Inside African Jewry

...The European is liberal and tolerant in his own country, but in the colonies is inclined to become imperialistic...

...The "pogroms" are a shame and disgrace to our civilization...

...And there are millions like him, still, in North Africa and the Orient...

...There are many Jews in North Africa...

...In any public outbreak, some group usually appears and makes for the Jewish quarter intent on harassing, insulting and sometimes robbing or killing citizens whose only crime is their Israelite parentage...

...Fearful and weak, but the modern man, conscious of the dangers and the need of an efficient solidarity without illusions...

...And authenticity in a book like this is of great value...

...author, "The Sphere" and other novels This is a novel about the Jews of Tunis, in whose "ghetto" the action takes place...

...Sad words which ought to make all of us wonder what we have done to deserve the privilege of our security...

...As previously remarked, they are peaceful men who have no desire to argue with arms, but with words and ideas...

...And they are likely to be the immediate victims of any disorder...

...Even though it follows the common patterns of documentary realism, the work has very particular interest...

...They wear a long black robe with the same perpendicular row of buttons still used by Catholic priests, reminiscent of the Semitic origins of Catholicism...

...Yet he is no longer the traditionalist Jew...

...The Jews of North Africa differ from European and American Jews by keeping, ordinarily, the Semitic tradition in customs and dress...

...After that, we sat and listened for any unusual sounds...

...Many complex nuances are to be found, and always tinged with subtle anguish: "We barricaded our doors and windows," writes Memmi, "the front door with two bars of wrought iron...

...What role do the Jews play in all this...

...When the small Jewish boy, who later on will be a brilliant professor and writer, learns that the men in uniform are always right...

...This novel of Memmi's provides a good argument for the Jews not only in Tunisia and France, but also in Algeria and French Morocco...

...The European commercial middle class in Algeria and Tunisia is easily swayed by the idea of racial superiority--toward the Jew as well as Mohammedan...

...when from inside the "ghetto" he contemplates with hope and reverence the next street which is no longer for Jews, the protagonist reminds us of the immense injustice of his situation...

...The disadvantage is that writing in the first person makes it more difficult to objectivize the characters and things of he narrative, especially those relating to the protagonist, who is both object and object at the same time...

...As he grew paler, I recognized on his face the marks of terror which he had transmitted to me in my earliest childhood...

...But in The Pillarof Salt it is a trait that adds veracity to this dramatic and terrible human document...

...Using only the indispensable words and with a pleasing absence of rhetoric, the author describes the life of his own family of Tunisian Jews...

...Like almost all books of this kind, The Pillar of Salt has an idyllic background, too, filled--despite the author himself, who apparently does not believe in such things--with the traditional charm of the folklore and the millennial aroma of that Semitic liturgy which is the oldest of all those existing today...

...In recent times the Mohammedans, encouraged by the Spanish Falangists and Russians, have been giving them a bloody reply...

...It is a pity that it was not translated into Arabic at the same time as into English...

...What impresses one even more than the threat of impending catastrophe in The Pillar of Salt is the little frustration concealed, the constant rebuff, and the kind of fear that the Jew dares not confess to himself but which obliges him to reinforce the door of his house with iron bars...

...They are basically the same as in New York or Buenos Aires--hard-working, mobile, skillful, cosmopolitan, pacific people with a sense of the abstract, that is to say, with a natural aptitude for philosophy, music and pure science...

...They also carefully observe the Sabbath and rules of the Passover...

...Will I ever be able to rid myself of that cold clamminess at the back of my neck, and of the absurd feeling of being paralyzed and disarmed in the face of a humiliating death...

...From time to time, my father dropped his work and rushed to the window...

...Says Camus: "Writing about the difficulty of being Jewish, Memmi finally chose to be a Jew, and this is all to the good...

...I also knew some in Melilla in the early Twenties--men of gentle manners, careful in their social relations, hard and rugged in business, suspicious of the Arab, not very friendly toward the Berber, considerate and submissive to the European colonist, Spanish, French or English...

...I know some Moroccan Jews in Tetuan and especially Tangier...

...The novel is written in the first person, which has certain advantages--primarily because it readily captures the reader's imagination...

...when he see that his strong and brave father, on the point of making an observation to a sergeant, hesitates and finally decides against it...

...Abuse of the first person is undoubtedly an easy trick...