Posted on The Times of Israel
September 20, 2012
By: Lyn Julius
Whatever else you might say about Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s campaign for recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, he has certainly put the cat among the pigeons. The Arab press and media are in disarray; the campaign has brought forth what Ayalon has termed “extreme and babbling responses” from the Palestinian leadership.
Last week’s “Justice for Jews from Arab Countries“ conference in Jerusalem, staged by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in association with the World Jewish Congress (WJC), made history: it was the first official attempt in 64 years to introduce the plight of 850,000 Jewish refugees into mainstream public discourse. On September 21, the scene shifts to New York, when Danny Ayalon, WJC President Ron Lauder and leading lawyer Alan Dershowitz will call for UN recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
Reactions so far in the mainstream media range from bewilderment to hysteria. The campaign is a “cynical manipulation.” It’s about talking points, political point-scoring, “hasbara.”
In other words, the involvement of the Israeli MFA has raised the media’s worst suspicions. Haaretz and The Daily Telegraph report that the Israeli government is obeying a recommendation of the Israeli National Security Council. It’s a premeditated strategy. It’s a stumbling block to peace, proof of the Israeli government’s ‘insincerity’, an excuse to avoid a peace settlement even when peace talks are not going on. (Naturally, perpetuating Palestinian refugee status down through the generations is not political. And the Palestinian insistence on their “right of return” to Israel is not a stumbling block to peace. )
The Jewish refugees campaign has been referred to as a tactic intended to deflect attention from Israel’s African refugees crisis, according to Shayna Zamkanei, or divert public opinion from Israeli “discrimination” against Sephardim, according to Sigal Samuel. (You know, discrimination is that thing which makes every Sephardi girl reach for her hair-straightening tongs in order to look like her Ashkenazi friends.)
Much Arab criticism has claimed that Jews from Arab countries were not refugees at all. If they were, they would assert a “right of return” of their own to their countries of birth. Since they are now in their homeland of Israel, their aspirations have been fulfilled (Radical Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy has now jumped on this bandwagon). Blogger Petra Marquardt-Bigman calls this vain attempt to “dezionize” Israel an own goal: Ironically, Hanan Ashrawi’s logic is a ringing endorsement of Zionism for the 650,000 Jews who did resettle in Israel.
For Hussein Ibish (ably challenged by Ben Cohen), the very fact that the Jews are not asking for a “right of return” makes their campaign for justice “hollow.” They have no substantive claims, he alleges – barring a desire to delegitimise the Palestinian “right of return.”
According to Canadian refugee rights lawyer David Matas, however, you can’t both claim to be a refugee and assert a ”right of return.” “The very assertion of a ‘right of return’ is an acknowledgement that the conditions which led to refugee status no longer hold sway,” he told last week’s conference. Needless to say, the conditions in almost all Arab countries remain as hostile and unsafe for Jews – if not more so — as on the day they fled.
What the Jewish refugee issue does is to remove a stumbling block to peace by pricking the bubble of Palestinian exceptionalism. If one set of refugees from the conflict has been shown to have been absorbed without fuss, what does it say about the other?
Others on the Israeli left have objected to the linkage of the two sets of refugees. One Almog Behar, a young Israeli-born poet, has popped up on Facebook to speak on behalf of an unheard-of committee of Iraqi and Kurdish Jews in Ramat Gan against “renewed Israeli government propaganda efforts to counter Palestinian refugee rights by using the claims of Jews who left Arab countries in the 1950s.” Clutching at Behar’s straw, an Iraqi newspaper is now reporting that Iraqi Jews refuse to be associated with the “file on Palestinian refugees.”
For leftist Larry Derfner, the Israeli campaign is not content with seeking parity — it is going for superiority. Derfner contends that the Israeli government’s “splashy new victimhood campaign” engenders a tawdry suffering contest.
Leftist blogger Kung Fu Jew charges:
I would think that Jews of Arab origin would be outraged that their dispossession is again raised only as a talking point against Palestinian refugees.
