Jews lived in Libya for more than two thousand years, from the Greek cities of Cyrenaica to the old Jewish quarter, the Hara, of Tripoli. Under Italian rule the community lived through racial laws and wartime camps; after the war it suffered pogroms, and by 1967 almost all of its 40,000 members had left. Today no Jews live in Libya. Most Libyan Jews and their descendants live in Israel and Italy. See also Tunisian Jews and North African Sephardim.
Origins
Ptolemy I settled Jews in Cyrenaica, in eastern Libya, in 312 BCE, and by the 2nd century BCE inscriptions from Benghazi and other towns show wealthy, organized communities. The Diaspora Revolt of 115–117 CE, centered in Cyrene, was crushed by Rome, and the Jews were nearly all driven out of Cyrenaica; Jewish life there did not revive until the 4th century.
In Tripolitania, in the west, Jews lived in Tripoli and in the villages of the Jebel Nafusa; in the 10th century the geographer al-Bakri described a Jewish community at Jadu. When Spain briefly conquered Tripoli in 1510, many Jews fled to the mountains or were enslaved.
The Sephardi connection
Most Libyan Jews descended from these old local communities rather than from Spanish exiles. The Sephardi imprint came largely through one man. Rabbi Shimon Lavi, born in Spain in 1486 and raised in Fez after the expulsion, was on his way to the Land of Israel in 1549 when he was kidnapped and ransomed. He reached Tripoli, found its community without teachers, and stayed. As its judge until 1585 he set up its institutions, wrote its regulations and established the Sephardi rite there. He also brought the Zohar into daily life: his commentary on it, Ketem Paz, and his hymn “Bar Yochai” are still known across the Jewish world.
Later Tripoli became a center of rabbinic learning; see Ma’aseh Rokeach and the scholarship of Tripoli.
Modern era and departure
- Ottoman and Italian rule. Ottoman rule was restored in 1835, and in 1903 the Alliance Israélite Universelle counted about 14,000 Jews in Tripoli and 2,000 in Benghazi. Italy colonized Libya in 1911. In 1941 about a quarter of Tripoli’s population was Jewish, with 44 synagogues.
- 1938–1943. Italy’s racial laws removed Jews from public offices and schools. In 1942 the Jews of Cyrenaica were sent to the Giado camp in the desert; when the British liberated it in January 1943 they recorded 562 deaths from typhus and abuse. Read more: Sephardim in the Holocaust.
- 1945. On November 5–7, 1945, a pogrom in Tripolitania killed more than 140 Jews and destroyed five synagogues.
- 1948–1951. Riots in June 1948 killed 12 more. When emigration was allowed in 1949, 30,972 Jews left for Israel by 1951, most of the community.
- 1967. Riots after the Six-Day War killed 18 people. More than 6,000 Jews were evacuated to Rome within a month; about 2,200 stayed in Italy and about 1,300 went on to Israel.
- 1970 and after. Under Gaddafi, Jewish property was confiscated and debts owed to Jews were cancelled. Fewer than 40 Jews remained by 1972; the last, Rina Debach, left for Rome in the early 2000s.
Religious life
Libyan Jews prayed in the Sephardi rite that Shimon Lavi established, with local customs of their own. Pilgrims visited his tomb in Tripoli. In 2011 David Gerbi, who had left as a boy in 1967, returned to reopen Tripoli’s Dar Bishi Synagogue; his effort lasted two days before he was forced to stop.
Language, music and food
Libyan Jews spoke Judeo-Arabic, and under Italian rule many also spoke Italian. Their cooking is known for shakshuka, spicy fish in chraime sauce, bsisa (a toasted barley and spice mixture eaten at the start of Nisan) and mafrum (stuffed vegetables braised in tomato sauce). See our Sephardic recipes.
The community today
No Jews live in Libya. Libyan Jews in Israel number in the tens of thousands, many in Netanya, Bat Yam, Ashkelon and Moshav Porat, and the families who stayed in Italy in 1967 became an important part of Rome’s Jewish community.
Notable people
- Frija Zoaretz 1907–1993 · Tripoli Teacher and Zionist leader; member of the Knesset for the National Religious Party from 1955.
- Raphael Luzon 1954–2026 · Benghazi Journalist and advocate for Libyan Jews; author of Libyan Twilight.
- David Gerbi childhood in Tripoli Psychotherapist in Rome who tried to reopen the Dar Bishi Synagogue in 2011.
- Moshe Kahlon b. 1960 · Hadera, parents from Tripoli Israel’s minister of finance, 2015–2020.
Sources and further reading
- Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970 (University of Texas Press, 1985).
- Harvey E. Goldberg, Jewish Life in Muslim Libya: Rivals and Relatives (University of Chicago Press, 1990).
- Maurice M. Roumani, The Jews of Libya: Coexistence, Persecution, Resettlement (Sussex Academic Press, 2008).
- “History of the Jews in Libya”, Wikipedia.
- “Shimon Lavi”, Wikipedia.
Revised October 2026 to correct errors in an earlier version of this page.
