‘We Were all Italian!’: The construction of a ‘sense of Italianness’ among Jews from Libya (1920s–1960s)

Abstract

The paper explores how a 'sense of Italianness' formed among Jews in Libya during the Italian colonial period and in the decades following its formal end. Based on interviews with Jews born in Libya to different generations and currently living in Israel and Europe, the essay considers the concrete declensions of this socio-cultural phenomenon and the different meanings that the respondents ascribe to it. Meanings span from the macro level of historical events and societal changes, to the micro level of individual social relations and material culture. Viewed across generations and framed in the peculiarities of Italian colonial history, the 'sense of Italianness' expressed by Jews in Libya appears as both a colonial and post-colonial legacy.

Building the Intimate Boundaries of the Nation

“…Italians viewed the Libyan Jewish population as racially and culturally closer to the European creole population present in the colony and willingly assimilated them into the settler society, with Jewish kids sent to Italian schools (Simon 1992, 81). Their relative inclusion in the settler society fostered a sense of belonging in the Libyan Jewish population (Rossetto 2021), setting them apart from the Arab and Berber populations until the legislative racist and antisemitic turn of the Fascist regime in the second half of the 1930s. These dynamics effectively excluded them from the racializing logic at the core of the categories that could mix with the Italians.…”

“…As mentioned in the subsection of this thematic discussion on mixture, Italian colonial authorities never mentioned Libyan Jews as a source of concern for the regulation of mixed intimacies, despite the significant Jewish population that inhabited the colony. 3 Their acknowledged assimilation within Italian settler society (Rossetto 2021), coupled with existing scholarship demonstrating the widespread presence of marriages between Tripolitanian Jewish women and Italian Christians (Simon 1992, 81), points to different levels of racialization imposed on the colonized populations. Religious affiliation to Islam represented the most apparent racializing trait that separated the settler population from the local one in the Libyan context.…”