Elissa Rhaïs: Difference between revisions

'''Elissa Rhaïs''', [[Hebrew language({{Langx|he|Hebrew]]: '''אליסה ראיס}}),''' born '''Rosine Boumendil''' (12 December 1876 – 18 August 1940) was a [[History of the Jews in Algeria|Jewish-Algerian]] writer, who adopted the persona of a Muslim woman who had escaped from a harem to further her literary career. Her novels were popular in her lifetime, but declined; interest in her life was revived in the 1980s by a claim that all her publications had been [[Ghostwriter|ghost-written]] and that she was illiterate.

Rosine Boumendil was born on 12 December 1876 in [[Blida]] to a Jewish family of modest means.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Déjeux|first=Jean|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GIqosKCXtWIC&q=Roland+Amar+Alg%C3%A9rie&pg=PA184|title=Dictionnaire des auteurs maghrébins de langue française|date=1 January 1984|publisher=KARTHALA Editions|isbn=978-2-86537-085-6|language=fr}}</ref> Her father, Jacob, was a baker and her mother, Mazaltov (born Seror) was a housewife.<ref name=":0" /> She went to a local school until she werewas placed as a domestic in a Jewish family at the age of twelve.<ref name=":0" /> Later, she claimed she had attended the "École des Religieuses de la Doctrine Chrétienne", although it did not open until her 20s.<ref name=":2">{{Citation|last=lorcin|first=patricia m e|editor1-first=Emmanuel K|editor1-last=Akyeampong|editor2-first=Henry Louis|editor2-last=Gates|title=Rhaı¨s, Elissa|date=2012|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195382075.001.0001/acref-9780195382075-e-1749|work=Dictionary of African Biography|publisher=Oxford University Press|language=en|doi=10.1093/acref/9780195382075.001.0001|isbn=978-0-19-538207-5|access-date=15 January 2021}}</ref> At 18 years old, she married a rabbi named Moïse Amar. The couple had three children: a daughter, who died at eleven years old; a son, Jacob-Raymond (1902-1987); another daughter Mireille (1908-1930).<ref name=":0" /> Jacob-Raymond became also a writer and a journalist better known as Roland Rhaïs. He was one of the few Algerian Jews to obtain Algerian nationality after the independence.<ref name=":0" />

During the 1930s, Rhaïs' as popularity waned and she returned to live in [[Blida]]. and sheShe died there on 18 August 1940.<ref name=":2" />

*''Saâda la Marocaine'' (Paris: 1919)

[[Category:Algerian-Jewish culturediaspora in France]]