Possessing History
2016
Possessing History:
Contextualizing the Use of Narrative History in Moroccan-Jewish Studies
A DIVISION THREE BY: THEODORE SAUL MILLER
Under the Advisory Guidance of: Figure 1: A photograph hanging on the wall of the Office Aaron Berman (Co-Chair)
Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann (Member) Rachel Rubinstein (Co-Chair)
Cover Images, left to right: A photograph from Edmond Gabai’s collection of items left behind by Moroccan Jews leaving in Fes in between 1948-76 (taken by Author, 2016); and a photograph from a Mimouna Celebration in Casablanca in the 1950s (Dafina Archives)
Table of Contents: Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introducing Jewish Moroccan Heritage
Section 1.1: Introduction Pages 9-7
Section 1.2: Understanding History and Heritage Pages 10-17
Section 1.3: Framing the Dispute over Moroccan Jewish Heritage Pages 17-27
Section 1.4: Positionality and Methodology Pages 27-35
Chapter 2: Disputed Narratives of the “Historic” Maghreb
Section 2.1: Pre-Islamic Morocco (Before 750 CE) Pages 36-43
Section 2:2: The Early Islamic Monarchs (750-1000 CE) Pages 43-51
Section 2.3: The First “Moroccan” Empires (1000-1250 CE) Pages 51-59
Section 2.4: The Marinids and the Mellah (1250-1500 CE) Pages 59-67
Section 2.5: Sharifian Morocco (1500-1800 CE) Pages 67-73
Chapter 3: Narratives of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Oppression
Section 3.1: The Nineteenth Century Pages 93-79
Section 3.2: The French Protectorate Era (1912-1925) Pages 79-85
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Table of Contents (cont.)
Section 3.3: Moroccan Nationalism and Judaism (1925-1948) Pages 85-91
Section 3.4: Independence, Zionism, and Emigration. (1948 – 1975) Pages 92-104
Section 3.5: Developing Moroccan Nationalism (1957-1999) Pages 104-111
Section 3.6: Activists, Jews, and the Royal House in the Contemporary Era. (1999-2016) Pages 111-119
Chapter 4: The Significance of Contested Narrative in Heritage Power
Section 4.1: Introduction Pages 119-121
Section 4.2: The Optimism and Pessimism of the Jewish Historians Pages 121-128
Section 4.3: What is Concealed and What is Displayed in Moroccan Narratives. Pages 128-133
Section 4.4: The Jewish Point of Negotiation within Moroccan Heritage Pages 133-140
Bibliography Pages 140-151
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Acknowledgements The writing that unfolds on these pages is without a doubt dedicated to my late grandfather: Martin “Pa” Goldstein. I could say that for no reason other than the absurdly immense amount of excitement and self-importance that a ten year old me felt when I opened one of my grandfather’s many published works and saw my own name in the dedication, but the truth is that reason for this dedication goes deeper than that. The most I could ever hope this work to be is a presentation that includes in equal parts two things that can often feel hopelessly far apart from one another: a healthy combination of skepticism and nuance with a strong sense of ethics and principle. No one in my life has ever embodied these two things simultaneously more successfully than my grandfather, and without him I wouldn’t have even known how to begin to strive for them simultaneously.
A project of this size and scope can only come together as a result of a litany people’s knowledge and support. As a result I feel it would only be right to speak to everyone that I feel brought me to the place I am now, whether it be physically, academically, or emotionally. Even if this project had somehow gotten to this point as a solo effort, which is of course impossible, without the people who helped me along the way I would never be able to appreciate the progress I have made.
The first and probably most important of these acknowledgements goes out to the people who took the risk of adding their voices to the work of someone who many of them had just met, and thus trusted me to represent them honestly to the best of my ability. As this piece will demonstrate this is a topic of study that has had no shortage of people’s voices being misrepresented or wholly erased, and thus the trust that many of my guides were willing to put in me calls for the most sincere and deepest thanks that I can offer in return.
Abdulrahman Lmaloki and Ridouane Wind not only offered their thoughts and knowledge to this project countless times, but helped me feel a sense of belonging and welcome in their home city that no American honestly has the right to feel after two weeks in Fes.
Fahira, Roshdid, Hassan, and Mona, opened their homes up to me during my time in Fes, and fed me in a way that would make any Ashkenazi Grandmother jealous, which is an unspeakably more impressive feat than the 140 pages of work that I have produced.
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To everyone else in the Mellah who lent their voices to this work, I truly couldn’t have asked for better guides. I speak of the amount of times that all of your words amazed with a slight sense of shame, because I had no right to assume anything less of any of you. As someone fortunate enough to receive higher education, let me assure you that anyone who ever tells you that a degree means that they are smarter or have more valuable opinions then you is probably sour about spending too much of their lives inside.
To Elmehdi Bhoudra, Younis Abedour, and Michelle Madina, who also offered me both beds to sleep in and thoughts to learn from in Rabat and Casablanca; all of you played a very special role in my project. Of everyone who has guided me throughout this project you all offered some of the most sincere challenges to the ways I chose to think about and approach this work. I can only imagine that watching someone such as myself attempt to understand the incredible and complicated place you come from was painful and frustrating at points. It would not be my place to asses to whether I was able to truly honor your concerns, but I can say with certainty that my thinking was stronger because of them.
A special thanks also goes out to the guidance offered to me in Casablanca by Vannessa Paloma. Listening to and appreciating the importance of the many different, and often contradictory, narratives and opinions was no easy task, and at many times it was tempting to ignore the nuance I was being exposed to. In that sense your thoughts and guidance were a breath of fresh air and I would be wholly unsurprised if the person that one day manages to coherently make sense of all this and become the hero Youness Laghari joked about with me turns out to be you.
Both in Morocco and in the US, I also had the great privilege of learning from a great many scholarly minds whose research serves as the foundations that my own thesis is built upon. Aomar Boum, Mohammed Hatimi, Daniel Schroeter, Chris Silver, Peter Geffen, Zhor Rehilil, Jamaa Baida Youness Laghari, and others whose work I cited but did not directly speak to are the real MVPs of this project. The fact that people who have devoted their whole lives to this work were willing to lend some time to someone who has so far lent less than a year is something I will never forget, especially if I am fortunate enough to reach their level one day.
Such projects are, as is often forgotten, an effort that just as much calls for financial support as mental effort. The fact that Professor Jutta Sperling at the Hampshire College school
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of Critical Social Inquiry, was willing to trust me enough to lend me some of this financial support makes her another person who could not be left out from these acknowledgement. Credit is also due to Jackie Jefferies, and the funding and trust she was willing to show me. I extend the same deep appreciation to the people in charge of the Sander Theones grant, who somehow chose to support my work out of a list of many other great and equally deserving choices. In that vein I also extend a huge thank you to my late grandmother Gloria Wald, who among the many others things she did for me left me some of the money that made this project happen.
The legs of this project may have been my own, but the people who taught those legs to walk were the amazing members of my committee; Aaron Berman, Rachel Rubenstein and Rachel Engmann. Not only did each of these people bring a unique and useful insight and perspective to this project, but they took up the task of reading, editing, and revising the many drafts and iterations of this project. As one can imagine based on the length of my work, this was no small feat, and as former student of theirs who they assigned lengthy readings at points, I great admire their dedication. On top of that, all of my committee managed to be calm and reassuring when I myself often failed to be, and as such they are the pilots that should be applauded after this plane’s smooth landing.
Aaron Berman has been there since pretty much the beginning of my Hampshire career, and rest assured has seen many up and downs. Without your support in these rough patches I doubt I would be able to see how important my failings were in getting me to the end of my Division III.
Rachel Rubinstein signed on to my committee despite knowing very little about what it might be like to work with me as a student. This project came from a time in my life when I began to think more seriously about my own Jewishness, and Rachel was crucial in helping me formulate these thoughts into real analysis that could play a role in my essay. In your role as a chair you not only helped keep my project together physically, but as the person who helped me reignite my interested in Judaic studies you also held my project together philosophically.
Rachel Engmann’s place in my committee was equally indispensable. Without you I’m not sure if I ever would have gotten to go to Morocco, which looking back it seems ridiculous that I once thought that I could embark on this project without that trip. One of my proudest
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moments in this semester came when I told a housemate of mine the title of my Div, and he said without missing a beat that it sounded “very Rachel Engmann.”
My final acknowledgements go out to my friends and family, which is a lengthy task when one has so many friends that are also family and family that are also friends. My parents, Aviva and Rich, my grandmother Inge, and my uncle Ricky (who long ago took me on my very first trip in Morocco) also put work into reading this and offered incredible insight. Everyone else who helped make me the person I am today; I know if I were to thank all of you then these acknowledgements would be longer then my thesis itself. I can’t go without mentioning some of your names though, so Ella, Avi, Ari, Willy, Tatanka, Ian, Monty, Damien, Helena, Titty, Jacob, Noah, Oren, Luke, Bogey, Samantha, Alec, Kiera, Nora, Ben, Dalton, Aimee….. all of you already know I love you. Regardless of the good and bad moments I’ve had with each of you, because of you guys I’ve been blessed with enough friends to make the top-scoring quarterback at a suburban high school jealous.
If you, the reader, have sat through all of this than you probably deserve an acknowledgement of your own. You didn’t realize it, but I’ve spent the past few pages introducing you to a wonderful tradition that is shared by many Moroccan and many Jews: thank yous and goodbyes lengthy enough to make everyone in the room hate you. If this was my wedding speech then my best men, Willy and Helena, would be asleep in their chairs and my unlucky partner would be filing for a divorce. This isn’t my wedding however, so instead of cake alcohol and dancing, I can only hope to offer what many would agree is the next best thing. That is of course, approximately 36,000 words of analysis of various representations of Jewish history in Morocco. If after finishing this Div III, you truly believe that I lied in calling it the next best thing to good food and inebriation, come find me and I will buy you a drink and we can talk about Lil’ Wayne.
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Chapter 1: Introducing Jewish Moroccan Heritage
Section 1.1: Introduction
More often than not, one’s understanding of history is closely tied to how they choose to identify themselves, ethnically, religiously, politically, or socially. As we build these identities we come to understand certain events in the past as “our” history: a series of occurrences that were experienced by our ancestors or compatriots that define who we are and what we struggle with today. Identities however, are intersectional as opposed to singular, and it is not uncommon to feel the pull of multiple histories as one tries to determine one’s own personal identity, and build compound identities. The compound identity that this paper focuses on is Moroccan-
Jewish, a composite whose legitimacy has been at times called into question by both the political and academic worlds. In this study, I will look at these various attempts to construct or delegitimize a Moroccan-Jewish identity by those who are often looked at as holding the power to shape it, and contrast these attempts with the thoughts of those who are trying to navigate their own relationship with Jewish history in
Morocco.
This paper was born out of a trip that I took to Morocco in 2012 with a group of fellow
North American Jews, to meet with and learn from the Mimouna Club; a group of Muslim students at Morocco’s Al-Akhawayn University Figure 2 Members of the Mimouna Club in front of the Casablanca Jewish dedicated to preserving and spreading Museum. (Boum, 2014) awareness of the sizable Jewish population that lived in the region until the second half of the
Twentieth century. Such a meeting was considered by the coordinators and many of the
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participants as a challenge to perceptions of an irreparable divide between Jews and Muslims, especially those from Arabic speaking countries, which had grown out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This interaction was framed as something uniquely Moroccan, and a large part of what we discussed with each other involved how peaceful and productive exchanges between Muslims and Jews were a salient feature of Moroccan history. This concept, of challenging a contemporary frame of thinking through a new perspective on history is what lead me to the questions I will seek to answer in this thesis.
In that regard I aim to accomplish three tasks in this paper. First I seek to illuminate the process of “heritage construction,” by which the past is organized into a recognizable narrative that aims to help people in the present build a picture of their ethnic, social, and political identity.
My aim in this first chapter will be to locate the construction of progressive historical narratives as a phenomenon that arises out of a specific time period to address certain needs, and show how this phenomenon manifested in both Moroccan and Jewish communities. Secondly, in my second and third chapter, I will review the history of Morocco and the Jewish communities within it as toldby those who are invested with authority on history, from anthropologists and historians to journalists and politicians, and those not in those positions of power who are often wrongfully viewed as the passive absorbers of historical narratives. Here we will see several points where historians have been challenged by different narrators in order to build a sense of what
Moroccan-Jewish heritages means. In my final chapter I will discuss how these disputes over what constitutes the Moroccan-Jewish story are understood by various parties in the present day.
Through this discussion I hope to highlight the complexity of the relationship between the authority and the so-called passive absorber, and show how a more nuanced understanding could advance the interfaith ambitions of Moroccan-Jewish dialogues.
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This research comes at a time when non-Jews in Morocco and Jews of a non-Moroccan origin are beginning to grapple more seriously with the questions and debates surrounding the
Moroccan-Jewish community. Among some of the recent events that best demonstrate this are efforts by prominent Ashkenazi Jews1 to achieve greater recognition within the larger Jewish community of the efforts of the late Moroccan King
Mohammed V to protect
Moroccan Jews from
Hitler and his supporters in Vichy France during the Holocaust; as well as efforts by the current
Moroccan King Figure 3 Andre Azoulay (a Jewish advisor to the Moroccan Monarchy) reads a speech prepared by current Moroccan King Mohammed V at a conference in honor of efforts Mohammed VI to bring made to save Moroccan Jews during the Holocaust (Cohen, 2015)
Jewish Moroccan History into the public eye, including a 2011 revision to the nation’s constitution that naming “Hebraic culture” as an integral part of Moroccan heritage. These and other events come not just from a desire to make progress on issues of estrangement, but also an attempt to redefine the connection that people living today that identify with Morocco or Judaism
(or both) have with memory and history.
1 Ashkenazi is one of many terms that attempts to capture the enormous diversity of world Jewish communities, specifically referring to Jews with roots in Northern and Eastern Europe.
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Section 1.2: Understanding History and Heritage
The idea that the past can be recalled as a story is not one likely strike the casual observer, and many of those more actively involved in the study of the past, as a subjective statement. Indeed from the perspective of the English speaker the idea of the story of the past is etymologically imbedded in the term history itself. When we speak however, of a linguistic connection in English, we might question whether or not history has been understood differently throughout different time periods and cultures. Goode suggests the most popular and widely agreed upon definition of history (in terms of the English language) stems back to a movement in
19th century Great Britain that sought to transform history from a “branch of letters loosely affiliated with philosophy and literature” to an unbiased analysis of the past that “many of its practitioners regarded as a science.”2 This is not to suggest that a search for empirical fact of the past is uniquely a product of Western European, as much as to remind the reader that when we speak of “history” as a term, we are speaking of academic approach to history that strives for impartiality.
At a basic level, studying the story of the past has been understood through the axiom dooming those who do not learn history to repeating it. Within this statement is an implication of progressive narratives, where civilizations study history to “better” themselves. While this approach may seem like a natural one, the concept of progressive civilization is not necessarily a chronological or geographical constant. Anderson describes how this attitude may have differed from previous European conceptions of history when he states that the “mediaeval Christian mind had no conception of history as cause and effect, and of a radical separation between past
2 2009, Page 3.
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and present.”3 Another alternative view to progressive history, with far more relevance to this project, comes from the 13th century North African historian Ibn Khaldun. In the introduction to
Khaldun’s Kitab Al-Ibar, his history of the world, he suggests that history moves in cyclic pattern as various dynasties and empires rise, centralize, and collapse, only to be replaced by a successor that will follow the same pattern.4 Progressive narratives must therefore be recognized as a specific trend within the study of the past, and not the discipline’s singular or most natural form.
If we are to recognize the view of history progressing forward as only one way to study of the past, we must try to understand when and why this perspective arose. The progressive historical narrative is a phenomenon that is most commonly linked to the rise of nationalism in
18th and 19th century Europe. Nationalism is described by Anderson as the formation of political entities, nation-states, which endeavor to represent an imagined community. The imagined community is a form of shared identity that serves to link people in disparate regions of a country. Such a community can often be built around linguistic or ethnic similarities, but also around a sense of cultural continuity, or a shared philosophy. For example, the Kingdom of
Morocco’s 2011 Constitution refers to the state as “a nation whose unity is based on the fully endorsed diversity of its constituents,” suggesting that the nation-state is unified by an acceptance of its diversity, as opposed to a singular ethno-linguistic or cultural identity.5
Imagined communities are not imagined accidently, but understanding how they come about can be a complex task. In this essay I would suggest, as many have before me, that such communities are largely built through a shared conceptualizations of the past, which sees the
3 1991. Page 23. 4 Alrefai and Brun. 2004. 5Jefri J. Ruchti, trans., Draft text of the Constitution adopted at the Referendum of 1 July 2011
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people or ideals represented in nation state as having preceded the polity itself. Such a conceptualized can be found for instance within the National Anthem of Israel, Hatikvah, in its rooting of the desire for the contemporary nation-state within a long history:
Our [Jewish Peoples] hope – the two thousand year old hope will
not be lost / To be a free people in our land / the land of Zion and
Jerusalem. [Translated by Author]6
Such sentiment is significant not just because it sets up a historical precedent for a state that is both Jewish and centered around ownership of a specific geographic area, but also because it implies a historical progression where the two thousand year old hope has been completed through Israeli independence. Thus the history of an imagined community is often not just linear but also progressive, as doing so equates the nation-state with progress itself.
One might at this point argue that it would be wrong to suggest that the sentiments of the
Moroccan Constitution or Hatikvah are “imagined,” if they are both rooted in historical circumstance. One might demonstrate this by pointing out the several Jewish ceremonies and traditions that idealize a return to Jerusalem or point to the large number of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups that inhabited the area that now constitutes the Moroccan nation state prior to its creation. A more descriptive way to refer to this imagination might be what Connerton calls a process of historical reconstruction.7 As opposed to the ideal of the historian as an impartial narrator, historical reconstruction suggests that portraying the past is always a matter of subjective interpretation. First hand witnesses, artifacts, and primary documents give us
6 While it is worth noting that Hatikvah was written several decades prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, the state’s adoption of it as a “national anthem” represents a desire to connect the nation to the ideals of the poem. 7 1989.
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implicitly myopic windows into the past; and through historical reconstruction these glimpses are deliberately strung together into a cohesive narrative by the historian. For example, the spiritual desire for a “return to Jerusalem” is interpreted as the desire for a sovereign nation-state. In this sense the historian becomes a facilitator of primary engagement with the narratives that hold together imagined communities.
Academia is not the only setting where one might engage with a theoretical past, as examples such as a national anthem or constitution remind us, which brings us to the concept of heritage. Harrison refers to heritage as a “summation of objects, places, and practices” that aim to “[recreate] the past in the images of the present.”8 Thus the conglomeration of physical and metaphysical objects that is understood as heritage serves as a popularized version of progressive history, where the past is mobilized to understand and improve the present.
Zionist thinker Theodor Herzl’s 1946 assertion that assimilation into gentile societies is impossible for European Jews because they “are what the ghetto made [them],” could be considered such a mobilization of heritage because it seeks to understand a contemporary (at the time of Herzl’s writing) issue as shaped by a specific historical condition.9 Herzl’s statement also seeks to assign an ownership to this a specific history that exists regardless of the subject’s knowledge of it. Whether or not a hypothetical European Jew has the same awareness or perception of their history as Herzl does is irrelevant to Herzl, because that Jew is still a product of the history he is highlighting.
This hypothetical person, who is a product of a history they themselves are not aware of, helps illustrate the link between heritage and the academic discipline of history. When Harrison
8 2009, Pages 9-10. 9 Page 37.
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refers to the summation objects, places, and practices he acknowledges the multiple ways in which heritage might be constructed. For example, even if a Jewish person has never read a history book before, they may have participated in a celebration of Pesach (Passover in English), in which certain traditions aim to help recreate the hardships and lifestyles of Jews during the exodus from Egypt described within the Torah. Unlike the ghettos of European mediaeval cities, the Jewish exodus from Egypt is an event that many historians question. However both Herzl’s quote about the ghetto and traditions of a Pesach celebration seek to connect present-day Jewish people to a long history of suffering and oppression.
What we must remember however is that these different avenues of heritage construction cannot be neatly separated into factual and imagined. Indeed the two can often be interwoven, especially in the heritage of a faith-based community such as Judaism. We can see how Jewish social memory may consist of a complementary combination of history and simulation, by looking at the Jewish holiday of Tisha Ba’av. Tisha Ba’av (literally referring to a date on the
Jewish calendar, the ninth day of the month of Av) is a holiday where orthodox observance entails fasting in remembrance of the destruction of two temples in Jerusalem, about 600 years apart. However, contemporary observance of Tisha Ba’av in both secular and orthodox
Figure 4 The Western Wall (Kotel in Jerusalem during Tish Ba’av. (Enkin, 2014)
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communities recasts it as a date that has repeatedly coincided with a series of tragic events for
Jewish communities’ worldwide.10 Although interpretation vary about which events should and should not be included on Tisha Ba’av, generally shared elements include the failure of Bar
Kochba’s revolt, the expulsion of Jews from medieval England, and the breakdown of Israeli-
Arab peace discussions.11 Thus in Tisha Ba’av we see the interweaving of events that can be historically reconstructed with those whose authenticity can only be justified through faith in spiritual texts, resulting in a participatory ceremony observed both secularly and religiously on a large scale that portrays an overarching feeling of Jewish memory and experience.12
Another lesson we can draw from our earlier examples is that the producers of heritage, from the historian to the composer, are not necessarily the dictators of it. However, if we are to understand heritage as the result of such a variety of factors, it becomes difficult to locate any person or force as a singular creator of heritage. The power of heritage creation is labeled by
Harrison as authorized heritage discourse (AHD), which he describes as the influence that a nation-state or other authority can have on public understandings of heritage. The transnational quality of AHD is illustrated in the contemporary world by organizations such as the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Culture Organization (UNESCO). One of the major responsibilities of UNESCO is the naming of world heritage sites; designated by the organization’s 1972 charter as something “natural” or “historic” that will benefit “the entirety of world citizenry.” The significance of the invocation of phrases such as “world citizenry” has been argued by Harrison to represent an attempt to establish an authority on heritage that is,
10 Ellis, 2006 11 Landsberg, 2016 12 Ynet, 2010
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albeit symbolically, above that of a single government. 13This is not to deemphasize the role that
a nation-state can play in the production of AHD, but
acknowledge the multiple levels on which heritage power
can be exerted.
In the instance of Moroccan-Jewish Heritage, where
we have multiple competing historical narratives,
unraveling the role of AHD and potentially manipulative or
harmful historical reconstruction requires examining several
different components of the process. In this regard I will
examine the role of both producers and authorities (both
Figure 5 Plaque denoting the UNESCO World Heritage internal and external to Morocco) in conceptualizing Site at Volubilis Morocco (taken by author, 2016) historical narratives and heritage. Furthermore I will also
highlight the opinions of what we might refer to as the participant or receiver of heritage, people
that are considered neither authorities nor producers. I believe that the participant is rarely a
passive absorber of heritage, but rather has their own agency in interpreting public discourses.
Thus through this holistic view of the imagined community that frames the Moroccan nation-
state, I hope to understand not only how the confines of this community are produced and
defined, but also how they are understood and received.
13 Page 63
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Section 1.3: Framing the Dispute over Moroccan Jewish Heritage
When I was shooting [my] film, I was dealing with a lot of
emotions, and a lot of people, even historians, that were hiding
some facts because they don’t want to show what’s happened
exactly. One has to give the facts, all the facts, and explain the
context. By doing this work, one can show and one can explain
what happened. But if someone ever succeeded in that work they
are like a mythical hero.
- Youness Laghari, Director of Moroccan Jews:
Destinies Undone. (2015)
The dispute over Moroccan-Jewish heritage can be framed as an intersection of multiple authorized heritage discourses, with each narrative speaking to contemporary concerns and beliefs. Therefore although the debate involves close to two millennia of history, the discourse is closely tied to more recently established concepts of nationhood and identity for both world
Jewry and the Moroccan nation-state. One could not rationally dispute the existence of a Jewish community in Morocco that existed there for at least several centuries, but what is instead being questioned is whether the imagined community built around the Moroccan nation-state is inclusive to Jewish heritage and peoples or has openly rejected them.
