Alliance Israélite Universelle

The Alliance Israélite Universelle was established in Paris in 1860 to improve the legal and cultural status of Jews in Asia Minor, the Middle East, and North Africa. It promoted the Gallicization and Westernization of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the Mediterranean world largely through an extensive network of elementary and vocational schools. By 1900, it was operating one hundred schools, primarily in Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco, with a total enrollment of twenty-six thousand students. Highly centralized, like the French government itself, its programs to transform traditional Jewish life often created tensions between the Paris headquarters and the traditional communities in which it established its schools.