Following the war, the first Jews to leave the country did so in order to follow the dream of an independent Israel, but conditions at home were to drive many more away in the following decades.
In the aftermath of Moroccan independence in 1956, the leading party Al Istiqlal (“The Independence”) — still a major force in the country — emphasised national identity by making Islam the official religion of the state, and Arabic its primary official language. Not Moroccan Arabic, mind you, but literary or standard Arabic, which is to Moroccan Arabic what Latin is to French and is barely understood, let alone spoken, by most Moroccans.
It led to de facto estrangement of Berber, French and Spanish-speaking Jewish Moroccans. If this was still of little or no consequence to the inhabitants of once-heavily Jewish small towns such as Erfoud in the Sahara, it definitely felt painful to Jewish inhabitants of Casablanca or Rabat, who were in charge of important commercial or administrative duties.
Then, in 1961, Egyptian president Gamal Abd-El-Nasser’s visit to Morocco triggered the first wave of open hostility against Jews. As the Arab League tried to define itself in opposition to both western capitalism and Russian communism, Jews were stigmatised as non-Arabs, and erroneously perceived as too western to be Moroccan.
By this stage many Jews were trying to escape Morocco illegally, but as the tensions increased, it was getting harder to get official travel documents. Even phone calls and postal service was gradually restricted, not so much through legal enforcement as boycotts by Moroccan socialist organisations. Cornered by the Arab-promoting Istiqlal on the Right, and by the USFP (Socialist Union of the Popular Forces, founded in 1959) on the Left, the Jews quickly found themselves deprived of any strong political ally.
For many people it was a clear example of double-think. Muslim Moroccans would call for a boycott of Israel but at the same time maintain close connections with their Jewish neighbours as individuals. A militia, the Misgeret, was established to provide self-defence for Moroccan Jews, but it soon turned its activities towards helping them to secretly escape the country through the Mossad-backed Operation Yachin.
Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and King Hassan II — Mohammed VI’s father — would eventually negotiate a formalisation of this departure, Morocco asking for financial compensation given the loss in financial and human capital. Entire villages were encouraged to depart at once, torn from centuries of shared memories with little to no preparation. Within just three months in the summer of 1967 half of the remaining Jews left Morocco, and it was by no means a happy story. Once in Israel, Moroccan Jews had to take on new jobs, settling in towns that seemed to have sprouted up overnight in the desert, in tiny two-bedroom flats that looked nothing like what they had been promised. For many, the dream of the Promised Land turned to disappointment as they discovered something they never expected — European Ashkenazi racism against the Sephardic newcomers. A song sarcastically recalled “They asked me where I come from, I said I am from Morocco, they said ‘Leave’; they asked me where I come from, I said I am from Romania, they said ‘Welcome’.”
Today, one million Israelis are Moroccan by descent, including 12 current government ministers. Israeli Jews from Morocco are, on many levels, more Moroccan than the majority of Moroccans, who have since undergone 30 years of Arabisation and increasingly Islamisation that belies their Berber and multicultural identity. But it is through Morocco’s religious diversity that the kingdom can, with luck, fight religious fundamentalism imported from the Arabian Gulf.
Last year, in spite of the travel difficulties, 100,000 Jews visited Morocco, of whom 30,000 came from Israel. They came to visit shrines, pray in synagogues and recite the Torah near their ancestors’ graves; they came back to the land of their forefathers, and to keep alive something that might otherwise disappear. Moroccan Judaism has a lot to teach to religious scholars and Biblical specialists; but it also has a lot to teach about a lost civilisation of poetry recited to the tunes of the ‘oud, of Andalusian arts and crafts forgotten in years of wandering, of memories of shared jokes and shared tales. Moroccan culture and history would not be the same without its Jewish elements — including the philosopher Maïmonides, singers Sami Al Maghribi and Zohra el Fassia, or politician André Azoulay, current adviser to the king.
Although most still oppose ties with Israel, Moroccans on the whole appreciate the historical place of Jews in their society. When the position of Hebraic law was submitted to public vote in 2011, Moroccans chose to keep all the articles that ensure Jewish freedom of private and public religious practice, despite strong pressure from radical Islamists within the kingdom and abroad.
My father still remembers fondly how Muslim kids used to spend Jewish feasts with their Jewish friends, and hosting them in return during Muslim festivals. I’m moved whenever I hear the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra play traditional Moroccan music — tunes celebrating beauty, love, wine and merrymaking, that are truly, authentically Moroccan, but which Moroccan youth have forgotten, and that fundamentalist Muslims frown upon.
And when I hear Sephardi grandmothers talking in Moroccan Arabic with that distinctive Jewish accent, either in Paris’s Sentier or on Brent Street in north-west London, I feel a kinship that is hard to put into words but that can move me to tears. And so in these troubled times, when anti-Semitism takes a new face, it warms my heart to see my native country welcoming back its most genuinely Moroccan citizens.
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