This question is not unique to the Moroccan nation-states, and is actually part of a process which has been referred to as the “Jewish Question;” a sort of trope that has appeared in some form in almost every nation-state with a Jewish population. The specific use of the phrase
Jewish Question is believed to date back to a 1753 debate in England over whether or not Jews
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should be granted the rights of citizenship and opportunities to run for Parliament, in return for loyalty to the current king. According to Dawidowicz14, the term “Jewish Question” was employed equally by proponents of Jewish Emancipation15 as the opposition. A text published in
1843 by a German Christian named Bruno Bauer titled The Jewish Question postulated that
Jewish communities could only integrate within the nation state if Jews abandoned their religious affiliations. The philosophy of Zionism also arises out of this era, as a movement internal to
European Jewish communities that saw the Jewish people as an imagined community in its own right, and as such should strive to strengthen that community instead of integrating into
European ones. Herzl, a founding figure of the Zionist movement, frames his pamphlet The
Jewish State 16around the Jewish Question. In a chapter titled The Jewish Question, Herzl highlights different forms of social exclusion and persecution that Jewish communities throughout Europe face and have faced, and suggests the phenomenon is worsening, an example of narrative history that is regressive rather than progressive.
Ultimately Herzl suggests that true integration and emancipation for Jews is an impossibility, even if codified by law. Herzl’s assertion was verified for many European Jews by the anti-Jewish violence of Nazism. In particular when we look at those who were targeted for annihilation by Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” we can see those who had
Jewish ancestry but did not practice as part of the religious and spiritual community were still treated as Jews. The establishment of independent states in Morocco and the rest of the Middle
East and North Africa, was also an era of mass exodus of Jews from that region. Events such as these are organized in a narrative of Jewish-Zionist heritage, where the lesson to be learned from
14 1975 15 In 18th Century Europe, Jewish Naturalization was often referred to as Emancipation. 16 1896
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history is that a non-Jewish state does not allow Jewish peoples the opportunity to integrate.17 By constituting Judaism itself as an imagined community, Jewish identity becomes ancestral and cultural as well as spiritual, and as such the histories and heritage of different Jewish communities throughout the world are interwoven into a singular narrative.
As a result of the way the Jewish Question has unfolded in Morocco, one of the major themes of the disputes we will see in this paper is to what extent Jews in different historical eras were marginalized and threatened, and what opportunities they had at integration both before and after the establishment of the nation state. Before going further though, we must briefly discuss the significance of the terminology we use to discuss the marginalization of Jewish communities.
The most commonly recognized term to describe animosity towards Jewish peoples is anti-
Semitism, which originates in the mid-nineteenth century writings describing the conditions of
European Jewry.18 This terminology arises out of a time when Jews were most often characterized as a racial and ethnic group as well as a religious one. As such, anti-Semitism has been critiqued as a misleading term both by those who don’t see Judaism as singular race or ethnicity as well as those that point out that the term Semitic has a much wider definition than just Jewish people.19 The very notion of classifying Jews as a race, functioned for anti-Semites as a denial of Jewish integration, assigning them a cultural status that was viewed as morally contemptible and unable to assimilate into the European nation-state. Rosenblum (2007) suggests that anti-Semitism uses the idea of Jewish nationality to associate Jews with other identities that were treated as implicitly subversive:
17 Mufti, 2007 18 Bein, 1990 19 Brustein 2004
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From the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Third Reich to the Red
Scare and the War on Terror, “the west” has historically targeted
Asians, Arabs, and Jews as mysterious, dishonestly and
manipulatively intelligent, overly sensual, war-like, and
barbarically loyal to their ‘tribe.’20
As will be demonstrated throughout this essay, treatment of Jews as a foreign element
imbued with the qualities listed by Rosenblum is not by any means the only context by which
Jewish communities throughout history have
been subjugated and threatened. This is
especially relevant in relationship to
Morocco, because for much (though not at
all) of the region’s history the threats and
discrimination that Jews did face was not
based in the same sentiments as anti-Semitism
in the way that it is conceptualized by
Rosenblum. When I chose to use the term
anti-Semitism in this paper, it will be
specifically in reference to sentiments and
actions that are based on the idea that Jews
are an ethnic group who are both unable to
Figure 6: Given as 18th century Anti-Jewish ideologies in Europe (ant-Semitism) integrate into gentile societies and seek were centered on inscription of ethnic identity to Jewish peoples, this era saw the rise of stereotypes that associated Jews with certain physical characteristics. (Harap, 2013) to intentionally subvert those societies.
20 Page 7.
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When describing opposition and oppression towards Jewish communities that do not fall under these lines I will instead use the more generalized term: Anti-Jewish.
The purpose of this differentiation is not to suggest that the specific kind of anti-Jewish sentiments that arose out of 19th century Europe are objectively worse than conditions that Jews faced elsewhere. What I wish to acknowledge however is the existence of a very specific mindset that is based in the logic of 19th century European racism, and that the term “anti-Semitism” is by definition a reflection of that mindset. There is of course no hermitically sealed border between patterns of thought in Europe and patterns of thought in North Africa, and anti-Semitism is thus by no means a phenomenon limited to the geographic area where it was birthed. However I would argue that one cannot hope to understand the Jewish story in North Africa without first understanding that anti-Semitism describes only a part of a larger story about both oppression and coexistence.
The Jewish question in
Morocco cannot be answered however by Jews alone, and we cannot discuss the role of
Jews within the Moroccan nation state without first understanding the conceptualization of the imagined community around Figure 7 Political Map of cities and major topographical sites in Morocco, not including the it. The pernicious nature of disputed Sahara territory. (Picture from Vidiani.com) locating historical continuity for the modern day nation state of Morocco is well represented by
21 |Possessing History
the state etymology. In Arabic, the region roughly corresponding to the modern day nation-state and kingdom was known as either Al-Maghreb or Al-Maghreb Al-Aqsa, meaning either the west or the far west, and reflecting the region’s location on the western periphery of the Islamic world.
However the political entities that reigned in this region were labeled, not with geography, but with the name of the ruling dynasty. In modern standardized Arabic, Al-Maghreb refers to the nation state of Morocco, with a citizen of the state being Maghrebi.21 English speakers also use the word Maghreb, but in order to describe the larger region corresponding to the states of
Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Morocco, the term used by most European languages for the geographical region and modern political entity, stems from the term Moor, which in term stems from the Spanish word for black, alluding to medieval Spanish impressions of their Arabic
Muslim conquerors.22 With both of these nomenclatural histories we see a mixture of geographic and political designations that aim to capture the identity of a contemporary nation state that has only existed in its present form since 1956.
Much in the same way that we can see how a Jewish imagined community arose out of
European marginalization of Jewry, the Moroccan imagined community can also be contextualized as a reaction to the cultural marginalization that occurred as part of the European colonization of North Africa. The Moroccan nationalist movement is generally understood as beginning with the establishment of a French Protectorate over the sultanate of the Alaouite dynasty in 1912, and culminating with the establishment of an independent Moroccan nation state under the control of an Alaouite king and an elected parliament in 1956.23 Subsequent sites
21 Dahiru, 1981 22 (shford, 1961 23 Miller, 2013
22 |Possessing History
of heritage within Morocco since independence have often sought to establish a historical continuity between the modern nation state and a pre-nationalist past. An interesting example of this is provided by the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, constructed in 1975 as the tallest building in Morocco and the seventh largest Mosque in the world. Specific architectural features which originated in cities within Morocco, such as the pale blue Zellij tiles and Tadelakt plaster, are prominently featured in the Mosque’s design. Furthermore its construction in the early 1990s was undertaken with almost exclusively Moroccan-sourced building materials and constructed by Moroccan laborers. In addition, the 500 Million USD project was funded mainly by donations solicited from citizens of the state, tying the construction of this architectural feat to the participation of the people.24 Finally, we can examine the significance of Hassan II, the
Moroccan King who led the site’s construction, as the mosque’s namesake. Since independence, the Moroccan government has adopted as a national motto (another important indicator of heritage) the Arabic phrase: “Allah, Al Wattan, Al Malik,” which translates in English to “God, the Homeland, and the King.” These three national symbols are readily apparent in the function, architecture, and nomenclature of the Hassan II Mosque. Furthermore, these three tropes of land, king, and religion reflect aspects of the nation state that existed prior to the colonial or post- colonial era.
24 Elleh, 2002
23 |Possessing History
The synthesis of a national symbol and a mosque into a single site also brings us back to the
question of religious inclusivity in Morocco, which is complicated by the presence of a larger
dispute over Islamic heritage. Characterizing Islamic heritage as a naturally nebulous action
given the sheer number (1.5 Billion) of adherents to various forms of the Islamic religion in
present day. Such characterizations are most
often associated with Said’s critique of
orientalism in Western Europe and North
American academia, in which he claims
European and North American thinkers
attempt to understand conflicts in the Middle
East as rooted in beliefs and norms implicit to
any culture where Islam was the dominant
religion.25 This notion can spring from a
variety of places. Anderson, for example,
argues that given the centrality of Arabic to
Islam as a religion, the language functions to
unify Muslims of all ethnicities into a singular Figure 8 Blue Zellij tiles at the base of columns in the Hassan II Mosque.(photo from My Craftwork LLC) community.26 Roumani meanwhile, states that
Islam does not draw any distinctions between a religious leader and a political one, and as such
the political structure of any Islamic nation-state is implicitly oppressive towards religious
minorities.27 This notion is not entirely confined to non-Islamic and Western commentaries, as
25 1975 26 Page 13. 27 1970, Page 50.
24 |Possessing History
demonstrated by the Salafist notion of Pan-Islamic identity. Asad Abu Khalil noted political groups advocating for a Pan-Islamic identity, such as Al-Qaeda, are just as likely as Western
Orientalists to resort to sweeping generalizations about Islamic culture.28
Making sense of the role that Islam plays in the Moroccan imagined community can begin with some basic demographic information. A 2010 survey of Moroccan citizens by the
Pew Forum suggested that 99.9% of the nation’s population identifies as Muslim. Within this overwhelmingly Muslim population, 67% identifies with the Sunni Sect of Islam, while 33% considers itself non-denominational. Furthermore we should understand that there exists several different schools of Islamic law and jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, with the Moroccan population overwhelmingly believed to subscribe to the Maliki doctrine.29 In addition we should also note the presence of unique Moroccan spiritual traditions, such as the Hiloula festival, which is based in beliefs that predate the arrival of Islam in North Africa, and may be observed by both
Muslims and Jews.30 As Geertz argues in his comparison of the development of Islam in
Morocco and Indonesia, both the theological doctrines of Islam as well as the way it is received and understood have developed in Morocco in a manner that reflects a series of unique political and cultural circumstances.31
This being said, we can still understand the role that Islam plays in defining the Moroccan imagined community as both ideological and demographic. The very same sentence in the 2011 constitution that roots Moroccan unity in diversity, also refers to that nation as a sovereign
Muslim state. In this respect the question of whether or not Morocco is an Islamic nation-state
28 1994. 29 Ramadan, 2006 30 Boum, 2006 31 1986
25 |Possessing History
might seem frivolous. Instead the more direct question to ask is how the various perceptions of
Islam that are unique to Morocco, and the use of Islam by Moroccan authorities has functioned to include or exclude non-Muslims. We shall see throughout this paper several commentators attempting to assign a specific character to Islam in Morocco as both an oppressive or inclusive force, and specific conceptions of history and heritage that reinforce these assertions.
As a religious minority within a post-colonial nation state, Moroccan Jewish history is very much included in the pantheon of what Hall refers to as “histories from below,” where the nation state attempts to incorporate identities that have traditionally been marginalized into its heritage.32 As the author points out, a true history from below must be considered not just in terms of whose story is being portrayed, but in terms of who represents that story. Given that a dispute over heritage is also a dispute about who a history or memory belongs to, it is difficult to find a clear answer to who deserves the power to represent Moroccan Jewish heritage. The easiest answer might be to center the Moroccan Jew as a narrator of their own history, but the list of producers and dictators of this heritage are much larger than just Jews of Moroccan origin.
Thus we will be presented with questions that might not present an immediate answer, such as how we can contrast the representational power of a Jew who is not of Moroccan origin with a
Moroccan who is not Jewish. Furthermore, we shall see how in some instances the voices of some Moroccan Jewish peoples are dismissed, sometimes by another Moroccan Jew.
Additionally, sources that we might wish to immediately discount, such as narratives written by
Europeans who are neither Moroccan nor Jewish, must be seriously considered if they are referred to as accurate depictions by a member of the Moroccan Jewish community.
321999
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In this chapter so far, we have discussed what I believe are the main historical narratives about the place of Jewish communities within Moroccan heritage: Zionist narratives of anti-Semitism; colonial European narratives about Jews and Muslims; and nationalist Moroccan narratives that attempt to define the boundaries of their imagined community. In the examination of a variety of individual discourses on Moroccan heritage that will follow, from politicians and scholars to tour guides and shopkeepers, it would be reductive to assume that any individual’s conception of the past is rooted entirely in only one of these narratives. In some of these accounts there might be an obvious disproportionate influence of one narrative or the obvious lack of another, but the presence of multiple theories and patterns of thought should constantly be considered when we assess the significance of a discourse.
Section 1.4: Positionality and Methodology
Despite my paper’s holistic ambitions, it doesn’t belong in a different category than previous portrayals of Moroccan Jewish History and Heritage, and is just as subject to certain biases and weaknesses. While subjectivity is not something that we can necessarily overcome in history, I hope that through establishing the position and method through which I engage with my material, my subjectivities can at least be contextualized.
I am a 22-year-old Jew from New York City with family originating in the modern-day nations of Poland, Germany, and Belarus, making me an Ashkenazi Jew. The several different waves of Ashkenazi emigration to the US occurred under different contexts, but it is worth noting that the part of my family’s history that is most known and discussed in my life is my mother and maternal grandmother’s family, the Futters. My maternal grandmother, Ingeborg
Amalia Futter, was born to a wealthy and assimilated German Jewish family (who co-owned a
27 |Possessing History
chain of popular non-kosher restaurants) in 1930s Germany. Adolf Hitler was elected into power in Germany shortly after my Grandmother’s birth, and the family relocated to Jerusalem, which was at the time under British control. The reasons why my family chose Palestine has often been portrayed to me as due to limits on immigration to the United States as opposed to Zionist impulses. Nevertheless, my grandmother participated as a combatant in both the conflict against
British colonial rule and the subsequent war of 1948 between a newly independent Israel and an alliance of Arab States. After the war, Ingeborg emigrated from Israel to the US as an international student at an American college, before naturalizing as a citizen of the US.
As a child I was never told that anti-Semitism was something I should fear intensely, nor was I told that the existence of a Jewish state was necessary to the safety of any Jewish community, both of which are instrumental components of the Zionist answer to the Jewish question. I was raised by a family that generally believed that Israel commits a kind of morally unacceptable violence in the name of security, although whether or not this violence delegitimized the concept of a Jewish State in Palestine was often a matter of debate. As I got older I began to look at the world around me and notice that accusations of anti-Semitism were sometimes used by members of the Jewish community to silence what I thought was legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, which made me reluctant to associate myself with the term in general.
I have traveled to Israel twice, and while both times I did find myself appreciating the strong
Jewish community within the state, I also witnessed events in the occupied West Bank that further estranged me from Zionism as a philosophy.
The things that both my lived experience as well as my education did teach me to fear and oppose, were consistent with the American leftist political viewpoint. My main concerns were, and in many ways still are, the oppression that I witnessed in my everyday life on the basis of
28 |Possessing History
race, gender, and sexuality. After the events of September 11 until the present day, another everyday part of my life in United States became witnessing a conversation about Muslim people and the Islamic faith in my city and country that often seem to advance a disturbing and sensationalist belief that Muslim theology represents an everyday threat to the idealized
American lifestyle. I experience this conversation as part of a rift in the leftist world where I was raised, where some drifted towards a camp which believes that Islam should be combatted as an ideology that is fundamentally incompatible with liberal ideas about democracy and free expression. I and others from the left grew to believe that reactionary elements within Islamic societies do not represent Islam as a whole as much as they do a response to colonial domination by Europe and the US.
As one might guess, much of what compelled me to study Jewish history in Morocco was my position within these disputes about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as they manifest themselves in the northeastern United States. I should disclose that I had hoped upon embarking on this research to discover a history that would counter what I saw as a dominant narrative concerning Islamic intolerance and conflict between Jews and Muslims. I further assumed that what I might find would speak to the damage that French colonialism inflicted on Morocco, especially to Jewish-Muslim relationships. I knew, for example, that the French colonial authorities in Algeria had granted Algerian Jews full French citizenship, creating friction between Jews and Muslims. However I was also drawn to this work by a specific experience that
I had speaking to a Rabbi in Casablanca who had been targeted by an assailant in a Jewish cemetery and attacked with an axe. This was one of my first times witnessing and speaking to the victim of an action that was both undeniably anti-Jewish and undeniably violent, and it caused me to reconsider how accurately my life experiences could speak to threats faced by Jewish
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communities in the contemporary world. It goes without saying that growing up Jewish in New
York is a unique opportunity in that one is given the chance to express religious and cultural sentiments and rarely face marginalization or persecution for doing so. Therefore this project also stems from a desire to understand the significance of the Jewish Question outside of the specific circumstances that I was raised in.
However, to analyze circumstances of any nature that fall in many ways outside the boundaries of your own experiences is a difficult task that required that I formulate a specific methodology for how I would approach and familiarize myself with the subject. The obstacle was compounded by a linguistic barrier; my lack of knowledge of the three languages, French,
Arabic, and Hebrew, that are most commonly spoken within Morocco and Moroccan Jewish communities. While I have some experience speaking and reading Modern Standard Arabic
(MSA),33 my knowledge of French and Hebrew is much more minimal. Thus the procedure I adopted in this research was intentionally constructed to take into considerations the very obstacles I would have engaging with the topic.
I began my research with various conversations with a variety of people who had more direct engagement and comprehensive experience, both with Moroccan-Jewish history and with contemporary Morocco. Some of these mentors included Peter Geffen, who organized the earlier trip I participated in to Morocco to meet with the Mimouna Club; El-Mehdi Boudra, a founding member of the Mimouna Club; and Aomar Boum, a US academic of Moroccan origin who published a comprehensive account of various perspectives expressed by Moroccan Muslims of various generations towards the country’s Jewish community and history. Through these
33 The Arabic language is almost exclusively written in what is known as MSA or Fusha, which is standardized throughout the Arabic speaking world. However there is also a highly colloquial form of spoken Arabic used in Morocco known as Darija.
30 |Possessing History
conversations I attempted to increase my familiarity with the subject, as well as build a list of
English-language texts that would help me familiarize myself with the various narratives I would be discussing. The texts that I read included both analyses of the various competing narratives that have arisen around Moroccan-Jewish heritage, as well as histories that sought to reinforce or deconstruct a specific narrative.
In January of 2016, I furthered this process of familiarization through a third trip to
Morocco, with the intention of discussing my topic with as many different perspectives as I reasonably could. The first two weeks of my trip were spent living with the family of a close friend in a section of the city of Fes that was traditionally known as a Mellah, or Jewish Quarter.
Today the vast majority of the Fes Mellah is Muslim, and the neighborhood became an ideal location for me to discuss Jewish heritage with Moroccan Muslims who do not occupy positions of power in the realm of historiography or politics. During this time the people I spoke to were mostly male, of a variety of age groups. Many, though not all of them participated in both the formal and informal economy that has arisen around the centrality of a trip to Fes for the roughly ten million international tourists who visit Morocco each year.34,35 This included people who offered guided tours of the neighborhood and its history, as well as owner and shopkeepers of stores that sold goods marketed towards international tourists. My logic in focusing on these sites and professions was heavily inspired by Ebron’s (2002) suggestion that the industry that has evolved around tourism to several sites in the African continent endeavors to capture and portray a local culture to the foreign observer through an object or experience. Considering this
34 World Bank. 2015 35 Carson, et al. 1999
31 |Possessing History
reasoning I hypothesized that a tour guide or Shopkeeper has an important role to play in the representation of historical narratives and imagined communities within Morocco.
Another type of person I engaged were those serving in various capacities as caretakers or curators of Jewish sites in Fes and the surrounding area. The people I spoke to involved in this caretaker role were both Jewish and Muslim, and had through various means become involved in the maintenance or restoration of a site, often with financial aid from the Moroccan government and international organizations such as UNESCO. Some of these people included the Jewish caretaker of a Jewish graveyard in Fes, Edmond Gabai; Fatima and Hannan Zahra, who have been actively involved in the restoration of two synagogues in the Fes Mellah since 1998; and
Ahmed Bonbi, a convert to Islam from a Jewish family who worked to maintain and lead tours of the Mellah, synagogue, and Jewish cemetery in a smaller city near Fes called Sefrou.
After my time in Fes, I aimed to familiarize myself with more official narratives of both the producers and dictators of Moroccan Jewish heritage in the nation’s capital city of Rabat. In the capital, and the neighboring cosmopolitan center I spoke with both Jews and Muslims in a variety of positions. This list included Moroccan-
Jewish scholars such as Michelle Medina, Vannessa
Paloma (currently completing a senior Fulbright study of
Jewish-Moroccan music), and Younis Abedour. I also met briefly with Jamaa Baida, a Muslim Moroccan history professor with a special interest in Jewish history who has Figure 9 Ahmed Bonbi on the main street of the played a primary role in founding and running the first Mellah in Sefrou (taken by author, 2016)
32 |Possessing History
national archive of Moroccan history. In Casablanca I spoke to the Muslim producer of a film about various portrayals of the Moroccan Jewish exodus, Younis Laghari. Furthermore I visited
Figure 10 A photograph of a kindergarten Class showing handmade Moroccan flags at the AIU Jewish School in Casablanca, displayed in the entrance hall of the Casablanca Jewish Museum (taken by author, 2016) the Casablanca Jewish Museum and participated in a conference there highlighting recent developments in the study of Moroccan Jewish History, hosted by an organization based in
France that will be greatly later within this paper: The Alliance Israelite Universelle. This conference was not only interesting as an opportunity to increase my knowledge of the current focuses of the type of scholarship I was studying, but it also gave me an opportunity to speak with Jews from Morocco and their children who had lived for the past forty years in diaspora in
Israel, France, and the US. Finally, after exploring the exhibits within the Museum, most of which were captioned in English, I spoke to the Muslim Moroccan woman who has served as curator for the Museum: Zhor Rehilil.
The conversations with the variety of sources that I listed above were not structured interviews as much as fluid conversations where I aimed to hit on as many talking points as
33 |Possessing History
seemed relevant to the specific source. I took notes on these conversations as they were developing, and occasionally with the consent of the participant recorded sections of these conversations on a video camera. Therefore, although my project certain applies some of the techniques and philosophies of an anthropological ethnography, I would argue that it cannot be considered fully as such due to the limited time frame during which it took place. This does not excuse me from an obligation to adhere to a code of ethical conduct in my miniaturized ethnographic endeavors. The sense of ethical obligation that I used to guide my conversations was heavily inspired by Meskell and Pels (2005) code of practical ethical engagement. Thus my interpolation of ethnographic experiences within this paper will aim to recognize that many of the people I spoke to have a far greater and more personal understanding of the subject matter and as such I must be cautious of both misrepresenting them and employing their thoughts and statements in my own narrative.
In order to avoid ethnographic exploitation, Meskell and Pells suggest the deconstruction of the normalized relationship between “researcher” and the “researched” subject.36 In doing so I have chosen to label many of those I spoke to in my trip to Morocco as guides rather than subjects, since the latter term is dehumanizing. The idea of engaging ethnographically with a guide entails recognition that many of my sources had much more expertise then I while acknowledging that their perspectives are subject to their political and social predispositions.
