Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds (Sephardic and Mizrahi Studies)

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. Section 1. Political and Social Interactions --Refuge in Morocco after 1492: From Iberian Outcast to Moroccan Dhimmi /Jane S. Gerber --Jews and the Moroccan Monarchy in the Age of Imperialism /Daniel J. Schroeter --Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef and the Jews of Morocco During the Second World War: New Discoveries /Joseph Chetrit --Centering the Margin: Family Networks, Occupational Mobility and Saharan Jews /Aomar Boum --Jewish Bodies, Muslim Bodies, and French Medicine in Morocco /Jonathan G. Katz --Section 2. Cultural Commonalities --Sebaa Ouled Ben Zmirou in Jewish and Muslim Contexts: Return to the Dead and Encounters After Death /José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim --Invisible Neighbors: Demonology Between Jews and Muslims in Morocco /Noam Sienna --A Common Language: Popular Music in Morocco /Vanessa Paloma Elbaz --The Aḥwash: Articulations of a Shared Amazigh (Berber) Cultural Tradition in Morocco and its Diaspora /Sarah Levin --Section 3. Religious Traditions and Halakhic Developments --Liturgy: An Overlooked Space in the Moroccan Jewish Musical Map /Edwin Seroussi --The Image of Morocco in the Poetry of R. David Ben Ḥassin (1727-1792) /André Elbaz --Muslims and Christians in the Writings of 20th Century Hakhamim of Morocco /David Moshe Biton --Traveling Between Place and Faith: Moroccan Jews Migrating to the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century /Michal Ben Ya'akov --Takkanot Concerning the Inheritances of Wives and Daughters among Moroccan Rabbis in the 15th - 20th Centuries /Moche Amar --Rabbi Refael ben Dva"sh: Precursor of Moroccan Legal Activity /Elimelech (Melech) Westreich --Section 4. Memoirs in Word and Image --Memories of Jewish-Muslim Coexistence in the New Mellaḥ of Meknes and Jewish Heritage Conservation in Post-Colonial Morocco /Ahmed Chouari --Growing up in the Mellaḥ of Taroudant:Spaces, Time, Acquaintances and Rupture. A Memoir with Two Poems /Joseph Chetrit --Delacroix and the Jews of Morocco /Maurice Arama "Jews and Muslims of Morocco collects accounts of the intersecting worlds and emergent shared customs and culture, suggesting that the unique atmosphere in Morocco allowed for Rabbinic empowerment and a more practical approach to halakhah"-- Provided by publisher