Sites of Jewish Memory

Jews in and From Islamic Lands

Glenda Abramson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317751601
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

This book brings together a collection of 16 essays, first published in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, that explore Jewish communities in North Africa, Turkey and Iraq. The discussions are located primarily in the 20th century but essays also examine the Jewish community in 16th-century Istanbul, and in early modern Morocco. Topics include traumatic departures of communities from countries of centuries-old Jewish residence, and relocations; pilgrimages to holy sites by Mizrahi Jews in Israel; resonances of Shabbetai Zevi in Turkey and Morocco; "otherness" and the nature of homeland; the Sephardi culinary heritage as realised in the cookbooks of Claudia Roden; sites of memory, such as Kuzguncuk in Turkey; and a controversial view of the exclusions and erasures that Arabized Jews have undergone. In this unique collection a major, but not exclusive, theme is that of the instability of memory, and the attempt to understand the interactions between memory and history as Jews recount their experiences of living in, and often leaving, their past homelands.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies.

Part 1: North Africa

Samir Ben-Layashi & Bruce Maddy-Weitzman

Myth, History and Realpolitik: Morocco and its Jewish Community^*

This article is an analytical overview of the history of Moroccan Jewry, from pre-Islamic times to the present day, exploring the themes of myth, memory and political interests in the multi-faceted, continuous interactions between the community and Moroccan society as a whole. In referring to seminal developments in Moroccan political history, it analyses the different ways in which the Jews of Morocco experienced them as an integral part of the larger societal mosaic. This survey of the 2,000-year Jewish presence in Morocco employs a variety of classical and modern sources in order to locate the place of Moroccan Jews within the ebbs and flows of Moroccan dynastic history, particularly following the establishment of the first Islamic dynasty in the eighth century, C.E. It also engages with current historiographical debates on the subject matter. Overall, it provides clarity and order to the subject of Jewish–Muslim inter-communal relations in Morocco over the longue durée, a matter too often shrouded in myths and half-truths.

Muslim–Jewish relations in Morocco during modern times have in many ways been unique in the annals of the Muslim world. Two illustrations may suffice: (1) Individual members of the Moroccan Jewish community, for example, David Amar and André Azoulay, served as important financial advisers to the late Moroccan monarch King Hassan II and, in Azloulay’s case, to Hassan’s son and current king, Muhammad VI, as well. In addition, community leader Serge Berdugo has played the role of itinerant Ambassador as an homme du palais, and was Minister of Tourism in 1994–5, only the second Jew to serve in the Moroccan Cabinet since independence. (2) The masthead of the Palace’s media mouthpiece, the French-language daily newspaper Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb, includes the date of publication according to the Hebrew calendar, alongside that of the Muslim and Gregorian ones. Intertwined with the Moroccan regime’s benevolent view of its Jewish community have been important state interests, resulting in a long-standing intimacy with the State of Israel. Beginning after the October 1973 Arab–Israeli war, Hassan II sought to play a facilitating role in Arab–Israeli diplomacy, and designated Moroccan Jews both “in country” and outside to assist him. Explaining his actions, Hassan II promoted an idealized version of Muslim–Jewish comity in Morocco as a model for Arabs and Israelis, drawing heavily on the mythical Golden Age of Muslim–Jewish synthesis in Andalusia before the reconquista. This myth, first propagated by European Jews in the nineteenth century, has had considerable traction over the years, and came to overlap with Moroccan Jewry’s own nostalgic and often rosy depiction of life in Morocco before the massive outflow from the community which commenced in the 1950s and eventually reduced the numbers of Jews in Morocco from 270,000 to a small remnant of just a few thousand persons today. Norman Stillman has written cogently about the gap between the idealized picture of the past and the actual historical record, while taking care not to promote a counter-myth of unremitting hostility—unlike others, as Mark Cohen has pointed out.¹

A review of the historical record, including the manner in which Jewish–Muslim relations over the longue durée are inscribed in Muslim and Jewish collective memories, reveals a picture rich in its complexity, which even includes a widespread, and not entirely preposterous belief, that particular groups in Moroccan Muslim society had converted to Islam from Judaism.² Broadly speaking, Muslim–Jewish relations were also very much a function of larger developments both within the country and between Morocco and the outside world.

