Hundreds of Jewish pilgrims flocked to the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba on Wednesday (May 18) for a key event of the tourist season in Tunisia, after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus epidemic. Covid-19. The first visitors arrived in the morning and passed through security gates under heavy police guard in this place hit 20 years ago by a suicide attack that killed 21 people. They would be nearly 4,000 pilgrims from fifteen countries, according to the Tunisian press.
Inside the oldest synagogue in Africa, pilgrims light candles before entering a small cave where, according to tradition, there is a stone from the first temple in Jerusalem. Then, they exchange dried fruits and sweets around a prayer pronounced by the rabbi of the synagogue. Tradition has it that pilgrims write their wishes on an egg, but also the names of young girls to be married, which they place in a hidden niche in which candles burn. At the end of the pilgrimage, they will return to collect these eggs, which will have meanwhile been cooked in the heat of the candles and in the confined atmosphere of the niche.
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Many pilgrims immortalize with photos and videos their visit to this synagogue with columns painted in white and blue, whose construction dates back to the 6th century BC. The pilgrimage of the Ghriba brought together some years up to 8,000 people over two days in this synagogue, one of the oldest and most important for Jews from North Africa. “My father is from Djerba and it was very important to him. I kept this memory, I came when I was young”told AFP Solange Azzouz, 75, born in Tunis and who has lived in Marseille for 58 years.
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Tunisia had more than 100,000 Jews before independence in 1956, a community that had fallen to about a thousand members. In party dress with her silk shirt and her pearl necklace, Solange Azzouz waits outside under a scorching sun. “As I get older, I begin to appreciate the pilgrimage, the atmosphere. I even have some family here.” confides the septuagenarian for whom this event is “a lucky charm”. The pilgrimage also consists of following in procession a large menorah, the Jewish candelabra, mounted on three wheels and decorated with colorful fabrics.
Born in Morocco, Adi Wizman Nicodeme, 74, comes for the first time at the invitation of a friend. An Israeli citizen living in Paris, he came to “know the place” and in the name of his faith. “All my friends told me about it as well as my students”confides this professor of Judaism and Hebrew. “I feel something, it’s very strong for me”, he adds.