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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Narrative Remembrance: Close Encounters Between Muslims and Jews in Morocco's Atlas Mountains Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4810v5hj Author Levin, Sarah Frances Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Narrative Remembrance: Close Encounters Between Muslims and Jews in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains by Sarah Frances Levin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Joint Doctor of Philosophy with the Graduate Theological Union in Jewish Studies and in the Designated Emphasis in Folklore in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Chana Kronfeld, Co-Chair Professor Charles L. Briggs, Co-Chair Professor Margaret Larkin Professor Naomi Seidman Professor Daniel J. Schroeter Spring 2017 Narrative Remembrance: Close Encounters Between Muslims and Jews in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains © Copyright by Sarah Frances Levin, 2017. All rights reserved. Abstract Narrative Remembrance: Close Encounters Between Muslims and Jews in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains by Sarah Frances Levin Joint Doctor of Philosophy in Jewish Studies with the Graduate Theological Union and in the Designated Emphasis in Folklore University of California, Berkeley Professor Chana Kronfeld, Co-Chair Professor Charles Briggs, Co-Chair This dissertation examines twentieth-century Jewish-Muslim relations in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains through oral traditions (anecdotes, jokes, songs, poetry duels) as remembered by Muslims and Jews in the twenty-first century. Jews had lived in these predominantly Berber- speaking regions for over one thousand years; yet these rural Jewish communities had almost completely disappeared by the early 1960s, due to mass emigration, largely to Israel. Despite the totality of the rupture, Jews and Muslims retain vivid memories of their former neighbors. Drawing on my fieldwork with Muslims still living in Moroccan villages and with Jews in Israel who had emigrated from those same villages over half a century earlier, I use the anecdotes and songs that animate these reminiscences as my primary sources. My analysis is further informed by extensive research on Moroccan history and culture. My study reveals that Berber oral traditions functioned in the past—and continue to function in present-day reminiscences—as forms of creative acknowledgment of both difference and affinity between Jews and Muslims. Analyzing examples from this corpus illuminates aspects and nuances of the intricacies of daily life rarely addressed in other sources, facilitating a deeper understanding of the paradoxes and possibilities of Jewish/Muslim co-existence in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, and perhaps beyond. Central to my theoretical concerns, therefore, are interreligious cultural production and boundaries. Berber cultural traditions in particular offer a unique framework (for both participants and researchers) for addressing issues of boundaries and difference, while simultaneously elucidating the shared cultural worlds of Jews and Muslims in which oral traditions played a crucial role, and out of which came creativity, humor, and community. It was the engagement with difference, rather than its erasure, that fostered community and a rich intercultural life. 1 I begin with an investigation of the phenomenon of Arabic-speaking Jews among Berber- speaking Muslims, which also illuminates Jewish participation in Berber oral—and other cultural—traditions. Rather than a unidirectional acculturation of the minority into the majority culture, Berber cultural forms engaged by Muslims and Jews reflect a dynamic interchange. I posit the idea of Muslim-Jewish “co-productions” for many of the shared Berber oral traditions, particularly for the poetic duels. In my analysis of the recounted anecdotes and poems, I explore how Muslims and Jews not only speak of each other but also through each other’s voices. Through adaptation of Bakhtin’s theoretical concepts of dialogism and polyphony, I show how speaking in one another’s voices allows Muslim and Jewish narrators to express multiple and often contradictory meanings simultaneously. Throughout my analysis, I investigate how boundaries did not always fall neatly or predictably into religious categories, nor did the complex socio-political stratification fit into a simplified majority-minority binary. The nuanced views of Jewish-Muslim relationships that my project presents serve as a model for exploring such intercommunal relations beyond the temporal and geographic focus of my dissertation. My study serves as a corrective to simplified and polarized views of Jewish- Muslim relations prevalent in public spheres, media, and still, though to a lesser degree, in academia, and leads to an appreciation of the complexity and diversity of such relationships. 