Havurah Shalom

When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History by Massoud Hayoun
 
September 22, 7 - 8:30 pm

There was a time when being an “Arab” didn’t mean you were necessarily Muslim.   When We Were Arabs is a well-researched history of the writers Jewish North African family. The author’s grandfather, of Moroccan Amazigh (Berber) origins, emigrated to Egypt.  He left Egypt in 1950 and arrived in the Los Angeles area via France, Israel, France again and the Bronx. His grandmother was a Tunisian Jew, whose family left Tunisia for France in 1950. The book examines the lives of North African Jews when they were an integral part of Arab societies and how that possibility all but ceased to exist. Many Moroccan, Egyptian, and Tunisian Jews would not have called themselves Arabs, as the author does. But the majority would easily have identified as Moroccans, Egyptians, or Tunisians. Despite the jarring ideas, the book is well-written and easy to read.

When We Were Arabs, tells the stories of Oscar and Daida, bringing their worlds alive in vivid poetic prose, and in so doing shattering our contemporary understanding of what makes an Arab, what makes a Jew, and how we draw the lines between us over which we do battle.

Discussion led by Joel Beinin.