Well actually, Jews from Arab countries are thrilled that their issue is finally being pushed to the fore. In much of the sniping at Ayalon’s campaign, there is sneering contempt; not compassion for Jewish refugees, nor appreciation for their human rights, from people who only seem to care about Palestinian rights. Under human rights law, Jewish refugees do have substantive claims for which there is no statute of limitations – to remembrance, recognition and redress, a notion that includes compensation.
The biggest obstacle to this campaign seems not the foreign or leftist press but mind-numbing ignorance among Israeli Jews. According to a poll released by the WJC to coincide with the international conference, 54% of Israeli Arabs are more likely to link Jewish refugees from Arab countries with Palestinians displaced from Israel, compared to only 48% of Israeli Jews. Even more worrying, 96% of the Jewish population was found to have no knowledge of the issue, compare to 89% of Israeli Arabs.
Danny Ayalon, you have an uphill struggle ahead – to educate your own.
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The Times of Israel September 20, 2012 By: Lyn Julius Whatever else you might say about Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s campaign for recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, he has certainly put the cat among the pigeons. The Arab press and media are in disarray; the campaign has brought forth […]
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Posted on Jewish Ideas Daily
August 10, 2012
Diana Muir Appelbaum
As a child, the French filmmaker Kamal Hachkar learned the Berber language from his grandparents in Tinghir, a Berber oasis city east of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. As an adult he discovered that the now exclusively Muslim town once had a substantial Jewish community. In Hachkar’s film Tinghir-Jerusalem, Echoes from the Mellah: The Rediscovery of a Judeo-Berber Culture, which appeared at the New York Sephardic Film Festival this spring, Hachkar walks through Tinghir with his grandfather. They stop at a certain spot, and Hachkar asks the old man if this is where the synagogue was. It is there no longer: All that remain in the old Jewish quarters of this and other Berber towns are crumbled adobe walls, vacant lots, and once-Jewish stores now owned by Muslims.
Hachkar was told what other young Moroccan children are told if they ask about the vanished Jews, that the Zionists forced the Jews to leave their beloved villages and that the Jews left in tears. Intrigued, he follows the story to Israel, where he tracks down the elderly Jews who were uprooted from Tinghir. Tears flowing, the immigrants reminisce about their childhood homes and friends. They sing old Berber songs and sigh. Berber Jews from Morocco have not had easy lives in Israel.
But do they regret leaving? No—and not merely, as one Israeli-born daughter reminds her mother, because in Morocco the woman had to wash clothes by hand in the river. The Jews left because they had to leave.
The Berber regions of Morocco were tribal and were not fully controlled by central authorities until well into the 20th century. Although Berber tribes understand themselves as extended families, descendants of a single, named ancestor, reality is more complicated. Families of slaves, former slaves, and survivors of defeated tribes can join a tribe as subordinate members. Berber Jews belonged to their tribes in this subordinate way. In the film, Hachkar walks the ruins of the abandoned Jewish quarter of a small Berber town as an elderly man describes the close friendships between the Jews and Muslims: The Jews of his tribe were like brothers, he says, and fought with the tribe to defend its territory. But when asked whether Jewish and Muslim young people could fall in love and marry, he recoils in shock.
You can still see traces of the Berber Jews in the geometric, humanoid carvings on the gravestones in the old Jewish cemetery of Mogador, modern Essaouira. Berber Jews fascinated 20th-century French ethnologists, who came to study them and photograph Jewish Berber women, with their distinctive tribal jewelry, embroidered robes, and tattooed faces. But only a small percentage of Morocco’s Jews were Berber-speakers. Larger numbers of Arabic-speaking Jews lived in Fez, Marrakech, and other cities and spoke Jewish versions of their regions’ Arabic dialects. After 1492, they were joined by Sephardim expelled from Spain. For the next five centuries, the communities maintained their distinctive customs, languages, and synagogues.
It is easy to get nostalgic about Jewish life in Morocco—picturesque towns, wonderful food. Today, the few thousand Jews who remain, mostly in the business hub of Casablanca, have full citizenship. Jews are welcome to visit and run businesses. The government has a moderate attitude toward Israel.