2 This dissertation is dedicated to my father, Aaron Raisin Levin, WHOSE CONSTANT CARE AND AFFECTION, HAVE BRIGHTENED MY EVERY PATH IN LIFE, AND BY WHOSE LIBERALITY, I HAVE BEEN PERMITTED TO VISIT FOREIGN LANDS… WITH A DAUGHTER’S LOVE AND A DAUGHTER’S REVERENCE (Another budget, or, Things which I saw in the East, Jane Anthony Eames, 1885) and in memory of my mother, Marcia Josel Levin, to whom I owe everything. i Table of Contents Chapter One Introduction: The Poetics of Difference 1 Chapter Two Affinity and Differentiation: The Role of Language in Negotiating Identity 22 Chapter Three Izza’s Song and Hanna’s Retort: Shared Creative Expression and Co-Production of Difference 42 Chapter Four The Poetics of Insults and Banter: Work and Everyday Encounters 63 Chapter Five Ambivalent Laughter: Religious Boundaries Breached, Removed, or Circumvented 84 Chapter Six Conclusion: The Saffron Path 107 Bibliography 110 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My gratitude first and foremost goes to all my wonderful narrators, whose voices enliven this dissertation, and without whom it would not exist. I only regret not being able to include them all, but even those not cited have significantly informed my work. This dissertation (research and writing) would not have been possible without the generous financial support of UC Berkeley’s Center for Jewish Studies Fellowships, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, the Irving and Helen Betz Traveling Fellowship, UC Berkeley’s Folklore Program Grant, the Posen Society of Fellows Dissertation Fellowship, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Doctoral Scholarship. As those who know me well, everything I do takes a village! I would not have achieved this without immense support in too many ways to count. So, to all those whom I wish I had the time to thank individually here, you know who you are, and I am eternally grateful for your assistance and inspiration on so many levels. This dissertation would not have been completed (let alone started) without you. iii CHAPTER ONE Introduction: The Poetics of Difference … Nor have I ever gotten anywhere near to the bottom of anything I have ever written about…. Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. It is a strange science whose most telling assertions are its most tremulously based, in which to get somewhere with the matter at hand is to intensify the suspicion, both your own and that of others, that you are not quite getting it right. — Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures DISSERTATION DESCRIPTION Jews and Muslims had lived together in the predominantly Berber-speaking villages of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains for well over one thousand years until the mass emigration of the Jews, primarily to Israel, in the 1950s and 1960s. Little is written of how these two religious populations lived together and interacted on a daily basis, and oral sources are quickly disappearing as the last generations who had firsthand experience of the intercommunal life pass. In 2011-2012, and summers in subsequent years, I conducted fieldwork with Muslims in numerous Moroccan Atlas Mountain villages, and with Jews in Israel who had immigrated from those same villages (or ones nearby). My intention was to investigate how their twenty-first century reminiscences of their lives together, particularly as expressed through oral traditions, might enrich understanding of twentieth century Muslim-Jewish relations in the Atlas Mountains, and perhaps have implications that extend beyond this time and place. Despite the totality of the rupture, elder Muslims and Jews retain vivid memories of their former neighbors, preserved in part in stories, songs, and jokes. The oral narratives that animate their memories illuminate a past that is shared yet replete with ambivalence and contradictions, articulating difference yet revealing intimacy in their relationships with one another. While villagers’ lives were clearly bounded by religious identity, present-day oral accounts reveal a shared localized cultural identity as well. Using the firsthand reminiscences as my primary sources, my analysis is further informed by extensive research of archival and published works, consultation with specialists, and by previous fieldwork I conducted for a different project.1 Despite religious differences and a socio-political hierarchy in which Jews were the only religious minority under a ruling Muslim majority, Muslims and Jews had for centuries led intertwined and interdependent lives in hundreds of Atlas Mountain villages. While each group 1 Prior to embarking on graduate