Engaging with guides instead of subjects is also a more honest way of locating my own position as a tourist within a foreign country. I agree with the suggestion put forth by Stronza, that the role and intentions of the anthropologist are not dissimilar to those of the tourist, even if the former is often unlikely to admit his connection to the sandal-footed, camera-toting legions of
36 Page 23.
34 |Possessing History
the later.37 Through these principles and processes I hope to produce an analysis that successfully synthesizes, without exploitation or manipulation, the work and perspectives of diverse group of people.
Thus my methodology, especially in speaking to tour guides and museum curators was also heavily inspired by the blueprint for participatory observation ethnography outlined by
Richards, in which the ethnographer experiences the subject matter they wish to analyze as a participant instead of as removed observer.38 Through these principles and processes I hope to produce an analysis that successfully synthesizes, without exploitation or manipulation, the work and perspectives of a diverse group of people.
Chapter 2: Disputed Narratives of the “Historic” Maghreb
Given that the application of progressive narratives of heritage to history is a relatively recent development, we must take a discerning view towards analyzing contemporary narratives that focus on eras prior to the arrival of more contemporary concepts of history and identity. I suggest two techniques to focus this discernment. Firstly we must attempt, when possible, to understand how both history and identity might have been viewed differently from the normalized methods of approach we use today. Secondly we must remember that imagined communities tend to conceptual themselves as historically permanent. Thus when a historian speaks of the Jewish people or Arab-Muslim societies in the pre-nationalist era, their assessments
37 2001, Page 261. 38 2005.
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may not necessarily be incorrect, but these peoples and societies might now have understood themselves as a unified community with singular historical narrative during the era in question.
Section 2.1: Pre-Islamic Morocco (Pre-750)
Since narrative history entails organizing the past into a recognizable and digestible story, an often recognizable feature of a nationalist heritage narrative is that it has both a beginning and an end. Appling these boundaries to history can be helpful in illustrating a point or a process, but it is important to remember that not everyone’s heritage or narrative will begin in the same place, and the place where one does chose to begin can inform you of their perspective. In the context of this line of thinking I would like to suggest that the way in which various scholars have chosen to begin Moroccan Jewish history is closely tied to attempts to highlight specific segments of Moroccan society as indigenous or authentic elements that have been there since the
“beginning.”
The fluidity of indigeneity in Morocco can be seen through the multiple ways in which the term Berber has been used in various historical and ethnographic accounts. The term
Berber is commonly believed to have originated from settlers living in First Century BCE outposts of the Roman Empire; such as the colonies of Voulubilis and Siga. Given as
“Roman” was understood as an inclusive Figure 11 The location of Volubilis on a map of Northern Morocco. (Image taken from Globus.com)
36 |Possessing History
identity that any ethnicity could and should assimilate into, those who choose not adopt the traditions and lifestyles of Roman settlers were seen as barbaric and unruly. The implication of this is that Berber stems from, Barbarus, the Latin word for Barbarian.39 Berbers at the time were therefore not a singular ethnic or linguistic group, but rather anyone from North Africa who did not was look at as resisting Roman rule and custom.
The term Berber was further utilized in historical volumes published by Khaldun and his contemporaries in the Arab Muslim Ummayad Caliphate during the fourteenth century, to refer to North African peoples not of Arabic descent.40 Finally we see the term Berber used prominently by scholars and missionaries from France who arrived in Morocco in the early twentieth century in conjunction with a French colonial occupation of North Africa. For example, an account of ethnicity in North Africa by a French missionary in the earlier 20th divides the region into Moors [Arabs], Jews, European Settlers, Negroes [darker skinned people from further South], and Berbers: a category that is simplistically defined as everyone else and at once “the great bulk of inhabitants.”41 Thus when Jews are described as the first non-native people to settle in Maghreb, the describer knowingly or unknowingly references a dominant construction of Moroccan history that centers on a dichotomy between settlers and natives.42 At the middle of this invasion-themed telling of Moroccan history lies an unspoken assumption about Imazighen and indigeneity that suggests they retain an almost unchanging status throughout multiple eras of Moroccan history.
39 Venema and Mguild, 2005 40 Schroeter, 2008, pg. 148. 41 Mitchell, 2012. 42 Shroeter,
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In order to correctly refer to the people labeled by some as “Berbers” within this essay, I highlight the fact that more and more scholars and non-Arab identifying people in North Africa discourage the use of this term due to its colonial implications. The most agreed upon terminology to describe the peoples, cultures, and languages that existed in Morocco prior to the arrival of Islam is Amazigh, or free people, the plural of which is Imazighen. Amazigh peoples speak a variety of dialectally related languages, which are referred to collectively as the
Tamazight linguistic family.43 Through this text I will attempt to use this more updated terminology unless referencing or directly quoting an instance or person who used the term
Berber.
In examining multiple ruminations on the “beginning” of Moroccan Jewish history, a salient feature is that the arrival of Judaism in the Maghreb is more likely to be marked by a point of reference then by a specific date. That is to say that the large variety of different sources for information about Moroccan Jewish history do not necessarily agree upon a specific date of the community’s arrival, but they do find some consensus in the fact that that Jews in Morocco significantly predate the arrival of Arabs and Islam in the seventh century CE. Along with a variety of theoretical dates, this referential demarcation of the arrival Jews in Morocco is shared by sources from the more recent academic research by Daniel Schroeter, to the 13th century writings of Ibn Khaldun, to many of the guides I spoke to in Fes and Casablanca.
This brings us to ask what the role of Jews might have been in pre-Islamic Amazigh polities. Certain historians refer to this population as Berber Jews, however as we will later see
43 Aissati, 2001.
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many also believe this title to be a more recent term that speaks to specific political concerns.
Regardless of ethnic identity, inscriptions in preserved areas of Volubilis confirm that there was at the very least a Jewish presence within Roman cities dating back to at least 2,000 years ago.44
Furthermore, there exists a common belief, though one that is not verifiable with physical evidence, that Jewish proselytizing led to many Amazigh tribes converting to Judaism during this era. Much of this is based on histories written by 12th and 13th century Islamic historians such as
Ibn-Khaldun and Al-Adrisi, which assert that Imazighen in certain regions observed Jewish laws.
As H.Z. Hirschberg pointed out however, Khaldun and Adrisi themselves lived multiple centuries after Islam arrived in Morocco, and they themselves admit theories of Jewish Amazigh tribes to be primarily hypothetical.45 Additionally, Schroeter points out that although Ibn
Khaldun does acknowledge the existence of Jewish Imazighen in his own time, he at no points asserts that they date back to the pre-Islamic era of North African history.46
Aside from questions of ethnic identities, theories of the roles of Jews in these pre-
Islamic Amazigh societies generally fall either into the category of mercantile class or political force. The mercantile explanation understands Jews of the Roman Empire as an integral component of trans-Mediterranean trade routes, and suggests that Jews would have formed small communities in cities along these trade routes, citing instructions from the 5th century BCE on how to travel from Volubilis to Jerusalem in accordance with the Jewish Sabbath.47 The
Encyclopedia Judaica expands on this theory, suggesting the lucrative gold market that existed in
44 Cohen, 2007. 45 1963. 46 2008. Page 148. 47 Hircshberg, 1963.
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the region from the 5th to the 3rd centuries BCE drew many affluent Jewish merchants to the region.48 An interesting variation on this theory was provided to me by multiple guides within the Mellah of Fes, who suggested to me that Jewish merchants arrived in Northern Morocco around 300 BCE, and founded the still existing town of Ketama in the Rif, which they used to grow Cannabis plants and cultivate Hashish. Despite its popularity within the Mellah, this story does not show up in academic texts on the subjects, and many historical scholars I spoke suggested it might be a result of enduring stereotypes about the Fassi Jewish community.49
In addition to mercantile explanations, the arrival of Jews in Morocco has also been linked to persecution by Christians in the late Roman Empire (Christianity was adopted as a state religion by Rome in the 4th century AD), which caused Jews to flee to Amazigh communities in the Rif and Atlas regions of Morocco which were already hostile to Roman rule. This explanation is also supported in the Encyclopedia Judaica, as well as in French colonial accounts from the early 19th century which cites Byzantine legislation from 534 against a variety of religious minorities in North Africa. In this composition of events, the Jewish identity of
Amazigh tribes is up to debate but Jews are presented as political allies of the Amazigh against
Roman and Christian control in North Africa.
The semi-mythical Amazigh queen, Kahina, plays an important role not only in understanding relationships between Imazighen and Jews in pre-Islamic Morocco, but also in the arrival of Islam to North Africa. Most accounts of Kahina’s life place her as a warrior and political figure who united a large variety of Amazigh tribes in the early seventh century. This
48 Encyclopedia Judaica, Volume 12 49 Sources: Younis Abedour, Mohammed Hatimi, Vanessa Paloma.
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occurred during an era when both Byzantine Christians from Greece and the rapidly expanding
Islamic caliphate under the Ummayad dynasty was struggling to control North Africa. It is furthermore generally agreed upon that Kahina fought and defeated a large Arab army at some point, and that she later engaged in scorched earth style destruction of villages and farmland in
North Africa in order to prevent another invading army’s advance.50
Beyond some of these basic details however, Kahina’s identity and legacy are conceptualized in wildly different manners in various narratives. Allagui suggests that in the contemporary literature of English, French and Hebrew speaking Jews, the queen is remembered as a Jewish Amazigh and celebrated as hero for her attempts to resist an Islamic and Arabic invasion.51 However this representation was most likely not a constant perspective held by
Jewish communities throughout history, as Hannoum points to orally past down stories and poetry from 10th century Jewish communities in North Africa that speak of Kahina as a villain who targeted and pillaged Jewish towns and families.52 Hannoum illuminates varying interpretations about whether or not these Jewish narratives of Kahina as a villain identifies the queen as Jewish. Some have suggested that labeling of Kahina as an enemy of Jews means that she herself must not be Jewish, while others have suggested that alternative translations (from
Tamazight) suggest that Kahina was remembered by North African Jews as Jewish but misguided and tyrannical.
50 Allagui, et al. 2013. 51 Page 994. 52 1997. Page 113.
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Hirschburg suggests that the earliest portrayal by a historian of Kahina as Jewish might come once against from Ibn Khaldun, who writes that the queen belonged to one of the Berber tribes that may have been Jewish.53 Similarly to how he portrays other conceptualizations of
Amazigh Jewry, Hirschburg suggests that the unconfirmed hypotheses of Kahina’s Jewishness
were popularized as historical fact by
both Jewish and Christian commentators
from Western Europe in the early
twentieth century who wished to
encourage anti-Islamic sentiment in
North African Jewry. Perhaps in response
to the use of Kahina as an anti-Islamic
symbol, Moroccan nationalist historians
of the same era conceptualized Kahina as
a villain whose usurpation was desired by
all peoples of the Maghreb, regardless of Figure 12 An image depiction of Kahina used during a lecture on Berber Jews at a 2016 conference at the Casablanca Jewish Musuem (taken by their religious or ethnic identity. author, 2016) Hannoum notes how the villainous
Kahina of these nationalist narratives unifies non-Muslim Amazigh and Muslims Arab together in a mutual struggle against an oppressive tyrant, as opposed to those who represent Kahina as a symbol of an Amazigh struggle against Arab conquests. The constant relocation of Kahina’s identity and legacy speak, not only to attempts to separate invader from native in the arrival of
53 1963. Page 317.
42 |Possessing History
Islam and Arabic-speaking peoples in Maghreb, but also attempts define what the pre-Islamic
Maghreb looked like religiously and ethnically.
Section 2.2: Early Islamic Monarchs (750 -1000)
Kahina’s memory in a contemporary Morocco where the majority is both Islamic and
Arabic-speaking can serve as a site for negation for historical continuity of the imagined community through the pre-Islamic and Islamic era. Light was shed on this negotiation by two different guides I encountered in the vicinity of Moulay Idriss, the first town built by Muslim
Arabs in Morocco, and Volubhis, a preserved ruin of a Roman town a few miles from Moulay
Idriss. In Volubhis I talked to a group of young men and women ages 18-22 who stated they used the area as place to meet up and socialize away from their parents. This group described learning about Kahina in school as children, but did not recall Kahina’s Judaism or religion being discussed. Although none of them indicated any kind of overly personal relationship to the
Kahina story, an older member of the group with more fluency in English described her as a
“founder” of Morocco, an analysis the rest of the group agreed with.54 The specific role that
Kahina might have played as a founder was elaborated on by an older male who was introduced to me as a “source of wisdom for the town) in Moulay Idriss:
“Kahina, she may not have defeated them [Arab invaders],
but she showed them something about this place. Because
of Kahina. It was realized that Muslims would never conquer
54 Source: Voluhbhis Group.
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Al-Maghrib with armies but only with diplomacy and alliances.”55
In a sense, this can be considered a construction of the arrival of Islam in Morocco as a union of the Arabic-Islamic with an already existing Amazigh cultural heritage; a figurative marriage of the two identities. I encountered this “marriage” sentiment again, in a quite literal sense, in one of my hosts in the Fes Mellah’s description of the arrival of the first Islamic king of
Morocco, Idriss I ben Abdallah (also known as Moulay Idriss):
When Idris arrived here he married a princess who was Berber, and
showed great respect for her. Since Moulay Idriss was assassinated
soon after he became king and had his first son, his son Idris II was
raised by his Berber mother. Thus Idris II was raised to be both a
Muslim and also to respect the Berber.56
One of the most cited historical sources for understanding this period is Rawd Al-Qirtas, a history of the region published in either Fas or Granada in 1326. Rawd Al-Qirtas suggests that
Idris I, who was allegedly son of the Prophet Muhammed’s daughter Fatima, arrived in Morocco after a failed revolt against the current Caliph (Harun Al-Rashid of the Abbasid Dynasty), becoming a ruler in 788 and dying in 791, allegedly at the hands of Harun Al-Rashid. The Rawd
Al-Qirtas explains that Morocco’s position on the periphery of Islamic conquest, made it an attractive location for dissidents from the central leadership of the Arabian empire.57 Another
55 Source: Salman in Moulay Idriss. 56 Source: Abdelrahman Lmaloki. 57 Hopkins, et al. 1981. Page 14.
44 |Possessing History
highlighted aspect of the polity founded by Idris I and his son, especially in archeological examination of the cities they constructed such as Fes and Moulay Idriss, is the importance of the allegiance between urban Arab monarchy and rural tribal entities. In describing the “emergent urbanism” of the era, an archeological team from the United States noted:
trade and military activity were evident in Idrisid Morocco,
but secondary when compared to [the importance of] productive
agricultural territory. As is detailed later, this form of state society
gave birth to political centers [cities] that were always located in
important agricultural zones.58
These dominant characteristics of histories of Moulay Idriss and his son encompass what
I would like to suggest are two recurring themes in depictions of Moroccan history: the first being Morocco’s geographical and political position differentiating it politically and culturally from the rest of Muslim world; and the second being the importance of stable relationships between an urban royal family and more rural tribal polities that controlled agricultural land. If we are to take into consideration Ibn Khaldun and other scholars’ theories of Jewish-Berber tribes, we can imagine that some of these agricultural policies that supported an urban Islamic monarchy may have well been Jewish ones. The reoccurrence of these two themes in the way that a variety of issues throughout Moroccan history have been phrased plays an important role
58 Boone, et al. 1990. Page 631.
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in understanding the relationship between historical reconstruction and social memory in
Morocco.
Figure 13 Territory of the Ummayad Caliphate in 1000 c.e.. the level at Morocco and Algeria were actually incoroprated into the entiry has been disputed. (Rahman, 2001)
The power struggle between various Islamic dynasties descended from Muhammad that allegedly led to Idris I’s assassination also helped set in the motion the establishment of an
Islamic Caliphate in Al-Andalus (Southern Spain), an event that in turn can help us understand
Islamic identity in the region during the medieval era. In 929, Abd Ar-Rahman of the Ummayad dynasty, whose family had been forcibly removed as Caliphs in Damascus by the Abbasids, declared himself Caliph from the city of Cordoba. The Ummayad Caliphate would soon expand to control not only large parts of Spain, but the northern and urbanized regions of Morocco
46 |Possessing History
around Tangier and Fes. Accounts of Abd Ar-Rahm’s Caliphate generally agree that, despite its
Arab political leadership, Muslims from the Maghreb played a crucial role in military and civilian administration.59 Anthropologist Jessica Coope suggested that events such as the conquest of Andalusia occurred as a part of a larger breakdown of the former synthesis of Arab and Islamic:
[The breakdown of] the ideal of Islam as a strictly Arab religion,
where Amazigh peoples began to adopt the Arabic language and
customs that were codified in Islamic scriptures while Muslim
Arab rulers slowly began to accept non-Arab Islamic peoples as
cultural and legal equals, rethinking themselves as settlers as
opposed to conquerors.60
The Andalusian Caliphate founded by Abd Ar-Rahman has been the subject of considerable interest for historians of a variety of backgrounds, due to the wide acknowledgement of the 9th-12th century constituting a “Golden Age” in Andalusia.61 The most highlighted facets of this Golden Age have changed based on the viewpoints of the historian or author depicting it, but generally shared emphases include the wide array of medical and scientific discoveries; influential artistic achievements in architecture, poetry, and music; and finally the wide degree of tolerance enjoyed by religious minorities in the Caliphate.62,63
59 Boone, et al. 1999. Page 52. 60 1993. Page 50. 61 Fletcher. 2006. Page 8. 62 Kaiwar. 1992. 63 Lapidus. 1992.
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Like everything else in this paper, the significance of demarcating a Golden Age should not be approached without deconstruction. Obviously the most relevant feature of the way historians identify the Andalusian Golden Age in terms of this paper is the toleration of religious minorities. However within the context of progressive narratives, I would argue that religious tolerance and scientific and cultural achievements are linked together as signs of “civilization” by many colonial European historians who take the opposite as an indication of backwardness.
Furthermore, we can also see how perspectives that treat the Andalusian Golden Age as a zenith in the region’s Islamic heritage might be doing so in order to weave a narrative of regression as opposed to progress. Such a technique is employed most visibly by the British-Jewish historian
Bernard Lewis, who is labeled by Mamdani as a “founding father” of Orientalism:64
In the early centuries of the caliphate, we may speak of a move in
the direction of greater tolerance. From the time of the Prophet to
that of the first caliphs and beyond to the universal empire of the
Umayyads and the Abassids, there is an unmistakable increase in
tolerance accorded to non-Muslims. From about the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries onward, there is a noticeable move in the
opposite direction.65
The trope of an Islamic Andalusian Golden Age is not employed exclusively within the narrative of regressive civilizations, and also appears conversely in Moroccan heritage with a
64 2004. Page 20. 65 2002. Pages 114-15.
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narrative of continuity rather than decline. The Moroccan-Jewish historian Haim Zafrani suggests that following the conquest of Andalusia by Christians, the philosophy of coexistence relocates in North Africa, a position which Schroeter suggests is echoed by large segments of
Moroccan Muslim academia.66,67
Reflective profiles of
Jewish life in the Maghreb and
Andalusia during the Ummayad
Caliphate often stress the high level of integration and participation available to Jewish individuals in various high profile sectors of society. The multitude of roles available to high profile
Jews can be illustrated through
Figure 14 Entrance to Al Quaraouiyine University in Fes. Constructed in 859, Al examples such as Juden ben Quaraouiyine is considered by many (including UNESCO) as one of the oldest universities in the world. (taken by author, 2016) Balza, a scientist and inventor for
Abd Ar-Rahman’s successor who played an active role in diplomatic relationships between
Christian and Muslim rulers; as well as Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, who helped patronize Jewish scientists and protect Jewish communities while serving as one of Abd Ar-Rahman’s court advisors.68,69 The net benefits that Jewish communities of Andalusia may have enjoyed as a
66 (Zafrani). 2005. 67 (Schroeter). 2008. Page 147. 68 Zucatto. 2005. Page 742 69 Scheiber, et al. 1973. Page 208.
49 |Possessing History
result of the prestigious positions awarded to them are hinted at by a plea for aid by an imperiled
Jewish community living under the Christian Byzantine Emperor in Sicily. This letter has been interpreted to indicate that not only was the Shaprut’s status as a protector of Jewish communities well known and even envied outside of the Islamic societies of the Maghreb and
Andalusia, but that standard of treatment for Jews under the Ummayad Caliphate was at least to some extent considered a model for protection and autonomy by more threatened Jewish communities elsewhere in world.70
Many of the prominent Andalusian Jews such as Shaprut hailed from a relatively insular mercantile class that stood up the top of the hierarchy of Jewish power within Andalusia. Other notable Jewish personages, such as the Rabbi Moses Ben Hanoukh, were not native to Andalusia but arrived in the royal court at the prompting of Shaprut and Abd Ar-Rahman. Much in the same way that Ummayad political ambitions centered on breaking away from centralized
Abbasid power in Baghdad, the Jewish community under Shaprut sought to break away from the influence of powerful Rabbinical schools operated out of Arabia. In practice this meant that community leaders in Andalusia often maintained closer relationships with local Islamic rulers than external Jewish communities.71 This sentiment was shared politically by the Ummayads, who were engaged in their cultural and political struggle, and is theorized by led to the cultivation of an Andalusia identity during Abd Ar-Rahman’s rule that was not necessarily exclusive to Jews or non-Arab Muslims.72
70 Ibid. 71 Ray. 2013 Page 255-257. 72 Collins. 1992. Page 82-94.
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In general, analyses of the status of religious minorities in the Ummayad Caliphate hinges on a set of specific policies which are outlined in the Qur’an and Hadith (statements made by the prophet Muhammad that do not appear in the Qur’an) but selectively and interpreted and reimagined by various political leaders. Dhimmi, an Arabic word meaning people of the book, is the Qur’anic term to describe the status of Christians and Jews under Islamic law. The Ummayad treatment of Dhimmi, both Jewish and Christian, has been described as a regime of “protected peoples,” where an Islamic rulers has a responsibility to both physically protect Dhimmi as well as allow them the right to worship as they wish, in return for their loyalty to their ruler and payment of extra tax called Jiyza.73 Alternatively, some more recent scholars have challenged the idea that Ummayad Dhimmitude should be represented in terms of the protections and privileges it offered Jewish subjects. This perspective, as categorized by Mark R. Cohen, casts Abd Ar-
Rahman’s Dhimmi system as characterized by arbitrary laws such as Jiyza and required outfits and articles of clothing for Dhimmi that was meant to codify Jews as societally inferior.74
Meanwhile Coope’s counter arguments suggest that these laws were only enforced sporadically, she also agrees that Ummayad Dhimmitude in practice and intention often did socially ostracize and humiliate Jews.75
Section 2.3: The First “Moroccan” Empires (1000-1250)
Our discussions of culture and society in the Islamic Maghreb and Andalusia, whether
Islamic or Judaic, has thus far focused mainly on urban polities such as Cordoba and Fes. As we
73 Furman. 2000. Page 13. 74 R. Cohen, et al. 2013. Page 31. 75 1993. Page 51.
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have already established, Arab settlement in Northern Morocco was characterized by the construction of urban centers such as Fes or Meknes that depended very heavily on positive relationships with surrounding agricultural and rural areas ruled by Amazigh tribal entities. The eventual collapse of the Ummayad Caliphate, and the rise and fall of the Maghrebi dynasties that succeeded it illustrate this relationship in mediaeval Morocco.
The rise of Maghrebi Islamic dynasties in Morocco and Andalusia originates with the
1039 conversion of nomadic tribes from the northern regions of the Sahara (modern day southern
Morocco) to Islam. These newly converted tribes embarked on a series of military conquests of both North Africa and Spain that culminated with the 1086 installment of their leader Yusuf Ibn
Tashufin as ruler of both regions and founder of the Almoravid dynasty. In understanding the
Almoravid rise to power it is crucial to note that Ibn Tashufin’s rule in Spain occurred at the behest of smaller Arab polities who wished for centralized protection against warring Christian monarchs.76 Thus the rise of the Almoravids as an Islamic Arabic-speaking of undeniably
Maghrebi origins represents an important chapter (and even potential culmination) of the diffusion of Arab and Amazigh identity through Islam.
