From the Chicago Tribune (free, registration required)
Tunisia's `miracle' isle shelters Jews, Muslims
By Evan Osnos
JERBA, Tunisia -- Some call this "the miracle island."
After dawn, before the streets stir, the painted signs above the shop doors reveal the unusual fact of life here: Hebrew on one sign, Arabic on the next, one after another, long after today's Middle East rendered that a relic from a more peaceful age.
About 1,000 Jews remain on this dot of lush green land off the Tunisian coast, living among nearly 70,000 Muslims. They live side by side, as they have for centuries.
"Sometimes we talk about the situation between the Israelis and the Arabs," jeweler Hai Haddad said as he burnishes a piece of silver at his tiny shop deep in the market. "But we don't let it affect us here. We know the situation in the Middle East, and we know the situation here."
No one here said there haven't been problems.
But Jerbans have weathered them, and that coexistence is all but unique in the Arab world.
"It is a total community--total Jewish and total Arab," said Abraham Udovitch, a Princeton University professor of Near East studies whose curiosity about the unusual island has lured him here many times. "Very few of the communities in the Arab world were able to do that. They are the last ones that remain in any number."
(read the rest at the Chicago Tribune)
Thanks to Len and Libby Traubman for the link.
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