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The oldest Jewish settlements in Libya were in Jebel Nafusa (Nafusa Mountain), also known as al-Jabal al-Gharbī (Ar. Western Mountain) and Adrar n Infusen (Ber.). The region extends some 170 kilometers (106 miles) southwest of Tripoli to the Tunisian border, and includes the areas around Yefren, Gharian, and Nalut. It is a mountainous desert plateau interspersed with deep valleys and fertile oases. Due to its rough terrain, governments located in the coastal areas historically found Jebel Nafusa…

1. Middle East and North AfricaJewish journalism in the Middle East and North Africa began in 1842 with the Ladino weekly La Buena Esperansa in Izmir (Smyrna). Between then and the end of the twentieth century, over eight hundred Jewish newspapers and periodicals were published in the region, many quite short-lived. Published by and about Sephardim and Mizraḥim, they appeared in regional, Jewish, and European languages, in a variety of formats and frequencies, differed great in longevity, and covered a wide range of t…

From November 4 to 7, 1945 Arab mobs attacked the Jews of Tripoli and its environs in British-occupied Libya. The violence erupted one day after two days of anti-Zionist mass demonstrations and rioting in Egypt that began on November 2 (Balfour Declaration Day). Unlike the Egyptian disturbances, the Tripolitanian riots had no overt political coloration, although some of the provocateurs may have had political motivations. Security forces of the British Military Administration (1943-1951) were slow to intervene, and as a result 130 Jews were killed, hundreds more …

The Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden (Heb. Ḥevrat ha-‛Ezra li-Yehude Germanya) was established in 1901 in Berlin to alleviate the cultural, social, and political conditions of Jews in the Levant and Eastern Europe. Its operations in the “Orient” (i.e., the Ottoman Empire and especially Palestine) ceased by the end of World War I, and it was officially dissolved in 1939. Its welfare activities centered on Russia and Romania, but some took place in Ottoman lands and the Balkans, mainly during the Balkan War (1912) and World War I.Most of the Hilfsverein’s educational operations cent…