A new exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris explores Jewish history in the Middle East and North Africa, from antiquity to the present day.
The exhibition is the largest of its kind to date, and is the first comprehensive exhibition on Jewish history to be held at a cultural institution devoted to the Arab world. French President Emmanuel Macron attended the show’s inauguration on Monday, praising its “journey across time and space”.
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For more than three millennia, Jewish communities have coexisted with the region’s pre-Islamic societies and Islamic dynasties. “The ancient Jewish presence across the region is spectacular,” says historian Benjamin Stora, the exhibition’s curator and author of 2017 book Juifs, Musulmans: La Grande Separation (Jews, Muslims: the Great Divide). “There are early synagogues from Syria, and an age-old presence in Saudi Arabia. I was surprised by the depth of this history.”
