Jewish communities in exile

This research has really brought home the huge issue of the expulsion of Jewish cultures that had been embedded in Arab lands for thousands of years.  Community in that setting seemed to have been a much more intimate and personal thing.. To understand context.. I am told that at it’s height there were 30,00) Jews in Libya.. I live in a small town in New Jersey of 50,000. In the whole country there were just over half as many people as in my town..

As a Jewish person who has grown in New York.. I have never known institutionalized prejudice. I begin to see how lucky I am, as I look at the history of my fathers countryman.

Thank you- Lillo Naim and Ruggiero Parienti for speaking to me and helping me get a sense of the flavor of the community

Camels

   A few stereotypical images .. Libya existed in my mind as a vague mix of sand and camels where they spoke Arabic and Italian.. 

 

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Scanning and sequence

The movie is beginning to take shape in my head. I spent today scanning.. the images are melding with the words I am reading to put things in a personal context.

As a child when my dad referred to something out of date , he would say.. oh that is from 1911. We thought it was funny. in Libya 1911 was a big year.. The italian colonizers arrived bringing a western perspective and culture.  Before 1911 there were  few western style schools – for both jew and  arab it was a distinctly nonwestern way of life.

Additional research planned

a few other directions:

• contact other family members .. Do they have any visual in formation?  Will they share memories? no info yet
• visit the archive at Sephardic house (American Sephard foundation)

First steps

 

My research has gotten off to a good start…
I searched Google for relevant sites and images
after finding reference to a few books i headed to the Parsons reference librarian and then NYU’s Bobst Library

There I located and took out 5 specific books on my topic

I contacted my mom and sister to see if we had any family images or memorabilia

This way I netted old slides, photos and postcards

Next stop contact and set up an an appointment to speak to some of my Dads contemporaries from Libya

Ok off and running…. borrowed some recording equipment from the school and headed to Queens to 4 hour visit with Lillo Naim-Vice president of the Association of Libyan Jews in America
(Who knew there was such a thing?) and Ruggerro Parienti

Lastly put together working a document categorizing my research to get a head start on the paper for this mini-thesis

so far so good..

I have begun to formulate an idea of the look of the movie
A motion collage- primarily based around short phases or single words the languages that played into the history of this minority population

To this end, I have begun to get the translations of a single word- Jew (male) in Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Italian

Ok.. all for now

Welcome

                       This is the beginning of a research diary tracking  work on my MFA  narrative studio project-Memories and Mirages- the Jews of Tripoli, Libya. This is a very personal project.  An American first generation descendant of the scattered Jews of Tripoli… I have chosen this way to get to know a community I was never part of.  For this project. I will produce a short movie- the first expression of this continuing journey into my families past.