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Green Synagogue (Slat al Khadra), Tripoli, Libya

Tripoli, Libya

The Green Synagogue (Slat al-Khadra/Hadra, צלאת אלכדרה) in the Hara Kabira, in Tripoli (Trables, طرابلس), Libya. It was located next door to the White (Slat al-Bayda / Beida, צלאת אל ביצ'ה) Synagogue. This synagogue also housed Shirei David (שירי דוד), a minyan for young people. 

Description

The Green Synagogue holds a special place in the memory of Hamos Guetta, who mentions it in his essay, “Mafrum, Haraimi, Tebiha, Bsisa, and Other Culinary Specialities: Tastes, Symbols, and Meaning,” in the book Jewish Libya: 

The time when food played a fundamental role was before and after Yom Kippur, the twenty-six hour fast. Before sunset, a meal that was halfway between lunch and dinner and rich with many kinds of food, was eaten to prepare us for the kilometers we would have to walk to get to the old green synagogue (the Hadra Synagogue) in the hara where my grandfather went to pray, then we would walk back home to sleep. The following morning, still fasting, we went back to the synagogue but the walk, which had been so pleasurable the evening before on a full stomach, now seemed endless, especially since we had to pass by the Arab bread ovens with their unmistakable smells. Finally we arrived at the synagogue where the prayers were being recited, while the children amused themselves with games. Then there were the final, very long hours when the mind was fixed on food, on what we would have liked to be eating, on our favorite dishes that came into the mind. When the prayers finished with “El Nora Alila” and the shofar, we went home –fortunately not to our own home, which was very far, but to the home of an aunt who lived near the synagogue. To get there we didn’t need an address, it was enough to close our eyes and follow the scent of coffee with zahar (orange flower water), bulu (sweet rolls), and the safra (semolina cake). We could have gotten confused only because the other houses had prepared the same things to break the fast.1


For Guetta and many others in the Jewish community in and around Tripoli, the Green Synagogue was not only a site for weekly prayer, but the destination of a multi-kilometer walk for the annual observance of Yom Kippur. The fasting holiday heightened his awareness of the delicious aromas surrounding the Green Synagogue, a sensory memory which is likely shared by former residents and visitors of the Jewish Haras of Tripoli.

Tripoli's Jewish Community


Roman and Byzantine Tripoli

Jews have inhabited Libya since at least the 3rd century BCE, and potentially as early as the First Temple.2 The first Jews of Libya mostly settled first arrived in Libya more than 2000 years ago, settling mostly in coastal cities such as Tripoli and Benghazi, which were, at the time, within the larger Roman regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.3 Some Berber tribes, including the Nafusa of the western Tripolitanian mountains, adopted Judaism.4 

Arab Tripoli

According to Jewish and Arab traditions, the Jews and Berbers resisted the Islamic Arabs who captured Tripolitania from Byzantine rule in 642.5 In addition to the residential population, Tripoli is mentioned in the records of Jewish merchants as a stop on their trade routes across north Africa.6 Upon the Spanish occupation of Tripoli from 1510-1530 followed by the Knights of Malta from 1530-1551, the Jews of Tripoli fled to other regions, such as Tajura, Gharian, and Italy.7 Some of them returned after 1551, and with them arrived Jewish refugees from Spain and Italy.8 


Ottoman Tripoli

The Ottomans government (1551-1911) was relatively tolerant of Jews, although levels of street conflict (e.g robberies and arson) between Jews and Muslims worsened.9 During an interruption in Ottoman rule by the independent Qaramanlis monarchy (1711-1835), the Jews of Tripoli began to distinguish their culture from Tunisian Jewry.10  


