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Beyond the Saharan Cloak: Uncovering Jewish Identity from Southern Morocco and Throughout the Sahara

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Beyond the Saharan Cloak: Uncovering Jewish Identity from Southern Morocco and Throughout the Sahara UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Title Beyond the Saharan Cloak: Uncovering Jewish Identity from Southern Morocco and throughout the Sahara Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7rc4d9p5 Journal Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 39(2) ISSN 0041-5715 Author Levi, Janice R. Publication Date 2016 DOI 10.5070/F7392031104 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Part II Beyond the Saharan Cloak: Uncovering Jewish Identity from Southern Morocco and throughout the Sahara Janice R. Levi Abstract From the end of the medieval period into the early modern era, regional anti-Semitic violence in Northwest Africa forced Jews to convert and/or flee into other lands. A legacy of imposed invisibil- ity, through illegality of Judaism and fear of expressing a Jewish faith identity, was a consequence of intolerance towards Jews. For their own safety, Jewish persons had to conceal their faith iden- tity. In doing so, what appears to be a lack of Jewish presence may simply be a strategic concealment of one’s interior faith conviction. This paper explores how Western institutional oversight, by orga- nizations and scholars, continually perpetuates the impression of Jewish absence from these spaces. Further, the paper seeks to chal- lenge a visible lack of Jewish presence in West Africa by analyzing the complexity of conversion and investigating seemingly “invis- ible” identities. Lastly, the paper examines how the efforts of Jewish persons to become undetectable have contributed to the historical elisions of Jewish presence in West Africa. “The cemetery of the Jews in Timbuktu is today a simple dune covered in shrubs, without epitaphs. This is the lost domain of some forgotten deaths in history.” —Ismael Diadie Haïdara 1 When faced with adversity, the expression “fight or flight” is too simple a binary to understand the Jewish response to historical moments of persecution if understood as a physical movement alone. Rather than merely looking at corporeal movement, which often accompanied other responses, one must evaluate how new personas evolved in response to political shifts in order to conceal a Jewish faith identity and how this evolution was a more passive © 2016 All Rights Reserved. Ufahamu 39:2 Spring 2016 110 UFAHAMU and often camouflaged attempt to resist the climate and policies intolerant of the Jewish faith. This paper seeks to understand this faith and identity transition, specifically with Jews of Morocco after the Iberian expulsion into the 18th century, and how the his- tory of these Jews is largely overlooked once within or south of the Sahara. First, the paper recognizes the “misdirected” histories that have contributed to the scholastic and cultural concealment of Jewish persons within and south of the Sahara, and additionally how western institutions neglected these southern populations, rendering them invisible. Second, it identifies the complexity of Jewish persons who elected to cloak their identities to avoid per- secution and what methodological approaches must be taken to recognize these mechanisms of disguise. Finally, I engage the small body of literature documenting the experiences of Moroccan and Saharan Jews, which will aid in the uncovering of identities and the construction of this history. Thus, I hope to draw attention to this demographic who was motivated to relocate to or remain in Northwest Africa during the metaphorical seesaw of toleration prevalent in this multi-century timeframe. Misdirected Histories: the Southern Blind and the Saharan Cloak2 The history of Judaism in Morocco is a pivotal site for understand- ing the migration and presence of Jews in the 15th-18th centuries in Northwest Africa. The treatment of Jews in Morocco consider- ably shaped the transmission and maintenance of Jewish religion and culture throughout the Sahara and beyond. However, the preservation of Jewish identity was threatened due to the climate of intolerance, which culminated with the official expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in the last decade of the 15th century. The heightening of atrocities against Jewish persons con- tinued to fluctuate for the next few centuries into the Inquisition era. This continuation of persecution and prejudice contributed to the recurrent movement south into regions more tolerant of Jewish identity and/or the motivation to reject old and develop new external identities. The geographical scope of this paper incorporates countries connected to the Sahara Desert, were engaged in trans-Saharan commerce, and/or had links to the Portuguese crown. Similarly, LEVI 111 this area is an important region, as its northern edge is situated just next to the Iberian Peninsula, its coastal cities were territories of the Portuguese empire, and Jewish persons were heavily involved in the trade of the region. We can consider that the influx in the Jewish population was due to both increasing persecution in the Iberian Peninsula and, coincidentally, better