Moroccan Jews

This article gives a panoramic picture of Rabbi Yossef Messas' (1892-1974) approach of Kabbalah as a source of law. The article illustrates his doctrine of separation between Halakha and Kabbalah and proves that despite the central place of Kabbala in Morocco, some halakhic authorities attempted to limit its influence on the halakhic discourse, even in the first half of the 20th century.

Abstract

Moroccan Jewry has always been the center of inquiry not only for scholars, but also filmmakers who used their camera lens to depict the stories of Moroccan Jews throughout contemporary history. This paper aims to explore the representation of the Jewish community in Moroccan Cinema.  I argue that a new generation of research in this area needs to address this fundamental research question: How do Moroccan films and documentaries portray the return of the Jewish communities to their native land Morocco? To answer the research question mentioned above, I analyze selected Jewish-themed feature films and documentaries that portray the return of members of the Moroccan Jewish Diaspora. Dress Lmrini’s Aida (2015) and Jerome Cohen Olivar‘s The Midnight Orchestra (2016) act as the primary sources for my research in addition to documentaries such as Tinghir-Jerusalem- Echoes from the Mellah (2011) by Kamal Hachkar, They Were Promised The Sea (2013) by Kathy Wazana, and Return to Morocco (2014) by Charlotte Bruneau. This research comes with two major aims: First, it provides an updated analysis of the Moroccan Jews on the Moroccan big screen by covering the Jewish themed films and documentaries released in the last few years. Second, it is among the first studies conducted on the return of the Moroccan Jewish immigrants to their homeland from cultural and artistic perspectives. In order to achieve the above goals, I will use different research methods. The most important method consists of interviews with some Jewish returnees and a series of commentaries and interpretations of the Jews representations in Moroccan cinema. The second component of my research methodology analyzes up close how Moroccan films portray this new Jewish community. The premise of this research lies in the fact that Moroccan Jews have never forgotten their Moroccan identity. They carry with them their memories and customs wherever they travel. What is more, they inculcate the love of Morocco to their children, who most of the time are born outside the nation and who come back to discover their roots and know more about their ancestors’ history. In a word, through a deep scrutiny of the documentary films relating the return of the Jews to Morocco, we notice that the Jewish community is perhaps on its way to take back its place in the Moroccan mosaic.
Keywords: Departure, Memory, Diaspora, Return, Moroccan Jewish cinema, Memory Sites.
Acknowledgment

This study aims at investigating the reasons behind the shrinking of the Jewish community in Morocco, as well as at highlighting why it is important to do so. Jews have existed in Morocco since the antiquity, and they are one of the reasons why Morocco is considered a multicultural nation that sets an example for peaceful coexistence. Sources indicate that around a quarter of a million Jews lived in Morocco by the mid-twentieth century. Recent statistics, however, show that only around five percent of that number remains. The increasing emigration rate among the members of the Jewish community provokes concerns about their status in the country.

My main concern is to explore the reasons for this emigration, and the extent to which Jews are accepted and integrated in the Moroccan society, especially in light of the continuous conflicts in the Middle East. The importance of such a study lies in its attempt to raise awareness about the potential loss of a component of the Moroccan civilization and a pillar of the Moroccan social fabric, which can have a negative impact on the country on many levels.

In brief, there are two major questions that need to be addressed: Are Jews accepted by the Moroccan society? Otherwise, why do they leave the country?

Abraham Serfaty is renowned internationally and in his Moroccan homeland for his Marxist oppositional dissidence (directed against French colonialism and subsequently homegrown Moroccan repression), his almost two decades of political imprisonment, and his complex positioning as an anti-Zionist Moroccan and Jew. Based on my interviews and Serfaty’s writings, this essay explores not only his self-definitions as an “Arab Jew” and insoumi but also the many ways Serfaty’s life shares features with the figure of a Jewish conscious pariah, a concept owed to Bernard Lazare and Hannah Arendt.

