to provide kosher chicken and meat. I was lucky during my visit to Sousse; a Sousse-born resident of France had returned for the week and was sponsoring a kiddish on Saturday afternoon, after the prayer service. About 25 people were in attendance, so I was able to become familiar with the community and collect some information.

Although I was able to speak to a number of people, many of the reports were mixed. When I asked if there was a Jewish school in the past, some answered that there was but it has been closed for some time, and others denied its existence. Furthermore, when I inquired about the Jewish migration from Sousse, one man told me that most of the Jews from Sousse migrated to Israel, even though all of the Jews from Sousse visiting at that time lived in France. The woman that takes care of the synagogue told me that Jews began leaving in the late 1950s because of wars and a fear of danger, even though there were never incidences of violence in Sousse. On the other hand, a couple that had migrated to France in 1989 claimed that many Jews moved after 1967 because of anxiety over the violence elsewhere in Tunisia. One last person told me that many Jews were scared in 1967, but not enough to leave Sousse; he argued that they were only compelled to leave after 1969, when the government socialized businesses and Jews were losing a lot of money under the new system. According to these conflicting reports, it is difficult to draw any solid conclusions on the migration from Sousse, except for the safe assumption that a wide array of reasons and circumstances led each family to react and decide their own fate personally.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of my trip to Sousse was the presence of a non-Jew at synagogue on Saturday afternoon. This particular person described himself to me as an agnostic, but he was born Muslim in Sousse. He seemed to be very friendly with many of the Jews at the kiddish and there seemed to be only a little opposition to his attendance. Only one man disapproved enough to express it to me when he told me that he believes “some of the Jews in Sousse are too close to Muslims.” This man does not live in Sousse anymore (he returned for a visit from France at the time), and his sentiments seemed to reflect a minority opinion amongst the current full-time residents of Sousse. According to conversations with them and my own observations, this community is extremely assimilated into Sousse’s society, demonstrated by the following: their knowledge of only Arabic and French (not Hebrew), my encounter with at least one Jewish man that speaks Classical Arabic, the social and non-religious behavior during the Saturday prayer service, the amount and closeness of real friendships with Muslims, and the fact that most of them do not keep Shabbat.