Jewish and Israel Studies
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
The Jews of Lebanon
Between Coexistence and Conflict
This is the first book to tell the story of the Jews of Lebanon in the twentieth century. It challenges the prevailing view that Jews everywhere in the Middle East were second-class citizens, and were persecuted after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Jews of Lebanon were just one of Lebanon’s 23 minorities with the same rights and privileges, and subject to the same political tensions. The author discusses the Jewish presence in Lebanon under Ottoman Rule; Lebanese Jews under the French mandate; Lebanese Jewish identity after the establishment of the State of Israel; the increase of the community through Syrian refugees; the Jews' position in the first civil war; the beginning of their exodus; the virtual extinction of the Jewish community as a result of the prolonged second civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and finally the community's memory of their Lebanese past.
| Paperback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-057-6 |
| Paperback Price: | £22.50 / $42.50 |
| Release Date: | November 2008 |
| Page Extent / Format: | 224 pp. / 229 x 152 m |
| Illustrated: | Pictures of Jewish Lebanese Life |
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Avi Shlaim
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note on Transliteration
Maps
Introduction
Jewish life in the Arab Middle East
Jewish life in Lebanon
A literary survey
Chapter One: A Voyage through History
The historical legacy
Lebanon under Ottoman Rule
The Lebanese Jewish community
Culture, education and religion
Chapter Two: Lebanese Jews under the
French Mandate: Liberty, Fraternity and Equality
Grand Liban and the mandate
Merchants and financiers
Inter-communal relations and community life
The Lebanese Zionist project and contacts with the Yishuv
The Palestine question
The Second World War and the Vichy regime
Chapter Three: Lebanese and Israeli
Independence: Questions of Identity
Lebanese independence and the National Pact
The Jewish community and the political situation, 1943–1948
Two women remember: a privileged life in Lebanon
The establishment of the State of Israel
Jewish refugees and unavoidable changes
Syrian refugees
Chapter Four: The First Civil War: Conflict
of Identities
Dual loyalties
The Jewish community and the political situation, 1949–1957
Community life, 1943–1958
The first Lebanese civil war
Political and cultural identification
Chapter Five: The Beginning of the Exodus
The Chehabist “miracle”
Syrian Jewish emigration and immigration
The departure of Rabbi Lichtman
The new Chief Rabbi
Jewish Loyalty, Allegiance and Spies
Inter-communal relations and community life between the 1958
civil war and the 1967 June War
Chapter Six: The Road to the Second
Lebanese Civil War
From the June War to the Cairo Agreement: the arrival of the
fedayeen and the first departure of Lebanese Jews
Years of decline: Lebanon and the Jewish community, 1970–1975
Stepping up Syrian Jewish exfiltration
Syrian revenge
Threats to the exfiltration operation
The second civil war
A community in liquidation
Chapter Seven: The Israeli Invasion
and Beyond: Renaissance or Decline?
Operation Peace for Galilee
The last family in Saida
Renaissance in Beirut
A failed peace
The war continues, 1985–1989
Hostage-taking
The end of the civil war
Chapter Eight: Conjectures, Considerations,
and Conclusions: A Sentimental Journey
The community in history
The Arab–Israeli conflict
A history of Lebanon
Appendix
1 Jewish Community Presidents, 1910–1999
2 Chief Rabbis, 1908–1978
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Second revised and expanded edition
An outstanding sociopolitical history of the Jewish community of Lebanon. Highly recommended.
Choice
Dr Schulze uses a rich panoply of sources to provide a comprehensive discourse on the social, economic, political, cultural and religious aspects of the life of the Jews of Lebanon. She succeeds in placing the Jewish community in the broader context of Lebanese and Middle Eastern politics, and makes a highly significant and substantive contribution to the study on minorities in the Middle East.
From the foreword by Professor Avi Shlaim, St Antony’s College, Oxford
In this update of the
2001 edition, Schulze (international history, London School of Economics; Israel’s Covert Diplomacy in Lebanon, 1998) counters
conventional thinking about the status of Jews in Lebanon. Without
denying that there has been some discrimination against Lebanese
Jews historically, she argues that they have been treated much like
the rest of the country’s many minority groups. Furthermore,
she maintains that recent mass emigration of the community is due
more to the 1982 Israeli invasion rather than to national policies
or civil wars. The book includes maps, photos, and listings of the
country’s Jewish community presidents and chief rabbis.
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