But Jewish life in Berber or Arab Morocco was never secure. This year is the centennial of the Fez Pogrom of 1912, a useful reminder that the history of the Jews in Arab North Africa was very like their history in other Christian and Muslim lands. Muslims saw Jews as inferior. Jews understood that they lived at Muslim sufferance. Jews could and did rise to great wealth and power in Moroccan society; but they had no rights, only such privileges as Muslim society and sultans chose to grant them. For centuries, they put up with what their neighbors dished out: petty humiliations, heavy taxation, occasional violence. The Jews of Fez responded to news of the first Zionist Congress in 1897 by establishing a chapter of Hibbat Zion (Lovers of Zion).
In 1948, Moroccans responded to the creation of Israel with deadly pogroms in Oujda and Jerada. In a wave of Jew hatred over the next several years, Jews were kidnapped and murdered. They were not expelled, as in Algeria; but Morocco had become dangerous, and they began to leave. They went to France, Montreal—and Israel, because, for the first time in history, they had the opportunity to go home. Indeed, so many families immigrated to Israel that in 1956, King Hassan, fearing that other Arab states would blame him for allowing immigrants from Morocco to strengthen Israel, forbade the Jews to leave.
After emigration was banned, Jews escaped clandestinely. On January 11, 1961, the Egoz, a small boat leased by the Mossad to smuggle Jews from Morocco to Gibraltar, capsized. All forty-four of the olim drowned, half were children. After the Egoz disaster, the Jewish Agency and the Mossad worked with threatened Moroccan communities to rescue the children first. In Operation Mural, 530 Moroccan Jewish children were sent by their families on an ostensible holiday in Switzerland—and, from there, flown to Israel.
Four months later, a deal was struck for a larger emigration. King Hassan, embarrassed by the international attention paid to the Egoz drownings, agreed that Moroccan Jews could emigrate secretly, so as not to draw the attention of anti-Israel governments—and the king would receive an indemnity for each Jew who left. The figures were never released, but it is estimated that between $5 million and $20 million flowed to the royal treasury in exchange for the 80,000 Moroccan Jews who were allowed to make aliyah between 1962 and 1964.
The last Berber Jews left Tinghir and other Berber towns silently, in the dead of night. Word was passed among them; they left with only what they could carry and without telling their Muslim neighbors. They walked, some of them single file down mountain trails, to roads outside their villages. There, they boarded buses to begin their journey to the Jewish state.
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Jewish Ideas Daily August 10, 2012 Diana Muir Appelbaum As a child, the French filmmaker Kamal Hachkar learned the Berber language from his grandparents in Tinghir, a Berber oasis city east of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. As an adult he discovered that the now exclusively Muslim town once had a substantial Jewish community. In […]
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Posted on AFP
5/12/12
OUAZZANE, Morocco — Thousands of Jews from Morocco, Israel and other parts of the world have over the past week carried out an annual pilgrimage to the Islamic nation to honour celebrated rabbis.
Morocco may not be the likeliest of Jewish pilgrim destinations, but the north African nation has for centuries had a vibrant Jewish population and some 1,200 of the faith's pious ancestors are buried in cemeteries here.
In recent days, about 5,000 pilgrims have gathered to pray for peace at sanctuaries and gravesites.
Perhaps the most famous of these burial grounds is that of Amran Ben Diwan, a venerated rabbi who was interred 250 years ago in the mountains of Ouazzane, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the capital Rabat.
Ben Diwan's tomb, nestled in a Jewish cemetery among acres of olive trees, was placed under police guard and only people who had been authorised by Morocco's Jewish community were allowed access.
The pilgrimage will finish Saturday, following five days of prayers and celebration, with pilgrims hurling candles into a large fire by Ben Diwan's tomb.
Morocco's Jewish population dwindled dramatically with the creation of Israel and now only a few thousand remain.
Tunisia has a small Jewish population too, and a famous synagogue there in 2002 was the target of an Al-Qaeda claimed suicide attack that killed 21 people, most of them German tourists.
Many pilgrims have since then given Tunisia a wide berth.
