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Jews and Muslims in Morocco

Their Intersecting Worlds

Edited by Joseph Chetrit; Jane S. Gerber and Drora Arussy - Contributions by Jane S. Gerber; Daniel J. Schroeter; Joseph Chetrit; Aomar Boum; Jonathan G. Katz; José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim; Noam Sienna; Vanessa Paloma Elbaz; Sarah Levin; Edwin Seroussi; André Elbaz; David Moshe Biton; Michal Ben Ya’akov; Moche Amar; Elimelech (Melech) Westreich; Ahmed Chouari and Maurice Arama

Multiple traditions of Jewish origins in Morocco emphasize the distinctiveness of Moroccan Jewry as indigenous to the area, rooted in its earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. The creative interaction of Moroccan Jewry with the Arab and Berber cultures was noted in the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, characteristic poetry, and musical works as well as their shared magical rites and popular texts and proverbs. In Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists analyze this culture, in all its complexity and hybridity. The volume’s collection of essays span political and social interactions throughout history, cultural commonalities, traditions, and halakhic developments. As Jewish life in Morocco has dwindled, much of what is left are traditions maintained in Moroccan ex-pat communities, and memories of those who stayed and those who left. The volume concludes with shared memories from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual from Morocco, a Moroccan Muslim scholar, an analysis of a visual memoir painted by the nineteenth-century artist, Eugène Delacroix, and a photo essay of the vanished world of Jewish life in Morocco.

  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Features
Lexington Books
Pages: 506 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¼
978-1-7936-2492-5 • Hardback • July 2021 • $150.00 • (£115.00)
978-1-7936-2494-9 • Paperback • August 2023 • $46.50 • (£36.00)
Series: Sephardic and Mizrahi Studies
Subjects: Religion / Judaism / History, History / Africa / North, Religion / Islam / History, Social Science / Jewish Studies

Joseph Chetrit is professor emeritus of socio-pragmatics, French linguistics, and Judeo-Arabic linguistics at the University of Haifa.

Jane S. Gerber is professor emerita of history and founder and director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Drora Arussy is director of the American Sephardi Federation Institute of Jewish Experience.

Map

Introduction

Section 1. Political and Social Interactions

Chapter 1: Refuge in Morocco after 1492: From Iberian Outcast to Moroccan Dhimmi

Jane S. Gerber

Chapter 2: Jews and the Moroccan Monarchy in the Age of Imperialism

Daniel J. Schroeter

Chapter 3: Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef and the Jews of Morocco During the Second World War: New Discoveries

Joseph Chetrit

Chapter 4: Centering the Margin: Family Networks, Occupational Mobility and Saharan Jews

Aomar Boum

Chapter 5: Jewish Bodies, Muslim Bodies, and French Medicine in Morocco

Jonathan G. Katz

Section 2. Cultural Commonalities

Chapter 6: Sebaa Ouled Ben Zmirou in Jewish and Muslim Contexts: Return to the Dead and Encounters After Death

José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim

Chapter 7: Invisible Neighbors: Demonology Between Jews and Muslims in Morocco

Noam Sienna

Chapter 8: A Common Language: Popular Music in Morocco

Vanessa Paloma Elbaz

Chapter 9: The Aḥwash: Articulations of a Shared Amazigh (Berber) Cultural Tradition in Morocco and its Diaspora

Sarah Levin

Section 3. Religious Traditions and Halakhic Developments

Chapter 10: Liturgy: An Overlooked Space in the Moroccan Jewish Musical Map

Edwin Seroussi

Chapter 11: The Image of Morocco in the Poetry of R. David Ben Ḥassin (1727-1792)

André Elbaz

​Chapter 12: Muslims and Christians in the Writings of 20th Century Hakhamim of Morocco

David Moshe Biton

Chapter 13: Traveling Between Place and Faith: Moroccan Jews Migrating to the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century

Michal Ben Ya’akov

Chapter 14: Takkanot Concerning the Inheritances of Wives and Daughters among Moroccan Rabbis in the 15th – 20th Centuries

Moche Amar

Chapter 15: Rabbi Refael ben Dva”sh: Precursor of Moroccan Legal Activity

Elimelech (Melech) Westreich

Section 4. Memoirs in Word and Image

Chapter 16: Memories of Jewish-Muslim Coexistence in the New Mellaḥ of Meknes and Jewish Heritage Conservation in Post-Colonial Morocco

Ahmed Chouari

Chapter 17: Growing up in the Mellaḥ of Taroudant: Spaces, Time, Acquaintances and Rupture. A Memoir with Two Poems

Joseph Chetrit

Chapter 18: Delacroix and the Jews of Morocco

Maurice Arama

Photo Essay

About the Contributors

Capturing the dialectics and historical vicissitudes of Jewish-Muslim relations in Morocco in all their intricacy and multivocality is a challenging project. This comprehensive volume, which brings together the contributions of 18 leading scholars from a wide gamut of disciplines, faces up to this challenge admirably.


