Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa

388 Pages·2011·4.439 MB·English

by  Emily Benichou Gottreich, Daniel J. Schroeter (eds.)

JUDAICA • MIDDLE EAST Sc aGo
hn
dt
“Opening new With only a small remnant of Jews still living r t
o r
in the Maghrib at the beginning of the 21st e e
t i
avenues for research e c
century, the vast majority of today’s inhabitants r h

on the Jews of the of North Africa have never met a Jew. Yet as this
volume reveals, Jews were an integral part of the
J
Maghrib, this volume
North African landscape from antiquity. Scholars E
W
is an important from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, and the
United States shed new light on Jewish life and I
contribution to both S
Muslim-Jewish relations in North Africa through
H
the lenses of history, anthropology, language, and
Jewish studies and

literature. The history and life stories told in this C
Maghrib studies. book illuminate the close cultural affinities and U
poignant relationships between Muslims and L
. . . [It] raises a whole T
Jews, and the uneasy coexistence that both united
U
range of questions and divided them throughout the history of the
R
Maghrib.
about how we might E

A
rethink modern Jewish EMILY BENICHOU GOTTREICH is Vice Chair of
N
the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Adjunct
D
history.”
Associate Professor of History and Middle Eastern

S
—Matthias Lehmann, author of Studies at the University of California Berkeley. She
O
Ladino Rabbinic Literature and is author of The Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and
C
Ottoman Sephardic Culture Muslim Space in Morocco’s Red City (IUP, 2006).
I

