Vibrancy and decline in Morocco

By Michael S. Arnold · November 30, 1999

Photos

CASABLANCA, Morocco, March 16 (JTA) — Growing up in Casablanca, Raphael Elmaleh says he never felt fully at ease as a member of a small Jewish minority in a heavily Muslim country. So when he was 7, Elmaleh’s family sent him from Morocco to a Jewish boarding school in England. Elmaleh thought he would feel more comfortable there — but it was in England, already unnerved by the chilly demeanor of the people, that he first encountered anti-Semitism. Elmaleh is like thousands of other Moroccan Jewish youths who have left their homeland for work or study. But a dozen years ago, Elmaleh did something quite unusual: He came back. After two decades away, Elmaleh found Morocco more advanced and developed economically and socially than when he had left. As an adult, Elmaleh says, he also was better able to appreciate the country’s traditional warmth and ethnic tolerance. When Elmaleh, who keeps kosher, goes to the homes of Muslim friends, they prepare vegetarian meals for him — and think nothing of it. “To find that in an Arab country,” Elmaleh said in a recent interview, “is amazing." Yet Elmaleh returned, too, to a Jewish community that has fallen from a peak of 300,000 souls after World War II to about 5,000 today. Marriageable men and women of Elmaleh’s age are long gone, most to France or Quebec in search of school, work or love. “It’s very hard to find friends of my age in Morocco.” In the Jewish community, Elmaleh said, “my age doesn’t exist anymore." “And to find a bride? Forget about it. I have to go to France or Israel if I want to find a shidduch." For now, Elmaleh isn’t looking. Instead, he’s busy going from village to village documenting the country’s Jewish heritage and earning money as a tour guide — “Morocco’s only Jewish tour guide,” as he is quick to tell visitors. Elmaleh’s life illustrates the two poles of experience for the Moroccan Jewish community today — warm, integrated, patriotic and vibrant, on the one hand; small, diminishing and potentially doomed on the other. “In 10 to 15 years I feel there may be no more Jews left in Morocco,” Elmaleh said. “I don’t think most parents would even want their kids to come back." Serge Berdugo, president of the country’s Jewish community and a former minister of tourism, is more optimistic. “A lot of people said we were going to disappear when we were down to 100,000 people, and then when we were 20,000 people,” he said. “We have numbers that can never disappear." Yet Berdugo is aware of the incentives drawing the community’s youth inexorably away. “How can you ask a Jew to come back when he can work in France for $3,000 and here he’ll earn $700?” Berdugo said. But the reality is never so simple. Two of Berdugo’s three children found success in Paris, yet one returned to Marrakesh and is living a life of industry and luxury. So, too, in the family of Jacky Kadoch, head of the small community of Marrakesh. The community numbers about 260 people, most of them over age 60. Those who do stay in Morocco enjoy community institutions and services that would be the envy of many small Jewish communities around the world. Morocco’s “is the jewel in the crown” of Jewish communities that the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee serves, said Amir Shaviv, the JDC’s assistant executive vice president for special operations. “There is such a rich fabric of Jewish life in the community although it’s so small, and it’s a model of peaceful coexistence in an Arab and Muslim country." The Casablanca community, which with 3,000 people is by far the largest in Morocco, has 10 Jewish schools serving some 800 students. The community also has at least six synagogues, an old-age home, a medical clinic and a youth center. Until a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations arrived in the country last month, Berdugo said, he never realized Moroccan Jewry had something to teach other Jewish communities. But, he said, as a Jewish community living with full rights in a Muslim country — in fact, as the last significant Jewish community in the Arab world — he now realizes that they do. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, said the vitality of the community, despite its small numbers, is inspiring. “To see a community that is dwindling but that is still investing so much in its future — that should cause us all to rethink,” Hoenlein said. At the youth center, known as the DEJJ, Jewish scouts arranged themselves around the edges of a courtyard to greet a visiting delegation from the Presidents Conference. As the Jewish dignitaries watched in delight, the Moroccan youths sang “Heiveinu shalom aleichem.” In a nearby classroom, young girls performed a choreographed dance number, while in another room a Jewish youth chorus performed. The American group later visited an old-age home run by the JDC and the local Jewish community, and visited the local Jewish museum, which houses ritual objects and photographs of buildings and tombstones that failed to hold the delegation’s interest. More compelling was another site visit — to the Cercle de l’Alliance, a social club that was among four Jewish targets hit in a series of suicide bombings last May 16. A fifth target was located near the Spanish consulate. No Jews were killed or hurt in the attacks; the buildings were empty of Jews because it was the Sabbath. Twenty-nine Muslims were killed. The bombings were a blow to the Jews’ sense of security in Morocco. Yet many Moroccans saw them primarily as a strike against the country’s social and political order, so much so that the anti-Jewish nature of the attacks largely has been obscured. That’s just fine with the community, which discouraged overseas Jewish groups from visiting after the bombings to express condolence, outrage or succor — acts of solidarity that might have portrayed the bombings as a Jewish affair, or created a sense that the community was somehow alien to Moroccan society. Instead, the Jewish community has been heartened by the outpouring of support from the country’s leadership and the general public. King