In mainstream scholarship, David Ben-Gurion is described as one of the main supporters and primary advocates of the policy of encouraging mass Jewish immigration to Israel (aliya) in the 1950s.
The Zionist movement had two different motives for supporting aliya: Diaspora Jews’ need for a safe haven (which would require mass aliya), and the need to build a solid and stable Jewish society in mandatory Palestine/Israel (which would require selective aliya).
When Ben-Gurion, in the 1940s, came to favor mass aliya, he did so because of the immigrants potential contribution to the attainment of statehood and then the independent state.
In the first years after independence, when entire communities immigrated to Israel, they included old and infirm people who did not fit the image of the pioneers of pre-state aliya. Nevertheless, for Ben-Gurion, their demographic contribution outweighed the burden of their absorption. By 1952, he had changed his mind and became one of the strongest supporters of selective immigration. He continued to support selectivity even when, in 1955, the safety of Moroccan Jews and their freedom to emigrate was in jeopardy. Ben-Gurion’s attitude to aliya from Morocco, in the shadow of the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, reflected his priority—a strong and secure Israel.

A historiography on Moroccan Jews in Canada (1960–2015) off ers an exemplary case study of conducting comprehensive research on religious and ethnic minorities within a Canadian national framework. To fi nd literature on this community, one must take a multinational, multidisciplinary, and multilingual approach. This mirrors the diasporic reality of Moroccan Jews, themselves dispersed from Morocco to Israel, France, Canada, and beyond. Scholarship on Moroccan Jews in Canada must cross the linguistic divides of Quebec and Ontario, as the majority francophone, but also Spanish- and Judeo- Arabic-speaking, population settled predominantly in Montreal followed by Toronto. In an attempt to examine Moroccan Jews as part of Canadian and Quebec history, the authors examined over 130 articles for this study— mostly regarding
Moroccan Jews in Montreal, but these also included some key works in Canadian Jewish studies and Quebec studies. In what follows, we analyze the chronology of these works in relation to broader trends in Canadian Jewish studies and Quebec studies. The trends in the growth of studies on Moroccan Jews in Canada have been divided into roughly four overlapping periods: immigration and integration (1960s to 1970s); recognition and rapprochement (1980s); multiculturalism, interculturalism, and the production of ethnicity (1990s); and memory, identity, and religion (2000s to present).

From 1948 onwards, the Jews of the Arab world left the countries of their ancestors not to return. The bulk of these migrations, around six hundred thousand persons, settled in the newly created Jewish State of Israel, in ancient Palestine. Most of them were Moroccan Jews, as Moroccan Jewry was the biggest of the Arab world. Although motivations may seem obvious, the crash of two emerging and powerful opposite nationalisms, Arab and Jewish, several studies have already pointed out that the situation was much more complex. 2 The aim of this article is to avoid easy conclusions and to come as close as possible to the position of Jewish populations, in view of the Arab world's personal attitudes towards Zionism, the creation of the State of Israel, the emergence of Arab nationalism, and the independence claims of Arab countries. That is, it tries to understand how local Jewish populations were positioned, particularly in Morocco, in relation to the important political changes that were taking place in the North of Africa and the Middle East in the mid-XX th century: on one hand, the creation of the State of Israel and, on the other hand, the independence of the Maghreb countries. These ten years, in which nothing was written, determined the future of most of the Maghreb countries and their diverse populations.

Samy Elmaghribi was a mid-twentieth century Moroccan superstar. From his debut in 1948 through his professional zenith in 1956, the Jewish musician was a ubiquitous presence on radio and in concert. His popularity owed to his pioneering of modern Moroccan music and to his performance of Moroccan nationalism through song and on stage. Elmaghribi's brand of anti-colonial nationalism, however, was not that of any particular political party. Instead, he espoused what might be termed, “Moroccanism,” a territorial nationalism that placed Sultan Mohamed ben Youssef at its center. Like Elmaghribi, it enjoyed widespread support. This study demonstrates that a focus on musical culture gives voice to mainstream forms of Moroccan nationalism that have received little scholarly attention to date. It also points to the active participation of Jews in postwar MENA societies. Finally, this article reconsiders the dynamics of decolonization through study of Elmaghribi's career, which spanned colony and independent nation.

