Across Europe and the Mediterranean exploring Jewish memories from Libya

Rossetto, Piera; Spadaro, Barbara

doi:10.14277/2385-3042/3p

The article aims at presenting a cross-disciplinary project on the histories and memories of the Jews from Libya: Mapping Living Memories. The Jewish Diaspora from Libya across Europe and the Mediterranean. The project has been designed and carried out by the authors of this article; its main outcome is represented by a collection of interviews with fifty Jews, men and women, who left Libya between the 1940s and the 1960s, moving to Italy, Israel, France and the UK. Our aims are twofold: first, to chart premises and distinctive features of our project, and highlight how the collection contribute to further elaborate the notion of “Libyan Jewry”; second, to point out the potential of this project for historical reading by exploring different steams of migration from a postcolonial perspective.

The article aims at presenting a cross-disciplinary project on the histories and memories of the Jews from Libya: Mapping Living Memories. The Jewish Diaspora from Libya across Europe and the Mediterranean. The project has been designed and carried out by the authors of this article; its main outcome is represented by a collection of interviews with fifty Jews, men and women, who left Libya between the 1940s and the 1960s, moving to Italy, Israel, France and the UK. Our aims are twofold: first, to chart premises and distinctive features of our project, and highlight how the collection contribute to further elaborate the notion of ‘Libyan Jewry’; second, to point out the potential of this project for historical reading by exploring different steams of migration from a postcolonial perspective.