The Almoravid era is treated by many of the cultural politics of the Ummayad Era. This has been considered by some scholars as a failure by Maghrebi Muslims to overcome “cultural subordination” by Arab Muslims, but can also be consider an assertion by the Almoravids against what fast becoming an anachronistic idea of the roles non-Arabs could play in Islamic society.77 Primarily this can be seen through transformations underwent by urban Islamic
76 Decosta. 1975. Page 481-482. 77 De Montequin. 1988.
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education centers, known as Madrasa, and the subsequent rise of the Mahadra tradition under
Yusuf Ibn Tashufin. Although initially an Islamic doctrine originating in urban centers, Mahadra was readapted during the Almoravid era to reflect some of the sensibilities and challenges that might come from being an observant Muslim while simultaneously living a nomadic or agrarian lifestyle.78 Moroccan historical profiles of Yusuf Ibn Tashufin and the Almoravids portray them as playing a universalizing role in bring Islam to multiple levels of Maghrebi societies:
The Moors exhibit much of pride in attributing
to Ibn Yasin79 the foundation of the Islamic School,
because he was a Moor himself, and because he created
an Islamic Central government that started the Almoravid
Empire (from West Africa to South of Spain).80
Two elements stand out from these descriptions of the Almoravids as vital to the development of Moroccan historical identity. Firstly we have a centralized and urban government with Nomadic origins supporting a cohesive understanding of Islam that unifies not only Arab and Maghrebi but also urban and rural. This is not to suggest the Almoravid’s were entirely successful in building relationships between urban and agricultural societies in Morocco, with archeological evidence suggesting that the rise of Almoravid’s in Northern Morocco was accompanied by destructive violence in the region around Fes, both urban and rural.81 Secondly
78 El Chouki. 1999. Page 68. 79 Ibn Yasin was the spiritual leader of the Almoravids, and considered responsible for their conversion to Islam. 80 El Hamel. The Transmission of Islamic Knowledge In Moorish Societies from the Rise of the Almoravids to the Nineteenth Century. Page 68.
81 Boone, et al. 1990. Page 636.
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we see, through the conquests embarked upon by the Almoravids, an emerging sense of modern
Moroccan political geography, in the form of an Islamic sultanate that stretches from the arid
regions of the southern Sahara to the temperate hills around Fes. This more familiar sense of the
geographical area that is defined as “Morocco” also has its roots in the economic realities of the
Almoravid Empire, which depended to a large extent on maintaining stable trade routes that
could bring West Africa and Saharan gold and slaves north into urban centers of rule such as Fes
and Cordoba.82
The Almoravids are also seen as
continuing to support an environment of
religious tolerance and integrated Jewish
involvement in society, with some
Andalusian Jewish scholars identifying the
Almoravid unification of warring Arab
entities as a Jewish golden age in its own
right.83 The waning years of the Almoravid
dynasty were also the early years of one of
the most pre-eminent figures of Jewish
history: Moshe Ben Maimon.84 Ben
Maimon’s early years (born in 1135) under Figure 15 Greatest extent of the Almoravid Dynasty under Yusuf ib Tashufin. (photo from Omar-Toons.com) Almoravid administration are characterized
82 Boone, et al. 1990. Page 635. 83 Decosta. 1975. Page 480. 84 Moshe Ben Maimon has been recognized and remembered by a wide variety of other titles, and may alternatively be identified as Maimonides, Ibn Maimon, and Rambam.
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by a combination of rabbinical studies and more general intellectual pursuits. Due to the dominant use of Arabic in philosophical and scientific institutions, as well as in translations of older Greek and Persian texts, Ben Maimon’s rise to prominence was paved by his acceptance as a Jew into Islamic academic institutions in Cordoba, and he is described as well versed and even
“immersed” in Islamic culture and religion.85
Ben Maimon, as both a Jew and an important member of Andalusian society, can serve as a sort of lens for understanding the how we perceive the fall of the Almoravids and the subsequent rise of the Almohad Dynasty in historical narratives. A narrative technique appears for example in the work of Daniel Frank, who refers to Ben Maimon as the “midpoint” in six hundred years of mediaeval Jewish philosophy.86 Like the Almoravids, the rise of the Almohad dynasty is linked to an alliance between a religious figure, Ibn Tumart, and a coalition of
Maghreb tribal polities. The Almohad military managed to eventually conquer and supplant the majority of the former Almoravid Empire, culminating in the conquest of Cordoba in 1148. The ideological basis of Ibn Tumart’s revolt came from a perception that the ruling Almoravid class had become too relaxed in their enforcement of Islamic law, and thus the Almohad conquest was also phrased as a revitalization of religious principles.87 The arrival of the Almohads is thus historicized as a disaster for the Spanish and Moroccan Dhimmi population, mainly based on accounts by one of Ben Maimon’s contemporaries, Abraham Ben Daud:
85 Stroumsa. 2009. Page 265. 86 2005. Page 136. 87 Watt. 1964. Page 25.
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In the wake of the sword of Ibn Tumart, which came into the world
when he decreed apostasy on the Jews, saying: “Come, and let us
cut them off from being a nation: that the name of Israel may be no
more in remembrance.” Thus, he wiped out every last “name and
remnant” of them from all of his empire, from the city of Silves at
the end of the world until the city of al-Mahdiya.88
Figure 16 Depiction of the Almohad Army laying siege to a Christian castle. This painting is believed to have been created in Christian Spain, as an attempt to portray the “barbaric” violence of Amazigh-Islamic armies. (Reynolds, 2015)
88 Gallego, et al. 2008. Page 38
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Given that Ben Maimon would have only been 13 years old at the time of the Almohad conquest of Cordoba, there are definite questions as to the speed at which Almohad anti-Jewish actions were implemented.81 One suggestion is that forced conversions were not implemented simultaneously throughout the empire, which is certainly logical considering that there was no instantaneous method of communication, and that therefore Ben Maimon’s family lived in a variety of different locations throughout Spain following their exile from Cordoba. However, city records suggest that by 1159 at the very latest, Ben Maimon and his family had relocated from Cordoba to Fes. The circumstances surrounding this relocation to Fes are confusing at best, as the commonly accepted theory that Ben Maimon was fleeing massive forced conversion of
Jews (such as the one described by Ben Daud) fails to take into account the rather obvious fact that Fes was just as much located in the Almohad Empire as Cordoba.89
Due to this disparity, there exists a fair amount of musing both in his time and in later historical analysis, over whether Maimon may have converted to Islam in order to remain safely within the Almohad Empire.90 Much of this debate hinges on an essay published by Maimonides only shortly after he left Fes, The Letter on Martyrdom,91 in which he states it is permissible for a
Jew to nominally convert to Islam under circumstances where death is the only alternative solution. Letters on Martyrdom centers on Maimon’s presumption that because Islam and
Judaism share the belief in a unified and singular god, conversion under the circumstance of compulsion cannot be considered a crime of a religious nature. While the conclusion drawn from some commentators that Maimonides placed his identity as a philosopher before his religious
89 Davidson. 2005. Page 21. 90 Kraemer. 2010. Page 116 91 Also known as the Letter on Apostasy
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identity cannot be substantiated, we can glean from Maimon’s writing an attempt to coalesce his
Jewish identity with the culture of Arab philosophy he was immersed in. 92
Similarly to the case of Kahina, Maimon’s potential conversion to Islam has led to his remembrance in Fes being marked by a multitude of different portrayals of his religious and ethnic identity.
The street where he allegedly resided in Fes is named in his honor, marked in both French and Arabic. Figure 18 Street named in Ben Maimon's honor, in the area of the Fes Medina he allegedly lived. (taken Interestingly, his name is rendered in French as Moise by author, 2016)
Ben Maimoune, using the Hebrew patronym of
Ben, while in Arabic he is rendered as Musa Ibn
Maimon, with Ibn representing the equivalent
Arabic patronym. Since Maimon would have been fluid in both languages neither can be considered objectively more correct, but they do bring to light the duality of his memory. In 2011, Ben Maimon’s religious heritage became a widely publicized controversy following public outcry from a number of Jewish publications over a UNESCO report Figure 17 Signage advertising a Muslim owned restaruant named after Maimon elsewhere in Fes that uses Hebrew to draw attention to his Jewishness. (taken by author, 2016) on Science in the Arab world that named his as a leading figure in Islamic philosophy.93,94 This duality was made especially clear by two of my
92 Frank. 2005. Page 139. 93 Bruck. 2011. 94
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guides within Fes, both of whom evoked his memory as a great philosopher without drawing specific reference to his religious identity.95,96 When I took the opportunity to further question one of these two guides, Saeed, about Maimon’s Judaism he responded that Maimon was “a great scholar of both Judaism and Islam.”
Section 2.4: The Marinids and the Mellah. (1250 – 1500)
Regardless of innumerable disputes concerning the actual status of Jews under the
Almohad dynasty, mentions of Jewish communities seem to be mostly absent from descriptions of both Morocco and Islamic Andalusia until the rise of the Beni-Merin Dynasty in 1250. David
Corcos, whose research focuses on the Jews under the Beni-Merin suggest that trade routes may have been responsible for the reappearance of Maghrebi Jewry during this era. However even
Corcos refers to the sudden and vast reappearance as “inexplicable,” perhaps at least acknowledging the possibly that Jewish life did in fact continue in some instances under the
Almohads.97 It is also worth noting that Corcos lends some credence to the belief in Jewish –
Berber tribal entities, which he asserts through citation of Ibn Khaldun and several North African
Jewish scholars of the Ummayad era.98 We can also find physical evidence for the existence of
Jews during the Almohad reign in regions of the empire more removed from the central authorities, such as the accounts of Benjamin of Tudela, an Andalusi born merchant who helped
95 Source: Muhammad in Fes. 96 Source: Saeed in Fes. 97 Corcos. 1964. Page 272. 98 Pages 267-277.
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facilitate the trade of gold and slaves to locations such as Fes and Tripoli.99 Additional evidence that Jewish life continued, and even strengthened, on the fringes of the Almohad Empire includes accounts of a Sub-Saharan Jewish-Amazigh Kingdom during this era. While information on this polity is scarce, Corcos suggests that it came about as a result of conversion to Judaism by the
Zenata Amazigh tribe that occurred in tandem with the rise of the Almohads.
Rawd al-Qirtas gives us our first more assertion to post-Almohad Moroccan Judaism in its reference to a 1248 fire in Fes specifically as a “disaster for the Jews.”100 This chronologically corresponds with a period of anarchy in the Almohad Empire caused by ongoing conflicts with
Christians in Spain, where Corcos suggests the Beni-Merin tribe began to seize power in
Northern Morocco.101 Like their predecessors, the Beni-Merin tribe had a heavily cohesive identity based in a nomadic past, and sought support for their rule through an alliance with urban
Islamic jurists and scholars. This result of this alliance was a promotion by the early rulers of the
Beni-Merin tribes of an Islamic philosophy stressing that a major responsibility of the ruler was his obligation to benefit the subjects of his community, as opposed to the Almohad view of the ruler as a strict upholder of Islamic morality.102 This was paired with the rise of a revisionist historic tradition promoted by the Beni-Merin which sought to emphasize the historical contributions of Imazighen in Islamic sultanate.103 Another distinction between the Beni-Marin and their predecessors was the Beni-Merin’s geographic intentions. With the final Almohad surrender to Abu-Yussef Marinid104 in 1268, no additional claim was laid on Islamic territories
99 Hess. 1964. 100 Hopkins, et al. 1981. Page 395. 101 1964. Page 281. 102 Shatzmiller. 1999. Page 511-513. 103 Brett. 1995. Page 252. 104 Marinid is an anglicized descriptor for a ruling member of the Ben-Merin tribe.
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in Andalusia, laying the foundations for a state culturally and politically centered in North
Africa.105
The Beni-Merin’s efforts to re-center their political administration in North Africa is embodied in their reconstruction and restoration of Idris I’s historic capital in Fes. In 1276, Fes officially became the capital of the Marinid state, heralded by the construction of a new city center (known today as Fes Jedid) and a royal palace for Abu-Yussef.106 In addition, Marinid reconstruction efforts in Fes funded the establishment of social services such as leper houses; as well as a series of smaller mosques and religious schools (madrasas) made to service more localized and specific communities then the former large scale institutions of the Almohads.107
This was also an era of innovations in Maghrebi scholarship, producing figures such as the often cited Ibn Khaldun. Khaldun’s histories of North Africa and Islamic Andalusia mark not just a development in North African historical methodology, but also an interlinking of historiography with cultural identity.108
Part of the significance of this expansion of urban society in Fes, was the decline of
Islamic Andalusia as Christian crusaders made more significant territorial conquests in Spain.
The Catholic crusade in Spain did not draw any ideological distinction between Islamic religion and Maghrebi-Arabic culture and ethnicity, so Christian expansion often entailed a resettlement of formerly Andalusian Muslim populations in Moroccan urban trade centers such as Fes or
105 Corcos. 1964. Page 53. 106 O’Meara. 2004. Page 23. 107 Ibid. 108 Goulaichi. 2005. Page 7.
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Marrakesh.109 While this process wouldn’t culminate until the conquest of Granada and the 1492
Edict of Expulsion, refugees from the Christian Reconquista of Spain played an important role in the development of urban Moroccan populations even in the early era of the rule of the Beni-
Merin.110 In contemporary tours of Meknes, Fas, and Rabat, it is relatively commonplace for guides to refer to certain neighborhoods or structures to be identified as Andalusi, and individuals describe family heritage as descendant from Spanish Muslims.111
A similar narrative is applied to the Jewish community of Andalusia, where Jews who lived in Morocco prior to the arrival of exiles from Andalusia refer to themselves as Toshavim, and Arabic speaking refugees from Andalusia call themselves Megorashim.112 The culmination of this exodus occurs in tandem with the 1492 Christian conquest of Granada, which was the final region of modern day Spain to remain under Islamic control, and the infamous Edict of
Expulsion that banished all remaining Jews and Muslims from Spain.113 This expulsion coincided with the period of Marinid rule, specifically that of Sultan Abu-Said Uthmann. The exiled Jewish communities of Spain would resettle in a variety of places from the Netherlands to
Turkey, but Morocco’s geographical proximity would make it an obvious location. Many of these Jewish refugees, hailing from urban centers such as Granada and Cordoba, would relocate to the rapidly growing cities of the Marinids, with an estimated 20,000 Jews arriving in Fes alone. These were Jews arriving, not just from formerly Arab Islamic regions of Iberia, but also from regions such as Castile and Leon which had spent generations under Spanish speaking
109 Marin-Guzman. 1992. 110 Boone, et al. 1990. Page 641. 111 Sources: Mohammed Hatimi, Elmehdi Bhoudra, Abdoul in Fes. 112 Miller, et al. 2001. Page 313. 113 Peters. 1995. Page 10
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Christian rule. The influence of these Sephardic (Spanish) Jews was bilateral. Schroeter points out how even as Sephardic Jews adopted the Arabic language and Islamic political causes,
Toshavim and Megorashim communities began to follow the teachings of Sephardic rabbis.114
The Beni-Merin’s contribution to the development of urban society in Morocco, as well as their understanding of the obligation of the Sultan to subject can both be detected through their policy on Jews. Abu-Yussef’s construction projects in Fes included the creation of a fortified Jewish quarter, known as the Mellah, from the Arabic and Hebrew word for salt.115
Much like Dhimmi status during the Ummayad Era, the Mellah has been subject to conflicting portrayals as an act of either benevolence or anti-Jewish violence. Corcos portrays the Mellah as an attempt to provide a greater degree of safety to the Jews, citing its proximity to the palace and accounts of the Sultan personally riding into the in order to quell anti-Jewish rioters in 1276.116
Furthermore, the creation of the Mellah itself is seen as an attempt to protect Jewish business against looting and violence.117 The representation of the Mellah as a form of privileged protection offered to Jews is echoed in Stillman’s suggestion that the walls of the Mellah offered a “haven for Jews fleeing outbreaks of intolerance.”118 However, one cannot ignore the negative implications of the creation of a walled Jewish space within a city, particularly in light of a 15th century account by a Jewish Fassi that describes the creation of the Mellah as an act of forced relocation:
114 Schroeter. 2008. Page 151. 115 Susan Gilman’s Inscribing Minority Space in the Islamic City suggests that the name Mellah comes from the salty plain on which the original Fes Mellah was constructed. 116 1964. Page 58. 117 Schroeter. 2008. Page 154. 118 1973. Page 256.
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Jews who had been living in the Fes Medina [old city center, as
opposed to Abu-Youssef’s Fas Jedid] since the foundation of the
city were expelled from it with a fierce brutality. Some Jews were
killed, while others embraced Islam. A few families left the
Medina and built the Mellah.119
From both of these anecdotes one might construe that regardless of the Sultan’s noble or
ignoble intentions, a high amount of tension existed between Muslim and Jewish subjects of the
king, as opposed to the unitary non-religious Andalusian harmony that is spoken of in some
narratives.
Figure 19 Map of the Mellah in Fes constructed by the Marinids. (Miller, et al. 2001)
119 Leslau. 1945. Page 197.
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Without suggesting that this observation is entirely untrue, we can note alternative depictions of the relationship between the Mellah and the Muslim community that stressed interdependence and cooperation. The Moroccan-Jewish historian Haim Zafrani treats the
Mellah as a continuation of “the Andalusian symbiosis, recreating a Judeo-Muslim cultural harmony that formerly had existed and bridged both sides of the Mediterranean.”120 Moise
Nahon, another Moroccan Jew to profile the Mellah, explains how Jewish doctors and metalworkers in the Mellah were sought out for their skill and knowledge by Muslim Fassi’s.
Additionally, the Mellah is depicted as a popular destination for Muslims looking to engage in activities that are forbidden by Islamic law, such as gambling and drinking.121 It might suggested that these competing conceptualizations of the Mellah also offer two different perspective on the source of anti-Jewish violence in Marinid Morocco: one where coexistence and cooperation is a norm punctuated by disorganized violence carried out by other segments of Moroccan society, and another where anti-Jewishness is a codified and normalized part of the royal administration.
The Mellah is an undeniably notable development from the historian’s perspective, because it is the first time we see an organized attempt to regulate the role that Jews played within the larger society. In this respect scholars have treated the Mellah as a sort of blueprint for understanding the distinctly Moroccan aspects of Moroccan Jewishness:
First imposed on the Jews by the Moroccan state, the Mellah
therefore became a distinctive measure of Moroccan Jewish
120 Schroeter. 2006. Page 147. 121 Nahon. 1909. Page 268. (translated by Avital Li)
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particularity, both delineating boundaries between Jews and
Muslims and distinguishing Moroccan Jews from Jewish
communities elsewhere. The period of mellahization a process that
occurred between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries,
symbolized the new synthesis that represented the cultural world of
a distinctive Moroccan Jewry.122
Thus the importance of the Mellah is not just in its location as a synthesis for Toshavim,
Megorashim and Sephardic Jewry, but also in how it redefines Jewish identity in Morocco in relation to the larger society around it. This redefinition, though cultural in the long term, can be traced and understood on a uniquely professional level. This can be seen in Nahon’s profile, where he suggests that Mellah Jews who worked as doctors and ironworkers came to gain a reputation and prestige that spread far beyond the Mellah. The Mellah also not only inscribed specifically Jewish professions but also Islamic ones, as it was populated with Muslim bakers who could operate the oven during the Jewish Sabbath.123
Whether by coercion, outright force, or personal choice, the centrality of the Mellah to
Jewish life in Morocco did mean that they increasingly became a group involved in and associated with a set of specific professions.124 This meant that specific urban-based industries such as artisanal and mercantile work became more associated with Jews, due to a combination of reality and stereotype.125 Two crucial locations along the Transharan trade route, Sijilmasa
122 Schroeter. 2006. Page 156. 123 Miller, et al. 2001.Page 320. 124 Schroeter. 2006. Page 156. 125 Goldberg. 1978. Page 79.
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and Tuat, are mentioned during this era as being almost completely controlled by Jewish merchants.126 Within higher echelons of the Sultanate, Jews also began to take up specific roles with the Moroccan court, specifically carrying out diplomatic missions to Christian Europe.
These “court Jews” have been represented by Zafrani as the highest expression of cooperation between Muslims and Jews.127 The Marinid era began a process of not only Judaizing certain professions and roles within Morocco, but also at least attempting to maintain a peaceful coexistence and codependence between Muslim and Jewish communities.
Section 2.5: Sharifian Morocco (1500 to 1800)
The slow decline of the power of Beni-Merin ushered in an era of decentralized and divided power across their former Sultanate, which would eventually be reunited under a new dynasty and paradigm of ideological rule by the Sharifian sultans. Two separate dynasties are generally understood as Sharifian, the Saadi and the Alaouites, the Alaouites are of special significance as the dynasty that has served as sultans and kings up to this day. The Sharifian era must also be understood in terms of the impact of major shifts in global power centers that would eventually have significance on internal Moroccan politics, particularly the Turkish Ottoman
Empire and European colonial empires.
The term “Sharif,” an Arabic title for a person of noble ancestry, is most often associated in Sunni Islam with a descendant of Muhammad. In this respect, both the Ummayads and the
126Corcos. 1964. Page 73. 127 Schroeter. 2002. Page 2.
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Idrisi were considered Sharifian in their own right, as opposed to later dynasties with origins
from within the Maghreb, including the Marinids. In 1554, The Saadi family from Southern
Morocco seized control of Marrakesh and used as a capital city. The first Saadi sultan, Abd
Abdullah, had the legitimacy of his claim of “Sharif” from the Islamic prophet confirm by a
prominent Moroccan Marabout, or holy man, named Al-Jazuli.128 Although Abd-Abdullah’s
claimed heritage has been called into
question, perhaps more important is
how he redefined the relationship
between Maghrebi and Islamic
heritage through his assumption of
the title of Sharif.129 The claim to
Sharifhood by Abd-Abdullah has
Figure 20 Gravestone of a Jewish Moroccan "saint" or Marabout, in Meknes. (taken by been explained as an attempt to author, 2016) “supersede” the power of Amazigh
families that rose after the rule of the Beni-Merin, by appealing to both the Amazigh belief in
rule justified by pedigree and Islamic notions of rule by a Caliph. Furthermore the Marabout
tradition in Morocco was believed to date back to spiritual beliefs in the region that predate
Islam.130 Marabouts are most often religious mystics ascribed with supernatural powers such as
healing, who became popular figures among threatened and disadvantages segments of society in
the general instability of post-Marinid Morocco. The Marabout traditions have often been
moblilized as another example of cooperative religious sentiment in Morocco. Both Jews and
128 Cornell. 1998. 129 Rabinow. 1977. Page 52. 130 Goulaichi. 2005. Page 15.
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Muslims in the region had their own holy men (The Marabouts are often portrayed by Europeans as “Moroccan Saints”), and at least as far back as the nineteenth century it was not uncommon for a Muslim to make a pilgrimage to a the grave of a Jewish Marabout and visa versa.
