On Refinding Jewish Morocco: East from Marrakesh

Looking out towards Jewish cemetery in former Sidi Rahal synagogue (2012)

 Over the summer, I divided my short time in Morocco between 1) doing some of the research that initially launched this blog (rediscovering remnants of the former Jewish communities of Morocco with a focus on the south) and 2) working to get a better understanding of the role of Jews in the Moroccan music scene in the middle part of the 20th century. Some of the places I visited for the first time included Asni, Sidi Rahal, the Valley of the Roses, Tourbiste, Zaouiat El Bir, Tinghir, Tinjdad (Asrir), and Goulmima. As usual my intent is to put these places on the blogoma, to share my impressions and photos, and to hopefully start a conversation by those who remember these places. Here are some musings on a few of these locales.

In Sidi Rahal's Jewish cemetery with temps rising to 117 (2012)

Sidi Rahal
At the end of August, we left Marrakesh and headed east. Thankfully, we opted for the air-conditioned rental car. By the time we arrived in Sidi Rahal, the temperature had already risen to 117 degrees. Bsara, piping hot pea soup, seemed like the most sensible lunchtime option. It was also being served at one of the few restaurants in the shade. Another bowl? The owner asked. No, I said with a smile. This used to be the mellah, he offered, and we were soon off. Sidi Rahal, once home to over 500 Jews, multiple synagogues, and the other trappings of communal life, had long interested me. It was visited in the 50s by a number of travelers who chronicled its final Jewish years. It had a vibrant past but now it seemed dusty. We walked for about 2 miles along the wadi. Surprisingly there was a sidewalk of sorts. Along the way it was clear that knowledge of the Jewish cemetery was common currency. We spotted the cemetery. It was on a dangerously dry hill. As we started to ascend, we spotted a pickup truck. We introduced ourselves and told the men where we were going. As luck would have it, the guardian of the cemetery was with the truck driver. As mazal would have it, the truck had just come from Casablanca. We arrived at the very moment that a new marble grave marker was being laid for the tzaddik Hagai Peretz. Maktoub I thought.

Witnessing the reconsecration of Hagai Peretz's tombstone (2012)

What remains of Sidi Rahal’s Jewish past is its extended cemetery walls. Few tombs have survived the weather and neglect. The mausoleum containing the tombs of Haggai Peretz and Yaakov Nahmias remains. The extended Nahmias family, scattered across the world, makes an annual pilgrimage to the tomb as attested to by the logbook on site. The remnants of a small synagogue exist, as does a fondouq for Jewish pilgrims. We headed back to the car but not before purchasing a 5-liter bottle of water. Skhoun chweeya, I said to the owner of the hanout. He smiled just enough to make me happy.

The Valley of the Roses
Our initial plan was to continue east until Figuig and then cut up to Debdou before making our way back west. Needless to say, our plans would eventually change.

Jewish woman in Tillit c. 1950s

After leaving Sidi Rahal, we skipped Tazarte due to the heat. We made our way straight to the Valley of the Roses. A number of iconic images from the area photographed in the 1950s by Elias Harrus, former head of the AIU, occupied my thoughts as we approached a remarkably more fertile area than Sidi Rahal. I knew of two villages – Zaouiat El Bir and Tillit - that once had Jewish communities. Upon arrival in the Valley, almost everyone we met pointed us the mudbrick village of Tourbiste as the site of one of the oldest Jewish communities in Morocco’s south.

Tourbiste is located above Ait Said (2012)

I had never heard of Tourbiste, nor could I find it on a map. A series of vague directions and a short drive along a winding road and we had found it from a distance. To get to Tourbiste we had to literally ford a river. A halved tree spanned the diameter of the water, acting as a bridge between the village and the rest of the Valley. As we crossed the river, I made the mistake of looking down, only to notice how swiftly the current was moving. The halved tree was impossibly thin. I had flashes of vertigo. It was too late to turn around and yet it was difficult to keep going. I closed my eyes and slowly moved forward…and then I fell in. I was fine but shaken and eventually made it across. As we walked toward Tourbiste, which reminded me in architecture of Ighil N’Oro, we passed mostly women but some men who offered us the fruits of the land. Person after person gave us delicious peaches, apples, and figs. Tourbiste itself, incredibly tiny, felt like a ghost town. Women were working the fields. I later learned that the men worked in the larger cities of the north. Upon arrival, I quickly saw something that resembled a synagogue and I heard male voices inside. I softly and then loudly knocked on the iron door. A woman answered who spoke little Arabic. Were there men home? I asked. A man came to the door and quickly we were invited inside to eat along with what amounted to be the village’s elders.

