The Alliance Israélite Universelle, Gender, and Jewish Education in Casablanca, Morocco 1886-1906
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University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-22-2020 “The Community for Educational Experiments”: The Alliance Israélite Universelle, Gender, and Jewish Education in Casablanca, Morocco 1886-1906 Selene Allain-Kovacs [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Recommended Citation Allain-Kovacs, Selene, "“The Community for Educational Experiments”: The Alliance Israélite Universelle, Gender, and Jewish Education in Casablanca, Morocco 1886-1906" (2020). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2714. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2714 This Thesis-Restricted is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis-Restricted in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis-Restricted has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “The Community for Educational Experiments” The Alliance Israélite Universelle, Gender, and Jewish Education in Casablanca, Morocco 1886-1906 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History International & Global Studies by Sélène Allain-Kovacs B.A. Northwestern State University, 2018 May, 2020 Acknowledgements There are many people I would like to thank, but the first thank you is for my grand- mère, Dr. Mathé Allain. A Casablanca native and respected historian, her guidance has proved invaluable in this personal exploration of my heritage. Her stories of Casablanca and the Jewish, French, and Muslim communities with which she interacted during her childhood drew me to this subject and her sharp editing eye ensured I told this story to the best of my ability. I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. James Mokhiber, Dr. Günter Bischof, and Dr. Marc Landry, II, who guided me through this process. Their words of wisdom and encouragement to keep digging were instrumental. I would also like to thank the many wonderful librarians at the University of New Orleans, Tulane University, and the Alliance Israélite Universelle archives, who facilitated my studies. The AIU librarians were particularly wonderful, emailing me documents both before and after my visits, as well as directing me towards sources I would have otherwise overlooked. A most important thanks goes to the Williamson family. Their funding allowed me to travel to both Morocco and the AIU archives in France, an invaluable experience in this process. My time in Morocco was a personal/familial pilgrimage, which allowed me to appreciate not only the country I had learned to love from family stories, but the absences left behind by those Moroccan Jews, like my grandmother, who left during and after World War II. ii Table of Contents Abstract…...………………………………...…………………………………………………….iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Literature Review……………………………………………………….………………………....4 The Alliance Israélite Universelle and Education……..………………………….……………..10 Moroccan Jews and Casablanca …………………………………………………………………14 Casablanca Gets an AIU School ……………………………………………………………..….17 One for the Girls…………………………………………………………………………………28 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….........35 Bibliography…..…………………………………………………………………………………38 Vita………………………………………………………………………………………………40 iii Abstract At the end of the nineteenth century, the Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) opened boys’ and girls’ schools in Casablanca, Morocco, introducing ideas of European-inflected modernity and secular education to the local Jewish community. Letters and reports from the founding directors provide insight into the problems, social and practical, they encountered and reveal the ways in which both Moroccan and European gender norms affected this “educational experiment.” Keywords: Casablanca, Morocco; Jewish Education; Girls’ Education; Alliance Israélite Universelle iv Introduction In 1906, Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) teacher Vida Benzaquen reflected on her work establishing the organization’s first school for girls in Casablanca, Morocco. Writing to the international organization’s Central Committee in her 1905-1906 annual report, Benzaquen noted the challenges and limitations of her work, but sought to project optimism nonetheless. “[O]ur influence has not gone very wide,” she wrote, “Our former students have not yet become mothers to reform their home according to their morals. The good seed has been spread, let’s let time ripen the harvest.”1 Like her counterpart Moïse Nahon, who founded Casablanca’s AIU boy’s school in 1897, Turkish-born Benzaquen had been educated by the AIU and trained in Paris. In Casablanca, both struggled to introduce ideas of secular education and European- inflected modernity to the Jewish community of the rapidly growing port city, while seeking to respect Moroccan Jewish opinion and traditions. Though their experiences differed in important ways, the two directors acted as cultural intermediaries between the “modern world” and a traditional, multi-faceted religious culture, helping to forge a more unified Jewish community in Morocco’s fastest growing city. A comparison of their two experiences and these pioneering “educational experiments” helps to shine a light on the complex Jewish community of Casablanca and reflects problems found in many corners of the world concerning attitudes towards education, gender issues, religious minorities, colonization, modernization, and paternalism. As representatives of the AIU, founded in Paris in 1860 by French Jewish intellectuals, Benzaquen and Nahon were among some of the early education reformers in Morocco to seek to 1 Benzaquen, “Rapport Annuel 1905-1906,” Box XIV F 25.2, digital archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (hereafter cited as AIU archives); AIU primary documents cited in this work are easily accessible through rachelnet.net, with authorization granted by the AIU library. 1 initiate efforts to “emancipate” and “modernize” North African and Middle Eastern Jews. Indeed, from the time the AIU opened its first school in Tétouan, Morocco in 1862, AIU schools would play a major role in defining “modernization” for the Jews of Morocco. AIU education trained generations of Moroccan Jews to navigate the westernizing societies of the coastal regions and opened different political and economic possibilities for all Jews, even the more “backward” Jews of the interior. The AIU schools helped to set the pace of these transformations, unifying Moroccan Jewish communities despite geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers. Between 1860 when it began and 1912 when the French protectorate was established, the Alliance Israélite Universelle reached thousands of Moroccan Jews, introducing ideas, changing ways of life for some, and widening solidarity. Nineteenth and early twentieth century Jews were a small, nearly invisible, yet important minority in Morocco. Until the late nineteenth century, their communities had not yet transformed by secularization, industrialization, and capitalism; in other words, the modernization which had been transforming the West, especially since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. When the AIU decided to bring “enlightenment” to the “backward” Jews of North Africa and the Middle East, it stirred up opposition among the “traditional” elites. The school master became another power-center and as such threatened the authority of the rabbis, the notables, and even that of parents and grandparents. It required a great deal of respect for tradition to navigate the struggle and negotiate the transition, as Benzaquen and Nahon both learned. AIU schoolmasters like Benzaquen and Nahon, the representatives of European powers, found themselves operating in a cultural matrix increasingly determined by Europeans, especially the French who saw the establishment of French language schools as a tool in expanding French influence and economic interests. 2 Casablanca, as Nahon expressed in the opening sentence of his first annual report, was “the community for educational experiments.” Today the largest city in Morocco, Casablanca was, in the nineteenth century, a small but rapidly growing settlement, reaching 21,000 in 1901, mostly Muslims, but having also some 5,000 Jews and 477 Europeans crowded within its walls.2 Most studies of this Jewish population focus on either their subordinate legal status under Arab law, or the “regeneration” they experienced through the French colonial “civilizing mission.” The AIU played an important role in this mission, since it was through AIU education that most Moroccan Jews were introduced to French ideals of secularization and modernization. Maghrebi Jewish scholars of the time wrote extensively on North African Jewish identity, a complicated cultural hybrid which encompassed more than just religion and nationality and was complicated by colonization, anti-Semitism, and international events such as the Dreyfus Affair.3 This thesis thus studies the prelude to and founding