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AFP 5/12/12 OUAZZANE, Morocco — Thousands of Jews from Morocco, Israel and other parts of the world have over the past week carried out an annual pilgrimage to the Islamic nation to honour celebrated rabbis. Morocco may not be the likeliest of Jewish pilgrim destinations, but the north African nation has for centuries had a […]
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Posted on The Times of Israel
4/17/12
By: Andrew M. Rosemarine
During Holocaust Remembrance Day week, it is important to remember that Sephardim too have suffered terribly at the hands of our enemies. Indeed, exactly 100 years ago this week, mutinous Moroccan troops looted the mellah (ghetto) in Fes, Morocco’s then capital, murdering 45 Jews and wounding many more. Nobody remembers it now, but the 1912 Tritl (as it is known in Morocco, “sacking” ) has powerful resonances today.
The link between Fes and Jewish persecution is a close one. Jews were murdered here every time an anti-Jewish sultan gave the green light. Prior to the Tritl, the sultan Yazid hung over a dozen Jews who refused to convert to Islam around 1790, and the rest converted for fear of the gallows. You can find Muslims in the city to this day called El Kohen, and you know their origins! (The current Mayor, Mr. Shabbat, who has accused Jews of wanting to take over the world, is presumably also a descendant.) Maimonides, the philosopher who studied and perhaps taught at the local university, the Qarawiyyin, saw his own teacher put to death here, so the head of the Fes community has told me.
The echoes of the persecution are still live. One of those murdered in Fes in 1912 was a Madame Serrero. Benjamin Serrero, a friendly fellow, with whom I dined on a recent visit, helped organize synagogue services here. He was bludgeoned to death with a hammer last month. One of the children murdered recently in Toulouse was Myriam Monsonego, a direct descendant of the Chief Rabbis Monsonego of Fes.
I visited the head of Fes’s Jewish community, Dr. Guigui. He’s a physician, much loved by the local population as a whole. One of my local contacts, unaware of my interest in this community, told me he’s the best doctor in town. We discussed centuries of persecution, and then moved on to the positive, as Dr Guigui told me with great pride of the recent refurbishment of an old synagogue here, and showed me photos of him together with England’s Prince Charles, when they visited it together last year. In his surgery, I met two Muslim students, who organized a symposium on the Holocaust near to here, unique in Arab lands. While Ahmedinajad adds to Jewish suffering by denying the Holocaust, young Muslim students spread awareness of it, as humanitarians, in Morocco.
Fortunately, most Jews in today’s Morocco feel safe, even with an avowedly Muslim-headed government. King Mohamed VI, as his father before him, has been highly appreciative and protective of them, and the kings are much loved in return. Indeed, the king’s grandfather, Mohamed V, has a status equivalent to that of a saint, having refused to hand the Jews over to the pro-Nazi Vichy occupying forces, during the Second World War. As far as Moroccan Jews worldwide are concerned, he is more popular than any gentile sovereign since Cyrus the Great helped build the Second Temple. (Current Persian heads of state are a little less popular today.)
Attitudes toward Jews are often positive in this country. A schoolteacher of my acquaintance, K, a committed and fervent Muslim, even tells me that most of the prophets in the Koran are Jewish. He is correct, but don’t repeat his words elsewhere in the Arab world, or you’ll find yourself in the local stocks.
Why are Moroccan Muslims’ attitudes to Jews so often different from those held by their coreligionists elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East? First, they are far away from the Arab-Israel conflict. Second, the entirely encouraging views of the king and his two predecessors have made a profound difference. For they all also held the status of Amir al Muminin, Prince of the Faithful, in effect the head of Islam in this country. The king’s Ambassador in London is his cousin, Princess Joumala. She told me recently that for her family, being a spiritual head was more important than being king. As far as protecting their Jewish minority is concerned, what the kings say and do matters. They appointed Jews as ministers and royal advisers, showing the royal seal of approval. But where there were at least 200,000 Jews 70 years ago, today under 5,000 remain.
Serge Berdugo, the ebullient secretary-general of Moroccan Jewry and a former minister of tourism, is optimistic about the current state of his community. He tells me of his good relations with the new Islamic Premier, Abdelilah Benkirane. Newspapers photographed them embracing warmly the night Mr Benkirane won parliamentary elections. The joint message of the two leaders – Jews and Muslims get on well together in today’s Morocco.
