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Moroccan Research of Its Jewish Community

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Moroccan Research of Its Jewish Community Jewish Thought in Arab Societies, 1880-1960 May 26-28, 2014, The Chaim Herzog Center, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Blad ma-fihash Yahud […] - Moroccan Research of its Jewish Community Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli The point of departure of my paper is the introductory note for this workshop which indicates a recent rise in the research of Middle Eastern Jews. The workshop's organizers suggest that this rise is a "result of regional changes on the one hand, and the growing interest in the history of the Jews of the Middle East on the other", and that "[…] it is possible to state with confidence that after many decades of relative neglect, the history of the Jews in the modern Middle East has become a significant topic, and a relevant one, more than ever before." In line with these observations I shall discuss Moroccan academic research of Moroccan Jewry, evaluate its dynamics, and ask whether the workshop's opening statement applies to Morocco as well. This paper follows a chronological order and links historiography with political, academic, and discursive changes. Its aim is to study the role which the study of the Jews fulfills in modern Moroccan intellectual history and in popular discourses. On this basis I will propose that "Our Jews", their research, discussion, memory and re-invention form a vital part of Moroccan identity, even today after the massive emigration of the local Jewish community. I put forward the idea that a 1 growing academic preoccupation with a social void is a part of the formation of social identities encompassing and relating to that void. Although the paper focuses on intellectual production in post-colonial Morocco, I shall very briefly mention the colonial era, bearing in mind that Moroccan descriptions of its local Jewry occur much earlier (at least from the 11th century onwards).1 The importance of all these early texts for our study is central as the ethos, Pastness, and makeup in which today's ideas and concepts are rooted are there. However due to time and space restrictions of this paper I shall develop these aspects elsewhere. During the colonial era the French boosted ethnographic research and created a huge "database" of Moroccan society. This data was put into active use in the structuring of the colonial state, and to a certain degree it continues to be a part of post-colonial Moroccan practices and historiography. In regard to Moroccan Jewry the French ethnographic corpus created a mélange of facts, interpretations and stereotypes. The reports and texts about the Jews were ambivalent – sometimes considering them as an integral part of Moroccan society, and sometimes (in line with the French Divide-and-Rule policy) presenting local Jewry as different, for example, in its ability to absorb modernity and act as its agent.2 Post-colonial historiographies were not able to ignore this earlier and significant database; whether accepting its conceptualizations or rejecting them, it continued to 1 For example references to Jews appear in the 11th century Description of North Africa of the Andalusian scholar Abu-Ubeid al-Bakri. Some later examples are a 17th century volume about – Muslims of Jewish origin, as well as various texts written by Moroccan Jews, and rich – البلديون collections of 19th century travelers' literature. 2 The French Protectorate administration created a kind of a quasi-academic status – the "researcher- administrator", in which some of the most renowned French ethnologists of the Maghreb – like Roger Le-Tourneau, Marcel Vicaire, and Jacques Berque – matured. In addition to them a large number of less known civil-administrators wrote numerous researches and Memoires as part of their training process, and gathered a huge and detailed body of ethnographic information. 2 instill post-colonial texts – not as a direct copying but as a methodical framework and a most accessible resource of ideas and information. After a persistent struggle Morocco gained its independence in 1956. The country's first years witnessed a fierce competition for power between the Royal Court and the political parties. In parallel with this turmoil, and in connection with other factors, the mass emigration of Moroccan Jews had taken place. In a matter of 17 years (1948 – 1965) a quarter of a million Jews left Morocco. In 1965 only 10% of the once vibrant local Jewish community remained in its homeland. Those still in Morocco today are no more than 2% of their original number. Hence, since 1965 Moroccan Jewry, by and large, has become a memory. Its departure left a void in Moroccan society, which is accompanied by feelings of loss, shock, insult, and by many unanswered questions.3 The sudden disappearance of a basic constituent of society plays a major role in the Moroccan experience of modernity, which as elsewhere, involves an aspect of loss. The departure of the Jewish community became an illustration for the devastating effects of modernity. Hence, academic research became one of the arenas where these feelings and memories are investigated and reenacted. *** Moroccan historiography during the first years of independence had intensively dealt with the decolonization of historical research. It interrogated national identity, and searched for unifying factors instead of focusing on particular groups within Moroccan society (as often done by the colonialists). Under this discourse of nationalist unity not many specific researches were produced about the 3 As Jamaa Baïdâ – historian at Mohamed V University in Rabat, and the current director of the Moroccan National Archives – said: "the uprooting of the Jews is like a painful wound in Moroccan national history" (Baïdâ, pers. Comm). 