North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria / Michael M. Laskier

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Laskier, Michael M., 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews.

Ethnic relations.

North Africa.

Jews--Africa, North--History--20th century.

Africa, North--Ethnic relations.

Africa, North.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource (418 p.)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2021

Place of Publication:

London : New York University Press, 1994

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Before widescale emigration in the early 1960s, North Africa's Jewish communities were among the largest in the world. Without Jewish emigrants from North Africa, Israel's dynamic growth would simply not have occured. North African Jews, also called Maghribi, strengthed the new Israeli state through their settlements, often becoming the victims of Arab-Israeli conflicts and terrorist attacks. Their contribution and struggles are, in many ways, akin to the challenges emigrants from the former Soviet Union are currently encountering in Israel. Today, these North African Jewish communities are a vital force in Israeli society and politics as well as in France and Quebec. In the first major political history of North African Jewry, Michael Laskier paints a compelling picture of three Third World Jewish communities, tracing their exposure to modernization and their relations with the Muslims and the European settlers. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this volume is its astonishing array of primary sources. Laskier draws on a wide range of archives in Israel, Europe, and the United States and on personal interviews with former community leaders, Maghribi Zionists, and Jewish outsiders who lived and worked among North Africa's Jews to recreate the experiences and development of these communities.Among the subjects covered:--Jewish conditions before and during colonial penetration by the French and Spanish;--anti-Semitism in North Africa, as promoted both by European settlers and Maghribi nationalists;--the precarious position of Jews amidst the struggle between colonized Muslims and European colonialists;--the impact of pogroms in the 1930s and 1940s and the Vichy/Nazi menace;--internal Jewish communal struggles due to the conflict between the proponents of integration, and of emigration to other lands, and, later, the communal self-liquidiation process;-the role of clandestine organizations, such as the Mossad, in organizing for self-defense and illegal immigration;-and, more generally, the history of the North African `aliyaand Zionist activity from the beginning of the twentieth century onward.A unique and unprecedented study, Michael Laskier's work will stand as the definitive account of North African Jewry for some time.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: A Sociopolitical Analysis

Chapter 2. Under Vichy and the Nazi-German Menace: The Jews of North Africa during the 1930s and 1940s

Chapter 3. Zionism, Clandestine Emigration to Israel, and Its Impact on Muslim- Jewish Relations: The Case of Morocco, 1947-March 1949

Chapter 4. Emigration to Israel in the Shadow of Morocco's Struggle for Independence, 1949-1956

Chapter 5. International Jewish Organizations and the 'Aliya from Morocco: The Early and Mid-1950s

Chapter 6. The Self-Liquidation Process: Political Developments among Moroccan Jewry and the Emigration Factor

Chapter 7. The Israeli-Directed Self-Defense Underground and "Operation Yakhin"

Chapter 8. Tunisia's National Struggle and Tunisian Jewry: Jewish Anxieties, Muslim-Jewish Coexistence, and Emigration

Chapter 9. From Internal Autonomy to Full Independence: The Post- Independence, Decolonization Era in Tunisia

Chapter 10. Algeria's Political and Social Struggle: Algerian Jewry's Dilemmas

Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8147-6536-X

OCLC:

906969906