- silence

- Carpentras, an original ghetto that also became a minor center of the Jewish civilizations and Avignon area, the four holy towns of the Comtat Venaissin:

- Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon, l’Ile-en-Sorgue.

- This territory of Provence was given up in the 16th century to the Pope

- and the Jews who came to take refuge in various times but especially after they were expelled from Provence, are known up to now as the “Pope’s Jews”.

- Besides, one thing is extremely moving, it is that in the ritual of prayer you can see a prayer for the Pontiff.

- So, as a fact, people who don’t know say,

- who are those Jews who pray for the Pontiff,

- they were the Pope’s Jews.

- They built this wonderful synagogue in Carpentras.

- Here we are in the synagogue of the town of Carpentras,

- my name is Haïm Sibéoni, I come from Alexandria, Egypt.

- I was expelled with my family in January, 1957, after the Suez Battle.

- And then I came to France.

- I was like my father, that is to say I butchered poultry, we call it choet in Hebrew, and then I came here to France, it is called the sacrifier.

- And what about circumcision?

- And then I learnt about circumcision.

- My parents arrived from Marrakesh.

- My father was still young, according to what he told me,

- at the time, he was young, that means that he was about 20, 21,

- so from what he told me, he took the boat from Tangier to Alexandria.

- In the end, you went from one place to another, like your father?

- Right, right.

- And the story of those Comtadine Jews is very moving.

- The popes, or the papal administration, expelled them all the time, letting them become richer and richer, persecuting them,

- they took their money, then opened their doors again,

- and that lasted down to the French Revolution.

- But from the Revolution on, there was no more history of the Jews in France,

- the Jews of the Comtat became French citizens just like any other citizens of the Vaucluse area

- and then starts for them, like for the rest of French Judaism, the phenomenon of the increase of the growing up in the Western civilization and of some assimilation.

- So, when the great migration takes place and drives the Algerian-born French, the Jews and the non-Jews from North Africa to France,

- a certain number of Jews from North Africa will stay in the Mediterranean zones

- as, even if the work conditions are more difficult or if the salaries are lower,

- they are less disorientated in Nice or Carpentras than in Lille, Roubaix or Tourcoing.