On Between East and West

This is a curious book. First, I must say that it has a lot of information but lacks the rigor of many other academic histories, so it is instead a popular history. Andre Chouraqui was not a historian—Wikipedia tells me that he was born in Algeria, became advisor to Ben-Guri0n on the integration of Jews from Muslim countries into Israeli society, and was deputy mayor of Jerusalem in the 1960s.

Although he is—on the whole—rather balanced, Chouraqui has a habit of clumping all of the Muslims of North Africa into one group—“Moslems”—rather than separating them into respective groups like Arab, Rifi, Kabyle, Shleuh, or even “Arab” and “Amazigh.” As such, he blends concepts together. For instance, he refers to North Africa as the longest successively colonized region of the world (2500 years). This isn’t true, the Moroccan Makhzan wielded sizable power until 1912 and again after 1956, a number of states in the medieval Maghrib were led by the Amazigh (Almohads, Almoravids, Hafsids, etc.), and the Maghrib under Ottoman rule was complicated with Arab and Amazigh North Africans wielding a great deal of power.

In truth, this is an excellent example of “national” history. Rather than looking at a specific process or event or region, Chouraqui is interested in the history of one people throughout a region. This is all well and good, and Chouraqui’s insights on Jewish life are good, but his discussion of other aspects of the Maghrib are lacking.

However, there is one point where Chouraqui had lost me even in terms of North African Jewish life. To him, the French colonization of the region was a godsend because lifted North African Jews out of even more wretched conditions than the worst European ghettoes. However, this was not a simple process of elevating a people, nor did the French necessarily do it for the sake of North African Jews—in many ways, enfranchising North African Jews offered them a local intermediary to better control the population of the Maghrib. The “modernization” that took place had a number of negative side effects, and it did not even positively impact all North African Jews. For more on this, please see The Pillar of Salt. Memmi offers a fantastic semi-autobiographic account of French colonization from his perspective as a Tunisian Jew. For other nonfiction accounts, take a look at Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria and Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria.

In sum, Chouraqui’s book is worth reading if you have no prior knowledge of Jewish life in the Maghrib, but his statements about other aspects are sweeping and often incorrect. This is best paired with other materials.