May this be a beacon of tolerance for all of North Africa and the Middle East.
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The Times of Israel 4/17/12 By: Andrew M. Rosemarine During Holocaust Remembrance Day week, it is important to remember that Sephardim too have suffered terribly at the hands of our enemies. Indeed, exactly 100 years ago this week, mutinous Moroccan troops looted the mellah (ghetto) in Fes, Morocco’s then capital, murdering 45 Jews and wounding […]
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Posted on The Times of Israel
4/16/12
By: Lyn Julius
While much of the western world has been marking the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, another tragedy is being quietly commemorated this week by Jews from Morocco. It is 100 years since a terrible pogrom devastated the Jewish quarter, or mellah, of Fez.
Just as the Jews of Iraq have the Farhud, the Jews of Fez have a name for their pogrom: the Tritl — literally the “sack” of Fez. The irony was that the Tritl broke out as Jews had finished celebrating their Mimouna, a convivial end to Passover during which they would invite their Muslim neighbors into their homes for mouffleta pancakes.
Two weeks after Morocco became a French Protectorate on March 30, 1912, Muslim army recruits, outraged at the takeover of the infidel, mutinied against their French officers. Egged on by women standing on the rooftops, the soldiers are said to have played football with the officers’ decapitated heads and decorated their chests with their victims’ intestines. In no time at all, the cry went up, “To the mellah!”
The French having previously confiscated all weapons, the Jews had no means to defend themselves. Looters broke down doors and stole jewelry, furniture, crockery, dishes and clothes. They desecrated synagogues and burnt Torah scrolls. Men, women and children were murdered in cold blood, hurled from roofs, mutilated and raped.
Sultana Elbaz was killed at an upstairs window. She was hit in the chest by a bullet fired by a soldier who had burst into the courtyard of her home. It is said that her baby survived by suckling her blood.
Escaping through a new gate from the mellah, Jews sought sanctuary in the medina, where some Arabs sheltered them. The Sultan Moulay Hafid took many starving Jews into his palace and sent them bread and olives. Throughout the time the refugees remained there, until April 28, it did not stop raining.
The abiding image of the 1912 Tritl is of Jews sheltering in the sultan’s menagerie. One photo shows the sultan’s lions and tigers in one cage, and Jews crammed cheek by jowl in the adjoining cage. So many Jews streamed into the palace that even the animal cages, the historical accounts suggest, had to be emptied for them. But the Jews had more than a passing familiarity with the beasts: the historian Nathan Weinstock writes that, as degraded “dhimmis,” it was the Jews’ chore to feed the royal lions and tigers. He even met a man who knew a man who bore a scar on his face from one of these big cats.
On April 19, in order to force the rioters away, French soldiers fired rockets and bombs, laying waste to much of the mellah. Jews abandoned the mellah, which was pillaged the next day.
During the three days of violence, 45 Jews were killed, although some estimates are higher. Over 70 were injured. French troops suffered an equal number of casualties, while almost 1,000 Muslims were killed or wounded. A third of the mellah was destroyed, and 12,000 Jews found themselves homeless.
In his report of the terrible events of Fez, the director of the local Alliance Israelite school, Amram Elmaleh, wrote:
The mellah looks as if ravaged by the worst cataclysm. Each visit I make renders me touched by the misery of these wretches, prostrated in painful silence, staring at the ruins of their humble dwellings…
Elmaleh was one of the 14-member rehabilitation commission tasked with distributing food aid to the survivors and eventually getting them back on their feet. It was only in September 1916 that the Jewish community finally received some compensation.
The Fez pogrom was not the first to befall the Jews; there had been a Berber attack the previous year on the Jewish quarter, and many others before that on various Jewish communities. The Tritl underlines the fact that the Jews in pre-colonial North Africa had neither material nor physical security. The era of the French protectorate ushered in a more stable period, but few Moroccan Jews managed to acquire French citizenship; 340 Jews from Fez were reported to have left for Palestine in 1922 alone. There would have been more if each emigrant had not been forced to deposit a guarantee of 1,000 francs.
