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The Jews of Libya
Coexistence, Persecution, Resettlement

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Maurice M. Roumani
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.

“In this pioneering work, examining the crucial period from the Italian racial laws of 1938 to the final Jews exodus from Libyan soil in 1967, Dr Maurice Roumani builds on the foundations laid by the scholars of the Jewish communities of the Maghreb – H.Z. Hirschberg, Shlomo Dov Goitein and Michel Abitbol – giving us for the first time a full, clear and remarkable picture of what is now a lost community, alive and flourishing only as a world-wide diaspora, with Israel as its centre. ... The extent of Dr Roumani’s scholarship illuminates the story of Libyan Jewry in its final five decades: its early Zionism, its period under Italian monarchist and then Italian Fascist rule, its torments during the war years, its literal liberation and mass emigration under the British, and its final years under Arab and Muslim rule. He gives the reader an impressive account of the workings of the Jewish community, its personalities, its strengths and its achievements. ... There is much in Dr Roumani’s final chapters that is dramatic, much that is tragic; yet the extraordinary efforts to secure the emigration of Libyan Jews is an inspiring story. In telling it, as in each phase of this book, Dr Roumani 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. His book is a testimony to their suffering and their fortitude.” From the Foreword by Sir Martin Gilbert

“This is a significant contribution to the modern history of the smallest and, regrettably, least studied Jewish community of North Africa. It is an important case study of Jewish modernization in an Islamic land under colonial rule and national independence, and while exhibiting certain parallels with the diaspora communities in the French Maghreb, it also exhibits no-less-important differences due not only to nature of Italian rule, but to the distinct character of the Libyan Jewry itself. Maurice Roumani has given us an impeccably researched, richly documented, and keenly insightful survey of Libyan Jewry’s social and political evolution in the twentieth century. He brings to the study not merely the observations of a trained scholar with all of the requisite linguistic and methodological skills, but also the real life experience of someone who lived through the turbulent events of the period and was an actual witness to some of them. It is to Roumani’s great credit that he is able to achieve an admirable balance of overall scholarly dispassion with the intimate poignancy of personal engagement. The Jews of Libya will surely take its place alongside the pioneer studies of Renzo De Felice and Harvey Goldberg.” Norman A. Stillman, Schusterman/Josey Professor of Judaic History, University of Oklahoma

“Roumani examines the modern history of Libyan Jews from ca. 1911 to ca. 1969 with chapters chronologically covering the Libyan Jews under the Italian colonialism, the British military administration, the role of international Jewish organizations in the rehabilitation and protection of minority rights between the end of British occupation and the independent Libyan state, the exodus to Israel, settlement in Israel, and the final exodus following the outbreak of hostilities in 1967. An appendix includes copies of historical documents such as newspaper articles, letters, and others pertinent to the topic. Roumani writes in a clear voice, and the book will prove valuable to students and scholars of modern Jewish history.” Reference & Research Book News

“In 1948, 36,000 Jews lived in Libya. Today, none do. Roumani, a Ben-Gurion University political scientist born in Libya, has created a masterful account of the last decades of this vanished community. … In 1911, the Italian army conquered Libya. The resulting Italian administration approached the Libyan Jewish community through its experience of Rome's positive relations with its Jewish community. There were marked differences between the two communities, however, leading to tumultuous relations for the ensuing two decades. Libyan Jews resisted both Italian rabbis and the reforms they sought to oversee as they fought to preserve their identity. Italian society did influence Libyan Jewry, however, catalyzing Zionism, for example. Hebrew classes became a fixture in Libyan Jewish communities in the 1920s and 1930s. Bad accompanied good, though; as anti-Semitism grew in Italy during the fascist period, anti-Jewish incidents increased in Libya, and as the Axis oriented its foreign policy toward the Arabs, Italian leaders privileged Libya's Arabs over its Jews. As the Axis solidified in the late 1930s, Rome imposed anti-Semitic race laws on both Italy and Libya. Libyan Jews were interned in local labor camps, deported, and, in some cases, transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
… As postwar Arab nationalism grew, anti-Jewish rioting and pogroms worsened. Arab hostility increased as independence neared, forcing Libyan Jews to choose between emigration to Israel or Europe or life under a hostile Arab government. Most chose the former, but a hardy core remained. Here, Roumani's detail is stellar. Exploring archives from Jerusalem to Rome to New York, as well as contemporary Arabic and Hebrew newspaper accounts, he recounts the organizational involvement of international Jewish agencies comprehensively and without sacrificing readability.
… Roumani’s final chapter, tracing the Libyan Jews who chose to remain in their country after Israel's independence, is one of the best case studies of Arab nationalist intolerance. Tripoli closed Jewish schools, forced Jews with relatives in Israel to register, and even placed the Jewish community's administration under Muslim trusteeship. Jews could not vote, serve in public capacities, or purchase property. Violence was commonplace. On the first day of the Six-day War in June 1967, Libyan mobs destroyed 60 percent of Jewish communal property. The Libyan government placed Jews in protective custody in a detainment camp from which they were quickly evacuated by air and sea. With Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi's rise two years later, the final nail was put into the community's coffin.
… Libya had a Jewish community for millennia. Within a matter of years, it collapsed. The Libyan Jewish community may not have been the Arab world's largest or most prominent, but The Jews of Libya, nevertheless, should become standard reading not only for students of Jewish history but for those professing expertise in modern Arab or North African history as well.” Middle East Quarterly

This book investigates the transformative period in the history of the Jews of Libya (1938–52), a period crucial to understanding Libyan Jewry’s evolution into a community playing significant roles in Israel, Italy and in relation with Qaddhafi’s Libya.
… Against a background of a reform conscious Ottoman administration (1835–1911) and subsequent stirrings of modernization under Italian colonial influence (1911–43), 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 1949–52.
… 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.
… The evolution of Libyan Jewry between 1938 and 1952 is characterized by three pivotal developments: The first (1938–43) was one of disruption and dislocation, brought about by the oppressive colonial administration allied with Germany.
… In the second (1945–48), riots and pogroms by Muslim Libyan mobs, agitated by pan-Arab and Palestinian sympathies, against Jewish communities left unprotected by the post-war British administration, ushered-in an awakening to the fact that its millennial presence in Libya was about to end. Incipient Zionism among Libyan Jews, particularly in youth movements, matured into fully shared decisions to migrate to Israel where the third pivotal development (1949–52) – encompassing resettlement, economic, social and religious adaptations –began to unfold.
… The book concludes with an analysis of the success story of Libyan Jewry in Israel, and in Italy where a group of post-1967 refugees reconstituted a thriving, influential community in Rome. “Jerusalem and Rome”have thus become the two poles of the renewed Jewish community of Libya, exhibiting political advancement in Israel, and commercial prosperity in Italy, along with a cultural renaissance and potential contributions to the ongoing process of reconciliation of the new Libya (as of 2005) with the West.

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