Chasing Jewish Shadows in Morocco

“I was 7 years old when Orson Welles filmed Othello here,” André Azoulay reminisced. “You can see me in the movie. I felt like a celebrity.” 

That was in 1950. Today, strolling through the ancient medina of Essaouira, Morocco with Azoulay, even at 83, he still has tremendous star power. Men approach, shake his hand and exchange kisses on the cheek. Smiling women put their right hands over their hearts in an act of reverence. Azoulay is not a movie star. He has a different role. For over thirty years he has worked as a senior advisor to Kings Hassan II and Muhammed VI. 

Azoulay is the most valuable Jewish diplomat in the Arab world. In no other Arab or Muslim nation can you find a Jew in such a high-profile position. While Azoulay’s job seems unique, he is in fact in a long line of Jews who have advised the Kings of Morocco. “The Kingdom of Morocco shall seek to preserve its diverse, indivisible national identity,” states the Moroccan Constitution. ”Its unity, which is built on the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Amazigh, and Saharan-Hassani components, is nurtured and enriched by African, Andalusian, Hebraic, and Mediterranean constituents.”

How is it possible that the world doesn’t know an Islamic kingdom embraces its Jewish citizens?

Mostly, because we have been telling ourselves an imprecise story all these years. The Spanish Inquisition forced Jews to flee south in 1492. But there were already thriving Jewish communities in Morocco when they arrived. Over two thousand years ago Jews traveled west after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans and settled in and around the Atlas Mountains. For decades we have been focused on the two actors, Israelis and Palestinians, and ignoring the other Jewish and Arab relationship offscreen. One that might allow us to imagine a different reality. If for a minute we could readjust our gaze towards the Jews in the Maghreb and see them not as a series of unfortunate events, but as a tale of cooperation and kindness, inclusiveness and respect we might find a key to open up a new chapter in the Middle East. 

I was invited to Morocco as part of the Kivunim Teachers Fellowship: a formidable intellectual and spiritual experience that allows teachers to seek and uncover stories we are not told about Judaism and Islam. We hopscotched across a Jewish infused Moroccan landscape that I could never have imagined: We visited a vibrant Jewish school and the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca. We paid tribute at the mausoleum of King Mohammed V who saved the Moroccan Jewish community when he refused Germany’s orders to deport all of Morocco’s Jews. Sorrowfully, I watched the last Jew of Rabat wave from her balcony in the old Jewish quarter. We prayed in a restored 350-year-old synagogue in Errachidia. We watched the sunrise in the Sahara. Then it was off to Marrakesh for an unforgettable home cooked Shabbat banquet. Continuously what we experienced was the vast preservation of Jewish cemeteries, street names, and memory here. King’s orders.

What is unfolding here is the opposite of what we have seen in Paris, London, and Los Angeles. Ironically, the almost two dozen Jewish teachers and I were more comfortable in a souk in the Islamic Kingdom than walking the streets of New York. Not everything is pro-Jewish in Morocco. Royal Air Maroc canceled flights to Tel Aviv and there have been pro-Palestinian protests, but there is also a remarkable amount of understanding. October 7th, uncoiled an already volatile region. However, Jewish life remains preserved, protected, and instructional in Morocco. My time there suggests not an unbridgeable chasm, but a country where Jews and Arabs could hardly be closer and further apart at the same time. (Of course, I found a friendly basketball game in Marrakesh.)

The Jnane Awerrad basketball court in Marrakesh: Photo by Marc Skelton

There is a Moroccan proverb: “A market without Jews is like bread without salt.”

By the late 1980s, the quarter of a million Jews emigrated from Morocco. Today, about two thousand Jews remain. While the Jewish population has dwindled their shadows remain. We met Muslim Moroccans responsible for assisting during Jewish holidays like Mimouna, those who help maintain synagogues, and more importantly those who fondly remember their Jewish neighbors and retell the stories to preserve the Jewish narrative in Morocco. We heard the tales of those Muslims who feel that the history of Jews is an essential ingredient to their own Moroccan identity. I also saw Muslims wearing yellow ribbons signaling a powerful statement of humanity for those Jews held hostage in Gaza. I felt a growing partnership throughout the country all in an attempt to substitute the missing salt. 

I witnessed this cooperation up close and personal in Arazane, a tiny village in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. A fifteen-year-old Hamed Harim was suddenly in charge of the 800-year-old synagogue when the last rabbi of Arazane left in the 1960s. The rabbi gave Harim the wooden key to the synagogue and told him to give it to any Jew who returned. About thirty years later Raphael David Elmaleh, a Moroccan-Jewish historian and guide, heard there was once a Jewish community in Arazane and immediately headed there. When Elmaleh asked Harim if Jews used to live in the village. Harim handed him the key and said, “What took you so long?”

Raphael David Elmaleh and Hamed Harim: Photo by Marc Skelton

This trip was unlike anything I have ever experienced and allowed me to understand something quite profound and unique about the Moroccan spirit. Azoulay has dedicated his life to a two-state solution and many times has been accused of having a dual loyalty. Harim’s oath to uphold the rabbi’s singular request is something out of the movies. Harim and Azoulay triggered different thoughts: How does someone hold on to something for that long? I’m always misplacing my keys. And who hasn’t given up on an impossible task? These two octogenarians, one Jewish, the other Muslim, refused to lose their faith in their co-religionists after all these years. 

As the trip wound down, we found ourselves right in the middle of the old Jewish quarter, at Essaouria’s House of Memory, a building designed by Azoulay, dedicated to preserving Muslim and Jewish coexistence and at the same time promoting how essential Jews are to Moroccan history. A Moroccan Muslim sung a Sufi prayer of peace and at one point mixed-in an ancient Judeo-Arab prayer into his song. My eyes wandered to the blue felt banner hanging from the wall, where a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic joined forces to remind the visitors of Morocco’s version of convivencia: Shalom Alaykoun. Peace be upon you.