— Yoram Bilu, Hebrew University


This volume weaves a rich tapestry of Jewish life in Morocco in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial times. Topics include the role played by Jewish exiles from the Iberian Peninsula; Jewish-Muslim relations; and interaction with the French during the Protectorate (1912–1956). Developments in popular religion, folklore, poetry, music, liturgy, and law make this volume a fascinating introduction to the history and culture of this important and diverse community in the Islamic world.


— Mark R. Cohen, Princeton University


Two thrusts have enriched the study of North African Jewish communities in recent decades. One is the deepening grasp of how scholarly, mystical, and liturgical developments in other Jewish centers were absorbed, preserved, and cultivated in the Maghreb. Second is the expanding appreciation of how Muslim society—both as the empowered majority and as quotidian neighbors—interpenetrated Jewish life. Jews and Muslims in Morocco weaves together these perspectives, providing a striking tapestry that both enhances our knowledge and invites continued research.


— Harvey Goldberg, Hebrew University


This collection of studies by some of the world’s leading scholars from a variety of disciplines offers a wide-ranging peregrination through Moroccan Jewish history and culture and its intricate and complex connection with the surrounding Islamic Arab and Berber cultural matrix. Readers are provided with in-depth, nuanced expositions of social and political interaction between Moroccan Jews and non-Jews and their shared cultural elements of language, literature, music, and popular beliefs and practices. It is a welcome addition to the growing literature on what was once the world’s largest non-Ashkenazi Jewish community with a unique and rich cultural heritage.


— Noam (Norman) A. Stillman, University of Oklahoma


The breadth of knowledge conveyed in this interdisciplinary volume will prove of lasting interest to scholars of both Moroccan and Jewish history as well those interested in cross-cultural connections and intragroup relations more broadly.


— Sephardic Horizons


ONLINE SUPPLEMENT

Online supplemental poems and images available to view for Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds

Edited by Joseph Chetrit, Jane S. Gerber and Drora Arussy.

Chapter 10: Audio Supplements

Chapter 13: Supplemental Images

Chapter 16: Supplemental Images

Chapter 17: Poems by Joseph Chetrit in Hebrew

Chapter 17: Joseph Chetrit reading poem 1

Chapter 17: Joseph Chetrit reading poem 2

Chapter 18: Images in Color



Jews and Muslims in Morocco

Their Intersecting Worlds

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
Summary
Summary
  • Multiple traditions of Jewish origins in Morocco emphasize the distinctiveness of Moroccan Jewry as indigenous to the area, rooted in its earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. The creative interaction of Moroccan Jewry with the Arab and Berber cultures was noted in the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, characteristic poetry, and musical works as well as their shared magical rites and popular texts and proverbs. In Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists analyze this culture, in all its complexity and hybridity. The volume’s collection of essays span political and social interactions throughout history, cultural commonalities, traditions, and halakhic developments. As Jewish life in Morocco has dwindled, much of what is left are traditions maintained in Moroccan ex-pat communities, and memories of those who stayed and those who left. The volume concludes with shared memories from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual from Morocco, a Moroccan Muslim scholar, an analysis of a visual memoir painted by the nineteenth-century artist, Eugène Delacroix, and a photo essay of the vanished world of Jewish life in Morocco.

Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 506 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¼
    978-1-7936-2492-5 • Hardback • July 2021 • $150.00 • (£115.00)
    978-1-7936-2494-9 • Paperback • August 2023 • $46.50 • (£36.00)
    Series: Sephardic and Mizrahi Studies
    Subjects: Religion / Judaism / History, History / Africa / North, Religion / Islam / History, Social Science / Jewish Studies
Author
Author
  • Joseph Chetrit is professor emeritus of socio-pragmatics, French linguistics, and Judeo-Arabic linguistics at the University of Haifa.

    Jane S. Gerber is professor emerita of history and founder and director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

    Drora Arussy is director of the American Sephardi Federation Institute of Jewish Experience.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Map

    Introduction

    Section 1. Political and Social Interactions

    Chapter 1: Refuge in Morocco after 1492: From Iberian Outcast to Moroccan Dhimmi

    Jane S. Gerber

    Chapter 2: Jews and the Moroccan Monarchy in the Age of Imperialism

    Daniel J. Schroeter

    Chapter 3: Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef and the Jews of Morocco During the Second World War: New Discoveries

    Joseph Chetrit

    Chapter 4: Centering the Margin: Family Networks, Occupational Mobility and Saharan Jews

