The Jews of Libya : coexistence, persecution, resettlement / Maurice M. Roumani

Bibliogr. p. 306-315

Maurice M. Roumani, born in Benghazi, Libya, is a Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology and the Middle East at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel where he is also the founder and Director of the J.R. Elyachar Center for the Study of Sephardi Heritage. A graduate of Brandeis University, the University of Chicago and the University of London, he has held teaching and research positions at Harvard University. Martin Gilbert provided a Foreword to the book.

In this revised edition Prof. Roumani presents new and original material on the deportation of Libyan Jews to French North Africa, offering new insights and aspects of the consequences of the Racial Laws and of anti-Semitism as rooted in Fascist ideology. He reveals one the unknown incidents (accidents) of the war, the bombing of La Marsa, and the resulting massacre of many Libyan Jews. The end of the war witnessed the complicated negotiations among the Allied forces in the repatriation of the deportees and the mediation of the AJDC in aiding the resettlement of the deportees in their native countries. Reviews and endorsements of the original publication are available on the Press website. They include: He uses a wide range of archival and oral sources, many of which have never been used before. Throughout the book, he reveals a mastery of the social and political history, and a fine understanding of the lives, hopes, fears and aspirations of Libyan Jews, From the Foreword by Sir Martin Gilbert; and: An impeccably researched, richly documented, and keenly insightful survey of Libyan Jewrys social and political evolution in the twentieth century. He achieves an admirable balance of overall scholarly dispassion with the intimate poignancy of personal engagement, Norman A. Stillman, University of Oklahoma. This book investigates the transformative period in the history of the Jews of Libya (193852), a period crucial to understanding Libyan Jewrys evolution into a community playing significant roles in Israel, Italy and in relation with Qaddhafis Libya. Against a background of a reform conscious Ottoman administration (18351911) and subsequent stirrings of modernization under Italian colonial influence (191143), the Jews of Libya began to experience rapid change following the application of fascist racial laws of 1938, the onset of war-related calamities and violent expressions of Libyan pan-Arabism, culminating in mass migration to Israel in the period 194952. By focusing on key socio-economic and political dimensions of this process, the author reveals the capacity of Libyan Jewry to adapt to and integrate into new environments without losing its unique and historical traditions