Approaching Tourbiste from its agricultural fields (2012)

We washed our hands and we were introduced to the Cheikh, muezzin, and other notables. We dug into delicious lamb tagine. It was just after Ramadan and people were happy. What better group to inform me of Tourbiste’s Jewish past? I thought. And so I asked and everyone looked at me like I was crazy. There never was a Jewish community here, one said. Another mentioned Zaouiat El Bir and Tillit. Are you sure? I asked. A resounding, “yes,” filled the air. We finished eating with them, thanked them, helped two young boys with their English homework, and were on our way. As we walked back, crossing dangerously worn wooden bridges, I began to wonder how Tourbiste had become constructed in people’s minds as Jewish. Was it ever really Jewish? Hadn’t others told informants that this village was seemingly never Jewish? I let these questions linger.

Zaouiat El Bir Judeo-Berber family names (2012)

Zaouiat El Bir
The Jewish cemetery in Zaouiat El Bir is almost impossible to miss. It’s located right next to the local Post Office, along the main road. The cemetery itself has a few curiosities. First, the family names of the former residents are listed on a plaque in the cemetery and all of the families bear the Berber patronym “Ait.” While this is not surprising given that the former Jewish community would have been comfortable in the local Tashelheit and Moroccan Arabic, I had never seen this before. Second, a hand painted sign in the cemetery mentions the Jewish exodus from Spain in 1492, pointing to real or imagined Iberian refugee origins for the local Jewish community as well. The juxtaposition was fascinating.

I had the pleasure of meeting with the guardian of the cemetery, a man in his 80s. I asked him the usual question about the location of the mellah, when the last residents left, etc. But this time I came with musical questions as well. Had he heard prayers in Hebrew? He had. I also asked him if there were any local, relatively famous Jewish singers. If so, did they perform Chleuh ahwash and ahidous? I had caught his attention. As he began to sing what he called Jewish ahwash, I cursed myself for leaving my digital recorder in the car. He beautifully sang a few more pieces, we had tea and sweets, and we continued east.

Handpainted sign marks the Jewish exodus from Spain in Zaouiat El Bir (2012)

Tinghir
We spent a couple of days in Tinghir, touring the city with our friend Kamal Hachkar. Hachkar is the visionary behind the film Tinghir-Jerusalem: Echoes from the Mellah. He has done incredible work historically reconstructing Tinghir’s once populous Jewish community and is using his documentary to have necessary, difficult conversations about Moroccan identity. His film is now touring the US and I strongly recommend going to check it out.

 

Clip from Tinghir-Jerusalem

  

Tinghir’s mellah is well preserved in many ways. The mellah gate can still be seen, as can its unique architecture. We had the pleasure of attending a presentation on Tinghir’s Jewish past at the local community center with remarks by Hachkar and a professor from Agadir. About 100 Tinghiri youth were not only in attendance but engaged. Watching this conversation happen was one of the highlights of this short trip to Morocco.

Tinjdad, Goulmima, and back to Fez

Jewish cemeteries in Asrir, Tinjdad (2012)

It was starting to rain by the time we reached Tinjdad. An older man on an even older bicycle, pointed us to Asrir, the douar which housed one of the region’s still identifiable mellahs. Yossef Chetrit has written about the former community of Asrir. Some of the Jews there used to own farmland and apparently the largest landowning family in the area was Jewish. As we walked through the mellah and toward the bright pink walls of the cemeteries, the sky opened up. Intense gusts of wind and rain made it difficult to see and walk. The doors of the cemetery were locked and the walls were too high to scale comfortably. A man with a sickle approached. Since my last travels in Morocco, I had trained myself to embrace this type of encounter rather than be petrified. He offered to give me a boost but I was afraid that once inside the cemetery I wouldn’t be able to pull myself back out. I decided to try to jump up and grab the top of the wall myself and to some how hoist myself to a position where I could see what was inside. One, two, and I was up. I peered down. Literally nothing remained. It was unfortunate but not uncommon. It was raining even harder and so we left. When we finally settled in to Goulmima and spent an afternoon visiting the mellah there, I got increasingly interested in drastically altering our itinerary.