Mohammed VI visited the Cercle de l’Alliance the day after the attack and urged the Jewish community to rebuild. Reconstruction is still in progress. The regime then organized a huge rally in support of the Jewish community in the streets of Casablanca. Together, the marchers chanted, “Jews are citizens, Wahhabis are assassins,” a reference to the fundamentalist roots of the attackers, who have been linked to Al-Qaida. The bombings clearly have been the seminal event for Moroccan Jews in recent years, yet members of the community insist they are not overly worried. “We were thinking we were completely immune,” Berdugo said. “Now we know that’s not the case. We’re in the same situation as everywhere else — but not more. Muslims feel just as targeted as Jews." Since the bombings, there have been two more murders of Jews, one in Casablanca and one in Meknes. Some observers say those, too, were anti-Jewish attacks, but members of the community say they simply were criminal murders. “A Jew has to be aware no matter where he is — in Casablanca, in New York or in Paris,” said one community member who asked not to be named. “In fact, it’s much worse for Jews in France; there you have real anti-Semitism,” the man continued. “Not here. Here, if you tell someone you’re Jewish, they’ll be proud." In the Jewish community, reactions to the bombings tend to divide along two lines. One is a variant on the timeless notion of Jews as the “canary in the coal mine” as a barometer for a society’s health. From this perspective, the bombings weren’t really directed at the Jews, but essentially were a test of the young king’s power. A second line is that because the bombings prompted the king to reaffirm the protection his predecessors historically offered to Morocco’s Jews, the community is now more secure than ever. “We were shocked,” said Kadoch, the head of the Marrakesh community, “but we understood right away that the king takes it very seriously, so right away we felt very safe." After the massive Jewish emigrations of the past half-century, it is often said that those who remain in Morocco either are too rich or too poor to leave. Yet since last year’s bombings, some say, even the remaining members of the community essentially are sitting on their suitcases. “For the Jewish community in Morocco, this is a very sad place,” said one Western observer who asked not to be named. “I think in general, people are packing their bags. It’s difficult for me to imagine that they will have a viable community a generation from now." Corinne Breuze, the French consul general in Casablanca, said that nearly all Moroccan Jews have visas to France that can be used in case of emergency, a luxury that is much harder for Muslims to obtain. “I really believe the Moroccan government is doing all it can to allow the Jewish community to live in peace here,” Breuze said. But, she said, as in many countries with small and potentially endangered Jewish communities, “they have the facility to go to Europe — just in case." Berdugo insists the current concern is no more than the customary jitters the community has each time the throne changes hands. “With every change of regime, Jews speculate about continuity,” Berdugo said. “But with each king, the situation gets better." Indeed, an informational booklet the community has produced begins with the proclamations of various Moroccan monarchs about the Jews, each successively more assertive and tolerant. Government ministers dispatched to meet with the American group — Foreign Minister Taib Fassi Firhi and the minister of Islamic and religious affairs, Ahmed Toufiq — stressed the historically warm relations between Moroccan Jews and Muslims. Toufiq, an ethnic Berber who grew up in the Atlas Mountains, said his community still regrets the emigrations of the 1950s and 1960s, when successive waves of Jews left Morocco for Israel, France and Canada. Many members of the American delegation marveled at the ease and warmth with which Jews and Muslims mingled at the receptions and meals for the American group. Liliane Shalom, the Moroccan-American president of the World Sephardi Federation, wept demonstratively during a visit to the Rabat tomb of King Mohammed V, the current monarch’s grandfather. Yet a few members of the delegation were less impressed by the oft-stated commitment to tolerance, saying it evoked medieval times when Jewish communities depended precariously on the monarch’s favor for their safety. With equality among citizens today taken for granted in the enlightened world, Morocco’s tolerance is noteworthy only in comparison to the anti-Semitism raging in other parts of the Muslim world, they said. “We’re supposed to say thank you that the Muslims here aren’t killing their Jews?” asked Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America. “What kind of standard is that?" Indeed, though the American group encountered smiles and warm wishes at every turn during their brief visit, they traveled under extraordinarily heavy security and were discouraged from going out alone or circulating in the Marrakesh marketplace with kipot or other visible Jewish signs. Members of the local community say they do not flaunt their Jewishness, but don’t hide it either. Elmaleh said he rarely encounters problems because of his ethnicity, except among less-educated Moroccans who are enraged by televised images of Israeli-Palestinian violence and who scorn all Jews as Zionists. “They don’t know that there two different kinds of Jews,” Elmaleh said. Community members are not naive about the potential dangers of the situation, but generally they feel safe, Berdugo said. “After the bombings I was afraid. But when I saw how many letters I got from Muslims, how many visits of condolence” — and then the huge Casablanca rally — “we don’t feel so isolated,” Berdugo said. “Of course in our history here we have dark pages,” he said. “Nevertheless, we feel we have a better life here than many Jewish communities all over the world.”

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Vibrancy and decline in Morocco

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