Mardochee Smaja and his family: an itinerary to emancipation (XIXth – XXth centuries)
16
JULY
2012
Introduction of the evolution of a Jewish family in Tunis trough three generations of women developing, for a large part, under the French Protectorate (from 1881 to 1956).
Their emancipation was, at first, induced by Mardochee Smaja, though he came from a traditional Judeo–Arabic background, but was a fierce supporter of French assimilation; very active partisan , he created the newspaper “La Justice” and he will associate his wife Elise, linked until then, to her submitted wife’s condition, to the fight in favor for his emancipate ideal.
Favorable to a secular education, he will lead his children to studying and will succeed to see his daughter Juliette become the first Jewish woman lawyer in Tunisia, this was quite an exceptional event in those days in the israelite society. The role of this woman of the second generation contrasted strongly that of her sisters, confined in their familial housewive’s duties.
The third generation, it is Annie’s, Mardochee’s brother’s daughter, who was fully integrated in the French cultural environement and she will analyse in her book called : "Les filles de Mardochée", the Jewish Tunisian women’s evolution, with Elise’s and Juliette’s examples. Her own emancipation will lead her to marry in Paris an activist of the philosophical and political ideas of the sixties: Marxism, May’s 68 demands... Definitively settled in France, her own personal struggle will identify herself with the feminist movements and psycho-cultural questionings .
Elise, Juliette and Annie: they represent the emancipation of a Jewish Tunisian family by their three examples by their gradual acculturation between Eastern tradition and Western philosophy .
Speaker | Location |
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Albert MAAREK |
Pont des Arts B & C |