New Jewish Morocco Books, Resources and Music

Books

A number of new, important books have been published recently that deserve the attention of anybody interested in Jewish Morocco.

The first is Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, an edited volume put together by two top scholars - Emily Gottreich at Berkeley and Daniel Schroeter at Minnesota. Of particular interest is Abdellah Larhmaid’s Jewish Identity and Landownership in the Sous Region of Morocco, Aomar Boum’s Southern Moroccan Jewry between the Colonial Manufacture of Knowledge and the Postcolonial Historiographical Silence, Susan Miller’s Making Tangier Modern: Ethnicity and Urban Development, 1880-1930 and Stacy Holden’s Muslim and Jewish Interaction in Moroccan Meat Markets, 1873-1912.

 

The volume also contains valuable chapters on Algeria and Tunisia. Hadj Miliani’s Crosscurrents: Trajectories of Algerian Jewish Artists and Men of Culture since the End of the Nineteenth Century will provide readers of this blog with familiar names of Algerian musicians from the first half of the 20^th century and is a welcome scholarly addition to this field although it also feels very much like the beginning of research rather than the culmination of efforts. Jewish Culture and Society North Africa will also serve as a welcome companion to the volume The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times edited by Reeva Spector Simon, Michael Laskier and Sara Reguer.

Brill recently released The Martyrdom of a Moroccan Jewish Saint by Sharon Vance, a contributor to Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa. I have not had a chance to read this yet but I have included a description of the book below: 

Tomb of Sol Hatchuel, Fez Jewish Cemetery, 2008 (c)

This work gathers texts that tell the story of the martyrdom of Sol Hatchuel, a young Jewish girl from Tangier, who was executed in Fez in 1834. It discusses narratives in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, French and Spanish written in the first century after her death, placing them in historical and literary historical context and showing how authors in each language interpreted her martyrdom. The book also includes a historical analysis of the event itself in the context of Moroccan and Moroccan Jewish history in the 19th Century.

Resources

The Douglas E. Goldman Jewish Genealogy Center at Beit Hatefusot in Tel Aviv recently received a donation from the Raphael and Georgette Cohen Collection of Family Trees of a searchable database of 22,000+ individual names, organized in family trees, of Jewish families from Meknes, Morocco. The link has been included below.

Music

I also want to draw your attention to Jonathan Ward’s excellent new four CD set Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM. Ward of Excavated Shellac fame (the excellent 78 rpm blog he runs) has incorporated a number of rare tracks by Jewish North African artists on the first CD including Sassi, Cheikh Zouzou, Cheikh Elafrit, Messaoud Habib and Zohra El Fassia. The CD set is now available for pre-order.

Links

To access a complete list of Jewish Morocco books, click here.

To purchase Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, click here.

To purchase The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, click here.

To purchase The Martyrdom of a Moroccan Jewish Saint, click here.

To access the Meknes database, click here.

To pre-order Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM, click here, and make sure to check out Excavated Shellac.

The Jew in Us - At the heart of Moroccan identity

"The origins of our flag

The original flag of Morocco, first used in the 10th century by the Almoravid Ruler Youssef ibn Tachfine, was white ... without any ornament. Three centuries later the Merinid dynasty added the seal of David, a star with six branches. Even if today, "the Star of David" is universally regarded as the hallmark of the Jewish people (it appears on the flag of Israel), we must remember that David, or Daoud, is a biblical prophet, revered as much by Jews than Muslims. So without discomfort or ambiguity the Merinides chose the six pointed star for their emblem…The currency in use in Morocco also remained until the early twentieth century the six pointed star." (My partial translation)

As I left Morocco last year (November 2008) I grabbed a few magazines and newspapers at the airport. I was blessed with the above article about Jewish identity as Moroccan identity. I meant to scan the article and post but never did. I have included the cover of the Tel Quel issue above and a partial translation of the opening paragraph. A Google translation of the article can be found here.

Indeed there was a time when the flag of Morocco and the currency of Morocco both displayed the seal of Solomon or Star of David.

Algerian Synagogue in Oujda

Just to give you a little taste of how the research comes to fruition. This is a photo from Jacob Pinkerfelds Synagogues in Northern Africa. In the 50s Pinkerfeld visited numerous communities throughout Morocco and much of what we know visually comes from his photographers photographs. For example, the restoration of Ibn Dannan in part used photographs from his work. This is the Algerian Synagogue in Oujda as it was some 55 years ago. It was much smaller than the Grande Synagogue and had no womens section.




This is a photograph taken last year. It is the same building, the same syangogue. It still stands and the door is locked. The star of David has been removed but its outline remains. If you look closely the street number remains the same.

Visiting Jewish Morocco - Resources on the internet

There is not a wealth of information on Jewish Morocco in English on the internet. Google searches usually yield little or repetative information. There is good information out there however (in French and Arabic) and there are resources that exist but that don't immediately come to mind when you are searching.

Google Earth and Wikimapia have become two very interesting resources for discovering Jewish Morocco. Both applications allow users to identify points on an often very clear map. So for example, an aerial view of Rabat will identify the mellah and a synagogue ("cinaguogue juif" south of the mellah and in a cluster of 3 marked areas) amongst many other sites. The information is user generated and usually by individuals on the ground.

By moving your mouse over a city you begin to learn a great deal thanks to the work of these volunteers. In the near future I plan to embed more of that information here so that you can discover for yourself at home and so that you can get an insight into my preparation when searching for sites.

Upcoming travel in Morocco - what am I doing there?

1. Celebrating Passover
   
2. Interviewing Raphael El Maleh for upcoming project
   
3. Re-discovering historical Jewish sites in the East (Oujda area) including:

• Locating specific sites like synagogues and cemeteries
  
• Evaluating conditions of sites in order to determine whether they are good candidates for restoration
  
• Providing practical information to potential visitors on how they can access these sites
  

Heading back

Heading back to Morocco in April. More to come.