This paper seeks to explore various angles of how the Moroccan Jewish culture is remembered or represented by Moroccan Muslims. The introduction has talked briefly about how they came to Morocco and their history up to the beginning of the Exodus. As any paper, mine also will also be divided into two parts. A theoretical and literary study of the matter and a practical experimental study.

This chapter sheds light on the processes of memorialization that lie behind present-day discourses on the saint Lalla Solika of Fez and thus on Jewish Moroccan female sanctity more generally. It examines a dossier of personal manuscript letters currently preserved in the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) in Paris. The letters were sent to the AIU between 1880 and 1897 by Haïm Hatchwell, a Jewish Moroccan man who claimed to be the saint’s nephew. Through a critical examination of these letters, the chapter analyzes Hatchwell’s conceptions of “heroism” and “martyrdom” and reflects on the ideas that would later become central to the diasporic memories of Lalla Solika.

ABSTRACT In mainstream scholarship, David Ben-Gurion is described as one of the main supporters and primary advocates of the policy of encouraging mass Jewish immigration to Israel (aliya) in the 1950s. The Zionist movement had two different motives for supporting aliya: Diaspora Jews’ need for a safe haven (which would require mass aliya), and the need to build a solid and stable Jewish society in mandatory Palestine/Israel (which would require selective aliya). When Ben-Gurion, in the 1940s, came to favour mass aliya, he did so because of the immigrants’ potential contribution to the attainment of statehood and then the independent state. In the first years after independence, when entire communities immigrated to Israel, they included old and infirm people who did not fit the image of the pioneers of pre-state aliya. Nevertheless, for Ben-Gurion, their demographic contribution outweighed the burden of their absorption. By 1952, he had changed his mind and became one of the strongest supporters of selective immigration. He continued to support selectivity even when, in 1955, the safety of Moroccan Jews and their freedom to emigrate was in jeopardy. Ben-Gurion's attitude to aliya from Morocco, in the shadow of the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, reflected his priority – a strong and secure Israel.

The Moroccan-French director Kamal Hachkar’s debut documentary film Tinghir-Jérusalem: Les échos du Mellah [‘Tinghir-Jerusalem: Echoes from the Mellah’] was the subject of much public debate in Morocco after its first airing on television in 2012. What was intended by the young director as a feature film about his feelings of nostalgia and attachment to the past of his hometown’s Jewish community touched many nerves in the Moroccan political scene and wider society. The airing of the documentary on the state television channel 2M in April 2012 and its subsequent inclusion in the official selection of the National Film Festival in Tangier in February 2013 were enough to get Moroccan political parties, several public intellectuals, and civil society in general talking heatedly about the film for months on end (Bahmad, 2013). Tinghir-Jérusalem’s illustrious tour in the international festival circuit where it garnered many accolades and much critical acclaim in the following months further intensified the debate between the film’s supporters and detractors. The present chapter opens with a short introduction to the life and times of Moroccan Jews in Morocco with a particular focus on Tinghir, followed by a brief account of the political reception of Hachkar’s documentary film in Morocco, before moving to explore the documentary’s reliance on the potentialities of affect and silence in exploring Tinghir’s Jewish community between the past and the present. This affective use of silence traverses the film’s narrative voice as well as the characters’ acts of past remembrance and speculation about the future of a millennial community that is today faced with loss and disappearance. The close analysis of Hachkar’s Tinghir-Jérusalem is anchored by reflections on the uses of the affective power of silence on the screen, which will be explored critically through a Deleuzian framing of the non-representationality of affect.

Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there was a continual Jewish presence on the coast of Colombia, then known as Nueva Granada. By Spanish law, Jews were not allowed, but it was a law rarely enforced, and many concessions were made by the Crown to admit Jews. They were usually identified as Portuguese in Spanish records, but the evidence suggests that it was a mixed community between Portuguese anusim (forced converts) and Sephardic Jews from Amsterdam, Morocco, and the Ottoman Empire. The presence of significant numbers of Jews and Crypto-Jews by the late 1500's, stimulated the Crown to establish an office of the Inquisition in Cartagena in 1610, responsible for the Caribbean. Here I will use the term "Illegal Jew", rather than "Crypto-Jew" because it seems that many of them were not completely hiding and considered themselves to be active Jews. Some continued to attend Minyans, knew the prayers and blessings central to Judaism, observed Shabbat and other Jewish holidays. The descendants of these Jews who stayed in Colombia after 1650 became Crypto-Jews, most of them gradually losing their religious and cultural roots over the succeeding decades and centuries. From the mid-1500's, Cartagena was a bustling port city, and many foreigners were arriving, attracted by the new economies of mining, landowning, and slave trading. Among these immigrants were many who practiced Judaism even though it was illegal to be a Jew in any of the territories of Spain. From 1580 to 1635 men recognized as Jewish were prominent in the commerce of Cartagena. Then, suddenly between 1635 and 1645 the Inquisition arrested more than one dozen of them for practicing Judaism, and the Jewish community publicly disappeared. Where did they come from? Who were they, and what did they do in Cartagena? Why did the Inquisition choose that time to act against the Jews? What happened to the Jews after 1650?

In mainstream scholarship, David Ben-Gurion is described as one of the main supporters and primary advocates of the policy of encouraging mass Jewish immigration to Israel (aliya) in the 1950s. The Zionist movement had two different motives for supporting aliya: Diaspora Jews’ need for a safe haven (which would require mass aliya), and the need to build a solid and stable Jewish society in mandatory Palestine/Israel (which would require selective aliya). When Ben-Gurion, in the 1940s, came to favor mass aliya, he did so because of the immigrants potential contribution to the attainment of statehood and then the independent state. In the first years after independence, when entire communities immigrated to Israel, they included old and infirm people who did not fit the image of the pioneers of pre-state aliya. Nevertheless, for Ben-Gurion, their demographic contribution outweighed the burden of their absorption. By 1952, he had changed his mind and became one of the strongest support...

From 1948 onwards, the Jews of the Arab world left the countries of their ancestors not to return. The bulk of these migrations, around six hundred thousand persons, settled in the newly created Jewish State of Israel, in ancient Palestine. Most of them were Moroccan Jews, as Moroccan Jewry was the biggest of the Arab world. Although motivations may seem obvious, the crash of two emerging and powerful opposite nationalisms, Arab and Jewish, several studies have already pointed out that the situation was much more complex. 2 The aim of this article is to avoid easy conclusions and to come as close as possible to the position of Jewish populations, in view of the Arab world's personal attitudes towards Zionism, the creation of the State of Israel, the emergence of Arab nationalism, and the independence claims of Arab countries. That is, it tries to understand how local Jewish populations were positioned, particularly in Morocco, in relation to the important political changes that were taking place in the North of Africa and the Middle East in the mid-XX th century: on one hand, the creation of the State of Israel and, on the other hand, the independence of the Maghreb countries. These ten years, in which nothing was written, determined the future of most of the Maghreb countries and their diverse populations.

The focus of this article is a mysterious Jewish society, Lishkat Yessod Hamaaravi (the Western Pillar Lodge), founded in Mogador (today Essaouira), Morocco, in the late nineteenth century. The nature of this unusual North African society is described on the basis of an examination of unpublished documents written by David Elkaïm, the association’s last secretary. The account deals with the activities of the lodge, its connection with a protonationalist Jewish group that was active in Jerusalem, and its embroilment in the social and ideological struggles that shook the community of Mogador during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Despite the presence of several prominent maskilim from Mogador among the membership, I argue that the society was founded to offer an alternative to the reformist and modern spirit in the town, promoted by Jews who were disappointed with both the Jewish-French modernization and the Hebrew Enlightenment models. To conclude, I discuss the high level of self-agency that characterized this totally native society and its impact on the foundation of the first Moroccan Zionist association in 1900.