This year’s Jewish pilgrimage on Tunisia’s island of Djerba will welcome more worshippers after two years of scaled-down participation due to safety concerns, organizers said on Tuesday, according to the AFP news agency.
The annual Lag Ba’Omer pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa’s oldest, has in the past drawn thousands of pilgrims from Europe and beyond, attracting international and local tourists as well.
But after a deadly 2023 attack on the synagogue that killed two worshippers and three police officers, fewer pilgrims have been turning out while officials also placed restrictions on the event.
This year, organizers announced it will be “open to everyone, Tunisians and foreigners, as part of a gradual return to normal," said the head of the organizing committee, Perez Trabelsi.
The pilgrimage will be held from April 30 to May 6.
Festivities will still be limited to indoors this year, whereas the pilgrimage usually includes a parade outside of the synagogue.
Djerba is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the region outside of Israel.
The pilgrimage is at the heart of the Jewish tradition in Tunisia, where only about 1,500 members of the faith still live mainly on the island compared to around 100,000 in the 1950s.
In 2018, about 3,000 people took part in the festivities. In 2019, hundreds of people attended. The pilgrimage then took a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19 and resumed in 2022.