I was fixated on the prospect of returning to Fez. My deep passion for the Maghreb’s musical history was pulling me to the city once home to one of Morocco’s greatest female singers, none other than Zohra El Fassia, and to a host of other musicians like the Botbol clan. I dreamed of chatting with those who remembered the music scene and maybe even finding a stash of 78s buried somewhere deep in the medina. With only a few days remaining in Morocco, we hurriedly made our way back west and north.

You can find more photos of my recent travels to Morocco on the Jewish Morocco Facebook page (which you can also “like”). My next post, which I’m putting the finishing touches on, will be on record digging, cassette collecting, and musical memory in Jewish Morocco. Stay tuned.

Videos from the Tahala Jewish Cemetery

I've added a couple of short videos from the Tahala Jewish cemetery. If anyone has any updates on the status of the cemetery, please send my way. It is surreal to once again see these videos after having been away from the region for too long.

Here is some of what I wrote back in October 2008:

I arrived in Tahala and quickly found an amicable old man who pointed me in the right direction. Tahala is a small village about 15 km outside of Tafraoute. It was a Saturday and even quieter than usual. If I saw anyone around I asked them to point me in the direction of the cemetery and the happily did so. I finally arrived to a construction site. The Moroccan equivalent of a McMansion was being built in Tahala and seriously blemished the landscape. The construction workers motioned me forward past the site and to what looked like construction materials at first glance. But at second glance it was much more than construction materials. It was the remnant of the Tahala Jewish cemetery...



...There were about 12-15 visible graves with visible, clearly written Hebrew on about 6 of the graves. Some of the graves lied under construction materials and many had been destroyed. There was broken pottery, mostly tagine lids, strewn about and a good number of the graves that were still in good condition had been desecrated from the top. A number of people I have spoken to on this matter seem to think that local Berber traditions have identified Jewish cemeteries as sources of certain powers and the broken pottery and even the desecration is part of these rituals. As construction moved along and as I moved on it seemed to me that this cemetery only has a few years left before it is totally destroyed. Sadly it was one of the most moving cemeteries I have seen since arriving in Morocco and was at a loss of what to do. If the Hebrew inscriptions are not moved to a museum (perhaps in Casablanca) then they will completely disappear in the near future.



Tahala and the study of the Jews of the Sous are continuing to gain interest among historians and anthropologists. Read Abdellah Larhmaid's excellent chapter on Jewish Identity and Landowndership in the Sous Region of Morocco in the excellent and recently released Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa.

A personal account of the funeral of Edmond Amran El Maleh

About a month ago, Megan MacDonald, a Fulbrighter in Morocco focusing on the role that Francophone / Moroccan novels play in Morocco and who is completing her dissertation on comparative literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo, contacted me about the death of Edmond Amran El Maleh and details for his funeral. Megan ended up attending the funeral in Rabat and wrote a beautiful piece (below). She also took some great pictures. I think these pictures speak volumes to complicated relationships in Morocco.

Megan MacDonald
20 December, 2010
mgn.macdonald@gmail.com

I first heard of the passing of Edmond Amran El Maleh at the age of 93, on Monday night via Twitter. Moroccan writer Laila Lalami reflected: “With the passing of Edmond Amran El Maleh, it feels as if a part of the literary, cultural (and yes, Jewish) history of Morocco has passed.” There was to be a tribute to this giant of Moroccan literature the next morning (Tuesday November 16, 2010) at the Jewish cemetery in Rabat, and then he would be brought to Essaouaira, his final resting place.