However, the stability of the Sharifian Kingdom was still heavily dependent on Amazigh familial polities, which the Sultan depended on for military and administrative missions.131
Accounts of the internal disputes that often arose between these polities, recorded by Kamal
Hachkar, suggest that they would often ally with Jewish communities in their struggles against neighboring Muslim families.132 The relationship between a tribal polity and a Jewish community, was defined by personal associations between specific Jews and specific members of the surrounding Muslim communitiy, as opposed to Mellah which aimed to offer blanket protection to entire communities.133
While Hachkar’s recordings suggest that the Sharifian era might be remembered as one of “tribal wars,” memories of the Saadi dynasty also stress the degree of stability and strength that they were able to uphold. In a museum dedicated to the Saadi dynasty in the city of Meknes, the importance of the dynasty was also explained to me in terms of their ability to defend
Morocco against external threats:
The Saadi had many enemies, both the Turks who wanted to
conquer us like they did Algerians and Tunisians, and also the
131 Deshen. 1984. Page 213. 132 2014. 133 Deshen. 1984. Page 214.
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Portuguese who wanted to add us to their colonial empire. Because
they [Saadi Sultans] managed to repel these invaders, Morocco
stayed an independent and strong place at a time when few of our
neighbors did.134
In addition to their ability to repel external threats, the Sharifians are also popularly remembered for the level of internal security they provided. The reign of the early Alaouite king,
Moulay Ismail, is often reflected back on as a time when “a woman or a Jew could travel alone from the farthest south of the country to its farthest north without being in fear about his/her safety.”135 This description hearkens back to the Marinid era ideal of the Sultan’s obligation to protect his people. In this respect we know that both the Saadi’s and the Alaouites built a significant number of new Mellah’s across Morocco, to the extent that by 1900 there was one in almost every mid-sized town and city across the country.136 The construction of these Mellahs themselves may have been part of a larger effort by Saadi and later Alaouite Sultan’s to assert their own authority. Luring Jewish populations to cities could help assure that their loyalties would be to the authority of the Sultan, also known as Al-Mazkhen, as opposed to an Amazigh tribal polity. Similarly, an assault on the Mellah community became an affront to the sovereignty and authority of the Sultan, who could express his power through his ability to protect vulnerable populations.137 The system that arose during the Marinid era and expanded under the Sharifian kings once again exists in the uncomfortable space of provided protection and opportunities to
Moroccan Jews while simultaneously enforcing a subjugated societal status.
134 Source: Tamer in Meknes. 135 Goulaichi. 2005. Page 18. 136 Kosansky. 2010. 137 Deshen. 1984. Page 213.
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The more widespread codification of the role of Muslims as protectors of their Jewish communities, which allowed Jewish communities to spread significantly outside of major cities, has been categorized across a spectrum that varies from coexistence to exploitation. Aomar
Boum’s research on Jewish communities in Southern Morocco alternatively suggests that in many cases Jews were able to mobilize their position as dhimmi to take more active roles in society, building not only political alliances but also personal friendships with their Muslim neighbors.138 In the 1797 account written by the European traveler John Davidson, this more positive view of Moroccan Jews is distinctly associated with Amazigh tribal communities, whereas urban Mellah Jews living under the Arab sultans are in a constant state of “debasement or servitude.”139
The crux of Davidson’s assertion of the “debasement” of Mellah Jews lies in the assumption that they would be constantly subject to unfair and discriminatory rulings in Islamic
Shari’a courts. A possible counter-narrative can be found in the legal records of one of the most prominent mercantile families of the Fes Mellah, the Assarafs. As representatives (Nagids) of the
Fes Mellah, the Assaraf’s are shown to have often appeared in Shari’a courts, both for the purpose of maintaining their international textile trade as well as defending Mellah residents in legal disputes with Muslims. Jessica Marglin’s readings of these records highlight both the positive and negatives of the Jewish experiences in Shari’a courts. There appears several different instances of the Assaraf family using Islamic courts to their advantage, such as successfully obligating a Muslim to repay debts owed to a Jewish merchant. Interestingly, in a
138 2013. Page 35. 139 1893. Page 188.
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possible indication of the ability of Mellah Jews to successfully navigate Islamic courts, Marglin points out that in 86% of the cases in the Assaraf records where Jews appeared in Shari’a courts, they were actually the plaintiffs against a Muslim defendant.140 Furthermore, in a reversal of the paradigm suggested by Davidson, there exist a significant number of instances of Jewish communities appealing to the Sharifian Sultan for protection from a local aggressor. As Arabic speakers, the Jews of the Mellah would be more then familiar with Islamic notions of fairness and justice, and often evoked such concepts when communicating to the Sultan about abuses of the Jewish community by more local powers. In cases such as an accusation of the kidnapping of a Jewish boy by a Muslim in the Saharan region of Sus, the sultan would send a mediator with the goal of normalizing relation between Jews and Muslims by addressing each party’s grievances.141
The social aspect of interreligious communal relationships in the Sharifian Morocco are often illustrated through the lenses of the Mimouna festival, a holiday celebrated by Jews and
Muslims at the end of the Jewish celebration of Pesach. During the seven days of a traditional
Passover celebration, Jews severely restrict their dietary habits. Allegedly, it became tradition for
Muslim families to bring a meal to Jewish household that they had a friendly relationship with and feast and celebrate together. In some instances this ceremony also grew to include the transgression of the social boundaries between the two groups, with Muslims putting on the clothing usually required of Jews. A less highlighted aspect of the festival also involved men of both religions, dressing up as women. Which bears an interesting connection back to
140 2013. Page 77-102 141 Page 238-250.
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commentary on Sultan’s ability to protect both women and Jews, and suggests once again that the two groups, or at least their societal positions, were also seen similarly.142
Chapter 3: Narratives of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Oppression
Section 3.1: The Nineteenth Century
Many of the most enduring and heavily debated depections of Mellah life appear during the nineteenth century, in the form of travel writings by European Jews and Gentiles about
Morocco. These depictions are often negative reflections on the Jewish condition in Norht
Africa, often suggesting that the Mellah became a tool for manipulation and ultimately weakening of the Jewish community, undermining communal loyalty by incentivizing loyalty to the Islamic ruler.143 This assessment falls within the theme of Mark Cohen’s assertion that the function of Dhimmi status was to codify Jewish inferiority.144 Several legislations passed by
Sharifian sultans can be viewed in this regard, although it is helpful to remember that many of these laws may have only been enforced sporadically. Regardless, laws which attempted to regulate and enforce ideas of Jewish inferiority seem to have been prominent enough to warrant reactions by a 19th century visitor to Fes from France, Leon Goddard:
according to the laws, the Jews cannot cultivate earth,-own land or
houses outside the Mellah…ride a horse in front of a town…If
142 Goldberg. 1978. Page 78. 143 Deshen. 1984. Page 216. 144 R. Cohen. 1986
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allowed to speak in front of a tribunal, they have to be squatting in
front of the judge…they have to dress only in black or dark color, -
- wear a black hat different than the turban…”145
Perhaps no story of this era however, has become more symbolic of negative interactions between the Sharifian era Sultan and his Jewish subjects then that of Solica Hachuel. Solica is portrayed by a variety of sources both inside and outside of Morocco, as a young girl, who was publicly beheaded in Fes in 1834 after being accused of Ridda conversion from Islam by an
Islamic court. Solica’s age, as well as her perceived innocence in the eyes of Jewish community, lead to widespread memorialization and veneration of her name. This includes a prominent grave site within the Jewish cemetery in Fes, as well as recitations of her story on Tisha Ba’av.146
Solica’s story varies slightly in depiction but usually starts with her making a Muslim friend from outside the Mellah, either another young girl or an older man, this friend then publicly testifies that they successfully convinced Solica to convert to Islam. After Solica refutes this claim, she is judged as an apostate and sentenced to death.147
The story of Solica is often construed as a general condemnation of Islamic society in general, particularly of the place of Jews under the Dhimmi system. Her story is taken to represent both anti-Jewish sentiment among the Fes populace, as well as the inability of Jews to protect themselves from the codified violence of the Islamic legal system that was enforced by the Sultan.148
145 Bostom. 2008. Page 15-16. 146 Hassine. 2011. Page 179. 147 Amos, et al. 2006. Pages 92-93. 148 Source: Alise in Casablanca
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Figure 21 A small mansoleum dedicated to Solica in the Jewish cemetary in Fes. The site has become a place of pilgrimage, with some including her among the pantheon of Jewish Moroccan Marabouts. (taken by author, 2016)
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This is not necessarily reflective of how Solica is viewed within the Islamic community of Fes itself, as it has been asserted that her grave is a site of pilgrimage for Muslims and Jews by both scholars and Mellah tour guides.149 It has been suggested that the use of Solica as a symbol of the subjugation of the Jewish Dhimmi in nineteenth century Morocco, might date back to the use of the story by Algerian
Jews in 1892, whose status as Dhimmi had been lifted by the French colonial administration.150 Through this channel, depictions of the story during the nineteenth and early twentieth century also became popular for
Christian Europeans, and appears in such sources as Goddard’s travel journal and oil painting by the French
Alfred Dehodencq.151
Solica’s story, and the way it has been remembered, hearkens to the importance of understanding how
Jewish Moroccans factor into the Figure 22 French painter Christian painter Alfred Dehodencq's 1860 depiction of the execution of Solica. (Hassine, 2011)
150 Hassine. 2011. Page 180. 151 Bostom. 2008. Page 15.
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interactions between European colonial powers and the Sharifian Alaouite sultans who ruled during the nineteenth century. As has already become clear, the situation of Moroccan Jewry under Islamic rule was depicted as highly oppressive in this category of literature, a depiction which at least one of my Mellah guides saw as having direct consequences on understandings of
Islamic-Jewish relations in Morocco:
The thing is that when [in the 1800s] European came to Morocco,
they wrote about the Jews and said how they were poor and
unfortunate, and everyone thought this is how it is for Jews in
Morocco. But the thing they did not know is that everyone was
poor at the time… and they thought that how it was for Jews in that
time was how it was always.152
The condition of nineteenth century Morocco that is being alluded to here can be understood through the economic tactics of imperial European powers of the era. We have already discussed how the economic power of Moroccan dynasties from the Almoravids onwards were heavily dependent on control of the trans-Saharan trade route from West Africa. This can help explain why many of the cities that served as consolidations of both economic and political power prior to the 19th century were inland cities located on this route, such as Fes, Meknes, and
Marrakesh. The invention of the steamboat in the 19th century, made sea-based trade a viable alternative to trans-Saharan trade for goods from West Africa to reach Europe. As a result,
European powers constructed a number of ports and harbors along the Moroccan coast
152 Source: Abdelrahman in Fes.
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(including modern day Casablanca) that allowed them to entirely bypass the trans-Saharan route.153 This combined with Spanish devaluation of Moroccan currencies wreaked havoc on the inland economy of the Sultanate.154 The relatively sudden disappearance of this major income source forced Moroccan farmers to begin exporting agricultural products in much larger numbers, resulting in widespread famines in 1798, 1815, 1825, and 1878.155
The collapse of the trans-Saharan trade route forced Jews who had previous thrived in smaller interior communities such as Sijilmasa into the Mellahs of urban Morocco, both in interior cities such as Fes as well as developing coastal ports in Agadir and Essaouira.156 The resulting influx significantly changed the make-up of these Mellahs, and can help explain why
19th centuries reports on the Mellah describe them as overcrowded and impoverished.157 As
Miller, Petruccioli, and Bertagnin’s study of the Fes Mellah points out, historical density of the neighborhood is exceeding difficult to accurately calculate because circumstances changed so rapidly during the 19th century. However, they do offer one piece of potential support for the idea
Jews was not the exceptional in Morocco, pointing out that a 1904 French traveler to the Mellah noted that conditions there were no worse than in the rest of the city.158 Furthermore, the Jews of the Mellah were not universally impoverished during the 19th century, particularly Jews employed in the Sultan’s court for diplomatic missions to Europe, who benefited significantly from the increased importance of trading with imperial powers.159
153 Zelaza. 1993. Page 264. 154 Valensi. 1997. Page 285. 155 Issawi. 1982. Page 98. 156 Boum. 2013. Page 16. 157 Bostom. 2008. Page 15. 158 Page 319. 159 Page 314.
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Given commonly held perceptions of anti-Semitic sentiment in twentieth century Europe, especially in the era of the infamous Dreyfus case in France, one might find French interest in the plight of Jews in Morocco to be a curiosity at the very least. In understanding this, we must primarily consider the role that Moroccan Jews played as envoys to colonial empires during the
19th century and into the era of the protectorate. A deeper political context for the European colonial empire’s interest and concern for Jews is at least suggest at by Abigail Green’s conclusion that the interest of the French and British in Jewish populations in locations like
Morocco often served as a pretext for legitimizing colonial empire.160 This claim could find further support in French colonial author’s Pierre Flamand’s characterization of French attitudes in Morocco as casting the Jew as “feeble, cowardly, dirty” and the Muslim as “fanatic, wrong, and cruel.”161 Under such stereotypes, it becomes easier to understand how sympathetic portrayals of the conditions of Moroccan Jews helped justify colonial outreached. This perspective, while certainly significant, should not be taken to an extreme such as to delegitimize the conditions and violence that were faced by Jews during this era.
Section 3.2: The French Protectorate Era (1900 – 1925)
The colonization of Morocco, despite being present in the geopolitical realities of the
1800s, was not fully realized until 1912. Although ongoing conflict across the Straits of Gibraltar had led to Spain and Portugal occupying small sections of the Moroccan coast line since shortly after 1492, the colonial era itself cannot rightfully have been considered to start until the 1912
160 Green.2008. Page 192 161 Levy. 2003.
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treaty of Fes, when Sultan Yusuf ben Hasan Alaouite was coerced into giving France the ability to dictate and influence his domestic and foreign policy in the form of a protectorate.162
The enactment of this protectorate was the result of longer history of negotiation between
Alaouite sultans and the French government. As the result of several large scale military defeats of the Alaouite army by Spanish soldiers during the nineteenth century, Sultan Abd Al-Aziz opened up diplomatic channels with France with the goal of importing European military technology. This lead to an estrangement between the Sultanate and religious authorities, as well as tribal polities, who looked at these liaisons as collaboration with the same people responsible for the ongoing crisis of famine and poverty. This was aggravated by the extravagant spending habits of Abd Al-Aziz, which included among many other luxuries items the purchase of a solid gold camera. As the situation intensified a series of riots and rebellions broke out against the
Sultan and French presence in the country. In at least one case in 1900, these riots targeted
Mellah Jewry, under the pretense that Jewish communities were aligned with the French due to their international business connections. This sentiment is notable not just as an example of Anti-
Jewish violence, but also because it directly embodies anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews as disloyal and subversive. The situation intensified with the 1907 murder of a French doctor by a mob in Marrakesh. French authorities seized on the murder of a doctor specifically, as evidence that Moroccan’s rejected modern science and needed to be saved from primeval barbarism.
While it is more likely than the murder occurred along the same lines as assaults on the Mellah, that is an attempt to demonstrate the illegitimacy of the Sultan through his inability to protect his
162 De Tarde. 1919.
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subjects, the French used it as a pretext to launch a military occupation that ended five years later in the Treaty of Fes.163
The status of Moroccan Jewry under the French protectorate can be understood through three different relationships. The first, the relationship of the French Jewish community to its
Moroccan counterpart, actually predated the protectorate through the institution of the Alliance
Israelite Universelle (AIU). The second is the laws enacted by a largely Christian colonial administration towards Jewry; which, depending on who you ask, represents attempts to either emancipate or control Moroccan Jewry. Finally, it must be examined how the first two relationships altered the general status of Jews in Moroccan society, and affected relationships between Jews and both Sultan and fellow Muslim citizenry.
The Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) was founded in 1860 in Paris, with the goal of fighting disease and poverty in “less fortunate” (un-emancipated in terms of the European conception of Jewish emancipation through naturalization) Jewish communities through a French language education that focused on European Jewish history. The first Alliance school appeared in the Northern Moroccan city of Tetouan shortly after the AIU’s founding, offering free primary education to any Jewish family in the surrounding area. The curriculum of these years was heavily critical of the concept of Dhimmi, and focused on the European enlightenment as a blueprint to improve Jewish conditions in Morocco.164 In this respect, the educational platform offered by the Alliance was not only focused on denigrating Islamic traditions within Morocco, but also specific Jewish traditions that were associated with the Islam and Arab culture. This
163 Amster. 2004. 164 Laskier. 1983. Page 147-148.
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included a discouraging of Jewish students from speaking or learning Arabic or Amazigh languages, as well as efforts to coerce the abandonment of names that were considered Amazigh or Arabic in favor of French ones.165,166 The Alliance model was built to perpetuate its own growth, with a graduating classes of pupils being encouraged and subsidized to found their own
Alliance schools under the supervision of a central authority.167 The Jewish theological traditions of
Moroccan communities were similarly dismissed as “dirty” with “very few true scholars” by French
Jews working in Morocco.168
The Alliance also attempted to play a role in offering political protection to threatened Jewish communities, particularly those such as Solica that
Figure 23 Uniform for an AIU school student in Fes, on were subject to oppressive judgement by Islamic display in Edmond Gabai's museum in the Fes Jewish Cemetary (taken by author, 2016) courts. However their only channel to do this was through the French colonial authority, which was only willing to go so far in transgressing the authority of the Sultan.169 As one can imagine, there existed mixed sentiment towards the activities and ideology of the Alliance among Moroccan Jewry. Aomar Boum’s research notes however, that this reluctance was rapidly shed following the events of the second World Wars
165 Source: Younis Laghari. 166 Source: Younis Abedour. 167 2013. Page 69. 168 Page 71. 169 Laskier. 1983. Page 151.
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and the Holocaust.170 The predominance of Alliance education probably also helped to further drive a wedge between Muslims and Jews, both by attempting to Francofy Jewish communities culturally, and giving Moroccan Jews access to higher positions in the protectorate
Administration.171
The general policy of the French colonial administration towards Jewish communities was predicated on not appearing to too heavily violate the relationship between Sultan and subject. In practice this system can be understood through the 1918 reforms to the Dhimmi system. Although believed to be written entirely by French authorities, the 1918 reform was officially released as a Dahir, a royal decree from the Sultan. These reforms were a direct result of pressure from the Alliance, who wished to see Moroccan Jews “emancipated” (granted French citizenship as they had been in Algeria in 1890).172 However, colonial Resident-General Hubert
Lyautey wished to avoid full emancipation, which he believed would cause instability among
Muslims and welcome a population of “unassimilable” Jews to French soil.173 The major issue that emancipation entailed was that Moroccan Jews could be subject to French courts, as opposed to the previous system where Jews had their own courts but were often subject to both
Berber and Islamic laws. Lyautey circumvented this issue, by reforming the Jewish court system so that it was equal to Berber and Islamic law, but still subject to French “secular” law.174 In practice the crucial difference this entailed was that Jews could no longer be called into Islamic court for crimes of a specifically religious nature, such as Ridda.175
170 Boum. 2013. Page 68. 171 Page 67. 172 Chetrit, et al. 2006. Page 170-171. 173 Laskier. 1983. Page 151. 174 Boum. 2013. Page 38-39. 175 Chetrit, et al. 2006. Page 189.
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Chetrit and Schroeter have argued however that even the more seemingly benevolent actions of Lyautey’s administration were actually use of “emancipation” as a pretext to exercise more direct control over Moroccan Jewish populations. These two narratives are not necessarily contradictory to one another, as it is worth noting they both entail extrication of Moroccan Jews from their more traditional place within the Sultanate. However we should also note the divide between the interests of the French Jews of the Alliance, which sought to grant full French citizenship to their Moroccan counterparts, and the French colonial authorities who sought to usurp the traditional arrangements that had existed between Jews and Muslims in Morocco since the rise of the Marinids.
The presence of this divide serves as a reminder that the so-called emancipation of
French Jews was in its own way just as tenuous as their counterparts in Morocco. Less than twenty years prior to the arrival of the protectorate, the French Jewish community was shaken by the infamous Dreyfus affair, in which a French military officer was (most believe) wrongfully accused and convicted of sharing military information with Great Britain. Although news of the court case and conviction were (most likely purposefully) suppressed in the French colonial empire, the contents of the case revealed French nationalist suspicions of the potential of any
Jewish community to become loyal citizens of France.176
If we look at some the factors that have been put forth by Jewish historians about why anti-Semitism was forged by circumstances of twentieth century Europe, one can quite easily
176 Daughton. 2005.
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how the French protectorate might have create similar conditions in Morocco. Firstly we should
consider one of the most commonly highlighted explanations for anti-Semitism: that it serves to
scapegoat Jews during times of societal misfortune and national crisis. We should further ask, as
Brustein and King do in their history of European Anti-Semitism, why specifically the Jews
might become a scapegoat for the troubles on 19th and 20th century Moroccan society. In looking
at his native country of France, sociologist Pierre Birnbaum suggested that Jews became a
scapegoat as a result of an impression by the French citizenry that emancipation of Jewish people
was “imposed” upon them by the state.177 Regardless of ones opinions on the relative benefits
and disadvantages that the protectorate offered Moroccan Jews, it does not take any significant
stretch of logic to understand how Moroccan Muslims might have also looked at French policy
as imposition by a foreign power. Especially when we consider this information along with AIU
efforts to Francofy Moroccan Jewry, we see quite easily how the specific conditions of anti-
Semitism replicated themselves in North Africa.
Section 3.3: Moroccan Nationalism and Judaism. (1925-1948)
If a certain strain of anti-Semitism can be attributed
specifically to nationalism, then one might naturally assume
that the rise of nationalist movements in Morocco may have
excluded Jews from Moroccan identity in a way that was
unthinkable under previous regimes. In Europe we have
Figure 24 Political map of Morocco in the 1930’s, already seen how nationalists debated the circumstances by with the light green representing the French Protectorate. (Kimdime Archives)
177 2004. Page 37.
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which Jews could join their movements and eventual nation-states, with some choosing to define
Jews ethnically so as to exclude even converts from their imagined communities. The development of a nationalist idea of Morocco entails a unification of distinct groups which might have previously considered themselves separate into a collective cultural identity. Primarily for the early Moroccan nationalist movements this meant bridging the gap between Arab and
Amazigh. Ironically, this process of unification may have actually been sped up by the arrival of
French infrastructure such as railroads that brought the country and the city into closer and more regular communication with each other. The French authorities worked actively to combat the possibility of these two separate groups unifying through measures such as the separation of
Berber and Islamic courts, as well indirectly through archeological and ethnographic scholarship that focused on pre-Islamic history in Morocco, such as the work on Kahina highlighted by
Hannoum.178
The tensions sowed by French colonial politics concerning Imazighen and Islam came to head most visibly in the 1930s, following the passage of another Dahir further separating the authority of Berber courts from Islamic ones. The anti-colonial movement that arose in this decade represented a significant break from previous anti-colonial movements in Morocco that presented a struggle between an Islamic and Christian civilization and most promulgated by high ranking religious clerics. Instead the insurrections of the 1930s, which included both peaceful demonstrations and more violent mass-action, was led by a series of popular newspapers, many of whom rejected both the Sultan and the elite Islamic clerics as out of touch with day-to-day life for Arabs and Imazighen within the protectorate.179 Many of the political leaders of this revolt
178 Wrytzen. 2013. Page 621-623. 179 Halstead. 1964. Page 442.
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had attended higher education, often in France itself, and formed secretive political societies dedicated to creating a unified Moroccan identity to resist French colonialism.180 Despite the rejection of traditional Islamic authorities, A Moroccan sense of Islamic spirituality remained central to the ideology of the Moroccan nationalists of the thirties. One of the most popular tactics of the nationalist organizers of the 1930’s became mass gathering for the recitation of a traditional prayer for times of hardship, Ya Latif, with the added line: “for our Berber brothers who are deprived of Muslim law and who can no longer live under the law and customs of their ancestors.”181
At times, perhaps due to the perception of the protectorate as an attack on the religious character of Morocco, the 1930’s demonstrations at times took on a specifically anti-Jewish character. Attacks on the Jewish community of Fes during this era were portrayed by a Mellah shop owner and resident, Mahdi, as indicative of a more European strain of anti-Semitism reaching Morocco:
The thing that happened in the 1930s is that the Jews and the
Sultan were believed to have sold out Morocco to the French. So a
few violent people in the movement came into the Mellah and
destroyed people’s homes and hurt people. But what is more
important is that they wanted us to stop buying from Jews and stop
having friendships with them. This is why we call this Morocco’s
180 Page 630 181 Page 626.
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first pogrom, it was the first time anyone tried to tell us that the
Jews didn’t belong here, among Muslims.182
The anti-Jewish elements of Moroccan nationalism were not universal to the movement itself, and some factions specifically concerned themselves with the integration of Jewish
Moroccan into a burgeoning sense of national identity. The favorable views of Moroccan nationalists towards Jews are often remember in association with the Alouite Sultan who eventually lead Morocco into independence, Sidi Mohammad Ben Youssef the Fifth.
