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Paper short abstract

Through two case studies—Israel’s recent militarised ‘visits’ to Jewish sites in South Lebanon and everyday memory work in the Jewish Quarter of Saïda—I demonstrate how the historical reality of sites and artifacts in the Levant escapes the nationalist frameworks within which they are imbricated.

Paper long abstract

Claims to Lebanese Jewish tangible heritage are multi-scalar, encompassing Israel’s assertion of worldwide Jewish history; the Lebanese state’s ostensible commitment to tolerance; and local contestations over ownership of sites and artefacts. Through two case studies—Israel’s recent militarised ‘visits’ to Jewish sites in South Lebanon and everyday memory work in the Jewish Quarter of Saïda—I demonstrate how the historical reality of ‘things Jewish’ in Lebanon escapes the nationalist frameworks within which it is imbricated.

In the fall of 2024, Israel intensified its military campaigns in Lebanon. Amidst bombardment of large segments of the country, Israel’s military escorted groups of ultra-Orthodox Jews to pray at religious sites across the south. Israel’s recent campaigns have included social scientists embedded within battalions, promoting sites (once revered by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike) as biblical and solely “Jewish,” thus promoting their usurpation within an ever-expanding Jewish state. Yet the continuing realities of the places and things that once sustained an active Jewish community in Lebanon demonstrate that Israel’s singular and totalising claim to Jewish life belies a historical reality in which Jewish heritage is entangled with the lives and histories not specifically ‘Jewish’. By examining both nationalist and local claims to multifaith sites, Jewish artefacts, and shared histories, I, ask: whom, including non-Jewish Lebanese and those in the Lebanese Jewish diaspora, speak for this heritage? And how have places and things central to Lebanese Jewish life, such as pilgrimage sites, historically dependant on networks of belonging that escape the confines and aims of the nation-state?