I wasn’t familiar with a Jewish cemetery in Rabat, so I turned to Google maps. I found two Jewish cemeteries in Rabat--one in between l’Océan and the Medina, and the other in Agdal. I emailed Chris Silver to ask him what he thought, having stumbled upon his blog while searching online for information on Jewish life in Morocco. My first instinct was that the older cemetery, the one near l’Océan and the medina, would be the spot for a tribute. In his email Chris reminded me “things in Morocco are never as they appear.” He also thought the medina would be the correct location. I asked IbnKafka on Twitter which he thought it would be. He was not aware of a Jewish cemetery in Agdal. I decided to ignore both of our first instincts, and head to Agdal. When I emailed Chris later on that day to tell him the cemetery was in Agdal he quipped, “Of course it was--I knew I should have trusted my opposite instinct.”

Exterior of Jewish cemetery in Agdal, Rabat (2010)

My taxi driver knew where the cemetery was, and asked me if I knew the word for cemetery in derija and fusha, which he promptly shared with me: (qbr) is a term in both derija and fusha that he said everyone would know, and (arodha) is specifically derija. He dropped me off at a semi-open gate, which turned out to be the cemetery for “the French”, according to the woman watching the door, with whom I exchanged some awkward derija, and which I later on found out is a Christian/European cemetery. She said that the Jewish cemetery was one door down.

Interior of Jewish cemetery in Agdal, Rabat (2010)

There were around one hundred people there milling about and talking in small groups when I arrived at 10am, with more trickling in over the next half hour. I heard a woman ask her companion in French, “Is the body here?” The crowd was made up of Moroccans and non-Moroccans, Muslims, Jews, Christians, those visually presenting as religious people, and those who were not, men and women, young and old, and several people wearing kaffiyehs with bright Palestinian flags on the borders.

Jewish, Muslim and Christian mourners of El Maleh (2010)

The body was brought out, draped in a Moroccan flag, and everyone gathered around as prayers were sung and tributes made. A cameraman showed up, filming the speakers and the body. In the cement enclosure the emotional words of the speakers were occasionally broken up by shuffling feet, sniffling, and ringing cellphones. One speaker highlighted the Moroccan Jewish community, which he said must continue to live on, as he cited El Maleh’s support of the Palestinian struggle, and his desire that Palestinians and Israelis should live in peace. El Maleh was described as a man rooted in his history, a history of Morocco. A man of conviction who had fought against the French occupation in Morocco. The speakers expressed gratitude for El Maleh’s compassion, his willingness to listen patiently to questions from others--even if they were not ‘good’ questions, or ‘intelligent’ questions. A man of grace who respected others. A man characterized by an incredible dynamism and honesty.

Scholars write about El Maleh as someone who constantly challenged idées reçus and official histories through his fiction and other writing. These remain a testament to the memory of his disappearance, while also serving as texts that bear witness to historical memory, and to a re-writing of official and unofficial Moroccan histories. This work of excavation was also one of re-layering: pointing at pluralisms that have existed in Moroccan society while looking towards a future with one finger on these historical sediments. His literature re-examined forgotten realities of Moroccan history, doing so in a polyphonic manner. Writing in Le Magazine littéraire in March 1999, El Maleh put forth:

« Écrivant en français, je savais que je n’écrivais pas en français. Il y avait cette singulière greffe d’une langue sur l’autre, ma langue maternelle l’arabe, ce feu intérieur. »

El Maleh was man who leaves us with his writing, a body of work that will be there for our children, and for their children. A man whose work speaks to all Moroccans, described by one speaker as Berber, Arab, Jewish, Muslim, francophone, arabophone. He was, according to one speaker, a man who knew how to laugh.

As is the case with premonitions that reveal themselves clearly in hindsight, it is fitting to end with the words of El Maleh’s friend Abdellah Baïda, writing just before his passing in Le Soir: “Ce cher Edmond a encore des cartouches dans sa besace; on entendra certainement reparler de lui.”

For El Maleh’s part, he felt: "Quand je quitte le Maroc, je me déplace sans me déplacer."

