North African Sephardim North African Sephardim North African Sephardim are a distinct sub-group of Sephardi Jews, who descend from exiled Iberian Jewish families of the late 15th century and North African Maghrebi Jewish communities. Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, most North African Sephardim have since relocated to either France or Israel. Several Iberian Jewish families also emigrated back to the Iberian Peninsula to form the core of the Jewish community of Gilbraltar. There are many Jewish communities in the North of Africa, including the communities of the Maghreb, Egypt,
North African communities of Paris Arab and Muslim countries. Naomi Davidson, author of "Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France", wrote that as of the mid-20th Century "The "community" of Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, however, was certainly not monolithic, as even the police acknowledged in their discussion of the North African "populations" of the Paris region". According to French police records, there have been Algerian and other North African residents of the 18th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements of Paris for nearly a century. Many North Africans settled in the city in the 1920s, making up the largest immigrant group to the city during that period.