Pillar of Salt Albert Memmis\'

¶ … Pillar of Salt

Albert Memmis' novel the Pillar of Salt was originally published during the 1950s, and tells the story of a young boy growing up as a Tunisian Jew in a ghetto of French-Occupied Algeria. The book highlights the difficulties of someone from an ostracized community to come to terms with his identity. On one hand, Memmi's hero Alexandre Mordekhai Benillouch does not fit into mainstream Tunisian society because he is Jewish. Alexandre is not seen as French, like the ruling powers of the colony, nor is he fully embraced as Algerian by Algerian nationals, though they should regard him as one of their fellow countrymen as he does not live the privileged existence of a French expatriate. But because Alexandre is an aspiring intellectual, the customs and beliefs of his family do not suit his personal religious needs. He feels a profound sense of inner, existential alienation from the ritual and customs of more orthodox Jews, and cannot see the logic or comfort such traditions provide.

The more he is forced to partake of the rituals of Judaism, the more isolated Alexandre feels from the Jewish community within his soul. Memmi's hero feels like a stranger in a strange land, but even a stranger amongst his fellow community of co-religionist 'strangers.' As a child, Alexandre felt protected by his father and mother's presence, but gradually this sense of comfort ebbs away. He lives in what he calls a 'blind' alley, a literal residence that symbolizes his initial blindness to prejudice, from which he moves as an older adolescent out into the world, when he has his blinder removed. Ultimately, he must leave his family to find himself, and eventually leave his community and homeland.

Not all Arab Jews find themselves in such a profound internal conflict, because they accept their place in the Jewish community -- for them, the community is their world. But Alexandre feels torn almost as soon as he has an awareness of his social status and he is hurt by the prejudice he experiences in school, in particular. He talks about he bitter smells of where he lives, the indignity of having to share living spaces with strange families, the presence of blackened calfskins that are the tools of the manual trades practiced by the residents, and above all the awareness that he lives in a ghetto. But his anger is not merely against anti-Semitism or his lack of material things, for he thinks at first he might have some comfort, if he could only believe -- but he realizes on the eve of his Bar Mitzvah that he cannot.