Finding my family

Spent a good deal of time looking for my host family for Erev Pesach. Fascinating exercise that involved spotting Jews and asking if they knew where the family lived, popping into corner groceries and asking if they knew Jews that lived close by, etc. I eventually found my family. Two of the children live within a few blocks of me in NY. The food was delicious and the seder itself was familiar and enjoyable. It lasted until about 1 in the morning at which point I was considerably exhausted especially considering that I had arrived on a red eye that morning. Add four cups of wine and Im falling asleep at the table.

Casa – Passover Eve

At 7 we met Raphy outside of shul. It was a wonderful, lively and soulful service. 50 people in all. Raphy pointed out certain men throughout the service.

That is Meir. He is a fortune teller in the Ourika Valley. (I had heard of Meir before – he uses Talmudic and Kabbalistic texts to tell fortunes). Meir very much looked the part.

That man there is restoring the cemetery in Skoura.

That is the Rabbi and that is another.

Casa – Arrival – April 8

Arriving was like old hat and I liked that. I was at the front of the line to buy train tickets and I held my ground. When I had to change at Ain Sebaa I walked over the train tracks instead of using the pedestrian bridge. It seems I had forgotten a good percentage of my Arabic but surely enough it would come back. I met a couple of friends in the medina in Casa. We walked through the medina a number of times as I tried to find my hotel. It was a beautiful sunny day and I began to discuss how Jewish history was all around us – you just had to know what you were looking for - as we happened upon Dar R. Haim Pinto (the house of the illustrious Rabbi Haim Pinto).

We found my hotel and I received a warm embrace from the proprieter of the hotel who remembered me from my last stay. We had lunch at an old favorite of mine and then headed to the corniche by the Hassan II mosque for some beaufitful views and much needed rest.

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.