References:

--Mary B. Vogl. “It was and it was not so: Edmond Amran El Maleh remembers Morocco” International Journal of Francophone Studies, 6 (2) 2003: 71-85.

--Edmond Amran el-Maleh, Le Magazine littéraire, mars 1999.

--http://www.aufaitmaroc.com/actualites/culture/2010/11/15/lettres-orphelines

--http://www.lesoir-echos.com/2010/11/05/edmond-amran-el-maleh-cette-obsedante-question-de-culture/

Jewish Cemetery in Asilah: Connecting with Levy Roif’s Great-Great Grandson

Nearly a year ago I wrote about the Jewish cemetery in Asilah. I mentioned two tombs that caught my attention. One of them was of Levy Roif who died in 1926 at the age of 110.

Last week I received a note in my inbox from Rinaldo in Brazil. It was a surprise that only the internet could have enabled.

Rinaldo wrote:
It was quite a wonderful surprise to read about the location of the tomb of Levi Roif. He was my great-great-grandfather. His son Abraham Roffe, or Roif, emigrated with his family in the late XIXs [19th century] to the city of Belem, in northern Brazil where he died in 1931 and was one of the leaders of the local Jewish Sephardic Community. My grandmother, Miriam Roffe Athias commented about her grandfather Levi Roif whom she knew personally, lived almost 110 years old, and was buried in Asilah.

He continues:
In the late XIX’s [19th century] and early XX’s [20th century] there was a massive migration of Moroccan Jews to the Amazon region during the rubber boom, they came from the cities of Tangier, Tetouan, Larache, Rabat and Asilah. The three sons of Levy Roif moved in the wake of that migration and settled in the city of Belém where there is a Synagogue since 1848. Around 300 Jewish Sephardic families still live there. The eldest son, Abraham Roffe, my great-grandfather came with wife and younger children. His eldest daughter, Miriam Roffe my grandmother, stayed in Azilah for a few years more, living with her grandparents Levy Roif an Honoria (The same name of my mother); she died in Belém in 1956.

Even more astounding - Rinaldo was kind enough to send me possibly the only photo in existence of Levy Roif (date unknown) taken in Asilah, Morocco. He also included a photo of the extended family taken in Brazil in 1922.

I am including both photos below. I am also including never before seen photos from my September 2008 visit to the Jewish cemetery in Asilah.

Levy Roif (date unknown)
Asilah, Morocco

Abraham Roffe, Wife and Family (1922)
Belem, Brazil

Tomb of Levy Roif (2008)
Asilah, Morocco
(c) Chris Silver

Jewish Cemetery and Geniza (2008)
Asilah, Morocco
(c) Chris Silver

A Guide to Accessing the Jewish Cemetery in Asilah
Take a train or bus to reach Asilah. The cemetery in Asilah lies just down the coast from the city center. It is easily accessed by foot and most locals will be able to point you in the right direction. There is a cemetery gate that remains unlocked. There is a family that lives on premises. The fourth wall that should close the cemetery off from the sea has come down which makes for a breathtaking, unbelievable view/juxtaposition but of course should be repaired to prevent further deterioration of the cemetery. To repair the wall would cost approximately $500. If anyone is interested in financing the repair, please contact me. A geniza still exists in the cemetery unlike other abandoned cemeteries across Morocco.

Asilah As Inspiration – the Case of Edmond Amran Elmaleh Edmond Amran Elmaleh is known as the Moroccan James Joyce. He was born in Safi and began his writing career much later in his life. His 1979-80 visit to the Jewish cemetery in Asilah inspired his first book Parcours Immobile.

He writes:
When, around the years 1978-1980, the emotion, the shock felt in a visit to the Jewish cemetery in Asilah, a small town forty miles from Tangier, determined the birth of Parcours Immobile, my first book.

Here is a little more about Parcours Immobile which takes place in the Jewish cemetery in Asilah.

Here he artfully describes Nahon, the last Jew to die in Asilah.

There is much more to write about the cemetery in Asilah (including its foundation story which involves a shipwrecked refugee ship from Spain in 1492), Jewish Asilah, and Elmaleh but I will leave it here for now.