|Two Jewish girls on the beach in Tunis, Tunisia. "Jeune filles |
Juives" by Neurdein freres taken between 1860 and 1890.
The girl on the right appears in the photo below, too.
(Credit: Unless otherwise marked, pictures are from the
Carpenter Collection, Library of Congress)
Today, perhaps only one percent of that 1947 Jewish population remains in the Arab countries.
|Postcard of Mother and daughter on |
Tunisia shore. "The woman’s robes and
conical headdress are representative of the
traditional dress of Jewish Tunisian women
during the early 20th century." The woman
also appears in the photo below.
(credit: Yeshiva University Museum)
Researchers for the Israel Daily Picture, searching through the Library of Congress/American Colony archives, unexpectedly came across 19th century pictures of some of these extinct or vanishing Jewish communities.
We present here pictures from the Tunisian Jewish community which numbered over 100,000 in 1948. Today, there are an estimated 1,500 Jews in Tunisia with two-thirds living on the island of Djerba.
The photos in the Carpenter collection of the Library of Congress were "produced and gathered by Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) and his daughter Frances (1890-1972) to illustrate his writings on travel and world geography," the Library explains.
|Jewish woman on Tunisia shore, |
possibly on the island of Djerba. She
appears to be the same woman
in the photo from the Yeshiva
University Museum. Is she
holding a baby in both photos?
(Jewish Postcard Collection)
Click on photos to enlarge.
Click on captions to view the original pictures.
Below is a listing of some of the photo essays we posted in the past on vanishing or extinct Jewish communities. Click on the city to view the posting:
Jews of Aleppo
Jews of Alexandria
Jews of Constantinople
Jews of Damascus
Jews of Kifl, Iraq (Ezekiel's Tomb)
|Tunisian Jewish Karouby Family (Jewish Postcard|
|Tunisian Jewish couple (circa 1900)|
|Keeners, hired mourners, at Jewish cemetery in Tunis (circa 1920)|
|Two Jewish women in Tunisia (1900-1923)|