Franck Salameh - Lebanon’s Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested

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This book could not have been written without the contribution and generosity of a great number of friends, colleagues, teachers, and acquaintances, all of whom deserve recognition, all of whom are owed a debt of gratitude.

For advice, time, guidance, and moral and intellectual support, I am privileged to have had very near to me Avigdor Levy, Noam Stillman, Nadim Shehadi, Robert Rabil, Asher Kaufman, Roger Makhlouf, Uzi Rabi, Maxim Shrayer, Michael Connolly, David Corm, Scott Abramson, David Silverstein, and Suzanne Kurtz Sloan. Owed thanks are also Hagop Toghramadjian, Rana al-Aggad, Jean-Claude Kuperminc, Rose Levyne, Mordechai Nisan, Jean Laloum, Mary-Jane Deeb, Marius Deeb, Jacques Stambouli, David Daoud, Haim Saadoun, Jol Kotek, Joshua Landis, Gabe Scheinmann, Helen Kedourie, and the late Sylvia Haim Kedourie .

Financial support for the bulk of this project was provided through a variety of Boston College research grantsnamely Research Incentive and Research Expense Grants. Likewise, generous awards from the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa in Washington DC, and the Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, were crucial in supporting research in Beirut, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Washington DC, Paris, and New York.

A particular debt of gratitude is owed the staff of the Boston College Libraries, the archives of the Alliance Isralite Universelle in Paris, the archives of the National Institute for Holocaust Documentation (the Jacob Rader Center of the American Jewish Archives) in Washington DC, the Charles Corm Archives in Beirut, the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE, Quai dOrsay) in Paris, the Ben Zvi Institute Archives in Jerusalem, and the Patrimoine et Cultures des Juifs du Liban in Paris.

Most importantly, I would like to thank those Lebanese Jews who generously shared advice, direction, hints, names, research trails, personal stories, and sumptuous tables laden with Lebanese foods and flowing libations. My heartfelt thanks go also to those who opened their homes and the vaults of their memories sharing snippets of their lives with me eagerly, devotedly, like they knew me all their lives and were simply catching me up on the last forty years of their lives. Many respondents in Lebanon proper will remain anonymous; others in the diaspora have opted to give their testimonials under borrowed names. They all know who they are. They all deserve my gratitude and respect. Those who have given me their stories, who have hinted to stories of others, or who have directed me to trails after additional stories (most still untold) and whom I can mention by name include Alain Abadie, Shirley Grego, Yitshak Levanon, Isick Kamhin, Yair Ravid, Dany Liniado, Fady Gadeh, Lucy Galante, Davide Galante, Batia Sasson, Mose Chems, Zahava Ganor, Edy Cohen, Gina Diwan, Ishac Diwan, Ben Battat, David Bukai, and Hilda Peled. I wish to single out the Lebanese Jews of Israel in particular, les beaux enfants de ma race, who took my heart and took me in like a returning relative, and who from Haifa, Jaffa, Bat-Yam, Tel-Aviv, and Jerusalem, still yearn for Lebanon, from a distance they still cant bridge.

At Palgrave Macmillan, I am indebted to Farideh Koohi-Kamali who took a genuine interest very early on in this projects live, at its inception more than three years ago and made sure I signed on the dotted line. I am also grateful to Alina Yurova, Editor for Regional Politics and Development Studies, and Editorial Assistant Mary Fata for seeing this book through, and for the generosity and advice that they offered throughout. Most of all, I must thank Alina for her elegance and patience granting me one extension after the next,