E
Indiana Series in Sephardi DANIEL J. SCHROETER is the Amos S. Denard T
and Mizrahi Studies Memorial Chair in Jewish History and Director Y
Harvey E. Goldberg of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University I
N
and Matthias Lehmann, editors of Minnesota. He is author of The Sultan’s Jew:
JEWISH CULTURE
Morocco and the Sephardi World and Merchants of N
Essaouira. O
R
INDIANA CONTRIBUTORS T AND SOCIETY IN
Yaëlle Azagury Oren Kosansky H
University Press
Jamaâ Baïda Joy A. Land
A
Bloomington & Indianapolis Philippe Barbé Abdellah Larhmaid F NORTH AFRICA
Saddek Benkada Mabrouk Mansouri R
iupress.indiana.edu
1-800-842-6796 Farid Benramdane Belkacem Mebarki I
C
Aomar Boum Hadj Miliani
A
Fayçal Cherif Susan Gilson Miller Edited by
Emily Benichou Daniel J. Schroeter
Emily Benichou Gottreich and
Gottreich Ruth Knafo Setton
Stacy E. Holden Yaron Tsur INDIANA Daniel J. Schroeter
Jonathan G. Katz Sharon Vance
Mohammed Kenbib Keith Walters
Jewish Culture & Society MECH.indd 1 4/29/11 11:15 AM
Jewish Culture and
Society in North Africa
Indiana Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies
Harvey E. Goldberg and Matthias Lehmann, editors
Jewish Culture
and Society
in North Africa
•
Edited by
Emily Benichou Gottreich
and Daniel J. Schroeter
•
INDIANA UNIvErSIty PrESS
bloomington and indianapolis
This book is a pub lication of
Indiana University Press
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Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
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© 2011 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, in clud ing photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The
Association of Ameri can University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the
only exception to this prohibition.
∞ The paper used in this pub lication meets the minimum requirements of the Ameri can
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jewish culture and society in North Africa / edited by Emily Benichou Gottreich and
Daniel J. Schroeter.
p. cm. — (Indiana series in Sephardi and Mizrahi studies)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-253-35509-6 (hardcopy : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-22225-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Jews—Africa, North. 2. Judaism—Relations—Islam. 3. Islam—Relations—Judaism. I.
Gottreich, Emily, 1966- II. Schroeter, Daniel J. III. Series: Indiana series in Sephardi and
Mizrahi studies.
DS135.A25J49 2011
305.892′4061—dc22 011008989
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Part I. Introduction
1
Rethinking Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa
Emily Benichou Gottreich and Daniel J. Schroeter 3
2
Muslim- Jewish Relations in Contemporary Morocco
Mohammed Kenbib 24
Part II. Origins, Diasporas, and Identities
3
Place Names in Western Algeria: Biblical Sources and
Dominant Semantic Domains
Farid Benramdane 35
4
The Image of the Jews among Ibadi Imazighen in North
Africa before the Tenth Century
Mabrouk Mansouri 45
5
Jewish Identity and Landownership in the Sous Region of Morocco
Abdellah Larhmaid 59
6
Southern Moroccan Jewry between the Colonial Manufacture of
Knowledge and the Postcolonial Historiographical Silence
Aomar Boum 73
v
vi Contents
7
Dating the Demise of the Western Sephardi Jewish
Diaspora in the Mediterranean
Yaron Tsur 93
Part III. Communities, Cultural Exchange, and Transformations
8
Jewish- Muslim Syncretism and Intercommunity Cohabitation
in the Writings of Albert Memmi: The Partage of Tunis
Philippe Barbé 107
9
Making Tangier Modern: Ethnicity and Urban Development, 1880–1930
Susan Gilson Miller 128
10
Muslim and Jewish Interaction in Moroccan Meat Markets, 1873–1912
Stacy E. Holden 150
11
A Moment in Sephardi History: The Reestablishment of the
Jewish Community of Oran, 1792–1831
Saddek Benkada 168
12
Crosscurrents: Trajectories of Algerian Jewish Artists and Men of
Culture since the End of the Nineteenth Century
Hadj Miliani 177
Part IV. Between Myth and History:
Sol Hachuel in Moroccan Jewish Memory
13
Sol Hachuel in the Collective Memory and Folktales of Moroccan Jews
Yaëlle Azagury 191
Contents vii
14
Sol Hachuel, “Heroine of the Nineteenth Century”: Gender, the
Jewish Question, and Colonial Discourse
Sharon Vance 201
15
Searching for Suleika: A Writer’s Journey
Ruth Knafo Setton 226
Part V. Gender, Colonialism, and the Alliance Israélite Universelle
16
Corresponding Women: Female Educators of the Alliance
Israélite Universelle in Tunisia, 1882–1914
Joy A. Land 239
17
Education for Jewish Girls in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-
Century Tunis and the Spread of French in Tunisia
Keith Walters 257
18
“Les Temps Héroïques”: The Alliance Israélite Universelle in
Marrakesh on the Eve of the French Protectorate
Jonathan G. Katz 282
Part VI. North African Jews and Political Change in
the Late Colonial and Post- Colonial Periods
19
Jewish- Muslim Relations in Tunisia during World War II:
Propaganda, Stereotypes, and Attitudes, 1939–1943
Fayçal Cherif 305
20
The Emigration of Moroccan Jews, 1948–1956
Jamaâ Baïda 321
viii Contents
21
Zouzef Tayayou (Joseph the Tailor), a Jew from Nedroma, and the Others
Belkacem Mebarki 334
22
The Real Morocco Itself: Jewish Saint Pilgrimage, Hybridity,
and the Idea of the Moroccan Nation
Oren Kosansky 341
Contributors 361
Index 365
Acknowledgments
As is the case with all books, but especially edited volumes that grow out of
conferences, this pub lication is the result of the tremendous assistance and
goodwill of many. The editors wish to take this opportunity to thank the follow-
ing individuals and institutions in particular.
First and foremost, the Ameri can Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), which
sponsored the conference; the Tangier Ameri can Legation Institute for Moroc-
can Studies (TALIM); and Thor Kuniholm, then director of the museum, which
hosted it at its splendid building in the Tangier madina. AIMS officers Keith Wal-
ters, Jim Miller, Donna Lee Bowen, and Mark Tessler were especially helpful, as
was the staff at TALIM (especially Assistant Director Yhtimad Bouziane) and
CEMAT (Centre des Études Maghrébines à Tunis) (especially Assistant Director
Riadh Saadaoui).
The conference “Rethinking Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa”
would not have happened, let alone been successful, had it not been for the ac-
tive participation of our overseas colleagues. We are especially grateful to André
Azoulay, Counselor to His Majesty Mohammed VI, who opened the conference
with characteristic insight and charm. Khalid Ben Srhir and Jamaâ Baïda helped
organize the Moroccan delegation, as did Farid Benramdane in Algeria and Jim
Miller and Riadh Saadaoui in Tunisia. Simon Lévy, director of the Musée du Ju-
daïsme Marocain in Casablanca, and the late Edmond Amran El Maleh contrib-
uted greatly to the conference proceedings in ways uniquely their own.
Additional support for the conference came from the Center for Middle East-
ern Studies (CMES) at the University of California, Berkeley, the home institution
of Emily Benichou Gottreich, and Research and Graduate Studies of University of
California, Irvine, the former home institution of Daniel Schroeter. Grants for the
preparation of the book were generously offered by the International Center for
Writing and Translation and the Humanities Center of UC Irvine. The comments
of the anonymous reviewer were extremely useful. We are likewise thankful to
Priscilla Minaise at UC Berkeley’s CMES for help assembling the manuscript, and
to Allan MacVicar for translations. Whatever faults and inconsistencies remain
are ours alone.
ix