Tunisia celebrates the Ghriba in complete safety

Thousands of people participated in the Jewish pilgrimage to Ghriba, Tunisia, which ended last Thursday evening without incident, under a very important security device.

For two days, the pilgrims prayed, sang in Hebrew, lit candles and laid eggs on which they wrote vows in a cavity at the bottom of the Ghriba synagogue, the oldest in Africa, located on the island of Djerba (south).

About 3,000 people attended the first day of the pilgrimage, said a police official on the spot.

This joyful march usually toured other synagogues on the island and Jewish quarters before being brought back to Ghriba. In recent years, the festivities have been confined to the vicinity of the synagogue for security reasons.

According to René Trabelsi, co-organizer of this annual pilgrimage, nearly 400 Israelis were among the pilgrims.

Organized each year on the 33rd day of Jewish Passover, the Ghriba pilgrimage is at the heart of the traditions of the Jewish Tunisians, a community that now counts only about 1,200 souls against 100,000 before independence in 1956.

It has suffered severely from the attacks that have affected Tunisia in recent years.

In its history, the synagogue has been bloody twice: in 1985, several people were killed by a policeman. Then, in April 2002, 21 people, the majority of them Germans, perished in an attack claimed by al-Qaeda.

Some 8,000 faithful participated in the Ghriba pilgrimage until 2002.

After a series of deadly attacks in 2015 targeting tourists and Tunisian security forces, the security situation in Tunisia has greatly improved in the last two years, but the state of emergency remains in force throughout the country.