The Jews of the Red Sea

Before becoming the history of Asmara, the story of the Jews of the Red Sea is that of a long coastline. Since Antiquity, Jewish communities have lived on both shores of this sea connecting the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. In Yemen, one of the oldest diasporas of the Jewish world flourished for nearly two millennia, from Sanaa to Aden. Aden, which became a British possession in 1839, established itself in the nineteenth century as a major transit port between Europe, India, and East Africa; its Jewish community played a leading commercial role there.

On the African shore, Jews lived in the ports of Sudan — in Souakin, then in Khartoum — and in those of Egypt, which the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) placed at the heart of world trade. It is within this network of exchange, through which people, goods, and traditions circulated, that the arrival of Yemeni and Adenite Jews in Eritrea takes its place. The community of Asmara was therefore not an isolated enclave, but one of the links in a Jewish world that was at once Mediterranean, African, and Indian-Oceanic.

The synagogue of Asmara is an elegant edifice, endowed with a sanctuary and classrooms; a cemetery was established nearby. It stands within the fabric of a singular city: capital of Italian Eritrea, Asmara was largely built in the 1930s in a modernist and rationalist style that earned it, in 2017, inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Inside, time seems suspended: Torah scrolls, commemorative plaques from the Italian era, and wooden pews remain in place. Today maintained sporadically by local caretakers and visited by a handful of curious travelers, the building stands upright, in silent resistance to time and oblivion. Together with the neighboring cemetery, it constitutes one of the last tangible links to a Jewish presence that lasted more than a century on the shores of the Red Sea.

The history of the community begins at the end of the 19th century, when Italy establishes its first colony: the colony of Eritrea, officially proclaimed in 1890, with Asmara soon becoming its capital. Colonial expansion, construction projects, the railway and trade open economic prospects that attract Jews from Yemen and Aden. Many settle in Asmara, where they devote themselves to commerce while remaining faithful to Jewish life.

As it grows, the community establishes institutions. The Hebrew Congregation of Asmara is founded in 1905, and a synagogue is built the following year. Completed in 1906, it includes a sanctuary and classrooms; a cemetery is maintained nearby. The synagogue becomes the heart of Jewish religious and communal life in the country — a rallying point for a diaspora that came from the other shore of the Red Sea.

The community was diverse. While most of its members traced their roots to Yemen and Aden, a few Italian Jews joined them, as did refugees fleeing Europe during the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Daily life intertwined Hebrew liturgy with Judeo-Arabic traditions and the imprint of Italian colonial culture, shaping a singular and layered communal identity.

This History also had its share of shadows. In 1938, the fascist racial laws of Mussolini's regime were extended to the Italian colonies, striking the Jews of Eritrea just as they struck those on the peninsula. The Italian defeat in East Africa in 1941, and the territory's passage under British administration, reshuffled the cards once again. A refuge for some, a land of hardship for others, Eritrea offers the image of a Jewishness that is at once Yemeni, Mediterranean, and African.

In the aftermath of World War II, the Jewish community of Eritrea reached its peak. It then numbered approximately four to five hundred people, and the synagogue hummed with activity: Hebrew prayers mingling with conversations in Arabic and Italian. Jews from neighboring countries, notably from Sudan, would come to celebrate the High Holidays in Asmara.

The community maintained schools, charitable works, and a rich social life. Like so many communities of the diaspora, the Jews of Eritrea knew how to find a delicate balance: integrating into the surrounding society — contributing to the local economy, taking part in civic life, earning the respect of their neighbors — while remaining deeply attached to their heritage.

Eritrea occupies a singular place in the history of Zionism. After the fall of Italian East Africa, the territory passed in 1941 under British military administration. It was there that the Mandate authorities chose to deport, from 1944 onward, militants from the clandestine organizations of the Irgoun and the Lehi arrested in the Land of Israel. Several hundred administrative detainees — approximately 250 at the outset — were transferred to camps in East Africa, including that of Sembel, near Asmara, before being dispersed to Sudan and then Kenya.

Among them was Yitzhak Shamir, one of the leaders of the Lehi, deported in 1946, who managed to escape in 1947 to make his way to France; he would become Prime Minister of Israel in the 1980s. Far from the Land of Israel, these men endured exile in the name of the dream of Jewish sovereignty. By an irony of history, the very same African land that held these fighters was home, just a few streets away, to a flourishing Jewish community.

The following decades brought profound upheavals. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 opened an era of great departures for Jewish communities of the Arab world and the Red Sea: between 1949 and 1950, Operation "Magic Carpet" transferred virtually all the Jews of Yemen and Aden to Israel. For the small community of Eritrea, aliyah also had a considerable effect: families departed, businesses changed hands, institutions shrank.

The country's political history accelerated the movement. After British administration (1941–1952), Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia by UN decision in 1952, then annexed in 1962; a long war of independence followed (1961–1991). Instability, violence, and economic uncertainty hastened departures through the 1970s. By 1975, the rabbi and many of the community's leading members had left the country — most for Israel, others for Europe or North America. What had once been a thriving congregation dwindled little by little to a handful of elderly individuals.

In recent years, the community had dwindled to what was considered its sole remaining member. Samuel "Sami" Cohen, born and raised in Eritrea, became the guardian of this heritage. Nearly eighty years old, he watched over the synagogue, maintained the cemetery, and preserved the vestiges of a Jewish presence that had almost entirely disappeared.

On a hill overlooking Asmara lies the small Jewish cemetery of the community, which holds approximately one hundred and fifty graves. Silent and windswept, it stands alongside the synagogue as a reminder of a congregation that once flourished on the shores of the Red Sea. Across the generations, there have always been women and men who refused to let the flame of Memory be extinguished — guardians of synagogues, cemeteries, books, and traditions that bind the living to those who came before them.

The history of the Jews of Eritrea is not remarkable for its size, but for what it teaches us. It recalls a sobering truth: communities that generations have labored to build can vanish with startling speed. Within a few decades, an entire world can disappear, leaving behind little more than photographs, gravestones, and memories.

Asmara is not an isolated case. All along the Red Sea — in Aden, in Sanaa, in Khartoum — centuries-old Jewish communities were extinguished within the space of a single generation. The Jews of Eritrea may have disappeared as a community; they must not disappear from our collective Memory. To remember them is not only to honor the past: it is to understand how even the most vibrant communities remain fragile. Such is the very meaning of the name Zakhor — remember.