3 Jews. This is apparent for example in the 1950s-60s volumes of Hesperis Tamuda, the journal regarded as the showcase of modern Moroccan research in the Humanities. The periodical's editing policy following independence pushed aside divisive subjects. Also when Germain Ayache, himself a Moroccan Jew, served as the editor of the journal from 1963 until he died in 1990 it published almost no articles dealing with Moroccan Jewry.4 A noticeable change in Jewish Studies in Moroccan academia occurred in the 1970s. This might have been connected with the spread, in those years, of the Annales theoretical approach that focuses on socio-economic questions. Regional dissertations produced at that time demonstrated the socio-economic importance of the local Jewish component for understanding Moroccan society as a comprehensive system. Many foreign researchers worked side by side with Moroccan historians in Morocco in the 1970s. These included former colonial Frenchmen like Jacques Berque and Paul Pascon who now turned left-wing and severely criticized colonialism, as well as American anthropologists: David Hart, Clifford and Hildred Geertz, Laurence Rosen, Ernest Gellner, Kenneth Brown and Dale Eickelman. All of these created a body of anthropological research which has given an additional theoretical thrust to investigations of the local social history, and added observations 4 Germain Ayache (1915-1990) was among the founders and activists of the Moroccan Communist Party. In the Protectorate period he taught in "Lyautey High school" in Casablanca. As a Jew he was fired from his job during the Vichy era. After the Second World War he was expelled by the French because of his Communist activity and returned to Morocco only with independence. He joined the department of History in the University of Rabat in 1960, where he was a faculty member until he died. Baïdâ (pers. Comm) notes that another indication for the scarceness of research about Moroccan Jews in the first decade after independence is the fact that in the 1967 "textbook" of Moroccan history – Histoire du Maroc – written by leading Moroccan and French historians of the 1960s (Brignon, Boutaleb, and more), the part dedicated for Moroccan Jewry is minimal. 4 presenting Moroccan Jewry as an integral constituent of Moroccan society (especially the works on Sefrou). Simultaneous with this historiographic turn, political tensions continued to rise in the kingdom and reached a climax in the beginning of the 1970s with two failed coup attempts against Hassan II. In the ensuing state building process orchestrated by the victorious Royal Court the Moroccan nation was portrayed as an eternal complex made of various, different yet complementing, ingredients – including a Jewish one – an ethos which exists in all levels of Moroccan society up to date. As part of the Kingdom's restructuring, Moroccan higher education system witnessed a major reform resulting in the establishment of numerous Humanities faculties throughout the country. This, coinciding with the methodological and theoretical developments, encouraged further researches that emphasized the complex and multi-faceted history of Morocco. Accordingly studies of the local Jewish history rose in number and expanded in scope.5 Noteworthy, the previous place held by Moroccan Jewish researchers within this discipline – scholars like Carlos de-Nesry, Abraham (Andre) Zagouri, Eli Malca, and Haim Zaafrani – had declined, while since the 1970s Muslim Moroccan researchers have taken the lead.6 5 A survey of academic writing in Morocco about its Jewish community from independence to nowadays reveals that until the end of the 1970s the number of publications on the subject was relatively low – with one or two publications per year. Also the themes of these publications were limited in comparison to what happened later. By then they included matters of law, linguistics, social-life, inter-religion relationships, and data about Anadalusian and Amazigh Jews, immigration and demography. 6 The rise in numbers of Moroccan publications on the local Jewry since the 1980s reflects broader processes involving disciplinary changes in historical research, the decentralization of the Moroccan academic system followed by the creation of many Humanities faculties, and the stabilization of the governmental system. Further legitimization for dealing with Jews might have been connected with the signing of peace treaties between Israel and some Arab countries – a process in which Morocco took part.
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