Each egg, a wish on the Jewish pilgrimage to the strange Tunisian synagogue

“It is not known where she is buried but it is said that she is in this cave,” describes Kati Rachel from inside the ancestral synagogue, while writing a wish on the shell of an egg, which she will deposit in a “miraculous” nook.

Asking for a new birth in the family or the marriage of those who resist the sacrament are the most requested wishes among the thousands of Jews, an estimated 5.000 this year, who line up at the La Ghriba synagogue, a genuine North African pilgrimage which ends today on the Tunisian island of Djerba.

Except during the pandemic, Rachel has not missed this event in the last two decades, like a large part of the local Jews and the diaspora who venerate this temple dating back to the 6th century BC, considered one of the oldest in the world. world.

Aware of the importance of this pilgrimage, both for tourism and for parishioners, the authorities have invested all possible means, says René Trabelsi, former Minister of Tourism and the first political official of the Jewish confession since the 1950s. .

Security forces surrounded access to this Mediterranean island by land, sea and air, where the country's largest Jewish community lives, around 1.500 people.

Esther, who now lives in Israel, stopped pilgrimage for six years after the 2002 jihadist attack that left 17 dead, and today this Frenchwoman of Moroccan origin marks her wish on the egg for a "friend who is sick with cancer." With her name and her mother's name because in the Jewish religion "it is inherited through the maternal line," she explains.

The egg, which represents fertility, began as a wish for motherhood but soon spread to other aspirations.

"My niece is 33 years old, she is single and she doesn't even want to hear about marriage, so I have asked for a man for her as I wish," she explains, laughing with her two Tunisian friends, who are crowded next to the small hole, otherwise more than half a meter long and half a meter wide, in which hundreds of eggs are stacked.

Loaded with egg cartons and phones in hand to immortalize the moment, the faithful, mostly women, also transmit the prayers of those who have not been able to travel to this pilgrimage.

In the complex, where the synagogue is located, which sports the traditional blue and white of Tunisian architecture, there is not a corner where the devotees do not abandon themselves to prayer, between barbecues and drinks; an encounter that takes place between faith, mysticism and entertainment.

The books of the Torah (the Pentateuch of the Hebrew Bible) are interspersed with the empty helmets of Celtia (local beer); From prayer and lighting candles, it moves on to dancing, music, and even auctions so that the rabbi mentions the name of the bidder in the prayer and who on its first day reached a total of 20.000 dinars (equivalent to 6.200 euros). .

«This prayer is the oldest in Djerba, it is more than 2.000 years old and it knows many miracles and everyone believes. "When someone has a wish, he comes here to pray because he believes that with his prayer it will be fulfilled," explains the great Rabbi of Tunisia, Rav Haim Bittan, at the end of the prayer.

"I'm not very religious, I'm more of a mystic and I believe, I believe in the Ghriba," says Rachel before posing for a selfie and leaving her wishes in the hands of this mysterious saint. EFE