Over 200,000 Moroccan Jews have come to Israel since 1948. They constitute the second largest wave of immigration after the Soviet aliya. In spite of the sultan’s long and honorable record of protecting his Jews, it is said that the trauma of the Fez Tritl is seared into the collective memory, and constitutes the primary reason why Jews left independent Morocco in such numbers.
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The Times of Israel 4/16/12 By: Lyn Julius While much of the western world has been marking the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, another tragedy is being quietly commemorated this week by Jews from Morocco. It is 100 years since a terrible pogrom devastated the Jewish quarter, or mellah, of Fez. Just […]
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Posted on Arutz Sheva
3/26/12
By: Chana Ya'ar
An elderly Jewish man was murdered by an unknown attacker with a hammer Monday in the city of Fez.
The 74-year-old victim, whose name has not yet been released, worked in property management for rentals owned by other Jews.
According to reports in Moroccan media, the elderly victim was seen being hit repeatedly by a man wielding a hammer.
The murderer fled the scene. Police are investigating to determine whether the attack was nationalist or criminal in nature.
Critically injured, he died as he was being rushed to King Hassan II University Hospital.
Earlier Monday, thousands of demonstrators stormed the parliament building in the capital city of Rabat. The protesters torched Israeli flags and expressed anger at the presence of Israeli envoy David Saranga, who was in the city to attend a meeting of the Euro-Mediterreanean Partnership (EUROMED), in advance of the Global March to Jerusalem set for this Friday, an event scheduled for the Arabs' annual "Land Day" protest.
Saranga, who was expected to remain in the country until nightfall before flying to Brussels, instead was quietly escorted through a side door from the building. He was taken to the airport and immediately boarded a flight for Paris instead.
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Arutz Sheva 3/26/12 By: Chana Ya’ar An elderly Jewish man was murdered by an unknown attacker with a hammer Monday in the city of Fez. The 74-year-old victim, whose name has not yet been released, worked in property management for rentals owned by other Jews. According to reports in Moroccan media, the elderly victim was […]
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Posted on Lewis and Clark
September, 2010
What began with simple curiosity about a small room filled with bags of papers in a synagogue in Rabat, Morocco, has become a project that will help change the way anthropologists and historians document cultures around the world.
Oren Kosansky, assistant professor of anthropology, has earned a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a digital archive of Judaic Moroccan documents from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The online archive will open access to researchers with an interest in Jewish culture in Northern Africa and allow them to share ideas and information widely. Of even greater interest to the NEH, the project will offer a new model for intercultural and international collaboration in the creation of technological resources to share historical information.
Making a discovery
Kosansky’s fascination with Judiaism in Morocco dates back to his graduate work in the early 1990s. In 2005, a Fulbright research grant took him to Rabat, the capital of Morocco and former home to a large Jewish community. During his stay, Kosansky worked closely with leaders of Rabat’s major synagogue and community center. It was there that he discovered a genizah—a room or depository found in synagogues, where old religious documents that are no longer in use are kept and periodically buried.
“In Judaic tradition, documents containing references to God are forbidden from being destroyed,” Kosansky explained. “Most obviously books and papers on religious topics such as the Torah are deemed sacred and treated in a ceremonious fashion, but any item with religious or legal references—such as a wedding announcement or business contract—would also be kept.
“In this case, I found literally thousands of books and documents pertaining to virtually all facets of Jewish life in Morocco, especially as it was transformed during the 20th century. My first thought was, ‘How can I save these materials from burial, so that they can be consulted by community members and scholars.’”
Kosansky noted that the Jewish community in Rabat once numbered in the thousands and had dwindled to fewer than 100, following a broader trend of emigration that brought the majority of Moroccan Jews to Israel, France, and other global destinations. As an anthropologist, he saw great potential for research materials that could serve many in his field.
“Written materials are very important in Judaism,” Kosansky explained. “It is a very textual culture. These documents offer great insight into a culture and a community of people that once thrived here. They offer an opportunity to investigate elements of a society that has not been fully explored by those of us in the academic field. For the Jewish community, it represents something perhaps even more valuable—an opportunity to reflect on how their traditions have been shaped by modern life, colonialism, technological change, and global networks of migration, communication, and commerce.”