Mohammad V came to power in 1927, at a time where it was not uncommon in Anti-
French circles in Morocco to reject the Sultan as a pawn of French interests.183 This assumption may have in some ways been compounded by a French influenced statement from the young
Sultan in 1930 that condemned the use of Ya Latif for political purposes. However, in the same year Mohammed V also began meeting with delegations of nationalist leaders. The potential of an alliance between nationalists and the sultan was officially realized in 1933, when the ascension of Mohammed V to the throne was celebrated by demonstrators as national holiday.184
The sultan’s own loyalties were more officially affirmed in a series of televised speeches in
1947, in which he blamed international treaties for the fragmentation and weakening of
Morocco.185
182 Source: Mahdi in Fes. 183 Mitchell. 1955. Page 430. 184 Wrytzen. 2013. Page 630 185 Mitchell. 1955. Page 430.
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The difference between Mohammed V’s condemnation of nationalists in 1930 and his endorsement in 1947 is closely related to the events of the Second World War that occurred in between these two dates. The capitulation of the French government to Nazi Germany, gave
Mohammed V an opportunity to undercut French authority by aligning himself with the Allied powers of Great Britain and the United States.186
Mohammed V’s rejection of the Franco-German alliance during the Second World War also has become a setting where his affirmation of the role of Jews in Moroccan nationalist identity is established. The French surrender to Hitler occurred on June 22nd 1940, and the total removal of Nazi allied Vichy French forces from Morocco occurred in November 1942, meaning that Vichy France held official power over the protectorate for about two years (though there de facto control was severely hampered by the dismemberment of the French army that was ordered by Hitler).187 In 1941, Colonial Authorities coerced the Sultan into a Dahir aimed at forcing
Moroccan Jews back into the Mellah and beginning a process a deportation to Germany.
Figure 25 Photograph of Mohammed V (right) meeting with Rabbis in Casablanca, 1937. Found in Casablanca Jewish Musuem (taken by author, 2016)
186 Rivlen. 1982. 187 Ibid.
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Archival research suggests these laws were only sporadically enforced, with no successful deportations of Moroccan Jews.188
Mohammed V is often depicted as a leading figure in seeing that Nazi policies that came via occupied France were not enforced. He is quite often cited as stating in response to the 1941
Dahir: “There are no Jews in Morocco. Only Moroccan Subjects,” affirming both his belief that
Jews belonged within the Moroccan nation and his obligation as Sultan to protect them.189
Another anecdote repeated during a recent ceremony in Mohammed V’s honor held at a New
York City synagogue, suggests that after being ordered by the Vichy government to force
Moroccan Jews to wear an identifying gold star patch, the Sultan instead demanded that additional patches be printed for him and his own family.190 Haim Zafrani points out that even as
Anti-Jewish laws were passed by way of Dahir, the Sultan held a series of meetings with prominent members of the Jewish community within his court, where he spoke against these measures.191
Speaking to a Moroccan Jewish scholar in Casablanca, the image of Mohammed V as a protector of the Jews was dismissed as a form of official propaganda concerning a king who wielded little actual political power.192 Wagenhofer similarly suggests that this narrative was produced retrospectively by Moroccan nationalists looking to advance an image of a tolerant and benevolent Sultan.193 Suspicions of Mohammed V’s dedication are in many ways compounded
188 Laskier. 1991. Page 348. 189 Wagenhofer. 2012. 190 Ibid 191 Zafrani. 1983. Page 297 (Translated by Wagenhofer) 192 Source: Alise in Casablanca 193 2012.
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by the fact that despite his rhetoric, he did continue actually enact the Vichy Dahir, although there is little to no actual evidence enforcement. It must also be understood that Jews living in
Morocco who were considered subjects of the Sultan were not spared deportation to Europe.194
Rita Aouad Badoual, a Moroccan historian employed by the French government to design curriculums for teaching Arab history in French schools, released a statement suggesting the fortunes of Moroccan Jews during the Holocaust can only be understood through an intersection of a variety of different factors, as opposed to solely through the Sultan’s actions and sentiments:
In the period when Morocco was under Vichy the Moroccan Jews
were afraid of their situation. Anti-Semitic laws were enacted in
the country […]. But the hesitation of the Sultan, the compromises,
derogations and exceptions opposing their application, and finally
the landing of the Americans spared them the terrible destiny of
their European fellow believers.195
Thus Mohammed V becomes yet another contested figure in Moroccan Jewish history, whose actions and ideology in reference to the place of Jews remains a subject of contemporary debate.
194 Ibid. 195 Aouad-Badoual, et al. 2006. Page 60 (Translated by Wagenhofer)
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Section 3.4: Independence, Zionism, and Emigration. (1948 – 1975)
The 1940’s are understandably treated as a watershed moment for Jewish communities across the world, both due to the attempted annihilation of European Jewry during the Holocaust and the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. In Morocco, as well as greater North Africa, the
1940s and the Second World War also marked the beginning of a long and often violent removal of colonial forces and the establishment of independent states undergoing a process of decolonization. The French protectorate of Morocco was disbanded and the independent
Kingdom of Morocco came into existence in 1956.196 In the decades following Moroccan independence, the Moroccan Jewish community living within the state was dramatically depleted, with many emigrating to Israel, France or the United States, to the point that there were less than 5000 Jews remaining by a 2003 national census. 197,198 This mass exodus has become a point of contention within competing historical narratives, and has been consistently recast as a variety of commentaries on the decolonization, Zionism, and nationalism.
The statistics on emigration of Jews to Morocco in the era of Moroccan independence are often used to challenge the legitimacy of Mohammed V’s supposed vision of Jewish integrality to the Moroccan nation state. In considering this narrative we must first look at what attempts were made to establish positive relations between nationalists and Jews in Morocco beyond the rhetoric of Mohammed V. A 1952 conference in Geneva between wealthy Moroccan Jew’s, mainly those of Spanish origin from Fes or Casablanca, and members of Morocco’s mainstream
196 Upon independence, Muhammad V changed his title from Sultan to King, and from this point forward the monarchy is referred to as a kingdom. 197 Stearns, et al. 2013. Page 966. 198 Bin-Nun. 2014. Page 52.
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nationalist independence party, Istiqlal, managed to secure funding from these families for the nationalist cause. Jewish pressure to reach a compromise with Istiqlal was probably encouraged by fears of anti-Jewish attacks by militarized nationalist factions leading military struggles against the protectorate. By 1954, when former general Mbarak Bekkay had emerged as a clear political leader of Istiqlal, he publicly announced intentions to preserve and naturalize the Jewish population in the new Moroccan state.199
Despite these efforts, Jewish emigration to Israel and abroad numbered at over 100,000 from 1948 until Moroccan independence, suggesting the optimism of wealthier (mostly urban
Arabic speaking) Moroccan Jews and Istiqlal nationalists were not shared by the Jewish population as a whole.200 Guides I spoke to in the Fes Mellah and Casablanca, offer several interpretations of the threats that Moroccan Jewry did and did not face during this era. A Jewish
Moroccan historian in Casablanca, spoke of boycotts and looting of Jewish business as regular occurrence in 1950’s Fes; motivated by myths about Jewish shopkeepers sending their money to the Israeli army.201 Another member of the Casablanca Jewish community spoke about Fes
Sharia courts protecting Muslims who attacked and murdered Jews from legal consequences.202
Once again, these incidents stand out in certain narratives due to their attempts to portray Jews as outsiders and traitors to the developing imagined community.
On the other hand within the contemporary Fes Mellah, many of my guides were dismissive of the idea that either boycotts or organized violence took place within the city during
199 Bin-Nun. 2014. Page 59-60. 200 Bin-Nun. 2014. Page 52. 201 Source: Yuness Abedour in Casablanca. 202 Source: Vanessa Paloma in Casablanca.
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the 1950s, including the same shopkeeper who spoke openly about the violent pogroms of
1930’s Fes.203 A man who identified himself as one of the last remaining Fassi Jews to live within the Mellah, claimed that stories of Muslim assaults on Jews during this era were lies created by an “Israeli propaganda machine.”204 Both an older Mellah shopkeeper who described himself as old enough to remember when the neighborhood was still largely Jewish, and film- maker and scholar Yunous Laghari touched on what they referred to as wide-spread assumption that the Istiqlal’s French language newspaper, L’opinion, was supported by Israeli secret agents to sensationalize Muslim-Jewish violence, though neither stated this as an objective truth.205
Accusations of Israeli aggravation of the tense situation between Muslims and Jews has been echoed by the Moroccan Jewish scholar Yigal Bin-Nun, though he does not necessarily imply that incidents of anti-Jewish violence were totally fabricated:
Israel distributed announcements to the world press (instigated by
the head of Mossad) regarding torture and arrests being carried out
among the Jewish community in Morocco, and of anti-Jewish
terror in the country. The shocking descriptions were intended to
raise concern throughout the world regarding the fate of North
African Jewry in general.206
203 Source Mahdi in Fes. Saleh in Fes, Musa in Fes. 204 Souce: Youssef in Fes. 205 Source: Mahdi in Fes. 206 2004. Page 58.
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While the idea of Israeli involvement in sensationalizing violence does not deserve flat out dismissal, especially in light of the exposure of Israeli covert operations207 of similar methodology in Egypt during the same era, the possibility of organized and targeted violence against Jewish communities should be taken equally seriously. Israeli scholar Michael Laskier suggests that from 1948-54 the violence experienced by Jewish communities was sporadic and more attributable to general social unrest the specific anti-Jewish sentiments. However following the 1954 exiling of Mohammed V by French colonial authorities, attacks on the Mellah, especially in cities with a large French presence such as Casablanca, became both more frequent and premeditated. In addition, Laskier notes a rise in economic discrimination against Jews within the industrial sector, in which Jews were fired from our prevented from entering jobs on the pretext that they would leave for Israel.208
Despite heightened tensions, Istiqlal continued to pursue positive relations with
Moroccan Jews throughout the 1950s, while taking a hardline stance against Israel. However as we shall see there are also points where anti-Israeli sentiment lead to the targeting of Jewish communities within Morocco as well as the propagation of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Mohammed
V’s exile was short lived, and his return on November 18th (which is celebrated as Moroccan
Independence Day) was followed by Morocco’s independence as a parliamentary constitutional monarchy in March 1956. By this point the alliance between Istiqlal and wealthier Moroccan
Jewish families had been formalized into an organization known as Al-Wifaq, which released the following statement upon independence:
207 In 1954, Israeli Military Intelligence was exposed attempting to stage bombings in Egypt posing as Arab nationalist and Islamist factions. (Perlmutter. 1968. Page 416) 208 1986. Page 40.
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Here in Morocco there are only Moroccan citizens: Moroccans of
the Muslim religion and Moroccans of the Jewish religion, but all
are Moroccans.209
In this statement we can see a reworking of the attitudes of King Mohammed V within a nationalist context, replacing the subject with the citizen. Furthermore Bin-Nun interprets this as an anti-Zionist statement, which rejects the idea of Jewishness as a nationalist identity. Similar sentiment was simultaneously expressed on the topic by Istiqlal public relations head, Ahmed
Balafrej:
The Jews need have no concern that they will suffer from any form
of discrimination in an independent Morocco. The Jews of
Morocco, like its Muslims, are both de jure and de facto citizens…
the positive development they will see will be their release from
the burden of colonial control… Morocco is their independent
country and whoever helps the Jews of Morocco helps Moroccan
independence as well.210
However the practical efforts at integration of Jews within the Morocco political system have been cast by scholars from Bin-Nun to Laskier as less than successful. Schroeter referred to the appointment of Leon Benzaquen (a Jewish Moroccan who was previously the king’s doctor)
209 Schroeter. 2008. Page 159. 210 Bin-Nun. 2014. Page 62.
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as a symbolic and ineffectual measure, pointing out that within two years of independence
Benzaquen had resigned and the Al-Wifaq had been disbanded.211 The failure of these integration efforts occurred in tandem with several non-violent palace orchestrated coups that saw the king take a more direct role in influencing the parliament, and the adoption of several major policy decisions that isolated the Jewish population.
Fears of violence, and even annihilation, by a Muslim and Arab nationalist majority were certainly widespread in some communities, where Jews who advocated for integration into independent Morocco were accused of being out of touch with the realities of the everyday violence Mellah communities were facing. The Jewish Moroccan-nationalist leader Marc Sabbah responded that the anxieties of Jewish communities in Morocco were the result of purposefully spread misinformation meant to stoke Jewish-Muslim relationships. 212
Bin-Nun points out that the geography, and multi-lingual and cultural make up of 1950’s
Morocco forced it leaders to choose between aligning itself with axis of “Western” powers of the early cold war era (Western Europe and thus by extension the US) and the Pan-Arabist policies of the Middle East. Subsequently to the Suez Crisis of 1954, Israel stood clearly aligned with the
US and its satellites, whereas the anti-Israeli politics of the Arab league were perceived as also implicitly anti-Jewish. 213 In 1958, Morocco joined the Arab League, a pan-Arabist political alliance lead by Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt, severely shaking the confidence of Al-Wifaq due to the Moroccan press and politicians’ failure to publicly draw lines between Moroccan Jews and
211 2008. Page 159. 212 Laskier. 1990 Page 468. 213 Bin-Nun. 2014. Page 52.
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Zionists. Nasser’s Pan-Arabist politics called for the political unification of Arab-Muslim states against aggressive attempts by Cold War era powers to increase their influence in the region, as well as a military alliance aimed at ending the state of Israel.214 Mohammed V called several meetings with Jewish leaders in order to assure them that their fate would not be similar to exiled
Egyptian Jews, but day to day politics often told a different story. Of particular note is the build- up to the January 1961 Casablanca conference, in which Mohammed V met with leaders from
Egypt, Libya, and the Algerian FLN, where Jews were rounded up and arrested and beaten in large numbers by the police.215
Unlike the forced exiled imposed on Jewish populations in other Arab League nation-states such as Iraq and Egypt, the entrance of
Morocco into pan-Arabist politics was accompanied by a policy of aggressively preventing Jews from leaving the country, through the Figure 26 Mohammed V's son Hassan II with Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt in 1958. (Getty Images) illegalization of Jewish emigration and the establishment of a specialized police department to prevent Jewish emigration.216
Criminalizing Jewish emigration has been portrayed alternatively as calculated realpolitik, aimed at halting the growth of the Israeli army as well as promoting the image of Morocco as a
214 Mamdani. Page 20-27. 2004. 215 Laskier. 1986. Page 42. 216 Ibid.
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democratic and tolerant society; and as an expression of paternalistic sentimentality where the
Sultan saw himself as having a responsibility to protect and preserve his Jewish subjects.217
Although these two depictions appear his contradictory statements about the views of
Mohammed V and Istiqlal towards Jews, either way their actions likely served to further estrange
Jews from the Moroccan nationalist cause. The crisis became embodied publicly when forty-four
Jews attempting to sneak out of Morocco were killed in a shipwreck near the port of Al-Hoceima on January tenth.218
Regardless of the extent of the threat posed to the Jewish communities of the era, illegalizing Jewish emigration in many ways served to only accelerate the Jewish exodus. Bin-Nun refers to the mass emigration as a “psychosis” brought on by a combination of agitation Figure 27 Jewish Moroccan survivors of the shipwreck at Al-Hoceima (Getty Images) from Israeli authorities
217 Bin-Nun. 2014. Page 52. 218 Laskier. 1986. Page 44.
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and missteps by the Moroccan government. The criminalization of emigration meant that there was a lack of actual data on the scale of Jewish emigration, a fact which Bin-nun states openly contribute to the spread of this psychosis:
Emigration took place in an atmosphere of secrecy, no one in the
[Jewish] community knew what the levels of emigration actually
were…in the minds of Jews, the rate of emigration had reached
proportions that caused everyone to feel that all his relatives and
acquaintances had left and only he remained behind…thus
paradoxically, the psychosis of departure was create not only by
Israel’s agents, but also by the Moroccan government, which
wished to stop it. 219
While Bin-nun’s attribution of Jewish flight to mass psychosis is certain to ruffle many feathers, it would be much harder to dispute the fact that the illegalization of emigration only served to intensify the crisis and effectively became pro-Zionist propaganda. With legal routes of relocation to Israel cut off, Moroccan and Israel Zionist organizations stepped in to launch a large-scale clandestine operation to continue the process of emigration, of which the Al-Hoceima shipwreck was only one part of. The illegality of these actions makes it hard to gauge the exact scale, but based on numbers compiled by Israeli immigration authorities, Laskier estimated approximately 60,000 emigrants from 1961 to 1963 alone.220
219 2014. Page 52. 220 1990. Page 468.
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Both the idea of Jewish emigration as a flight from oppression and as a mass psychosis suggest that this exodus served as a Jewish Moroccan renunciation of their Moroccan national identity, and ignores the fact that departure to Israel was also phrased in the era as a purely religious journey with less of emphasis on political context. This narrative is touched on most extensively in Kamal Hachkar’s interviews and ethnographic research on Jews who left Morocco for Israeli from smaller towns in the Atlas Mountains. Hachkar interviews both Muslims who remembered the departure of Moroccan Jewish communities and members of the exodus who resettled in Southern Israel, noting that both sides tend to phrase the journey as a religious quest as opposed to a political one. In addition, he documents evidence of how the diasporic community in Israel attempted to retain Moroccan (and even potentially nationalist) identity; bringing with them language and music as well as naming a street in Ashdod, Israel after
Mohammed V’s successor, King Hasan II.221
In the process of de-mystifying the Moroccan Jewish exodus it is also important to note that rates of emigration were by no means constant, and rose and fell dramatically throughout different eras and periods. Laskier, for example, notes that by 1966 emigration rates to Israel fell dramatically, despite loosening government restrictions on Jewish emigration. He points out that by this point, almost twenty years after the arrival of the first Moroccan Jewish communities in
Israel, news of less than favorable conditions for the group within the Zionist state had begun to spread back to communities within Morocco. Moroccan Jews returning from Israel, sometimes as tourists and sometimes for good, reported low job prospects and experiencing widespread discrimination and prejudice from a European Jewish majority.222 The discrimination faced by
221 Hachkar. 2014. 2221990. Page 493.
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Moroccan Jews arriving in Israel in the 1940’s has been widely documented by a variety of sources including Bin-Nun, as well as Hachkar and Laghari. The latter two of these both include in their films’ snippets of an infamous protest song remembered by Moroccan Jews living in
Israel, in which a Moroccan Jew is forced to pretend to be Polish to an Ashkenazi employer in order to receive a job.223,224 I also spoke to two Moroccan Jews living within Atlanta, who both emigrated to Israel during the early 1950s and left tens year later for Morocco and later the
United States:
I was young but I remember a day when one… one of my friends,
whose parents were Polish wouldn’t play with me anymore. When
I finally confronted him about this, he told me his mother had told
him that Moroccan Jews were lazy and stupid, and that if he played
with us he would become like this too.225
Despite the possibility of discrimination in Israeli society, Jewish emigration experienced a resurgence after 1967, sparked by the Israeli Six-Day War and the subsequent backlash experienced by Moroccan Jews. The Six Day War of 1967 saw the Israeli acquisition of a significant number of territories formerly controlled by Arab States, and the beginning of the now infamous Israeli occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan River, and represented a massive ideological humiliation for the Arab league. In reaction the Istiqlal party intensified its anti-Zionist rhetoric to an extent that many have once again accused of failing to properly
223 Hachkar. 2014. 224 Laghari. 2015. 225 Edgar in Atlanta.
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differentiate between Zionist and Jew. L’Opinion began publishing infamous European anti-
Jewish literature including Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and encouraged a large scale boycott of Jewish businesses on the ground that they were funneling profits into
Israel. Although not necessarily condoning the boycott, and even potential banning publications circulating the most violent and extremist positions, the Moroccan government also discouraged
Jews from celebrating religious holidays in public.226 The extent to which the anti-Israel movement wished to differentiate by Israel and the Jewish population in general can be found within a 1967 editorial published in the Moroccan newspaper Al-masa:
We do not wish the authorities to harm the Jews…. But we want
the heads of the Jews if they betray Muslims…. We do not want
the authorities to carry on a war of destroying everything as did
Hitler, for the Islamic religion forbids this…. We only want to say
this common truth that all men in Morocco know. The feelings of
the Jews do not change. They are upholding the little state Israel
with money and none of them fail in this.227
Thus while there does exist, even on the more extreme end of the spectrum, an attempt to establish a theoretical difference between Jew and Zionist, the meaning of this differentiation is lost by assertions that all Jews are in fact loyal to Israel. Although this sentiment was actively discouraged by the palace, and King Hasan II (who succeeded his father in 1961), the confidence that Jews held in the ability of the palace to protect was shook by two (albeit unsuccessful)) coup
226 Laskier. 1990. Page 495. 227 Laskier. 1986. Page 497.
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d’tat attempts in 1971 and 1972. Bans on Jewish Emigration had been loosened during this point, and an estimated 17,000 Jews left for Israel, as well as France and the US, in between
1967 and 1975, leaving only 18,000 behind. This exodus also included some formerly prominent proponents of integration into the Moroccan nationalist movement, such as former Al-Wifaq leader David Amar.228
Section 3.5: Developing Moroccan Nationalism (1957-1999)
If the conception of Arab Nationalism as the motivating force behind anti-Jewish sentiment in Morocco is correct, then we must study the changing character of Moroccan nationalism as it has developed up to the present day, and how that has informed opinions on
Jewish Moroccans even as their population within the kingdom rapidly dwindled. On the first official celebration of Moroccan Independence Day in 1957, Istiqlal’s Arabic-language newspaper (an entirely different publication from L’Opinion) declared in its headline: “Morocco is an Arab State and its constitution is Islam.”229 Such an assertion is contextualized by the view of the French protectorate as unfriendly to a synthesized Arab-Islamic identity, as an attempt to establish ideological and cultural sovereignty along with territorial sovereignty.
However, this Arab-Islamic ideal of the State was not universally endorsed, and the late fifties and sixties and were also an era of several small scale revolts in regions with large
Amazigh language-speaking populations against the centralized authority of an Arab-Nationalist government. Furthermore some of these revolts were led by Imazighen who had been
228 Laskier. 1990. Page 498-501. 229 Laskier. 1986. Page 494.
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specifically empowered by French colonial policies, such as Thami El-Glaoui, who assembled hundreds of Amazigh chiefs in an attempt to usurp the Arab monarchy. 230 These revolts are not dissimilar to the many conflicts of preceding eras of Moroccan History between rural non-Arabic speaking communities and the centralized and urban based government, and do not necessarily constitute a challenge to the ideological foundations of the state as much to the authority of the state in specific regions.
Mohammed V attempted to pacify the wedge that had been placed between “Berber” and
“Arab” almost immediately upon independence, by invalidating the corresponding Dahirs which had been enacted under French coercion. The language employed by Mohammed V acknowledged the existence and legitimacy of both Amazigh and Arab identity, and attempted to unite them under a banner of Islam:
Our people, placed in the shadow of Islam, tolerating no
discrimination between Arabs and Berbers, and with no other ideal
than its love of nation, are an example of solidarity and
brotherhood. It is in this union that has made of us a glorious
nation…. Because of this, we have decided to abolish all artificial
discriminatory measures and restore to the law of Islam the place it
deserves in your lands.231
230 Wyrtzen. 2013. Page 280. 231 Text of July 11th, 1956 speech at Ajdir, translated by Abdelrahman Lmaloki
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In practice however, the proposed unity of Imazighen and Arabs under Islam in early
1950’s Morocco prioritized the diffusion of Arabic as a national language and unity within the international cultural bloc of the Arab League. This can be seen in the educational system established in 1959 by government minister Abdelkarim Benjelloun, which instituted nation- wide mandatory schooling in traditional Arabic and “Arab” history. This education program was enforced by the importation of a corps of professors from Nasser’s United Arab Republic.232,233
Further attempts at pacification were made through the appointment of Amazigh chiefs who had supported Mohammed V during the struggle against France to governmental positions, but these figures were purposefully denied positions where they would be able influence the cultural agenda of Arabization.234
This is not say however, that the early Moroccan nationalist project involved the outright denial of Amazigh identity, as much as careful regulation and limitation of its public expression.