According to Moroccan Muslim collective memory,³ Moroccan Jews are “native” to the country, pre-dating the arrival of Islam, and essentially going back to the beginning of recorded history, a status rarely enjoyed by Jews elsewhere, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan and Yemen being notable exceptions. Moroccan Jews owe this prerogative to the fact that the ancient history of the Jews of North Africa in general and Morocco in particular is underpinned by a corpus of legends drawing on very old and rich oral traditions.

Several legends feed the origin myth of North African Jews. The most common is the one that begins with the fall of the Kingdom of Judea, and the destruction of Jerusalem, including the first Temple, by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. While most of the population was deported to Babylon, a smaller portion was said to have fled to North Africa. Tradition has it that a group of kohanim brought a door and a stone from the destroyed First Temple and used it to establish the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Jerba, in Tunisia. Similarly, Moroccan Jews believe that descendants of those fleeing Nebuchadnezzar founded what they deem to be their oldest continually existing community, Oufrane, in the anti-Atlas mountains near the city of Agadir (not to be confused with Ifrane in the Middle Atlas, south of Meknès). When the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great (539–530 B.C.) allowed the exiled Jewish population to go back to Judea and rebuild their temple, the Jews who were in the far-off lands of North Africa either did not hear of the amnesty of Cyrus and thus did not return to Judea, or were too ensconced in their new abode.⁴ The partisans of this theory are divided between two possibilities: (1) a massive migration of Canaanite Jews to North Africa; (2) migration of individuals or small groups who converted local Berber (Imazighen) tribes to Judaism.⁵ These theories cannot be tested: epigraphic evidence is scanty,⁶ while archaeological indications of a large-scale migration are non-existent. Part of the grand narrative of the modern-day Berber identity movement is that Berbers, the native population of North Africa, were indeed Jewish and Christian before the arrival of Islam.⁷ However, the number of Judaized Berbers, and the percentage of North African Jews who are descendants of Berber converts, cannot be ascertained, and, like so much else regarding the subject, is a subject of disagreement.⁸

The historical record does indicate that Jewish communities existed in North Africa at least since Second Temple times, and perhaps even earlier. The ancient city of Carthage (near modern-day Tunis), was founded in 813 B.C. by Phoenician merchants; the Phoenician seamen and traders who plied the North African coasts most probably included Jews. A further addition to the mixture of myths and legends is the fact that to this day, Jews and Muslims venerate the tomb of Joshua in Tlemcen, in western Algeria, where he is said to have died after warring in the Maghreb.

Religious belief and praxis in North Africa during the late Roman and early Christian eras was highly syncretist. In describing these years, Muslim historians and chroniclers—Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam⁹ from the ninth century, al-Kindi¹⁰ from the tenth, Ibn Khaldun¹¹ from the fourteenth, and al-Maqrizi¹² from the fifteenth—all share two fundamental points: (1) The population of North Africa, al-barbar or al-Baraberah, consisted of Christians, Jews and pagans who all went through a massive and mostly peaceful Islamization; and (2) a Berber queen known as the Kahina (“sorceress”) led a fierce, albeit ultimately failed, resistance to Arab-Islamic conquerors by what may have been Judaized Berber tribes in the Jerawa and Aures mountains.¹³

Both the Copts in Egypt and the Jews in North Africa survived because they fulfilled administrative roles that permitted the transition from the Roman/Byzantium order to the Muslim one.¹⁴ As Michael Brett has shown, being a member of the Islamic faith was not the ultimate criterion for surviving this transition period.¹⁵ Unlike the Copts, however, native North African Christianity did not survive the Almoravid and Almohad eras (tenth to twelfth centuries), perhaps because native Christians were identified as part of the threat posed to Islamic rule by neighboring Christian Spain. By contrast, Jewish communities did survive, notwithstanding harsh Islamization measures that left little choice for religious minorities other than conversion, exile or death.¹⁶

