Posted on 07/25/2011 5:01:26 PM PDT by SJackson
YAFRAN, Libya — For centuries, Jews lived among the Berbers of Yafran, observing the Sabbath at the synagogue of Ghriba, but they suddenly left 63 years ago, and their land in Libya remains untouched.
Every hamlet around Yafran bears the mark of the Libyan Jews, who arrived in the country 2,300 years ago and, until their departure soon after Israel's creation in 1948, constituted half the city's population.
Everywhere, the ruins of their homes still cling to the mountainside. Some were lived in, others subsumed by the Berber population. Time has taken its toll, but the houses remain untouched and uninhabited.
"It's just as it was before," says Tarek Ayad, a 58-year-old retiree.
Numerous abandoned synagogues remain intact, silent witnesses to the co-existence of the two peoples. Amid the coloured mosaics of Ghriba synagogue, Hebrew inscriptions overlap those in Amazigh, the language of the Berbers.
Moulded Stars of David have been unharmed in one synagogue, despite it having been converted to a mosque after the Arab conquest of the 7th century, while the Jewish cemetery, with its many ancient tombs -- some of which are dug into the rock -- borders a Berber graveyard.
Some in Yafran remember the names of prominent Jewish families: Aaron, Mguelish, Guetta. For generations, fathers and sons alike were rabbis.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, . . .
5 years ago we were in Akko and a Libyan Jewish coppersmith asked my sephardic Turkish machatenister where is family was from. I guess my father in law looked Libyan
Some of the worst anti-Jewish violence occurred in the years following the liberation of North Africa by Allied troops. From November 5 to November 7, 1945, more than 140 Jews were killed and many more injured in a pogrom in Tripoli. The rioters looted nearly all of the city's synagogues and destroyed five of them, along with hundreds of homes and businesses. In June 1948, anti-Jewish rioters killed another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. This time, however, the Libyan Jewish community had prepared to defend itself. Jewish self-defense units fought back against the rioters, preventing dozens of more deaths.ML/NJ
Come a little closer said the spider to the fly . . .
Years ago, I used to hang out with a Berber ex-pat in NYC. One of the nicest guys I’ve ever known.
BTW, there has been heavy fighting between Gaddafi and the rebels in this town, so the timing of the article is especially silly.
Someone will probably come along who knows, but my impression is that the Berbers live in in the south and east aren’t particularly “friendly” with the Arabs. In that context, this wouldn’t surprise me
The Berbers aren’t Arabs. Most of the anti-Jewish agitation happened in the coastal towns, which are mostly Arab.
The Berbers have been kept down by Arab cultural and political domination in what is now Libya, Tunisia and Algeria; less so in Morocco I believe.
The Palestinians are kept down by the Arabs too. It doesn’t make them Jew friendly.
Mass exodus does not usually occur when the area is hospitable.
maybe the local berbers want their fellow compatriots who happened to be Jews back, but the Islamic Jihadis who are right now fighting Ghaddafi would like to then kill these returnees...
remember that St. Augustine was a Berber Christian as were many before the advent of Islam
Now the fanatical ones are those who think they are Arabs...
yet even many of the so-called “Arabs” are really Berber by blood.
Yes, after a couple of cocktails he’d get all depressed and bitch about how “his” culture was being destroyed.
I’ve heard Persians saying the same thing
In a letter to Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of the NTC, the Israeli president of WOLJ, Meir Kahlon, offered his organization’s support and assistance.
“We feel it is our obligation that Libya become a model state with freedom of thought and religion for all its citizens,” the letter stated, announcing the appointment of Dr. David Gerbi as WOLJ’s “legitimate representative.”
Gerbi, an Italian Jewish Jungian psychologist born in Tripoli in 1955, has made several trips to Libya in the past decade in attempts to negotiate reconstruction and reconciliation for the Libyan Jewish community that traces its origins to the third century BCE.
Last month, as the first Libyan Jew to publicly declare his backing for the NTC, he worked as a volunteer teaching methods for healing victims of post-traumatic stress syndrome in Bengazi’s Psychiatric Hospital.
“The world-wide community of Libyan Jews is proud that its son, David Gerbi, has made his way to Bengazi to provide humanitarian assistance on the ground to the brave people of that city,” the letter said.
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