Bibliography

Explore the references, sources, and research that support Lebanon's stories and cultural content.

• Literature and folktales

  Stories and Writers of the Jews of Lebanon

  Lebanon's Jewish community was small, but its story has found its way into books, from a Jewish newspaper in Arabic to memoirs and oral histories that keep the memory of Wadi Abu Jamil alive.

  A community in print

  News and schools in Beirut

  From 1921 into the 1940s, Beirut's Jews published Al Alam al Israili (The Israelite World), a newspaper in Arabic that covered community life across the region. The Alliance Israélite Universelle schools taught generations of Lebanese Jewish children to read and write in French, Arabic, and Hebrew.

  Folktales and legends

  Old synagogues, old stories

  Lebanese Jews told stories about their oldest places of worship, such as the synagogue of Deir el Qamar in the Chouf mountains, completed in 1638 and now long silent, and about the families from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey who joined them over the centuries. Many of these stories were never written down; they live on in the memories of the community and its descendants.

  Modern writers

  Remembering Wadi Abu Jamil

  In recent years, writers have worked to record the community before its memories are lost. The historian Tomer Levi's The Jews of Beirut traces the rise of the community from the 1860s to the 1930s, and the Lebanese journalist Nada Abdelsamad gathered the memories of Jews and their neighbors in Wadi Abu Jamil: Stories about the Jews of Beirut. JIMENA's oral history with Isaac Hasbani adds a firsthand voice.

  Read with students

  Start with these

  • The Jews of Beirut, Tomer Levi (high school and adult)

  See all books on the Jews of Lebanon in JIMENA's bibliography →

  Sources: History of the Jews in Lebanon; Deir el Qamar Synagogue.