47 years haven’t dulled the ache of that horrific morning or the difficult period that ensued

(Photos: Ezra Trabelsi, Yaakov Cohen, Family archives)

I

t’s already been 48 years, but for Tunisian kehillah leader and rosh yeshivah, Rav Meir Mazuz, and his brothers, the shots that gunned down their holy father on a Tunis street still pierce their own hearts.

It was a Monday morning, 21 Teves 5731/January 18, 1971, and Rav Matzliach Mazuz, who at age 59 was the last of the Tusinian geonim, was walking home from an early Shacharis, accompanied by a young lad. It was a local holiday and most of the shops were closed, but the fishmonger was open, and Rav Matzliach made his way there to buy fish for Shabbos. True, it was only Monday, but for Rav Matzliach, it was never too early to prepare for Shabbos. Times, though, were turbulent for the dwindling Jewish community, which had plummeted from about 100,000 to 15,000 since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. And now, four years after the Six Day War, tensions among the local Arab population were running even higher. In fact, Rav Matzliach Mazuz and his three brilliant Torah scholar sons and their families —Rav Meir, Rav Tzemach, and Rav Rachamim — were planning to make the move to Eretz Yisrael for quite some time, and had already begun the daunting project of moving Rav Matzliach’s valuable and extensive library.

But that morning, everything changed. An assassin was lurking in a nearby alleyway, fired off a few shots at close range, and Rav Matzliach fell to the ground — the tefillin that just a short time before adorned his noble head now soaked in his blood.

Words for Posterity 

Rav Meir Mazuz shlita, rosh yeshivah of Kisei Rachamim in Bnei Brak, current leader of Tunisian Jewry, and Rav Matzliach’s eldest son, recorded the events of that fateful day with his own trembling hand. He’s been keeping his own personal diary for close to 50 years, and for the first time, he has now allowed the pages to be publicized. This is what he wrote about that dreadful morning:

“On Monday morning, 21 Tevet, parshat Va’eira, Abba woke up feeling weak. My mother told him, ‘Don’t go out this morning, it’s very cold.’ He replied that there might not be a minyan at neitz hachamah in the beit knesset, and so, wrapped in his tallit and wearing his tefillin, with two volumes of Chok L’Yisrael in the pockets of his robes, he make his way to the beit knesset, where he was the shaliach tzibbur. At his last birkat Kohanim, he placed his holy hands on our heads and blessed us as usual. Afterwards, at eight-thirty, he left the beit knesset hand in hand with a young seven-year-old talmid. They went to the Shuk Elbachari to buy fish. A gentile thug named Ali Egharbi was sitting in a nearby coffee house and spotted them. He had a revolver in his pocket with three rounds in it, seven bullets to a round — a total of 21 bullets. He also had four knives hidden in his sleeves (the commissar in charge of criminal punishment told us this afterward. He also had a list of other rabbanim with him, including Chief Rabbi HaRamah, my father the rosh yeshivah, and others. It was a list of their addresses and exact daily schedules).

“As soon as the assassin saw my father, he started following him silently down the street… There weren’t many people out, as it was a holiday, so he was able to fire two shots there. One struck my father in his thigh and the other on his face, knocking out some teeth. My father fell down, screaming in pain, but the thug didn’t let up, and fired a third shot that hit the left side of his forehead. He collapsed there, wallowing in his own blood. The bag with his tallit and tefillin was soaked in his blood, as was his siddur and his clothing.

“Immediately a Jew named Chaim Peretz ran out and took in the gruesome scene, shouting, ‘What are you doing to our rabbi?!’ And the assassin screamed ‘I’ll finish you off too!’ Egharbi shot at him, but he raised his hands to his face and the bullet wounded his right hand instead. Egharbi kept firing, and Peretz managed to run behind a car, the bullets whizzing past his legs. After that Egharbi went back to the beit knesset but found it locked, although in the meantime his managed to shoot at another Jew.

“When the shooting finally stopped, the young boy ran to the yeshivah and tearfully told what happened. The older bochurim ran to my father and wanted to take him right to the hospital, but there was a cursed policeman there, who told them ‘put him down until we investigate.’ Finally, they were able to get a taxi, while the gentiles around began to jeer, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead, why do want to take him in a taxi?’ Then a Jew came and took him to the hospital, and on the way they said Kriat Shema with him. By the time they arrived, he’d passed away.” (Excerpted from the diary of Hagaon Rav Meir Mazuz, Teves 5731).

While Rav Meir Mazuz lets us peruse the yellowed pages of his diaries as we sit outside the beis medrash of Kisei Rachamim, he fills in some of the missing details, explaining how the little boy managed to run away unharmed. “His name is David Yeshayahu, and later he told us that although my father was shot and barely conscious, he screamed to the boy to get down and play dead,” Rav Mazuz tells Mishpacha in a rare interview together with his brothers Rav Tzemach and Rav Rachamim. “David Yeshayahu immediately lay down on the ground and closed his eyes, and while the murderer thought he was dead, he saw that Abba was still alive and shot again, shooting him in the head to make sure he killed him. The assassin continued on his spree, but then the gun jammed.”