Moroccan Jewish Communists 1925-1975 A
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Radical Nationalists: Moroccan Jewish Communists 1925-1975 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Alma Rachel Heckman 2015 © Copyright by Alma Rachel Heckman 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Radical Nationalists: Moroccan Jewish Communists 1925-1975 by Alma Rachel Heckman Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Chair From the outset of the French protectorate of Morocco in 1912 through independence in 1956, a variety of ideologies coalesced into pro-independence political movements. This dissertation explores Jewish involvement in the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM) between 1925-1975. Opening up this 1925-1975 moment recovers ways in which Jews and Muslims conceptualized Jews fitting into newly independent nation-states. Leftist groups, originating in Europe, flourished in Morocco beginning in the mid-1920s. By 1936 the socialist leaning Moroccan Union of Muslims and Jews had been founded, a sign of the growing importance of leftist organizations in the Moroccan political spectrum. When France fell to Germany in 1940, the French Communist Party (PCF) chose solidarity with France over its internationalist obligations, ii requiring the Maghribi Communist parties to fight for the common cause against Fascism and put independence ambitions on hold. Vichy rule brought anti-Semitic legislation to the majority of North African Jews, inspiring many in the immediate post-war generation to reject France’s vision of republican assimilation. The national liberation parties of the Maghrib, in practice, if not on paper, often espoused an Arab nationalist platform informed by Islam. Betrayed by French republicanism and unconvinced by Zionism, many Maghribi Jews expressed their patriotism through Communism. The 1950s through the early 1970s were the apex of Communist Jewish political participation in the Maghrib and the height of migration to Israel or France. Emanating from Moscow and refracted through the PCF to Morocco and beyond, this project not only looks at ideologies and populations in transit, but also their transformation in new national and international contexts. iii The dissertation of Alma Rachel Heckman is approved. James L. Gelvin David N. Myers Susan Slyomovics Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Lynne Carol Pettler and James Joseph Heckman, who (perhaps unwittingly) ushered me into the family business. I am grateful for years of editing help, criticism, and a life begun surrounded by books. v Table of Contents Introduction: Three Conscious Pariahs …………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 1: Growth of the Left in Morocco, Demographic Upheaval and Jewish Reactions ……16 Chapter 2: The Vichy Years and the Politicization of Moroccan Jewry ………………………..69 Chapter 3: The Rights and Obligations of Divorce: Jews and Moroccan Independence ……...130 Chapter 4: Absence and Counter-Narratives: The Years of Lead and the Moroccan Jewish Exodus ………………………………………………………………………………………….197 Scarification: a Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….252 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………...257 vi Acknowledgments In a sense, this project has been in the making since I took my first French class at the age of eight. Without that French class, I would not have learned about the Francophone world, the world of French empire. Without that, I most likely would not have studied Arabic, which in turn developed my interest in Hebrew. It seems fitting, then, to begin by thanking my language teachers, for they have given me the most essential tools in order, as the sociologist Abdelkébir Khatibi put it, to engage in a “pensée autre” – another mode of thinking, another means of engaging in texts, narratives, and discourses.1 In rough chronological order, I thank my most influential language teachers, starting with my French teachers: Mme Vicki Schneider-Ehsan; M. Charles R. Fowler and M. Steven Farver of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. At Wellesley College, I was fortunate enough to study Modern Standard Arabic and literatures of the Maghrib with Professor Rachid Aadnani – he formed a loyal Moroccanist cadre. At UCLA, I continued my Hebrew studies with Professor Yona Sabar. The tools of language permit a kind of bathing, plunging in literature and the worlds contained therein. The earliest form of this project was an undergraduate dissertation I wrote at Wellesley College and submitted in 2009, under the direction of Professor Anjali Prabhu of the French and Francophone Studies department. That thesis, entitled “Le thème de l’exil dans la pensée maghrébine de 1948 à nos jours: perspectives comparatives arabes et juives de l’exil dans la literature francophone de l’Afrique du Nord,” was an early opening into the research questions addressed in this dissertation, concerning exile, alienation, and the wonderful problematic of Arab Jewish trajectories. I thank Professor Prabhu for her patience with me, encouragement, and 1 Abdelkébir Khatibi, Maghreb Pluriel (Paris: Denoël, 1983). vii for introducing me to a wealth of Francophone texts (novels, theory, films), including Abdelkébir Khatibi’s notion of a “pensée autre.” Those discussions, questions and texts form the foundations of this dissertation’s architecture. Albert Memmi’s semi-autobiographical memoir La Statue de sel (“The Pillar of Salt”) was the lynchpin for my transition from the literature discipline to that of history.2 I am deeply indebted to Professor Frances Malino of Wellesley College’s history department for introducing me to Memmi and to the wide and fascinating world of Jewish life in North Africa and the Middle East. Her continued collaboration, mentorship and encouragement have been vital to this project. Professor Malino guided my research questions during my Fulbright year in Morocco (AY 2009- 2010) and put me in touch with the Diarna geo-museum and digital heritage mapping project directors Jesse Sage and Jason Guberman-Pfeffer. I am thankful to them for suggesting sites for me to document for the project, notably the Vichy camps along Morocco’s eastern border with Algeria, as well as putting me in touch with Zhor Rehilil of the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and many others. I am grateful to Zhor and of course the late Simon Lévy for allowing me access to the museum’s archives and introducing me to the vibrancy of ongoing Moroccan efforts to preserve the country’s Jewish heritage. Meeting Simon Lévy (1934 – 2011) in the fall of 2009 was the first time I met a Moroccan Jewish Communist, someone whose Moroccan and Jewish identities were mutually constitutive. His anecdotes, personal papers and perspective on the Moroccan Jewish past perfuse this dissertation. His wife, Encarnacion Lévy, and their two children, Jean and Jacques Lévy, were extraordinarily generous in granting me access to their personal archives, photographs and 2 Albert Memmi, La Statue de sel (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966). viii memories. While writing this dissertation, I regret to say that Encarnacion Lévy passed away. In editing, I realized I had written about her in the first chapter in the present tense; by the final chapter, she was, as is said in French, éteint (“extinguished,” as a flame). I spent two months with her in Casablanca between December 2013 and January 2014, perusing her husband’s library, personal archives, newspapers and political ephemera. We spent hours discussing her life, her perspective on the events that so often only record the deeds of famous men. As with so many women in history, her name does not appear in the archives. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to hear her stories first hand, and to perpetuate that voice in this research. None of this would have been written without my advisor and committee chair Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein. She has been the most thorough, supportive and inspiring of mentors. Over the past five years she has helped mold every question, every angle of this project, most importantly its trans-national emplotment and perspective on citizenship. I am eternally grateful for her many edits of this dissertation, of the conference papers and grant applications that enabled it, and all of the conversations that framed my fundamental research questions and focused them in a productive direction. I am similarly indebted to my committee members, in alphabetical order: Professors James L. Gelvin, Susan Gilson Miller, David N. Myers, and Susan Slyomovics. Whether from the angle of Modern Middle Eastern history, Modern Jewish history, Modern Maghribi history, anthropology, intellectual history, oral history, or cultural history, each has been incredibly generous with their time, mental catalogue, and most importantly, questions and criticism. I look forward to continuing the conversation. ix I thank the following organizations for their financial support of this project, in chronological order: the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant through UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES); the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) Roter and Ralph and Sarah Monkarsh fellowships; the Takiff Family Foundation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies; the American Academy for Jewish Research; the UCLA CJS Bluma Appel Fellowship; the UCLA International Institute International Fieldwork Fellowship and the Posen Society