Jews, Law, and the Modern State: Legal Nationalization in Colonial North Africa

Abstract: This article explores the transformation of Jewish law in the French colonial Maghrib (late nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century). Drawing primarily on Jewish newspapers in French and Judeo-Arabic and responsa in Hebrew, it explores how the perception and practice of Jewish law shifted in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. First, westernizing Jews came to think about Jewish law through the lens of French law. The status of women under Jewish law became a particular concern for many self-styled modernizers, though of course questions about women's rights were never absent from rabbinically oriented discourse. Second, Jewish law was nationalized—that is, authorities made efforts to both standardize and modernize Jewish law in a national mode, creating a Moroccan Jewish law, a Tunisian Jewish law, etc. Third, the elevation of Jewish law to a national, state-sanctioned jurisdiction imposed on all Jews—regardless of whether they believed or even whether they had converted out of Judaism—posed thorny legal problems. The legal history of Jews in twentieth-century North Africa offers an opportunity to rethink both the engagement of Jewish law with the state and the emergence of new ways of understanding Judaism and Jewish identity in the modern Middle East.