Italian Tripoli to Gaddafi

By the time of the Italian occupation of Libya in 1911, the Jewish population of Tripoli was 8,509 out of approximately 30,000 people in the city.11 The occupation led to struggles between traditional and modernizing factions in the community; in an effort to defuse the struggle, the colonial authorities invited Italian Rabbi Elia Artomo to serve as chief rabbi of Tripoli.12 Relations between the Jewish community and the colonial government began to deteriorate after the Fascists took power in Italy. In 1942 Mussolini ordered that Jews of foreign nationalities living in Libya be sent to camps in Libya or Europe. Anti-Jewish riots swept the country in 1945 and 1948; between 1949 and 1951 most of the Jewish population emigrated to Europe or Israel.13 Most of the remaining Jews were forcibly expelled in 1967, the year of the Six Day War. At the start of Muammar Gaddafi (Quaddafi)’s regime, the synagogues in Tripoli were destroyed, all Jewish property was confiscated, and all debts to Jews canceled.14  


After Gaddafi

Today there are Jews living in Libya. On October 10th, 2003, Rina Debach, an eighty–one year old woman in an elderly home, was the last Jew to leave the country, when her nephew who had left in 1967 finally got permission from the Libyan and Italian authorities for her to be evacuated.15

 

Tripoli, Libya

© Mapbox, © OpenStreetMap

Sources

Endnotes
1.  Hamos Guetta, “Mafrum, Haraimi, Tebiha, Bsisa, and Other Culinary Specialities: Tastes, Symbols, and Meaning,” in Jewish Libya, ed. Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, Memory and Identity in Text and Image (Syracuse University Press, 2018), 64, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.11.


2.  Associated Press, “Libya’s ‘revolutionary Jew’ Returns to Restore Tripoli Synagogue,” The Guardian, October 3, 2011, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/03/libyas-revolutionary-jew-restore-synagogue; Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, eds., “Introduction,” in Jewish Libya, Memory and Identity in Text and Image (Syracuse University Press, 2018), 17, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.7.


3.  “Tripolitania - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia,” Alchetron.com, August 18, 2017, https://alchetron.com/Tripolitania.


4.  Maurice M. Roumani, “Libyan Jews in the Islamic Arab and Ottoman Periods,” in Jewish Libya, ed. Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, Memory and Identity in Text and Image (Syracuse University Press, 2018), 39, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.9.


5.  Roumani, 39.


6.  Roumani, 40.


7.  Roumani, 41.


8.  Roumani, 41.


9.  Roumani, 42.


10.  Roumani, 41.


11.  Maurice Roumani, “Tripoli,” in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (Brill Online), accessed July 23, 2014, http://0-referenceworks.brillonline.com.luna.wellesley.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/tripoli-libya-COM_0021620.


12.  Roumani.


13.  Roumani.


14.  “Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries,” accessed July 14, 2022, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries.


15.  Maurice Roumani, “The Final Exodus of the Libyan Jews in 1967,” Jewish Political Studies Review 19, no. 3/4 (2007): 95.



Bibliography


Guetta, Hamos. “Mafrum, Haraimi, Tebiha, Bsisa, and Other Culinary Specialities: Tastes, Symbols, and Meaning.” In Jewish Libya, edited by Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, 45–67. Memory and Identity in Text and Image. Syracuse University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.11.


“Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries.” Accessed July 14, 2022. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries.


Press, Associated. “Libya’s ‘revolutionary Jew’ Returns to Restore Tripoli Synagogue.” The Guardian, October 3, 2011, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/03/libyas-revolutionary-jew-restore-synagogue.


Roumani, Jacques, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, eds. “Introduction.” In Jewish Libya, 17–18. Memory and Identity in Text and Image. Syracuse University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.7.


Roumani, Maurice. “The Final Exodus of the Libyan Jews in 1967.” Jewish Political Studies Review 19, no. 3/4 (2007): 77–100.


———. “Tripoli.” In Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Brill Online. Accessed July 23, 2014. http://0-referenceworks.brillonline.com.luna.wellesley.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/tripoli-libya-COM_0021620.


Roumani, Maurice M. “Libyan Jews in the Islamic Arab and Ottoman Periods.” In Jewish Libya, edited by Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, 39–42. Memory and Identity in Text and Image. Syracuse University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.9.


Alchetron.com. “Tripolitania - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia,” August 18, 2017. https://alchetron.com/Tripolitania.


This site is mentioned by Nachshon El-Gay in his interview. 


Coordinates courtesy of Merkaz Or Shalom, www.or-shalom.org.il.