commercial opportu- nities.3 It should be noted, however, in these regions being studied, Jewish persons still maintained restricted freedoms—whether as property of the crown in the territories or under dhimmi status with their co-religionists in Morocco, which ultimately led to addi- tional veneers and external identities that did not reflect their interior faith.4 The disregard of Jewish communities that existed in such close proximity to the Iberian Peninsula and with established connections to Jewish and Iberian networks is an unfortunate scholarly oversight.5 In his article “The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492,” Henry Kamen suggests that the number of Jews who left Spain was in fact quite small, especially when compared to other sources available.6 His argument is based on the attempt to quantify, through tax documentation, the actual number of Jews and persons whom documents record emigra- tion and a later return to Spain.7 His geographical focus is largely situated in Iberia and the northern Mediterranean coasts and highlights persons who oscillate between Spain, Portugal, and other southern European countries. The article falls short of criti- cally analyzing the state of Portuguese Jews and their subsequent expulsion, as its impact also affected Iberian refugees who had fled there a few years before. Furthermore, eliding Jewish activity in and emigration to Africa is a weakness, as records indicate that, due to geographical proximity and economic ties to the crown, Jewish persons were already acting on behalf of the crown in the imperial territories.8 Thus, Kamen is seemingly interested in track- ing the number of Jews who were physically present in Spain in the few years surrounding the 1492 decree. In fact, he argues Jews who left Spain for Portugal merely returned once Judaism became illegal in Portugal.9 This migration pattern is simply too limited, as Kamen does not fully acknowledge the extent of migration of Jews (Portuguese and Spanish refugees) to the south, namely in Africa.10 112 UFAHAMU Just as Kamen did not have a southern gaze, many scholars of Jewish Africa fail to direct their eyes into and past the Sahara. Within the scholarship of Jewish history in North Africa, there are limited texts addressing Jewish involvement in the south, into, and/ or beyond the Sahara. Most of these texts discuss the role of Jews as merchants and financiers in trans-Saharan trade but do not address notions of (dual) identities, faith practices, motivations, or the fate of these Jewish persons.11 It should also be noted that cat- egories of periodization and analyses created in the West also lend to the obscuration of Jewish activity leading up to the expulsion and Inquisition. For instance, convivencia, a term coined by Span- ish scholar Américo Castro in the 20th century, contributes to the neglected gaze of the condition of Jewish persons and is seemingly a scholastic attempt to conceal an undercurrent of instability.12 In addition to the “southern blind,” or a geographical cloak, where scholars have failed to look south for Jewish popula- tions, one must consider other Western institutions that similarly directed their gaze away from the south. Daniel Schroeter and Joseph Chetrit point out that the “rural south” was largely, if not fully, ignored by the Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU).13 The AIU, established in the last half of the nineteenth century, arguably contributed to the “cloaking,” or overlooking (to say the least), of minority Jewish communities in Morocco.14 Mikhaël Elbaz explained the goal of the AIU was to “emancipate Moroc- can Jews by teaching them the narratives of Western civilization.”15 This furthered the marginalization of small communities whose continuation of faith practices, which were more closely aligned to Mosaic Law and more common pre-expulsion, were increas- ingly seen as a non-Westernized Judaism.16 This was undoubtedly one of many steps toward the divide of normativized and “anti- quated” communities. Miriam Bodian’s study on the shift in Judaic narrative to provide a “republican” Greco account mirroring the civilization mythology of the West common in post-expulsion communities even further divides the “rural south,” which would seemingly be associated with Bodian’s “biblical Hebrews” to the “civilized” north.17 As attention was focused on cities with a larger demographic of Jews in Morocco and the Mahgrib more largely, the communities that harbored smaller percentages of Jews quickly fell away from the global/normative gaze, were further ostracized, and consequently forgotten. This lack of attention, led LEVI 113 by the AIU, set a trend in focusing attention to Jewish communi- ties in the north. Schroeter and Chetrit also acknowledge the role of colonialism in creating the divide between the north and “rural south.” The north, whose urban centers were largely affected by Western rule, ideologies, and shifts in religious praxis conflicted with the neglect of colonial officials of the “rural south,” who maintained their practices and system of religious governance.18 This divide between the “rural south” and urban, or perhaps “westernized,” north became internalized in the treatment of Jews from these regions.
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