Lebanon’s Jewish Community

Book excerpt: 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.