    Aomar Boum

    Chapter 5: Jewish Bodies, Muslim Bodies, and French Medicine in Morocco

    Jonathan G. Katz

    Section 2. Cultural Commonalities

    Chapter 6: Sebaa Ouled Ben Zmirou in Jewish and Muslim Contexts: Return to the Dead and Encounters After Death

    José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim

    Chapter 7: Invisible Neighbors: Demonology Between Jews and Muslims in Morocco

    Noam Sienna

    Chapter 8: A Common Language: Popular Music in Morocco

    Vanessa Paloma Elbaz

    Chapter 9: The Aḥwash: Articulations of a Shared Amazigh (Berber) Cultural Tradition in Morocco and its Diaspora

    Sarah Levin

    Section 3. Religious Traditions and Halakhic Developments

    Chapter 10: Liturgy: An Overlooked Space in the Moroccan Jewish Musical Map

    Edwin Seroussi

    Chapter 11: The Image of Morocco in the Poetry of R. David Ben Ḥassin (1727-1792)

    André Elbaz

    ​Chapter 12: Muslims and Christians in the Writings of 20th Century Hakhamim of Morocco

    David Moshe Biton

    Chapter 13: Traveling Between Place and Faith: Moroccan Jews Migrating to the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century

    Michal Ben Ya’akov

    Chapter 14: Takkanot Concerning the Inheritances of Wives and Daughters among Moroccan Rabbis in the 15th – 20th Centuries

    Moche Amar

    Chapter 15: Rabbi Refael ben Dva”sh: Precursor of Moroccan Legal Activity

    Elimelech (Melech) Westreich

    Section 4. Memoirs in Word and Image

    Chapter 16: Memories of Jewish-Muslim Coexistence in the New Mellaḥ of Meknes and Jewish Heritage Conservation in Post-Colonial Morocco

    Ahmed Chouari

    Chapter 17: Growing up in the Mellaḥ of Taroudant: Spaces, Time, Acquaintances and Rupture. A Memoir with Two Poems

    Joseph Chetrit

    Chapter 18: Delacroix and the Jews of Morocco

    Maurice Arama

    Photo Essay

    About the Contributors

Reviews
Reviews
  • Capturing the dialectics and historical vicissitudes of Jewish-Muslim relations in Morocco in all their intricacy and multivocality is a challenging project. This comprehensive volume, which brings together the contributions of 18 leading scholars from a wide gamut of disciplines, faces up to this challenge admirably.


    — Yoram Bilu, Hebrew University


    This volume weaves a rich tapestry of Jewish life in Morocco in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial times. Topics include the role played by Jewish exiles from the Iberian Peninsula; Jewish-Muslim relations; and interaction with the French during the Protectorate (1912–1956). Developments in popular religion, folklore, poetry, music, liturgy, and law make this volume a fascinating introduction to the history and culture of this important and diverse community in the Islamic world.


    — Mark R. Cohen, Princeton University


    Two thrusts have enriched the study of North African Jewish communities in recent decades. One is the deepening grasp of how scholarly, mystical, and liturgical developments in other Jewish centers were absorbed, preserved, and cultivated in the Maghreb. Second is the expanding appreciation of how Muslim society—both as the empowered majority and as quotidian neighbors—interpenetrated Jewish life. Jews and Muslims in Morocco weaves together these perspectives, providing a striking tapestry that both enhances our knowledge and invites continued research.


    — Harvey Goldberg, Hebrew University


    This collection of studies by some of the world’s leading scholars from a variety of disciplines offers a wide-ranging peregrination through Moroccan Jewish history and culture and its intricate and complex connection with the surrounding Islamic Arab and Berber cultural matrix. Readers are provided with in-depth, nuanced expositions of social and political interaction between Moroccan Jews and non-Jews and their shared cultural elements of language, literature, music, and popular beliefs and practices. It is a welcome addition to the growing literature on what was once the world’s largest non-Ashkenazi Jewish community with a unique and rich cultural heritage.


    — Noam (Norman) A. Stillman, University of Oklahoma


    The breadth of knowledge conveyed in this interdisciplinary volume will prove of lasting interest to scholars of both Moroccan and Jewish history as well those interested in cross-cultural connections and intragroup relations more broadly.


    — Sephardic Horizons


Features
Features
  • ONLINE SUPPLEMENT

    Online supplemental poems and images available to view for Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds

    Edited by Joseph Chetrit, Jane S. Gerber and Drora Arussy.

    Chapter 10: Audio Supplements

    Chapter 13: Supplemental Images

    Chapter 16: Supplemental Images

    Chapter 17: Poems by Joseph Chetrit in Hebrew

    Chapter 17: Joseph Chetrit reading poem 1

    Chapter 17: Joseph Chetrit reading poem 2

    Chapter 18: Images in Color



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