In 1959, Mohammed V, announced the beginning of an annual festival of arts and culture, the
Mawazine Festival, in Morocco that would include a specific section dedicated to Amazigh crafts, dance, and music. The goal of this festival in regulating Amazigh identity was described by Aomar Boum as an attempt to de-politicize Amazigh identity by celebrating it as an artifact of
Moroccan history as opposed to a contemporary culture in conflict with the program of
Arabization.235
232 Wyrtzen. 2013. Page 286 233 At the time Egypt and Syria had joined together to form the short-lived United Arab Republic as an attempt to realize Gamal Nasser’s Pan-Arab aspirations. 234 Wyrtzen. 2013. Page 284. 235 Boum. 2012. Page 22-23
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As early as the nineties-sixties, a recognizable opposition to the regulated Amazigh identity prescribed by the state began to emerge out of Amazigh students in university in Rabat,
Casablanca, and Paris. These movements were galvanized by the brutal repression of a similar student run organizations of Imazighen against Arabization in neighboring Algeria, but soon faced their own brutal crackdown by Hassan II that saw many leaders executed and jailed.236
Simultaneously, Amazigh activism was also suppressed by the politics of the post-1967 war era, where unity between urban and rural Muslim populations in Morocco was popularized as a united front against Zionism.237
A similar tactics of encouraging unity through an external enemy was exercised on a larger scale in 1975 during Morocco’s “Green March” into the disputed territories to its south known as the Western Sahara. Although the causes and intended results of the Green March were much larger than issues of Amazigh autonomy, the event serves as a useful bookmark for the evolution of Moroccan nationalism. In 1975 Spain, which was undergoing its own political and ideological metamorphosis due to death of fascist leader Francisco Franco, evacuated the colonially acquired territory south of Morocco known as Rio de Oro, Tanzerof Tutrimt, or (most commonly in English) Western Sahara. The Spanish government had signed diplomatic agreement with Morocco and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (which lies directly to the south of Western Sahara) allowing the two post-colonial states to divide and annex the Western Sahara territory. Integration into Morocco and Mauritania was resisted militarily by a group advocating for the creation of independent Sahrawi republic. The Sahrawi people, who take their name from the Arabic term for people originating from a desert, spoke a local dialect Amazigh dialect and
236 Silverstein, et al. 2004. Page 45. 237 Laskier. 1990. Page 498-501.
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are believed to be genetically related to the Sanhaja tribe which gave birth to the Almoravid dynasty.238
Figure 28 Participants in the Green March, 1976 (Wyrtzen, 2008) While the military wing of the Sahrawi movement, the Polisario Front, managed to force the retreat of the Mauritanian Army in 1979, the Moroccan presence and conflict over said presence continues to this day in Western Sahara, partially because of the lines by which King
Hasan II chose to assert Morocco’s claim to the territory. On October 16th, 1975 Hassan II called for a “Green March” by his people, enlisting 350,000 volunteers to march into the Western
Sahara territory with the goal of establishing the land’s implicitly Moroccan character. In his autobiography, Hasan II was careful to phrase the Green March within the context of Moroccan
238 Seddon. 1987. Pages 24-26.
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nationalism and heritage, against the claim that his interest in Western Sahara had more to do with acquiring lucrative phosphate resources:
Moroccan do not have a nouveau riche mentality. If I had to chose
between the return of these territories to a motherland and
phosphates, I would willingly have abandoned phosphates.239
While Hasan II’s conviction in this statement is of course unverifiable, one must still understand how the king’s rhetoric developed Moroccan national identity. Hasan II phrased the attempted separation of Morocco from Western Sahara as a continuation of the policies of coerced estrangement of Sultan to subject that were practiced by the French. In doing so he was able to speak to and win the support of nationalist factions previously opposed to his rule that had ochestrated earlier palace coups and Amazigh nationalist protests. As we already saw with the issue of Jewish emigration, the nationalist goals of the Istiqlal party were not always in sync with goals of the King himself, a reality that was exacerbated by Istiqlal’s involvement in the ’71 and ’72 coup attempts. 240 In this sense the movement galvanized a variety of increasingly divided groups in the Moroccan political and social spectrum by encouraging resistance to colonialism and people’s participation in nationalist heritage, much in the same spirit as the construction of the Hasan II Mosque (which occurred in 1975).
Thus the Green March also manifested itself as an expression of Moroccan heritage larger than the territorial dispute that gave birth to it. The 1970’s saw the rise of a cast of popular
239 1967. Page 197. (Translated by Avital Li) 240 Wiener. 1979. Page 25-27
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musicians within Morocco who combined Andalusian and Arabic instrumentation with Amazigh and West African musical heritage, many of whom created massively popular songs endorsing the Green March such as Jil Jilala’s Al-Ayun (My Eyes).241 Large scale public events such as football matches held fundraisers and donated ticket proceeds to funding the March.242 This revitalization of Moroccan national identity occurred simultaneously to the decline and perceived failure of the Pan-Arabist philosophy, embodied by Anwar Sadat’s (successor to Nasser in
Egypt) peace treaty with Israel and subsequent assassination. Hasan himself played a vital and public role in these negotiations, acting as an intermediary at times between the Egyptians and
Israelis. The uncertainty of the era in terms of identity is perhaps best captured by another song from the seventies by Jil Jilala, referred to by Aomar Boum as one of their most popular:
Oh Arab! Oh Muslim! Your state of affairs is painful.
Zionists destroy the Mosque and you have given up.
Oh, Arab! Oh, Muslim! When are you going to decide?243
Perhaps as a result of the weakening hold of pan-Arabist philosophies, the latter decades of the twentieth century, particularly the late 80s and 90s, saw new gains being made with the government by Amazigh activists. The resurgence of the movement occurred as government control of public discourse began to show some signs of weakening during the late eighties and early nineties, when politically dissenting parties once again began to gain some influence in the senate.244 In 1994 a group Imazighen were arrested by police for demonstrating in a May Day
241 El Hamel. 2008. Page 260. 242 Wiener. 1979. Page 32. 243 2013. Page xvi (Prologue) 244 White. 1997. Page 392.
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parade using signs written in an Amazigh script prompted larger protests, and eventually results in the demonstrator’s release. In further response to the protest, Hasan II publicly affirmed the importance of Amazigh dialects to Moroccan history, and began allow radio and TV broadcasts in the Tamazight language as well teaching Tamazight in schools. A new government department known as the ICRAM (Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture) was inaugurated to implement these reforms and lead by Amazigh language speakers from a variety of regions and dialects. These measures were not met with excitement by all members of the Amazigh activist community however, and dissenters phrased them as a further attempt to regulate non-Arabic speaking culture by the government.245
Section 3.6: Activists, Jews, and the Royal House in the Contemporary Era. (1999-2016)
Thus Amazigh autonomy, as opposed to Arabization, was already an explicitly stated priority of the government by Hasan II’s death in 1999 and the succession of his son Mohammad
VI. In the backroom of a music club in Fes I spoke with a group of Amazigh musicians, about how this transfer of power was treated politically:
In all the homes and stores here, you see the picture of Mohammed
V, because he is loved for founding the nation…. And you see our
current king Mohammed VI who the people look at as kind and a
leader who listens to his people. You don’t see so much the picture
of Hasan II, because maybe he is looked at as less a king for the
245 Silverstein, et. 2004. Page 45-46.
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people. Hasan II was a powerful leader who defeated his enemies
and sometimes a leader like this is needed…. And maybe this is
why you don’t see his picture hung up by people.246
This perception of current king Mohammed VI as much more receptive to citizenry, while not universally shared throughout the kingdom, speaks to the effectiveness of highly public efforts headed by the king to give representation to groups which traditionally saw themselves as marginalized by the state. In these efforts the Mawazine Festivals started by Mohammed V have served as a useful forum for publicizing government efforts to promote a more imagined
Figure 29 Crowd at the 2014 Mawazine Festival. (From Festivalmawazine.ma) community. In recent years the festivals have grown significantly in both size and funding, while
246 Source: Rashid in Fes.
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also seeking to present a more diverse picture of Moroccan history and society then purely
Imazighen traditions. Mazawine festivals of the past ten years have included sections dedicated to Jewish, West African, and even Saharwi history and music.247
In some cases, Amazigh and Moroccan Jews saw themselves as aligned in struggle against marginalization, as demonstrated by an Amazigh activist and museum curator in a 2008
French-Canadian film about the history of the movement in Southern Morocco:
In general, [Amazigh] activists regard Jews as a people similarly
marginalized by Arabo-Islamism and see in the Zionist movement
a model for the Amazigh struggle: the successful codification and
preservation of a threatened language, and the obtaining of
political and territorial autonomy with the state of Israel.248
To the Jewish-Moroccan scholars I spoke to in Casablanca however, this image of cooperation and commonality between the Muslim Amazigh activists and Jewish Moroccans was not necessarily shared. To one of my guides who grew up in Fes, the enduring imagery of the
Jew as having loyalties outside of the state and culture complicated the relationship between
Jewish-Moroccans and activists of seeking for Amazigh autonomy, as well as movements seeking to address corruption in the government or recognition of Sahrawi desires for independence. He suggested that in order to avoid violence and gain acceptance Moroccan Jews are often required to display themselves as zealously loyal to the government and unassociated
247 Boum. 2012. Page 23. 248 Silverstein. 2010. Page 23
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with any movement potential supported by external elements, a requirement he metaphorically referred to as “being more catholic then the pope.”249 My guide also pointed as evidence to the publication of articles in government news sources that prominently display Jews supporting the
King and Government on issues such as the Western Sahara question.250 Another Jewish scholar living in Casablanca I spoke to suggested that positive relationships between the state and Jews shouldn’t implicitly be read as coercive or manipulated, but did supply her own interpretation of how anti-Jewish sentiment can limit the relationships between Moroccan Jews and other activist groups:
I do think there is the space in contemporary Morocco for Jews to
engage with the country at large, and all its details and to be
critical or be supportive…. However I think that if the Jew is seen
as having an allegiance outside of Morocco, than that person
becomes an easy target. What ends up happening a lot is that the
people [Jews] who engage with the Moroccan political
establishment in a critical manner then all have to make very
public pro-Palestinian kind of declaration… To say ‘you know I’m
Jewish, I’m criticizing Morocco, but it’s not because I love
Israel.’251
In a sense these attitudes can be seen as parallel to objections of Amazigh activists to the
Mawazine; a feeling of having ones political affiliations regulated by the state via cultural
249 Source: Youness Abedour in Casablanca. 250 Kohen. 2016. 251 Source: Vanessa Paloma in Casablanca.
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identity. In a BBC televised debate between Moroccan activist Rachid El-Beghiti and Mawazine director Aziz Daki, El-Beghiti argued against the festival as a mismanagement of funds, and an attempt to co-opt a historical state of coexistence that already existed between Amazigh and
Jews. El-Beghiti further pointed to the festival’s location, in large cities as opposed to the more rural areas it claims to represent, as proof of its purpose as a method of government regulation of culture. This opposition however is not across the board, and several prominent Amazigh activists and musicians, as well a Jewish Moroccan advisor to the king Andre Azoulay, have endorsed both Mawazine and other efforts to further to present a more diverse picture of
Moroccan society.252
To those that stand behind the legitimacy of Mohammed VI’s presentation of a more diverse picture of Moroccan nationality, the king’s 2011 revision to the constitution is often spoke of as a crowning achievements of these efforts. 2011 was a year of enormous social upheaval across North Africa and the Middle East, with the large-scale grass roots anti- government demonstrations and movements in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria and many other nations that were dubbed the Arab Spring.
The Arab Spring provided a backdrop for the 2011 constitutional revisions instituted by
Mohammed VI, although it is worth noting that one of my guides denied that the reforms were directly connected to events elsewhere in the Middle East.253 The revisions, which were passed via Dahir,254 mainly focused on promoting a more democratic character for the state through 180
252Boum. 2012. Page 23. 253 Source: Tarik in Rabat. 254 The 2011 Dahir was also voted on both publicly and within parliament, although the legitimacy of these elections has been disputed. (Maghraoui)
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different articles that aimed to empower the parliament; improve economic and social conditions for women; protect citizenry from extrajudicial renditions; and create further government transparency. Especially significant within the context of this paper is also Article 5, which inscribed Amazigh as an official state language.255 Of great significance to the Jewish community is also the constitution’s preamble, a section of which is engraved in stone in the lobby of the Casablanca Jewish Museum:
[Morocco is] a sovereign Muslim State, committed to the ideals of
openness, tolerance, and dialogue… we are Arabic, Amazigh,
Hassani,256 Sub-Saharan, African, Andalusian, Jewish and
Mediterranean components.257
Article Three expands on religion and state, briefly mentioning that the Muslim state must ensure Jews have the same political rights as other citizens.258 While one might accuse these measures as being largely symbolic, my guides in the Mellah ascribed significance to them as helping to spark a national awakening about Jewish history for Muslims:
It used to be that we [Mellah residents] didn’t think much of the
Jews and the fact that the place where we live is where they used to
live, and that we share a history. But people started to think about
255 Maghraoui. 2011. Page 694. 256 Sahrawi people are often referred to as Hassani in state documents, in reference to the Hassaniya dialect of Arabic that is spoken in the region. 257 Jefri J. Ruchti, trans., Draft text of the Constitution adopted at the Referendum of 1 July 2011 258 Madani, et al. 2012. Page 19.
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it five years ago, when the constitution was changed, and that
when we became more aware of how similar we are to the Jews
and how much we share.259
This sentiment was shared by one of my Jewish-Moroccan guides in Casablanca, who made similar comments on the significance of the 2011 Constitution to Jews and Muslims in
Morocco:
This [Jewish] voice that is known by everybody that everybody
carries with them… with this new writing of the constitution, from
2011, where all these different parts of Moroccan diversity are
really legitimately and officially written down. It actually has
given the official stamp for people to be able to fully express this.
Without it being an affront with what it means to be Moroccan.260
The more public endorsement of Jewish-Moroccan identity also attracted attention outside of the state, particularly from the American Jewish community. The trip that I took part in 2012 was organized by New York City based Rabbi. During this trip, we became the first
Jewish group welcomed inside the Rabat mausoleum of King Mohammed V, in order to offer a
Hebrew payer in his honor. Four years later, Andre Azoulay delivered a speech prepared by King
Mohammed VI in a New York City synagogue, honoring efforts to have Mohammed V’s efforts
259 Source: Saleh in Fes. 260 Source: Vanessa Paloma in Casablanca.
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to save Jews during the Holocaust recognized.261 As mentioned within the first chapter, these efforts happen in conjunction with more general efforts by Moroccan government to promote the state and its heritage as bastion of religious tolerance, such as 2016’s Marrakesh Declaration in support of religious tolerance in Muslim nations.262
Governmental funding for the restoration and preservation of Jewish sites has also attracted international attention, as well as revealed some of the fault lines within the state concerning the issue.263 Of particular attention and focus was the recent ceremony honoring the restoration of the Al Fassiyne Synagogue in Fes.
According to claims by several of the guides I spoke with, current Prime Minister Abdelih
Benkirane refused to attend the event until compelled to do so by Mohammed VI and gave a speech written by the king to read at the event.264
However, regardless of one’s position on current kings policy and sincerity towards Jews, it Figure 30 Map detailing recently restored Synagogues across Morocco from the could also be that atmosphere of harmony Casablanca Jewish Museum (taken by Author, 2016) promoted by the government to some extent conceals the very active battle being fought over how to contextualize Moroccan Jewish history and the relationship
262 Bayyah. 2016 263 Liphshiz. 2013 264 Sources: Zhor Rehilil. Mohammed Hatimi. Younis Abdeour. Vanessa Paloma.
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between Moroccan Jews and Muslim. This battle manifests itself through a variety of means across Moroccan history: in the Berber origins of the Jews; the religious identity of figures like
Kahina and Ben Maimon; the various advantages and oppressions that Jews experienced in the
Mellah and as subjects of the Sultan or King; the conviction of Mohammed V in protecting Jews from Nazism; and the factors leading up to mass emigration of Moroccan Jews following independence. These disputes do not exist in a vacuum, and they invariably are argued within the context those trying to establish narratives about Morocco, Jews, Colonialism, and Islam. In the third chapter of this piece I will try to both locate the significance of these larger disputes, and examine how they shape or do not shape the views of people who interact with this history on daily basis.
Chapter 4: The Significance of Contested Narrative in Heritage Power
4.1: Introduction
In the contested heritage of Jewish communities in Morocco, one encounters a variety of identities built out of an amalgamation of historical memory and contemporary politics;
Berber/Amazigh, Arab, Muslim, Zionist, Colonialist, Megorashim versus Toshavim. None of these identities are necessarily extricable from each other, although some of them are often treated as such.
When we examine the agency of heritage dictation by looking at who has the power to create official discourse of memory in Jewish Moroccan history, we find the lines between powerful and powerless becoming increasingly blurred. Different representations contrast Jews
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as victims of a social structure that profited off their oppression and vulnerability, beneficiaries of a Kingdom that promoted religious tolerance and mutual cooperation, and finally as agents of a European system of oppression and subjugation. Similarly, Arabic and Islamic identity within
Morocco appears both as a victim of colonial and post-colonial forces based out of Western
Europe and the United States, and an oppressor of non-Arabic and Islamic identities within the kingdom. Tying of all of this together is the nation state itself, which is unsurprisingly also cast sometimes as a resistor of oppression (as a former French colony) and oppressor in its own right
(as a monarchy which sometimes fails to stop or actively supports the persecution of its own marginalized groups).
The Jewish Question as an international phenomenon is also a concern of exclusivity, given special focus by the primacy of the nation-state in the modern era. As each individual nation-state dictates its heritage through history, the presence of a Jewish community forces questions about the ultimate exclusivity of national identity. Jewish communities and Morocco are not only cast both as oppressors and victims, but also historicized as Arabs, as Berbers, and also as Zionists whose religious identity is also an ethnic and political ones. In this conflation a of religion, politics and ethnicity, the Jews of Morocco might find an unexpected commonality with Muslims as described by Mamdani; both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia rely on inscribing a social and political identity to a religious one.265
Although Mamdani makes this comparison mainly as an introductory concept for a book that focuses on Western stereotypes of Muslims, the analogy runs deeper than this singular
265 2004. Page 14.
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similarity. Systemic discrimination against Muslims and Jews are two forms of systemic discrimination whose existence is often contested or flat out denied, and often explained through generalized statements about the history of these groups. These generalizations are innately related to the process of heritage building, as they invoke grand narratives about the histories of peoples and groups. In some instances, these narratives are imposed by people who don’t themselves identify with the group but hold some sort of position of power over them, as illustrated by the recent backlash against Barak Obama comments about conflicts in the Middle
East going back for “generations.”266 However, in just as many cases, grand narratives about the history of Jews and Muslims, and the interaction between the two, are produced by Jews and
Muslims themselves. In the following pages I will discuss what I consider the use of these grand narratives in various portrayals of Moroccan-Jewish history.
Section 4.1: The Optimism and Pessimism of the Jewish Historians
Salo W. Baron, the Ashkenazi American historian whose inclusion has become almost mandatory on lists of the greatest Jewish historians, famously (or infamously) concluded while attempting to write a comprehensive history of world Jewry that previous historians in his field had a deceptively lachrymose view of Jewish history. In working against what he saw as an illusory pessimism, Baron suggested that historians of Jewish communities should avoid looking at Jews in isolation and not accounting for the interactions between Jew and gentiles, and that positive interactions with these gentiles communities should hold just as much importance as negative ones..267 Baron’s views were written primarily in response to a school of German-
266 Adam. 2016 267 Feldman. 1993. Page 2.
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Jewish scholars of nineteenth century, who saw Jewish history and identity as defined by the endurance of suffering and oppression. 268
Competing visions of pessimism and optimism abound in the realm of Moroccan-Jewish history, often in explicit reference to Zionism and Israel. Those following this battle in 1991 witnessed a published discourse between two American historians of Moroccan Jewish history: the University of Oklahoma’s Norman Stillman, and Princeton’s Mark R. Cohen. When Stillman suggested that Moroccan-Jewish resentment towards Muslims is the product of Ashkenazi perspectives and narratives, Cohen responded by accusing Stillman of subscribing to a “golden age myth” of cooperation and coexistence for North African Jewish communities.269 While neither Cohen nor Stillman may have aimed to present an entirely one-sided or myopic perspective on Maghrebi-Jewish history, both had found themselves entangled in a debate that strived for an ultimate and conclusive statement on the ability of Islamic and Jewish communities to respectfully share a North African identity.
We should not and do not, have to look exclusively to the writings of American scholars to find debates about the existence of coexistence and cooperation in North Africa. In the interest of looking towards Moroccan Jewish sources in understanding the interplay of these grand narratives, Yigal Bin-Nun stands out for both his closeness to the subject matter and his definitive assertion that the failure of integration does not lie entirely in Moroccan anti-Jewish sentiment. Bin-Nun’s identity does not automatically validate his theory of mass-psychosis however, and at worst his thesis could be accused of just as effectively robbing Moroccan-Jewish
268 Roemer. 2000. Page 352. 269Brinner. 1993. Page 132.
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emigrants of their agency to make their own decisions just as effectively as the Israeli misinformation he speaks of. Certainly we must understand, based off the first-hand accounts collected by Hachkar, Boum, and many others, that reasons for emigration were multifaceted, and not necessarily all in response to perceived or actualized threats to safety. Speaking to one of my Jewish hosts and guides in Casablanca, Moroccan Jews who downplayed the threat of anti-
Jewish violence and oppression after Moroccan independence were accused of doing so out of fear of consequences for telling the truth, although suggest explanation enlists the same tactic of generalization and robbery of agency as Bin-Nun’s mass Psychosis.270 At a conference by the
AIU in Casablanca, I spoke to the daughter of a Moroccan-Jewish emigrant to France, who offered her own perspective on the why some Moroccan-Jew took such negative stances on emigration:
I think my father told me that he left Morocco, not because things
were so bad for him [there], but because he thought things would
be better for him in Paris… Then he got to Paris and realized here
also he would have to struggle to find a job and struggle against
people who hated him because he was Moroccan or because he
was Jewish, and that he fit in even less. So then Morocco became
like a memory for him, and in his imagination if he returned then
all of his problems would go away.271
270 Source: Alise in Fes. 271 Rebecca in Casablanca.
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In the anecdote above, my guide theorized that her father’s feelings of regret about emigration, came in part from what we could call a revisualization of history in the eyes of the present, or heritage. In terms of chronology, this a micro-example that stretches only over two generations, but the process has reached much further back in the process of mobilizing
Moroccan-Jewish history into heritage. In 1150, two years after Ben Maimon’s exile from
Cordoba, he published (in Judeo-Arabic) a three part letter known as The Guide for the
Perplexed, outlining his views on the intersection of secular philosophy and Judaism. Guide for the Perplexed advocated the interpretation of Judaism as a form of education rather than a biological community of Abraham’s ancestors, in this respect Ben Maimon advocates that Jews should not exclude themselves from other communities around them either physically or intellectually. Maimon phrases this as a question of Jewish survival, pointing out the annihilation of other Canaanite communities such as the Philistines, who chose to identify solely as a people instead of philosophical community. In recent times, some scholars have read these comments as
Ben Maimon’s manifesto against the identification of Jews as a people or ethnicity.272 Such a statement is highly unwieldy, and naturally involves assumption and conjecture, as the concept of ethnicity did not exist in Ben Maimon’s time in the same way that it does now. However an important observation can still be drawn from Guide to the Perplexed within its historical context. Even at time of heightened anti-Jewish oppression by an Islamic polity, Ben Maimon chooses to reject the idea that Jews cannot be socially or philosophically integrated with their neighbors, and goes as far as to label this integration as requisite to Jewish survival.
