Libyan ‘revolutionary Jew' to restore synagogue

TRIPOLI, Libya -- David Gerbi is a 56-year-old psychoanalyst, but to Libyan rebels he was the "revolutionary Jew." He returned to his homeland after 44 years in exile to help oust Moammar Gadhafi, and to take on what may be an even more challenging mission.

That job began Sunday, when he took a sledgehammer to a concrete wall. Behind it: the door to Tripoli's crumbling main synagogue, unused since Gadhafi expelled Libya's small Jewish community early in his decades-long rule.

Gerbi knocked down the wall, said a prayer and cried.

"What Gadhafi tried to do is to eliminate the memory of us. He tried to eliminate the amazing language. He tried to eliminate the religion of the Jewish people," said Gerbi, whose family fled to Italy when he was 12. "I want bring our legacy back, I want to give a chance to the Jewish of Libya to come back."

The Star of David is still visible inside and outside the peach-colored Dar al-Bishi synagogue in Tripoli's walled Old City. An empty ark where Torah scrolls were once kept still reads "Shema Israel" -- "Hear, O Israel" -- in faded Hebrew. But graffiti is painted on the walls, and the floor and upper chambers are covered in garbage -- plastic water bottles, clothes, mattresses, drug paraphernalia and dead pigeon carcasses.

He and a team of helpers carted in brooms, rakes and buckets to prepare to clean it out.

It took Gerbi weeks to get permission from Libya's new rulers to begin restoring the synagogue, which is part of his broader goal of promoting tolerance for Jews and other religions in a new Libya.

"My hope and wish is to have an inclusive country," he said. "I want to make justice, not only for me, but for all the people of Libya for the damage that Gadhafi did."

Gerbi's family fled to Rome in 1967, when Arab anger was rising over the war in which Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. Two years later, Gadhafi expelled the rest of Libya's Jewish community, which at its peak numbered about 37,000.

Gerbi returned to his homeland this summer to join the rebellion that ousted Gadhafi, helping with strategy and psychological issues. He rode into the capital with fighters from the western mountains as Tripoli fell in late August.

Now he has hired neighborhood residents to help clean and renovate the synagogue in Hara Kabira, a sandy slum that was once Tripoli's Jewish quarter. He said he is funding the synagogue renovation himself, and plans to stay for as long as needed until his project is complete.

A test of tolerance

He called it a test of tolerance for Libya's new rulers.

"I plan to restore the synagogue, I plan to get the passport back, I plan to resolve the problem of the confiscated property, individual and collective," he said. "I plan to help rebuild Libya, to do my part."

Gerbi isn't sure how many Jewish properties were confiscated, but he hopes to find a way to resolve that issue and build a garden memorial on the site of the former Jewish cemetery, which Gadhafi had covered with high rises and a parking lot.

Libya's acting justice minister, Mohammed al-Alagi, said Gerbi could appeal for justice.

"If he was discriminated at some time, Libyan courts are open for his claims," he said.

Gerbi, who wore a yarmulke on Sunday and likes to take walks on the seaside street outside the protective confines of his hotel to clear his head, considers himself a Jewish ambassador of goodwill.

He said he faced some hostility in the beginning but has been able to overcome it with old-fashioned glad-handing, although he acknowledges concerns are high about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dar al-Bishi is one of the few Libyan synagogues with the potential to be restored. Others have been demolished or put to other uses. Some were turned into mosques.