Berber Jews
 |
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (3,000) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Israel
|
3,000 |
 United States
|
? |
 European Union
|
? |
 Algeria
|
? |
 Morocco
|
? |
| Languages | |
| •Liturgical: Mizrahi Hebrew •Traditional: Berber; also Judeo-Arabic with Judeo-Berber as a contact language •Modern: typically the language of whatever country they now reside in, including Modern Hebrew in Israel |
|
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
|
Jews Mizrahi Jews Sephardi Jews Other Jewish groups Berbers |
|
Berber Jews are the Jewish communities of the Atlas mountains in Morocco, and previously in Algeria, which historically spoke Berber languages. Between 1950 and 1970 most emigrated to France, the United States, or Israel.
Jews have settled in North Africa since Roman times and a Jewish community existed in the Roman province of Africa, which is modern Tunisia. Ifriqia was the name chosen for what we know today as Tunisia. The acceptance by the Berbers of Judaism as a religion, and its embrace by a number of tribes, may have occurred over time. French historian, Eugène Albertini dates the judaization of certain Berber tribes and their expansion from Tripolitania to the Saharan oases, to the end of the 1st century.Marcel Simon for his part, sees the first point of contact between the western Berbers and Judaism in the great Jewish Rebellion of 66-70. Historians believe, based on the writings of Ibn Khaldoun and other evidences, that some or all of the ancient Judaized Berber tribes later adopted Christianity and afterwards Islam, and it is not clear if they are a part of the ancestry of contemporary Berber-speaking Jews.
Besides old settlements of Jews in the Atlas mountains and the interior Berber lands of Morocco, strong periodic persecutions by the Almohades most probably augmented the Jewish presence there. This hypothesis is reinforced by the pogroms which happened in Fes, Meknes and Taza in the late 15th century and which would have brought another wave of Jews, including amongst them Spanish Jewish-descended families such as the Peretz, and this wave would have even reach the Sahara with Figuig and Errachidia.
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