Algeria is unusual among the North African communities on this site, and the reason is administrative.
Algeria was a French colony from 1830 to 1962, and from the Crémieux Decree of 1870 almost all Algerian Jews were French citizens. The paper trail is therefore largely a French civil-registration trail rather than a rabbinical one — births, marriages and deaths recorded by the state, in French, and held today in a French archive.
For a researcher this is very good news. Where Moroccan or Libyan research means community registers in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, Algerian research means indexed civil records that are freely searchable online.
Who were the Jews of Algeria?
Several populations, layered over one another, and the distinction matters.
Antiquity. A Jewish presence dates back at least to Roman times, alongside long-established indigenous Berber and Arabic-speaking Jewish communities.
The fourteenth century. Jews fleeing persecution in Spain — from the 1391 riots in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearics — settled in Algeria and mingled with the existing local population. A second wave followed the 1492 expulsion.
Two rabbis of that refugee generation shaped the community: Yitzchak ben Sheshet Perfet (the Ribash) and Shimon ben Zemah Duran (the Rashbatz), both of whom settled in Algiers.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Granas — Jews from Livorno — arrived as commercial intermediaries between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. This is the same Livornese movement that produced the Grana of Tunis, described on our Tunisia page.
The nineteenth century. Many Sephardi Jews from Tetouan in Morocco and from Gibraltar settled in Oran and western Algeria, reinforcing the community there.
So “Sephardi” in Algeria may mean a family that arrived in 1391, in 1492, from Livorno in 1700, or from Tetouan in 1850 — and the records that will find them differ accordingly.
What changed under French rule?
Everything about the records.
French occupation began in 1830, with an estimated Jewish population of around 26,000.
There followed gradual adoption of French language, culture and — after the Crémieux Decree of 1870 — French citizenship. The exception was the Jews of the M’zab and the Southern Territories, who were only naturalised in 1961.
This is why the ANOM civil records are so productive. Because nearly all Algerian Jews were naturalised after 1870, they appear in French civil registration as fully as any other French citizens.
Vichy, 1940–1943
Under French collaborationist rule from October 1940, the Crémieux Decree was revoked, stripping some 110,000 Algerian Jews of French citizenship. The antisemitic Statut des Juifs laws applied, property was “Aryanised”, and internment camps operated at Bedeau and Djelfa.
This period generated its own records — of dispossession, internment and the loss and restoration of citizenship — and they are worth searching for any family present in those years.
1962
At independence, around 130,000 of Algeria’s roughly 140,000 Jews left for France, with roughly 10,000 going to Israel.
Algerian Jews are the one North African community that overwhelmingly chose France rather than Israel. If you are tracing an Algerian family forward, France is where they went — and the associations listed below, based in France, are the natural point of contact.
Where were the communities?
The principal Jewish communities were at:
Algiers · Oran · Constantine · Batna · Biskra · Annaba (Bône) · Blida · Béjaïa (Bougie) · Mostaganem · Tlemcen
Many Jews from Morocco, especially Tetouan, migrated westward into Algeria, settling in Mascara, Oran and Sidi Bel Abbès. For those families the trail continues on our Morocco page and, for the British-protection route, our Gibraltar page.
Where should you start?
The essential starting point for most Algerian-Jewish research is a pairing of two resources.
The ANOM civil records, 1830–1904. Held by the Archives nationales d’outre-mer, freely searchable online, and — because nearly all Algerian Jews were naturalised after 1870 — covering the community very fully for the late nineteenth century.
Maurice Eisenbeth’s 1936 dictionary of Algerian Jewish surnames, based on the 1931 census and organised by province: Algiers, Constantine, Oran and the South.
Alexander Beider’s article, “Civil Records and the Study of Jewish Surnames from Algeria”, explains how to use the two together, and is the best short guide to the subject.
Archives and libraries
Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM) — the French government’s colonial archive; the core source for Algerian civil records (births, marriages, deaths) 1830–1904, freely searchable online.
Les Archives du Consistoire Central de Paris
Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), Jerusalem
Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) collection
Bibliothèque nationale d’Algérie
Books and publications
Maurice Eisenbeth, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord: Dictionnaire des noms de famille (1936), based on the 1931 census — the standard reference for Algerian Jewish surnames by province.
Alexander Beider, “Civil Records and the Study of Jewish Surnames from Algeria” — a concise guide to using the ANOM civil records for genealogy and onomastics.
Isaac Bloch, Les inscriptions tumulaires des cimetières israélites d’Alger — tombstone inscriptions from the Jewish cemeteries of Algiers.
M. J. M. Haddey, Le livre d’or des israélites algériens — the leading Jewish merchants of Algiers during the Turkish period.
Richard Ayoun, Juifs d’Algérie 1830–1907: inventaire des archives consistoriales et bibliographie.
Joshua Schreier, The Merchants of Oran: A Jewish Port at the Dawn of Empire — on the Gibraltarian and Livornese Jewish merchants of Oran, the Lasry family among them.
Mathilde A. Tagger and Yitzchak Kerem, Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental Genealogical Sources in Israel.
Websites and online resources
Cercle de Généalogie Juive (CGJ), Paris — the leading specialists on Algerian-Jewish genealogy, and holders of the major cemetery and civil-record indexes.
Morial — Association of Jews from Algeria
Zlabia — website for Algerian Jews
International Jewish Cemetery Project
National Library of Israel newspaper archives: Bulletin de la Société de Conférences juives d’Alger (1924–1930) and Maguid Micharim (1895–1896)
FamilySearch page on Algeria
Specific resources
Saint Eugène Jewish cemetery, Algiers — the largest Jewish cemetery in the city (Friends of the cemetery)
Index of Voter Lists in Constantine, 1880
GAMT — French ancestry in the North African colonies
GenAmi — French-Jewish genealogy group
Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
Claims Conference, for victims of the Holocaust
Association des Israélites d’Oranie en France
Juifs d’Algérie, naturalisation et émancipation — video
Help us find records
We are looking for:
- Pre-1962 trade directories, post-office address books and telephone directories for the Algerian towns
- Records of the Bedeau and Djelfa internment camps, 1940–43
- Documentation of the revocation and restoration of citizenship under Vichy
- Records of the M’zab and Southern Territories communities, naturalised only in 1961
- Cemetery transcriptions beyond Bloch’s Algiers inscriptions
- Family papers documenting the move from Tetouan or Gibraltar to Oran and western Algeria
- Anything on the Livornese Grana families in Algiers and their connection to Tunis
If you hold any of this, or know where it is, please email [email protected]. Material contributed is credited, and we are happy to work under any conditions you set.
Research services
Algerian research is, unusually for North Africa, mostly French archive work — the ANOM civil records will carry most families through the nineteenth century, and Eisenbeth’s dictionary will place the surname by province.
The harder questions are what came before 1830, where the family was before Algeria — Spain, Livorno, Tetouan or Gibraltar — and what happened to it in France after 1962. If you would like help, you can hire a Sephardic genealogist.
If you have found this page useful, please consider making a small donation to support this site.
See also: Sephardic Jewish Genealogy in Morocco · Sephardic Jews of Gibraltar · Grana Jews of Tunisia · Sephardic Jews of Livorno · Sephardic Jewish Genealogy in France