The Marinid era in Morocco (1269–1465) was decisively shaped by the inexorable reconquest of the Iberian peninsula by Christian forces, generating a flow of Andalusian refugees, Muslim and Jewish alike, many of whom settled in Fez, the new capital of the Marinid Dynasty. Andalusian Jews, termed megorashim (“expellees”), as distinguished from the native toshavim (“residents”), provided a major demographic and cultural injection into Moroccan Jewish society. Both the Muslim and Jewish chronicles of the time speak of what we can call the “cultural superiority” of the Andalusian refugees over the local population. From the Jewish side, one can sense this “superiority” in the eventual changes that altered the form and content of taqqanut (rabbinical legal rulings, based on Jewish law).¹⁷ One of the most obvious changes was in the personal status code. Prior to the outflow from Andalusia, Moroccan Jews followed a combination of talmudic law intertwined with local customs and traditions, which permitted bigamy and in very rare cases even polygamy. With the arrival of the megorashim, the Andalusian Rabbis hastened to implement the talmudic “Castillian Law” which forbade bigamy. Still, resistance among the toshavim resulted in some modifications of the prohibitions.¹⁸ This juridical pendulum proves that the “superiority” of the megorashim over the toshavim was not taken for granted, but encountered resistance and resulted in negotiation. Eventually, the traditions and customs of the two components of the Jewish community would cohere into a particular Moroccan Jewish culture.¹⁹

Contrary to the Almohads, Marinid rulers were generally accommodating to their Jewish subjects. Jews even occupied very high ranks in the Marinid court, especially under the reign of Abu Yaqub (1286–1307).²⁰ Nonetheless, in 1438, Jews were obligated to evacuate the center of Fez and move to a separate, walled-off quarter, (mellah),²¹ a pattern that subsequently repeated itself in Morocco’s other major cities. How is this to be explained?

The Marinids were not sharif-s (shorfa; descendents of the prophet), and were not as zealous in their religious observance. For that reason, their legitimacy could more easily be called into question. Moreover, their new capital city, Fez, was held in lower public esteem than Marrakech, the Almohads’ capital. Among other developments which helped rectify the situation was the “discovery” in 1437, in the heart of the city, of the purportedly intact corpse of Idris II, who founded Fez in 810 in the footsteps of his father, the first Muslim Moroccan ruler. A holy shrine was built on the site of his grave, thus rendering Fez a sacred Muslim city, requiring the Jews to move from its center to the mellah in the newly built Fez al-Jadid.²²

During the Wattasid period (1465–1554), all the Moroccan coastal cities were occupied by Spain and Portugal. The legitimacy of the successor Sa‵dian dynasty (1554–1659) was based on its sharifian origin as descendents of the Prophet and on its leadership of the jihad, the armed resistance to the Spanish and Portuguese. The attitude of the megorashim towards the occupiers was ambivalent. The traumatic memory of the expulsion did not prevent some of these megorashim from cooperating with their ex-hangmen, resulting in the development of a commercial Jewish elite that played an intermediary economic role between Moroccan Muslims and their occupiers. According to Michel Abitbol, Jewish–Christian relations were characterized by “forced inquisition and conversions in the north [Spain], coexistence and even a Judaeo-Christian symbiosis in the south [Morocco].”²³ Nonetheless, among the majority of the Jews, the fear of a further Inquisition was genuine. Hence, the Jews who inhabited the northern part of Morocco created a special festival, Purim Sebastiano, to celebrate the Sa‵di victory over the army of the Portuguese king Don Sebastian on 4 August 1578.²⁴

Overall, the Sa‵dian period was one of political stability, economic prosperity, military strength and the consolidation of the country’s borders, which resemble those of modern times. After the Portuguese defeat, the Sa‵dians gained fuller control of the trans-Saharan caravan routes transporting gold and slaves, a process in which Moroccan Jews were involved, as well as in the lucrative sugar sector in the southwestern Souss region, which required slave labour.²⁵

It was during the Sa‵dian dynasty that a new mella...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Part 1: North Africa
• Part 2 : The Middle East
• Index