BY THE GRACE OF GOD:

Here in this isolated enclave in the middle of the Muslim world, is the Hara Kabira, the largest of two Jewish neighborhoods on the southern Tunisian island of Djerba, where Jews, Christians and Muslims peacefully live and work side by side.

The community has weathered the tumult that shook the region following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the changes that altered the region after the 2011 revolutions. Now, as attention has focused on a rising tide of extremism that has engulfed the region, the community says it is intent on staying.

"By the grace of God, the Jews can live here and we can grow," says Youssef Oezen, the president of the Jewish community in Djerba.

Numbering around 5,000 in 1948, the Jewish population of Djerba - which traces its origins back to the Babylonian exile of 586 BC - dropped to less than 700 by the middle of the 1990s.

But over the past two decades, the population once again began to slowly grow. Today, around 1,100 Jews live on the island, according to Oezen, and with nearly half under 20 years old, in a deeply conservative community where having large families is the norm, he is firm in his belief that they will continue to grow. [...]

"We mix, we respect each other, it's just what's normal," said Madji Barouni, a Muslim from Djerba, as he stands in a jewellry shop in the old market of Houmt Souk, Djerba's largest town. Avi Bittan, the shop's Jewish owner, examines a watch Barouni brought in for repair.

During the day, Jewish men work alongside Muslim and Christian neighbors as merchants in Houmt Souk, selling gold and silver jewellery, textiles and souvenirs.

"There are no problems," Barouni told DW, as the Muslim call to prayer sounds from a nearby mosque.

 

While they enjoy friendly and cordial relations with other residents of the island, when work is over, most Jews return home, keeping an insular life in their community. For Jewish leaders, it is a way to protect traditions and resist assimilation. [...]

[I]n one of his first moves after rising to power, Rashid Al-Ghannoushi, the head of Nahda, Tunisia's leading Islamist party, sent a delegation to the Jews in Djerba in an effort to reassure the community they would be protected.

Today, the government's efforts to protect the Jews of Djerba are in plain sight. Police are stationed at entrances of the Hara Kabira to monitor who comes in and out and security checkpoints are scattered throughout the neighborhood.

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