With the approval of community leaders, Kosansky sorted through hundreds of sacks containing thousands of documents and determined which documents were appropriate for burial and which represented significant historical texts suitable for preservation. Synagogue leaders gave Kosansky the documents for preservation, and he donated them to the Jewish Museum in Casablanca.
The unparalleled collection contains many unique documents, including handwritten letters, unpublished manuscripts, and community records, as well as published materials in a variety of languages, including Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew, and French. The documents now held by the museum will be the focus of Kosansky’s NEH digitization project.
Building a model to bring disparate parties and countries together
In developing his project, Kosansky has faced many difficult questions and considerations. Despite his excitement about the opportunity to open the door further on North African culture, he wrestled with concerns about how to build such an archive—chief among them, how to build an equitable process that respects the legal, ethical, and social differences across several societies.
“There are so many issues up for consideration,” Kosansky said. “For example, what, if any, are the copyright issues for such old documents? And what are the copyright laws in Morocco? Are there private documents we shouldn’t digitize out of respect for some individuals or the Jewish community? Who should be consulted on such ethical considerations?”
Kosansky will begin the project while he is directing Lewis & Clark’s first overseas program in Morocco next spring. Over the next 18 months, he will be identifying experts both in the U.S. and in Morocco in diverse fields like digital archives, information access, intellectual property law, and Jewish history to address the legal issues, begin the digitization process, and have the website built.
Given the scope of the entire project, Kosansky feels the key to its success will be building a shared vision and understanding across languages and cultural differences.
While the circumstances for any future project will be unique to the people and part of the world it is happening in, NEH will be better prepared to fund and assist comparable projects based on Kosansky’s experience and the lessons he takes away.
“This is about far more than an archive,” Kosansky said. “And it will be more than a list or set of images. It will be organic in its process and in its outcomes. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to learn how to effectively bring a cross-cultural project to fruition and to develop a model for academicians and laypeople to share information and ideas about the documents that they access.”
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Lewis and Clark September, 2010 What began with simple curiosity about a small room filled with bags of papers in a synagogue in Rabat, Morocco, has become a project that will help change the way anthropologists and historians document cultures around the world. Oren Kosansky, assistant professor of anthropology, has earned a $50,000 grant from […]
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Posted on Morocco World News
By: Ghassan Essalehi
Ifrane, Morocco, December 2, 2011
Simon Levy, Secretary General of the Foundation of Jewish-Moroccan Cultural Heritage and the director of the Jewish Museum of Morocco, passed away on Friday morning at a hospital in Rabat following a long illness, people. He was 77. Levy was Morocco’s foremost authority on Moroccan Jewish cultural. His work will continue to guide future generations, academia, and researchers all over the world.
Mr. Levy was born in Fez in 1934. He was a professor in the Spanish Department of Mohamed V University in Rabat since 1971. Mr. Levy went to prison during Morocco’s colonization period because of his resistance to the French and demands to grant Morocco independence. Mr. Levy was also in prison during the years known as “Years of Lead” because of his demands to grant citizens more individual liberties and rights.
Mr. Levy was a leading figure and active member of Morocco’s Communist party (which, later on, became known as PPS) in which he held key positions for more than 30 years (up until 2011). He was also the Secretary General of Moroccan Judaism Foundation and the Director of its Museum in Casablanca (the only museum of this city)....
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Morocco World News By: Ghassan Essalehi Ifrane, Morocco, December 2, 2011 Simon Levy, Secretary General of the Foundation of Jewish-Moroccan Cultural Heritage and the director of the Jewish Museum of Morocco, passed away on Friday morning at a hospital in Rabat following a long illness, people. He was 77. Levy was Morocco’s foremost authority on […]
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Posted on The Jewish Chronicle Online
By: Andrew Rosemarine
December 1, 2011
Magui Kakon, probably the only Jewish woman to have ever contested a parliamentary election in an Arab country, stood for Morocco's Party of the Social Centre this week.
