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The Transitaires

The European Passage of North African Jews and the Making of Mizrahi Heritage

The Transitaires cover

The Transitaires

The European Passage of North African Jews and the Making of Mizrahi Heritage

Description

While research on Jewish SWANA communities is impressive, less is known about their passage through Europe during the 1950s. This book examines North African Jews' traumatic journeys across postwar Europe before the majority became citizens of the state of Israel. The stories of 'the transitaires', as they were named locally, remain largely unknown. This book is based on archival research, ethnographic exploration, and the author's own family history, giving voice to the countless families who were unabsorbed in Europe and who struggled to overcome decades of traumatic absorption in Israel. The archival work includes records of displaced SWANAJews from 1947 to the early 1960s and oral testimonies from second- and third-generation Jewish families. The research ties a critical analysis of the memory and heritage of Mizrahi Jews in Israel to European history, postcolonial politics, and the historiography of the Palestinian Nakba. It shows that the operation of migration would not have unfolded on such a massive scale without the active role of European countries - imperial France being first among them. Framing Mizrahi history as European heritage, the book aims to highlight the historical role Europe played in shaping Israel Palestine in the wake of the Nakba, while also addressing the centrality of the region in contemporary European political and cultural debate. It explores why this forgotten passage still matters, and how the afterlife of migration and dislocation ties Europe, Israel Palestine, and the Arab world together.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue


Framing On “The Question” of Migration, Heritage and Afterlife


Chapter 1
My hometown
Holon and the long 1950s

Chapter 2
What Happened to the Children?
a Baby Boy in Marseille

Chapter 3
00-00-48
the Machinery of Chaos in Postwar France

Chapter 4
We are not Immigrants
Wavering between Old and New in Marseille

Chapter 5
We, “the Moroccans”
migration Traumas, Memory and Racialization

Chapter 6
Inheritances
Safed Settlement and the Legacy of Pilgrimage

Chapter 7
Territory of Abandonment
Kiryat Shmona and the Struggle to Remain and Remember

Chapter 8
Epilogue
Democratizing Heritage

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 21 Jan 2027
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Pages 240
ISBN 9781350666580
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 40 b&w images
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Hilla Dayan

Hilla Dayan is a sociologist and lecturer at Amste…

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