Editor's Note
Dear readers of Sephardic Horizons,
This new issue of Sephardic Horizons (vol. 11, nos. 2-3) is our Libya and Tunisia number. It includes five articles by scholars of Jewish Libya and Jewish Tunisia, all except two (which are appearing in English for the first time) written especially for this issue. Original material in Ladino, and an unusually large group of wide-ranging reviews, follow. The issue is dedicated to the memory of my dear late husband, Jacques Roumani z”l, who conceived of and led the editing of the recent book Jewish Libya: Memory and Identity, published by Syracuse University Press in 2018, and in Italian by Belforte Press in 2020 as Libia ebraica: memoria e identità. The book was coedited by David Meghnagi and myself. This issue in a sense continues that volume. As readers will see, three out of the five articles deal with the Holocaust, one with Jewish Muslim relations, and one with Jewish refugees who fled Libya following pogroms in 1945 and 1948.
We feel honored at the opportunity to publish studies by Harvey E. Goldberg and Hagar Salamon on a unique custom in Southern Tunisia and Tripolitania for Muslims to attend synagogue on the holiday of Shavuot to listen to the Ten Commandments, by Maurice M. Roumani on Libyan Jews who in the Holocaust years were exiled to Tunisia, by Vivienne Roumani-Denn on oral histories of the war years, by Jens Hoppe on post-Holocaust indemnification for Libyan Jews, and by Danielle Willard-Kyle on postwar Libyan Jewish refugees’ experiences in Italian DP camps. All of these are important contributions to Libyan Jewish studies.
In Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, Jane Mushabac and Leah Varsano have generously allowed us to publish for the first time their play, Un Otro Ermano, performed also for the first time earlier this year at the Ladino Day of the American Sephardi Federation, in New York, to great acclaim. The rarity of new original plays in Ladino makes us feel doubly honored. Perhaps this new play will start a trend. Rachel Amado Bortnick contributes a review of a new memoir in Ladino, Una Ijita Chika de Galata, by Coya Delevi, and reviews of nine new books on Sephardic topics follow. The contributing reviewers are Regina Igel, Carsten Schapkow, Kora von Wittelsbach, Ira Robinson, Ignat Ayzenberg, Jane Gerber, Aimée Israel-Pelletier, Timothy Riggio Quevillon, and myself. To all reviewers, and authors of articles and other materials, as well as those who have provided illustrations, we send thanks. Thanks also to Annette B. Fromm and Altan Gabbay, expert associate editor and webmaster respectively, for their essential contributions.
We hope you enjoy this new issue of Sephardic Horizons.
Judith Roumani, Editor