Despite failing to win a parliamentary seat, Ms Kakon won 80,000 votes, up by 50,000 on her 2007 election campaign, and she remains upbeat.
"Moroccan democracy has moved forwards, and with it, her minorities," said Ms Kakon, who runs a property business and writes Jewish cookbooks.
Ms Kakon, who lives in Casablanca, told newspaper Akhbar al Yawm that her religion was a positive factor, a symbol of the diversity of the kingdom, where Arabs, Berbers and Jews have lived side by side for centuries.
But for the first time ever in Morocco, an Islamic party topped the election results this week. The Islamic Party of Justice and Development (PJD), previously the largest opposition group, won 107 out of 395 seats.
Lahsen Daoudi, head of the PJD's parliamentary group, described the results as a "historic turning point". Under the new constitution, accepted by referendum in July, the leader of the winning party has the right to become Prime Minister and set up a new administration.
The PJD has begun looking for partners for a coalition. Abdelilah Benkirane, PJD's 57-year-old Secretary General who has been called upon by the king to form a new government, said that the PJD was "open to everyone" and will change its programme to bring in coalition partners.
Outgoing premier Abbas Al Fassi, of the nationalist Istiqlal party, is expected to join the coalition with his 60 seats. He has described PJD's win as "a victory for democracy". The Union of Socialist Progressive Forces, which won 39 seats, is also expected by many to join the coalition.
The PJD is considered moderate in the West, and has made it clear it will neither ban alcohol nor impose the veil.
However in Morocco, the PJD is thought to be highly conservative. A common view is that the party has deliberately sought to project a less hardline image since the 2003 Casablancan bombings, for which Islamists were convicted.
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The Jewish Chronicle Online By: Andrew Rosemarine December 1, 2011 Magui Kakon, probably the only Jewish woman to have ever contested a parliamentary election in an Arab country, stood for Morocco’s Party of the Social Centre this week. Despite failing to win a parliamentary seat, Ms Kakon won 80,000 votes, up by 50,000 on her […]
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En préambule au Festival Sépharade 2011 qui aura lieu à Montréal (Canada), du 12 au 17 novembre prochain, une série de rencontres ont eu lieu dimanche dans cette ville autour du thème “Vitalité du judaïsme marocain d'hier et d'aujourd'hui”.
Le judaïsme marocain est “bien vivant” et les juifs marocains le font revivre dans leur mémoire et ont réussi, de part le monde à imposer nombre de leurs traditions marocaines, ont affirmé dimanche soir à Montréal les participants à une rencontre autour du thème “Vitalité du judaïsme marocain d'hier et d'aujourd'hui”.
La rencontre a fait valoir que les juifs marocains demeurent attachés à leur identité, leur culture et leurs traditions marocaines, et les intervenants ont mis en avant la coexistence entre communautés juive et musulmane au Maroc vieille de près de 3.000 ans. Un sujet mis en avant par le professeur David Bensoussan, de l'Université du Québec, qui a commenté le panorama “exceptionnel” de l'histoire des Juifs du Maroc avec un accent particulier sur le futur des relations entre les Juifs du Maroc et leur pays d'origine.
“Le Maroc est le seul pays arabe à avoir osé inscrire dans le texte constitutionnel l'affluent hébraïque de l'identité marocaine. Il faut reconnaitre. C'est extraordinaire”.
PROFESSEUR DAVID BENSOUSSAN.
Un constat également souligné par l'ambassadeur du Maroc au Canada et le consul général à Montréal, qui ont mis en avant “nos valeurs communes plutôt que nos différences”.
Cette rencontre a également été l'occasion de découvrir la riche collection de Avraham Elarar, de livres et manuscrits de rabbins du Maroc à partir du 15e siècle.
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En préambule au Festival Sépharade 2011 qui aura lieu à Montréal (Canada), du 12 au 17 novembre prochain, une série de rencontres ont eu lieu dimanche dans cette ville autour du thème “Vitalité du judaïsme marocain d’hier et d’aujourd’hui”. Le judaïsme marocain est “bien vivant” et les juifs marocains le font revivre dans leur mémoire […]
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