Five thousand Tunisian Jews from France, Italy and Israel, are expected to attend the annual pilgrimage to the synagogue of El Ghriba (Arabic for "the marvelous") on the island of Djerba this weekend.
Hundreds of Israelis will travel to Djerba via France, Malta, and Turkey as Israel and Tunisia do not have direct air links. Security measures will be tight, five years after a terrorist attack against the synagogue which killed twenty-one people, including 14 German tourists
The El Ghriba synagogue, located in the formerly Jewish village of Harah Sghira, is the oldest synagogue in Africa. According to one tradition the synagogue was established by a group of Cohanim, or Jewish priests from the Temple of Jerusalem, who supposedly settled on the island immediately after the destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.