This book mines the early history of modern Lebanon, focusing on the country's Jewish community and examining inter-Lebanese relations. It gives voice to personal testimonies, family archives, private papers, recollections of expatriate and resident Lebanese Jewish communities, as well as rarely tapped archival sources. With unique access to the Jewish communities in Lebanon and the Greater Middle East, the author presents both history and memory of Lebanon's Jews, considering what, how, and why they choose to remember their Lebanese lives. The work retells the history of Lebanon by placing Lebanese Jews into the country's narrative from the 1920s to 1970s, including an examination of the role they played in the construction of Lebanon's multi-sectarian system.
1. Prolegomenon: When Lebanon Loved the Jews.- 2. Lebanon of the Jews: An Introduction.- 3. Lebanese Jewry: Memory Fragments.- 4. Rootedness and Exile: Holocaust and Aftermath.- 5. Lebanese Jewish Memory and Memorial: Personal Recollections.- 6. Through the Eyes of Others: History's Reckoning.- 7. On Lebanese Jewish History and Memory: A Conclusion
Franck Salameh is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures at Boston College, USA.
"Salameh's writing is accessible and informative ... . Bringing together studies like Salameh's with the now wealth of studies on Jews in distinct Middle Eastern countries, using a comparative approach, may greatly enrich our understanding of this important topic." (Caroline Kahlenberg, Bustan: The Middle East Book Review, Vol. 10 (2), 2019)