272 Seeskin. 1991. Page 116-118.
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Ben Maimon’s philosophy was not without its critics, and many of the sage’s views made him a highly controversial figure in his own time. These critiques took many forms, including the accusations by Egyptian Jewish rabbis of Ben Maimon’s conversion to Islam, but one of the most common themes was the elitism of the Rabbi’s perspective.273,274 Not at all coincidentally, this brings us to an interesting comparison between Ben Maimon and the mid-twentieth century
Moroccan Jews advocating for integration as opposed to emigration, who were also accused of being out of touch with life for less societally advantaged Jews. As we remember, Al-Wifaq member Marc Sabbah responded that these accusations were the result of purposefully spread and manipulative information. However, both Al-Wifaq and Ben Maimon did in their own way enjoy relatively privileged positions within their societies (at least in comparison to others Jews), and the possibility of a relationship between economic and social class and views on integration should be seriously examined.
In accounts of the anti-Jewish discrimination codified into Dhimmi and Mellah law we have heard several scholars mention, sometimes in defense of a coexistence narrative, that such laws were enforced only sporadically. If integration is truly an elitist perspective, it would follow that this sporadic enforcement was not totally randomized, and that such laws tended to threaten less economically wealthy or socially influential Jews. Such a narrative could certainly be supported by records of the Assaraf family of nineteenth century Fes, who were able to use their wealth and social power as Negid to successfully advocate for Jewish concerns in Islamic courts.
However, Marglin’s documents also cite examples of the Assaraf family advocating for less wealthy members of the community, and Aomar Boum’s extensive research shows several
273 Margoliouth. 1901. 274 Ibid
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examples in Southern Morocco of less fortunate and societally influential Jews achieving favorable settlements in Sharia courts.275 Furthermore, there would be dissonance in saying that because anti-Jewish legislations was wielded disproportionately on less privileged Jews, less privileged Jews were necessarily less open to integration. In that sense given the lack of any specific information on variance in Jewish attitudes towards Zionism and integration by class, confirming or refuting the assumptions of elitism will always be a matter of conjecture and projection.276
Equally noteworthy in terms of critique of the narrative of “Golden Age tolerance” is that focusing on Jewish ability to survive under a system under a system that favored Muslims, or that system’s sporadic enforcement, ignores the reality implied by that system’s existence in the first place. Thus the pertinent question on this topic could be phrased as whether Jews thrived due to their status as Dhimmi or in spite of their status as Dhimmi. A Jewish Moroccan scholar I spoke to in Casablanca advocated a cautious return to the 18th and 19th century texts written by travelers from Europe in order to find a more accurate picture of the pre-protectorate conditions of Jewish Dhimmi. This was not an assertion that was made without an awareness of the biases and motivations that may have inflicted these accounts:
You go back and you look at these [European] writers and you
think goddam these people are anti-Semitic and racist as hell. But
at the same time you have to realize that these were the only
people who would write about things for the Jews how they really
275 Pages 43-48. 276 Source: Aomar Boum.
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were, not the lies and propaganda of the government….. and that in
many ways was the plight of the Moroccan Jew, stuck between
Arabs who want to kill us and Europeans who wanted to colonize
us.277
A similar conflict is conferred by Aomar Boum in the introduction to Memories of
Absence. While he readily admits the pitfalls of relying on the French ethnographers who narratives precluded the arrival of the French protectorate, Boum also discussed the consequences of the enduring social stigma that casts Moroccan Jewish scholarship as exclusively part of a “colonial legacy of knowledge,” and suggests a methodology for integrating these accounts:
But what kind of “reconnaissance” should scholars of Moroccan
Jews produce today?... Should I reject the claims of colonial
narratives in their entirety as some nationalist historians have
advocated? De Foucauld’s study of Moroccan society in the
nineteenth century has as many strengths as it has flaws. My own
ethnographic encounter corroborated information reported by de
Foucauld more than a century earlier. Nevertheless, other sources
could complement de Foucauld’s study: legal manuscripts,
personal Muslim narratives, and colonial as well as post-colonial
Jewish and Muslim newspapers…. While absolute truth may not
277 Source: Alise in Casablanca.
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be available to humankind, knowledge and deliberate ignorance
are incompatible.278
Boum’s statements carry with them a significance not just to the specific field of
Moroccan-Jewish historiography, but also in reference to Baron’s critiques on the methodology and approaches to Jewish history. While his statement does not support optimism as an ideological principle, equating such optimism to Moroccan nationalism, Boum does seem to effectively support Baron’s opposition to the study of Jewish history in isolation. Instead he aims to coalesce multiple narratives, both Jewish and Gentile, and both Moroccan and colonial, and understand the perspective and relative biases of each side in the quest to build the most comprehensive picture of this history.
Section 4.2: What is Concealed and What is Displayed in Moroccan Narratives.
We see in the actions of Mohammed V and his currently reigning grandson, a desire to establish a Moroccan national identity that transcends both religious and linguistic boundaries.
As we discussed in the introduction, the imagined community asserted by Mohammed VI in the
2011 constitution is a pluralistic one that is made distinct by its diversity. However, although the community itself may be religiously diverse, the state is explicitly established as Islamic. How these concepts can be integrated with each other was hinted at in conversation with the owner of a multilevel shop in the Mellah that had a small area dedicated to crafts made by Moroccan
Jewish artisans:
278 Boum. 2013. Page 4.
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If you go back to the history of Islam, you will see that like our
prophet Muhammed Sallahu Alayhi Wassalam279 this was living
with many Israel[ites], with the Jewish, and they was making
business with them. And they say to each other that they are
Amin.280 And so throughout the history of Jews and Muslims in Al-
Maghreb they were kind to each other, and it is the politics, not the
religion that separate each other.281
Figure 31 Crafts made by Jewish artisans on display in Saleh’s shop in the Mellah. (taken by Author, 2016)
Thus a tolerance implicit to Islam as it manifested in the Arabian Peninsula is given as a
root of cooperation between Jews and Muslims in Morocco. We can also can also see something
recognizable as specifically from Moroccan history in Saleh’s statement: the locating of this
279 Translated from Arabic: Peace be Upon Him. 280 Translated from Arabic: Honest Men 281 Source: Saleh in Fes.
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cooperation in successful and honest business relationships between Jews and Muslims. In rituals such as Mimouna and Marabouts, we see that religious and spiritual spaces have often been shared between the two religious groups. Furthermore, the appearance of Jewish-Moroccan heritage in the Mawazine locates coexistence within shared spirituality and festivity.
Aomar Boum however, suggests that Moroccan representations of Jews must be understood through what is unsaid as much as what is said. Boum refers to a term in Moroccan colloquial Arabic, Tymak or “plastic eye;” an idiom referring to “things that might be important but should be ignored because of the trouble they might cause.”282 Tymak might be used for example to explain why earlier Moroccan nationalist accounts of Kahina deign not to mention her religious affiliation. It also might be applied to Prime Minister Benkirane’s alleged reluctance to attend and acknowledge the re-opening of a synagogue in Fes. The issue of Tymak was evoked by a former minister of education within the Moroccan government, who claimed the lack of public knowledge about Moroccan Jewish history was due to an “orchestrated ignorance.”283 Boum also tentatively applies Tymak to the geography and architecture of the
Casablanca Jewish Museum, which has existed since the early 1990s. Located within a quiet neighborhood on the periphery of the Casablanca metropolitan area, the Casablanca Jewish
Museum is labeled externally only as “museum” in French and Arabic, with no further identifying features hinting at its contents or themes. An Amazigh activist and curator of his own museum who was interviewed by Boum suggests this reality allows sustained ignorance by the
Moroccan public of Jewish history:
282 2013. Page 110. 283 Page 166.
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People are only getting one story these days. They need to know
that the world is more complex than what the media feeds them.
But my only problem with the Jewish Museum of Casablanca is
that it is not at the center of Casablanca where everybody can see it
and then can react to it instead of being built in a hidden villa in
the oasis neighborhood.284
When I spoke to the
current curator of the
Casablanca Jewish Museum, a
Muslim women named Zhor
Rehihil who wrote her graduate
thesis on Jewish Moroccans, she
also named ignorance as a major
obstacle facing the Museum.
Though she asked not to be
directly quoted, Zhor relayed to Figure 32 The largely unmarked entrance to the Casablanca Jewish Musuem, the small sign next to the door way says "Musuem" (taken by author, 2016) me several stories of time when
people who she called Islamists, which she explained as those who believe that Morocco is only
for Muslims, visited the museum on her prompting. Zhor saw many of these people have eye-
openings experiences at the Museum, and stated that the first question many asked afterwards
was why the story of Moroccan Jewry is not taught to everyone. She suggested however, that
284 Boum. 2013. Page 121.
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these same people might choose not to speak publicly among Muslims friends simply because the topic was considered socially taboo. She further wondered if similar taboos exist in the
Jewish Moroccan community that prevent them from engaging with Muslims.
Learning about Tymak from Aomar was an enlightening experience for me as an
American because it helped contextualize some of the critiques I heard from other Americans about the way Moroccans discuss Jewish history in their country. One historian suggested to me that Moroccans speak positively of Jews only because of politeness and social customs and not out of actual conviction.285 Another told me that I could not trust what a Moroccan Muslim would say to me in the short time I would be there, and should wait till I had been their several years to hear their “true” opinions on Jews. Such statements, especially when made by scholars from the US, are reminiscent of the way that European ethnographers and sociologists of the 19th and early 20th centuries ascribed traits to the people of the Maghreb such as intellectually lazy or untrustworthy.286 Tymak appears as a much more nuanced way of critiquing these narratives, where we can understand the moments where Jewish history in the nation is ignored or left unsaid as potentially related to social customs that many Moroccans themselves are willing to speak on, as opposed to intellectual or cultural defect ascribed along racial terms.
These experiences with Tymak reveal a disparity between the concerns that Moroccan
Jews have about their representation and concern of Moroccan Muslims wishing to integrate the
Jewish-Moroccan community into their national heritage. While the many of the Jews that I spoke to expressed concern that a coexistence narrative was being pushed in a manner that
285 Source: David in Athens. 286 Memmi. 2005. Page 71
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erased the real struggles that they faced historically and contemporaneously. Meanwhile, the non-Jewish Moroccans who I spoke tended to see deliberate erasure of Jewish history as a more direct obstacle then optimistic and potentially reductive retellings of it. Although these two different conceptions of adversity are not mutually exclusive to each other, and there are certainly people who recognized both issues in a non-exclusive manner, this dissonance did seem at some moments to estrange those interested in Jewish heritage from each other.
Section 4.3: The Jewish Point of Negotiation within Moroccan Heritage
There is a historian that says there is no Jewish Question in
Morocco, but actually I think that because of this issue of very
different narratives [about Jewish history] it tells you there is
actually a Jewish question. Because the Jewish question in
Morocco is that the Jew serves as a point for negotiation of all sort
of things that are political and social in the society.
- Vanessa Paloma
I do my work to reframe for the world a pluralistic Morocco. I
consider today, even if the Jewish minority has become very
restrained to three or four thousand people living today in
Morocco, the Jewish patrimony belongs to all Moroccans whatever
their denomination is. We are Moroccan before being Jewish,
Muslim, Christian, or atheist.
133 |Possessing History
- Jamaa Baida, Director of Moroccan National
Archives.287
It is almost indisputable that Moroccan Jewish history has in fact taken on a symbolic value that has outlived the departure of the large majority of the community. Given the small number of Jews still living within the state, we must ask what interest in the community says about the development of the imagined community. What is interesting about Moroccan history is that the symbolic significance of the Jewish community seems to predate the exodus of the mid-20th century. We see this especially in the relationship between Jewish communities and the
Sharifian dynasty, with the axiom about Moulay Ismail’s power being so great that Jews and
Women could travel across the country without fear of violence. We see it also with the way that attacks on the Jewish community later became a method (for some) to challenge the authority of the Sultan.
The symbolic significance of Jewishness to a non-Jewish Moroccan came to life for me during my time in the Fes Mellah. My first time walking down the main street of the Mellah I was approached by people of all ages, from a seven-year old boy to a man in his late fifties, offering to show me to the synagogue and other Jewish sites within the area. Sometimes these offers would be in return for a small monetary compensation, but more often these walks through the Mellah would end at my guide’s home, where they would ask me more about my project and what interested me about Moroccan Jewish history. Many of the people who engaged with me
287 Translated from French with the help of Avital Li.
134 |Possessing History
would often want to show me some sort of physical object that reminded them of Moroccan
Jews, usually an artisanal craft decorated with a Star of David or a Menorah. Describing the significance of these keepsakes, one of my guide who said he was himself too young to remember when Jews lived in the Mellah, thought of these items as made specifically for the purpose of preserving memory:
At the time when they [Jewish people] were living here, they make
many things by hand. And they made this [A Seder Plate]. So that
they can stay long with us, even after they have left. So for us
growing up in the Mellah it is as if the Jews are still living here
among us.288
Figure 33 Abdelrahman's Seder plate, passed down through an uncle. (taken by author, 2016)
288 Source: Abdelrahman Lmaloki.
135 |Possessing History
Another common story I heard that spoke to the symbolic importance of Jews to many
Mellah residents, as well the uncomfortable place that this symbolic role can sometimes inhabit, concerned the origins of Hashish smoking in the neighborhood. While no reliable data on the rates of Hashish consumption in Morocco exists, one can say based on observation alone that it is common to notice Hashish being rolled and smoked in public areas in the Mellah, mostly by younger people. Although this association that many people had in between Jews and Hashish was debunked as myth by almost all of the historians I spoke with, it is interesting to note that even if this assumptions stems from anti-Jewish stereotypes, there seems to be very little animosity in the way the younger generation of the Mellah associates Jews and Hashish.289
Instead Hashish was referred to as a “gift” to people of the Mellah and one of my guides suggested its prominence spoke to a “special kind of peace of mind” that one could only achieve in Morocco.290 A similar reverence towards the Jewish community was also taken towards the balconies of the Mellah houses, an architectural feature that almost every single one of my guides chose to point out while walking in the Mellah:
In old Morocco, it was right for the women to stay inside and not
leave the house so much once she was married. In the Muslim
houses the women only had a small slit window to look through so
no one could see them. But the Jews always built these balconies
so that the women could enjoy the fresh air and to them it did not
matter if others saw them. And some of the old people still say this
is a bad thing, but now as the place of women in Morocco is
289 Source Mohammed Hatimi and Youness Abedour. 290 Source: Yassine in Fes.
136 |Possessing History
changing and giving women more freedom, these balconies remind
us how the Jews taught us a different way where the woman is not
so much in prison.291
The sentiments that I encountered in the
Mellah seem to fall within the attitude espoused by Jamaa Baida that see Jewish Moroccan history as belonging to all Moroccan’s regardless of faith. Such a narrative however, may be critiqued by those who do see the study of Jewish history as exclusive, and see the
Moroccan sense of that narrative “belonging” to them as a robbery of agency. In one specific interaction that occurred between two Mellah residents and one of the few Moroccan Jews still living in the Mellah I did have a chance to witness something that might be considered as a robbery of agency, and indeed of identity itself. Figure 34 Some of the oft-mentioned balconies on former Jewish homes in the Fes Mellah. (taken by author, 2016) This incident occurred after my first time visiting the spacious Jewish cemetery in the Fes Mellah, the upkeep of which is supervised by an older Fassi Jew named Edmond Gabai. At a Café that night I asked my guide why he had refused to enter the cemetery with me, as I was under the
291 Source: Jo Ker in Sefou
137 |Possessing History
impression that there was no restriction against Muslims doing so. He responded that he chose to avoid the cemetery as an act of protest against Edmond, who he believed was embezzling the money that was donated by international organizations and the government. Additionally my guide also explained that Edmond only pretended to be Jewish, and several of the men at the café asserted that they had seen Edmond go to Mosque in disguise:
I know that Edmond is not Jewish, because what he is is not what
it is to be Jewish. He pretends to be poor when people come to
visit even though he is not, and if you don’t give him a good
amount of money, you will see he will treat you badly… people
like this are everywhere and we say that Edmond is not Jewish,
because his religion is money not god.292
While my guide’s negative feelings about Edmond certainly fall within both anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic stereotypes, these stereotypes are treated as the antithesis of Jewishness rather than the embodiment of it. This does not excuse the probability that at least part of the animosity between Edmond and his guide stems from Edmond’s Jewishness, but it does reflect on the unique position that Jewishness has assumed for some members of the Mellah community.
Furthermore, it inverts the idea of a Judaism as a culture that one cannot simply convert out of, and instead phrases Judaism as spiritual community unassociated with ethnicity and pedigree.
While not an ultimate vindication of any sort, the hostility between Edmond and many of the
292 Source: Abdelrahman Lmaloki
138 |Possessing History
Mellah residents does serve to contextualize why the symbolic status of Moroccan Jewry can become problematic to actual members of the Jewish community.
In the conclusion to Memories of Absence, Aomar Boum argues that the Moroccan project of promoting pluralism and tolerance can only succeed if the “other” (in this case Jews) is successfully humanized. Though Jews play a largely symbolic role in contemporary Moroccan society and imagination, the significance of this symbolic role should not be instantly categorized as dehumanization. As Jew are increasingly represented as an integral part of
Moroccan cultural heritage, many segments of societies have developed an interest in acquiring a closeness to the Moroccan Jewish community, whether it be the keepsakes of the residents of the
Fes Mellah or Zhor Rehilil’s Jewish Museum in Casablanca. This closeness is not only fostered through a redefinition of what it means to be Moroccan, but also through a new understanding of history and memory that phrases this closeness as a revival of a historical reality. In this sense the integration of Jewish (and Amazigh) into the definition of Moroccaness, can also be looked as a new kind of post-colonialism. Whereas Arab nationalists and Salafists defined resistance to colonialism purely as reinforcing the Arab and Islamic identities that the French imperial project tried to degrade, Moroccan pluralism seeks to actually reverse the divisions between these communities that were born in the protectorate and cemented by the Arab nationalists.
Appreciating Moroccan pluralism does not mean also refusing to acknowledge the progress that has yet to be made, and in this respect it must be stated that humanization cannot truly occur without actual interactions between the Jewish and Muslim communities on a sustained level. If this process is to begin, the criticism coming from the Jewish scholarly
139 |Possessing History
community that the pluralists ignore and neglect the struggles of that Moroccan Jews have faced as a minority must be taken more seriously. anti-Jewish sentiment and anti-Semitism cannot be confronted without first being acknowledged, a process that has not seen nearly as much energy devoted to it as the championing of historical coexistence and cooperation. Pluralism and integration however, do need to be essentialized to singular narrative of either coexistence or oppression. Instead Moroccan-Jewish history must be understood as nuanced and not necessarily either progressive or regressive, such that challenges can be recognized without degrading the importance of the unique relationship that has evolved there.
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Liphshiz, Cnaan. "Why Is the Moroccan King Funding Jewish Sites?" The Times of Israel. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2013. Brinner, William M.. AJS Review 18.1 (1993): 132–134. Web. Rosenblum, April. The Past Didn't Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Anti-Semitism a Part of All of Our Movements. Philadelphia: Building Equality, 2007. Print. Scheiber, Alexander, and Zvi Malachi. “Letter from Sicily to Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprut”. Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 41/42 (1973): 207–218. Web. Speech on the Berber Dahir in Ajdir (1956) (testimony of Mohammed V Alaouite). Print. The Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Lands: Legal Framework and a Call to Action (2016) (testimony of H.E Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah). Print.
List of Guides: Abdoul in Fes: Mellah resident who offered me a guided a tour of landmarks of Jewish History within Historic Fes. Abdelrahman Lmaloki: Abdelrahman Lmaloki hosted me during a large part of my stay in Fes, and accompanied me on many of my excursions into the Fes Mellah and the surrounding regions, both providing with his own interpretations of the history and offering translation help from Arabic when it was needed. Alise in Casablanca: Fulbright scholar in Morocco from the US, from a family of Moroccan Jews. Hosted me in Casablanca. Edgar in Atlanta: Moroccan Jew born in Casablanca, who moved to Israel in 1948 before returning to Morocco briefly and then emigrating to the US. Elmehdi Bhoudra: Founder and former head of the Mimouna Club. David in Athens: Doctoral Student in Moroccan History at University of Georgia Athens, who I spoke with briefly for advice before my trip. Jo Ker in Sefrou: Professional Tour guide I met in Sefrou who showed me some stone engravings done (allegedly) by a Jewish family that he keeps at his home. Jo Ker did not speak any English and his statement was translated for me by Abdelrahman Lmaloki. Mahdi in Fes: Owner of a store selling clothing in the Fes Mellah. Mahdi did not speak any English and his statement was translated for me by Abdelrahman Lmaloki. Mohammed in Fes: Mellah resident who offered me a guided a tour of landmarks of Jewish History within Historic Fes. Mohammed Hatimi: A professor of Moroccan History in Meknes, who lead me on a guided tour of the city with a focus on Jewish sites within it.
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Musa in Fes: Mellah resident who offered me a guided a tour of landmarks of Jewish History within Historic Fes. Rashid in Fes: Rapper and Musician in Fes, that spoke with after a performance at nightclub in the new city. Rashid did not speak any English and his statement was translated for me by Abdelrahman Lmaloki. Rebecca in Casablanca: A Jewish women I spoke with after an AIU conference in Casablanca, who father emigrated to Paris from Morocco. Saeed in Fes: Owner of a small store within Fes’s old city (also known as the Fes Medina), which lies right outside Ben Maimon’s alleged home in Fes. Saleh in Fes. Mellah resident who offered me a guided a tour of landmarks of Jewish History within Historic Fes. Salman in Moulay Idriss: An older man I was introduced to by another one of my guides in the town of Moulay Idriss. I was told by my guide that due to his age, Salman is respected as a “source of Wisdom” by surrounding communities. Salman did not speak any English and his statement was translated for me by Abdelrahman Lmaloki. Tamer in Meknes. Mellah resident who offered me a guided a tour of landmarks of Jewish History within Historic Meknes. Tarik in Rabat: Muslim who lived nearby the Jewish cemetery in Rabat, and took me on brief tour of the cemetery. Vanessa Paloma: Senior Fulbright Researcher studying Moroccan Jewish Music in Casablanca. Born in the US to a family of Moroccan Jewish origin. Voluhbhis Group: a group of Moroccan youth I briefly spoke to about Kahina in the UNESCO world Heritage Site which has been constructed around the ruins of Voluhbhis. Two members of this group spoke English, and asked that they not be referred to by name. Youssef in Fes: Older man living the Mellah who told me he had a Jewish father and Muslim mother. Grew up speaking Hebrew and Arabic. Youssef did not speak any English and his statement was translated for me by Abdelrahman Lmaloki. Yassine in Fes: Owner of a store selling clothing in the Fes Mellah. Youness Abedour: Moroccan-Jewish scholar living in Casablanca from Fes. Occasionally leads guided tours of Fes for English and French speakers. Younis Laghari: Moroccan Muslim filmmaker and scholar. Director of films about Moroccan Jewish History that have been widely circulated in the US and Israel. Zhor Rehilil: Muslim curator of the Casablanca Jewish Museum. Relevant Image Citations:
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Boum, Aomar. "FOR THESE MOROCCAN MUSLIMS, MIMOUNA ISN’T JUST A JEWISH THING—IT’S THEIR HERITAGE, TOO." Tablet Magazine. N.p., 2014. Web. Cohen, Anne. "Honoring the Moroccan King Who Saved the Jews." Forward Magazine. N.p., 2015. Web. Enkin, Ari. "Unity Is Our Hope on Tisha B’Av – The Day of Mourning for the Temple." UWI. United with Israel, 2014. Web. Harap, Louis. "Stereotypes of Jews in Literature." Stereotypes of Jews in Literature. N.p., 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Rahman, Syed Azizur. The Story of Islamic Spain. New Delhi: Goodword, 2001. Print. "Afro-Asiatica: An Odyssey in Black." : FEAR OF BLACKNESS SERIES: PART I. Dana Reynolds, 27 Jan. 215. Web.
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