David Cohen rises back the issue of Jewish properties in Algeria

Jewish academic David Cohen has just published a new collective research on Jews properties and memories in Algeria, entitled: Jews of Algeria: A Permanent Evolution (1750-1962).

• In fact it is the author’s second work on this subject, after: Chronicles of Jews Communities in Algeria…Disappeared Today, which was published in 2010.
•  These works have been sponsored by Moriel, a French Jewish association devoted to maintaining alive traditions of Jews of Algeria.
• The author wanted to carry out a historic research on Judaism in North African region, especially in Algeria, before the arrival of Arabs, and until the end of the French occupation in Algeria, in 1962. Jews of Algeria have preferred leaving the country to France, and then joined Israel, the author specified.
• David Cohen made sure to lay a hand on spiritual, rabbinic, intellectual and social aspects of “the confronted” Judaism in Algeria.
• It is worth to mention that the Algerian government has rejected recurrent claims of Jews to recapture properties they left in the country after the independence.
• Yet, Minister of Religious Affairs, Abdellah Ghoulamallah, declared, previousely, that the World Jewish Congress had addressed a demand to the Algerian government, two years ago, to recuperate two synagogues situated in Algiers and Oran, in order to renovate them. But the Algerian government has only accepted to renovate the two synagogues without attributing them to the WJC. The government has also decided to repair a Jewish graveyard in Tlemcen province. There are about 25 synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in the country, according to Ministry of Religious Affairs.
•