Overview

This volume examines the cultural legacy of Jewish emigration from the Maghreb and the Middle East in the years following 1948. Drawing on the remarkable cinematic and literary output of the last twenty years, this collection posits loss as a new conceptual framework in which to understand Jewish-Muslim relations. Previous studies of Jewish emigration have followed the mass departure of Jews, but the contributors to this book choose to remain behind and trace the contours of Jewish absence in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern societies. Attuned to loss in this way, the cultural memories of Jewish-Muslim life transcend the narratives of turmoil, taboo, and nostalgia that have dominated Muslim and prevalent scholarly perspectives on Jewish emigration. Read as a whole, the collection affords an uncommon opportunity to mourn and heal through a nuanced reckoning with the absence of Jews from communities in which they had lived for millennia. Its wide geographic reach and interdisciplinary nature will speak both to scholars and lay readers in Amazigh studies, Arabic studies, Middle Eastern studies, Jewish studies, memory studies, and a host of other disciplines. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla, Abdelkader Aoudjit, İlker Hepkaner, Sarah Irving, Stephanie Kraver, Lital Levy, Nadia Sabri, and Lior B. Sternfeld.

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9780271097558

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Reviews

“A landmark intervention, Remembering Jews illuminates how the complexities of the Jewish departure from Arab/Amazigh spaces can be creatively revisited from the perspective of their former Muslim neighbors. Unmuting the silence shrouding the absence, the volume animates cultural memory in order to enable alternative forms of scholarship. The compelling introduction and the stimulating essays transcend the academic boundaries separating Jewish studies from Arab/Middle Eastern/Amazigh studies, providing a generative framework for a vital engagement.” —Ella Habiba Shohat, author of On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements

“A landmark intervention, Remembering Jews illuminates how the complexities of the Jewish departure from Arab spaces can be creatively revisited from the perspective of their former Muslim neighbors. Unmuting the silence shrouding the absence, the volume animates cultural memory in order to enable alternative forms of scholarship. The compelling introduction and the stimulating essays transcend the academic boundaries separating Jewish studies from Arab/Middle Eastern studies, providing a generative framework for a vital engagement.” —Ella Habiba Shohat,author of On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements

Author Information

Brahim El Guabli is Associate Professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College. He is the author of Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship After State Violence and coeditor of the two-volume Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco During the “Years of Lead” (1966–1988). Mostafa Hussein is Assistant Professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at the University of Michigan. His research has appeared in journals such as Israel Studies Review, Journal of Levantine Studies, and Jewish Quarterly Review.

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