Books
Books recommended by JIMENA staff for readers, students, and educators exploring the history, literature, languages, and traditions of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Browse children’s books, novels, history, Jewish languages, and Sephardic thought.
Buy BookFiction & Literature
Benghazi–Bergen-Belsen
by Yossi SucaryBased on the wartime fate of Libya's Jews, the novel follows Silvana Hajaj and her family from their comfortable life in Benghazi through deportation by the Italian Fascist and Nazi authorities to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya
by Rachel SimonA study of Jewish women in Libya during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining education, work, family, and religious life as Ottoman, Italian, and modern influences brought change.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
Jewish Libya: Memory and Identity in Text and Image
by Jacques Roumani, Judith Roumani, David MeghnagiAn illustrated collection of essays and photographs on the Jews of Libya, exploring their long history, family life, language, religious practice, and the memory of their twentieth century displacement to Israel and Italy.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
Jewish Life in Muslim Libya: Rivals and Relatives
by Harvey E. GoldbergAn anthropological history of Jews in Libya, examining Jewish and Muslim relations during Ottoman and Italian rule, the community's ties with neighbors as rivals and relatives, and the violence that ended it.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970
by Renzo De FeliceA history of the Jews of Libya from 1835 to 1970, covering late Ottoman rule, Italian colonization, Fascist racial laws, wartime persecution, the 1945 and 1948 riots, and the community's departure.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
The Jews of Libya: Coexistence, Persecution, Resettlement
by Maurice RoumaniA history of Libyan Jewry under Ottoman, Italian, and British rule, examining coexistence with Muslim neighbors, wartime persecution, the 1945 and 1948 riots, and the community's resettlement in Israel and Italy.