"[An] outstanding pioneering effort. . . . Scholars and lay readers with an interest in 20th century North Africa, Jewish community life, Zionism, and political development will find much here that is new and useful. Highly recommended."
--"International Journal of Middle East Studies"

"Drawing on French government archives, documents of the Alliance Isralite Universelle (AIU), Israeli archives, interviews and published sources, Laskier provides a readable, well-integrated socio-political history of the Jewish communities of North Africa."
--"Religious Studies Review"

Before widescale emigration in the early 1960s, North Africa's Jewish communities were among the largest in the world. Without Jewish emigrants from North Africa, Israel's dynamic growth would simply not have occured. North African Jews, also called Maghribi, strengthed the new Israeli state through their settlements, often becoming the victims of Arab-Israeli conflicts and terrorist attacks. Their contribution and struggles are, in many ways, akin to the challenges emigrants from the former Soviet Union are currently encountering in Israel. Today, these North African Jewish communities are a vital force in Israeli society and politics as well as in France and Quebec.

In the first major political history of North African Jewry, Michael Laskier paints a compelling picture of three Third World Jewish communities, tracing their exposure to modernization and their relations with the Muslims and the European settlers. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this volume is its astonishing array of primary sources. Laskier draws on a wide range of archives in Israel, Europe, and the United States and onpersonal interviews with former community leaders, Maghribi Zionists, and Jewish outsiders who lived and worked among North Africa's Jews to recreate the experiences and development of these communities.Among the subjects covered:
--Jewish conditions before and during colonial penetration by the French and Spanish;
--anti-Semitism in North Africa, as promoted both by European settlers and Maghribi nationalists;
--the precarious position of Jews amidst the struggle between colonized Muslims and European colonialists;
--the impact of pogroms in the 1930s and 1940s and the Vichy/Nazi menace;
--internal Jewish communal struggles due to the conflict between the proponents of integration, and of emigration to other lands, and, later, the communal self-liquidiation process;--the role of clandestine organizations, such as the Mossad, in organizing for self-defense and illegal immigration;--and, more generally, the history of the North African aliyaand Zionist activity from the beginning of the twentieth century onward.

A unique and unprecedented study, Michael Laskier's work will stand as the definitive account of North African Jewry for some time.

"[An] outstanding pioneering effort. . . . Scholars and lay readers with an interest in 20th century North Africa, Jewish community life, Zionism, and political development will find much here that is new and useful. Highly recommended."
--"International Journal of Middle East Studies"

"Drawing on French government archives, documents of the Alliance Isralite Universelle (AIU), Israeli archives, interviews and published sources, Laskier provides a readable, well-integrated socio-political history of the Jewish communities of North Africa."
--"Religious Studies Review"

Before widescale emigration in the early 1960s, North Africa's Jewish communities were among the largest in the world. Without Jewish emigrants from North Africa, Israel's dynamic growth would simply not have occured. North African Jews, also called Maghribi, strengthed the new Israeli state through their settlements, often becoming the victims of Arab-Israeli conflicts and terrorist attacks. Their contribution and struggles are, in many ways, akin to the challenges emigrants from the former Soviet Union are currently encountering in Israel. Today, these North African Jewish communities are a vital force in Israeli society and politics as well as in France and Quebec.

In the first major political history of North African Jewry, Michael Laskier paints a compelling picture of three Third World Jewish communities, tracing their exposure to modernization and their relations with the Muslims and the European settlers. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this volume is its astonishing array of primary sources. Laskier draws on a wide range of archives in Israel, Europe, and the United States and onpersonal interviews with former community leaders, Maghribi Zionists, and Jewish outsiders who lived and worked among North Africa's Jews to recreate the experiences and development of these communities.Among the subjects covered:
--Jewish conditions before and during colonial penetration by the French and Spanish;
--anti-Semitism in North Africa, as promoted both by European settlers and Maghribi nationalists;
--the precarious position of Jews amidst the struggle between colonized Muslims and European colonialists;
--the impact of pogroms in the 1930s and 1940s and the Vichy/Nazi menace;
--internal Jewish communal struggles due to the conflict between the proponents of integration, and of emigration to other lands, and, later, the communal self-liquidiation process;--the role of clandestine organizations, such as the Mossad, in organizing for self-defense and illegal immigration;--and, more generally, the history of the North African aliyaand Zionist activity from the beginning of the twentieth century onward.

A unique and unprecedented study, Michael Laskier's work will stand as the definitive account of North African Jewry for some time.

"An impressive collection of essays that adds great depth and breadth to our understanding of Jewish-Muslim relations in the modern period."--Jeffrey Kenney, author of Muslim Rebels: Kharijites and the Politics of Extremism in Egypt "This remarkable volume offers a rich panoply of perspectives, both on the final chapter of Jewish minority life within the Islamic orbit, and on the contemporary relationships obtaining between Jews and Muslims and between Israel and the Muslim nation states. The variety of eclectic approaches works synergistically to supply nuance to complex and often misunderstood relationships."--Marc S. Bernstein, author of Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations in Judaism and Islam A companion volume to The Convergence of Judaism and Islam, this collection of essays explores the Jewish-Muslim relationship from the nineteenth century to the present. While that earlier work focused on the shared cultures and often peaceful relations between the two religions in the medieval and early modern periods, this book reveals how the paths of Jews and Muslims began to diverge two centuries ago. The essays in this volume examine how each group reacted quite differently to colonial rule, how the Palestine Question and the Arab-Israeli crisis have soured relations, and how the rise of nationalism has contributed to the growing tensions. With contributors from a wide variety of scholarly disciplines, this book offers a broad but in-depth analysis of the Jewish-Muslim relationship in recent times. Michael M. Laskier is professor of Middle Eastern studies and director of the Menachem Begin Center for the Study of Underground Movements at Bar-Ilan University. He has authored many books, including Israel and the Maghreb: From Statehood to Oslo. Yaacov Lev is professor of Islamic medieval studies at Bar-Ilan University and the author of Charity, Endowments, and Charitable Institutions in Medieval Islam.