During her trip, she encountered both sides of Tunisia’s Jewish heritage: the vibrant and colorful synagogues and communities of Djerba and Tunis, and the eerily empty synagogues and schools of the country’s interior such as in Matmata and Tatouine.See what she saw as you take your very own journey to Tunisia through this interactive Diarna exhibit.
The Bet Yaakov Synagogue of Tunis is a modest building on a narrow, pleasant little street, la Rue de Loire, in the center of Tunis. The Synagogue lies flush with the rest of the buildings on the street, and distinguishes itself as a religious site only by a decorative Star of David on its facade, and a Hebrew inscription above the door, בית ׳עקב, Bet Yaakov. The inside of the building is similarly modest, and quite small, especially when compared to more grandiose Tunis synagogue constructions like the Great Synagogue of Tunis, consecrated in 1938.
The Matmata, who became famous for their troglodyte habitats, were a tribe that Jews were actively involved in for a very long time. The Jewish community at Matmata developed and adopted the local habitat mode and installed a semi-troglodyte synagogue that still remains today. It is built in local stone and half-buried into the earth, with its integration into the astonishingly barren landscape of the valley punctuated with cavities being remarkable. The synagogue is only identifiable by the skylight, which acts as a portal to the space underground.
Jewish Tunisia
