Writing in the New York Times, Anouar Maji and Yaelle Azagury have produced a nuanced view of Morocco’s relationship with its Jews. The King is rightly applauded for preserving and promoting Jewish heritage. The writers blame ‘European colonialism, the creation of Israel and the emergence of Arab nationalism, imbued with elements of anti-Semitism, for dividing the Jewish and Muslim communities’. But the causes of the mass exodus predate the 20th century. European colonialism was in the main good for the Jews, as it liberated them from centuries of ‘dhimmitude’ and forced conversions.There were a few privileged financiers and courtiers, but popular feeling was very often anti-Jewish, leading the Jews being locked into ghettoes for their own safety, and to more pogroms than in other parts of the Arab world. (With thanks: Gina, Boruch)
Celebrating Succot in Marrakesh, 2017
The 2011 Constitution acknowledges that Morocco’s identity has been “nourished and enriched” in part by “Hebraic” components. Around that same time, King Mohammed VI embarked on a wide-ranging rehabilitation project that reflects his “ the cultural and spiritual heritage of the Moroccan Jewish community.
More than 160 Jewish cemeteries with thousands of gravestones have been uncovered, cleaned up and inventoried with funding from the kingdom. In addition to synagogues, former Jewish schools have been renovated with the king’s support. The original names of the Jewish neighborhoods where many of these synagogues have stood for centuries have also been reinstated. In 2013, Abdelilah Benkirane, then the prime minister of Morocco’s Islamist-led government, read a message by the king at the reopening of the newly restored Slat al Fassiyine synagogue in Fez in which he pledged to protect the Jewish community.
Other houses of worship, like the splendid 19th-century Nahon synagogue in Tangier, are now museums. The Ettedgui synagogue in Casablanca and the adjacent El Mellah Jewish Museum, founded in 1997 by Moroccan Jews who believe in a shared future between Jews and Muslims, were restored and rededicated by the king in 2016. El Mellah is the only comprehensive Jewish museum in the Arab world. There are plans for three more in Morocco. (…)
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