book review

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Book Review 

Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas: Hispanic Moroccan Jews and 

their Globalizing Community

 by Dr. Aviad Moreno

Dr. Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah

 Until recently the history, culture, and legacy of Middle Eastern and North African Jewry has, overall, been woefully underappreciated and under explored within North America. Luckily in the past decade there has been growing interest in these communities. Today thankfully, numerous publications and cultural projects have begun to introduce American Jewry to the fascinating and important history of the Sephardic world. In particular, Moroccan Jewry has received a great deal of attention due to the long history of Jewish presence in Morocco, the large size of its linguistically and culturally diverse Jewish community (which at its height in the 1940s numbered over 280,000), and more recently the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel in 2020.  

 One such example of this, is the very sophisticated and nuanced volume recently published by Dr. Aviad Moreno of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, a specialist on Jews in and of the Islamic World in which he reconstructs the migratory history of the Hispanophone (Spanish speaking) Jewish communities of Northern Morocco in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas, Dr. Moreno specifically considered how Jews in Northern Morocco saw themselves as connected to both modern Spain and historic al-Andalus (the birthplace of Sephardic Judaism), in addition to the wider Hispanophone world. Moreno’s work is all the more important as the majority of recent publications on Moroccan Jewry in English focus on the areas of Morocco which were part of the French protectorate (1912-1956), and thus many Jews in these areas came to identify with French language and culture. Moreno’s focus on Hispanophone Morocco is the first of its kind, integrating the historic past of the community, with its modern transnational networks, providing an important comparative study to other works which focus on Francophone Moroccan Jews and their transnational networks. This is not to say that there was a strict divide between Hispanophone and Francophone colonial Morocco. Indeed, many Jews in cities such as tangiers, for example, spoke both French and Spanish, in addition to Arabic.

 Chronologically, the book begins with the process of “re-hispanization” stemming from the involvement of Spain in Northern Morocco after the 1859-1860 Spanish-Moroccan War, zeroing in on this moment when Jews in the north of Morocco began to (re)strengthen their connection to Hispanophone culture as an consequence of colonization. The book then continues to study the evolution of this dynamic community through the Spanish Protectorate (1912-1956), Franco’s regime (1939-1975), Moroccan independence (1956), and finally Spain’s decision to embrace its “lost” Jewish brethren by offering a pathway to reclaim Spanish citizenship. In doing so, Moreno also explores the advent of the global Moroccan Hispanophone diaspora with specific cases studies on Venezuela (although Moroccan Jews settled across Central and South America) and Israel considering the Diaspora both before and after 1948. This is an important departure from many other studies which often conclude in 1948, although these networks continued to exist well after the creation of the state of Israel. 

 By dedicating significant space to the centrality of the Spanish language in the identity construction of this community Moreno makes two important observations. Firstly, he demonstrates the indivisible connectedness of identity and language, even when a community is delocalized, in this case Spanish even after the decolonization of Morocco or emigration to Israel and how it can germinate new identities such an imagined connection to Europe or facilitate integration into a new homeland in the Americas. Secondly, Moreno traces the elevation for Haketia (the version of Judeo-Spanish spoken in Northern Morocco) from its position as a lowly symbol of backwardness, to a culture marker celebrated and studied by the community.

 Beyond the providing an important, and until recently understudied history of the Hispanic Moroccan Jewish Diaspora, Dr. Moreno’s work provides important food for thought on how we think both about Jewish diaspora and identity by painstakingly reconstructed the ways in which this community articulated their connections to both Spain and Morocco as homelands while also engaging with Jewish nationalism. In doing so he demonstrates both the pervasiveness of trans-national/imperial Jewish networks both before and after the creation of the state of Israel, and that identifying with multiple homelands, cultures, languages, and traditions is central to the modern Jewish experience. In doing so, the book provides new insight on how other Jews communities have also related to overlapping places and communities across time and space. In summary, Moreno’s work is an important study demonstrating how Spanish speaking Moroccan Jews felt connected to multiple places and communities, including Morocco, historic al-Andalus, modern Spain, the larger Sephardic diaspora, and finally the modern state of Israel. 

Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah is assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, she is specialized in the modern history of Middle Eastern and North African Jewry. (s.r.goldstein@rug.nl)

An excerpt from THE COUNCIL OF WISE WOMEN by Izzy Abrahmson.

For Benjamin Cohen, the tailor of Chelm, the New Year always presented overwhelming problems. For weeks before the holidays, there were huge rushes of urgent repairs.

There were “The Sprouts,” youngsters whose new suits and dresses needed to be drastically altered because of sudden and unexpected growth spurts.

Some clients, he dubbed, “The Expanders.” These were usually older men and women who had gained weight, so that when they tried on their best outfits, the squeeze was tight — if not impossible.

Benjamin Cohen wanted his son, Yakov, to learn the trade, but the Rosh Rush was no time to teach. So, mostly, Yakov sat around waiting and watching.

On the morning before the New Year, Benjamin was finishing a pure white cotton underskirt for the merchant’s wife. He got careless, and he pricked his finger with the needle.

“Ow!” he yelped.

Immediately, Yakov leapt into action. He snatched the white skirt from his father’s bleeding hand, and ran from the shop.

“You fool!” his father yelled. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

Yakov didn’t answer. With cotton, Yakov knew, you have to quickly rinse off the blood. The Cantors had the only indoor hand-pump in the village. He dashed across the village, careful to keep the skirt from dragging in the dirt. He raced up the steps to the merchant’s house and pounded on the door.

Reb Cantor’s youngest daughter, Gittel, opened the door. “Where’s the fire?”

“May I use your water pump?” Yakov panted. “It’s urgent!”

Gittel Cantor immediately leapt to the wrong conclusion. She ran past Yakov screaming, “Our house is on fire.”

Hearing her shouts, her mother, father, brother, and two sisters also fled into the street.

Yakov, however, was still on his brave mission to help his father. He sped through the (imaginary) flames, into the Cantors’ kitchen, ran to their sink, and began pumping furiously.

Meanwhile, outside, the Cantor family’s wails and shrieks attracted attention. Everyone in earshot grabbed a bucket and made a line that weaved from the well all the way to the Cantors’ house.

In the kitchen, Yakov was getting hot from yanking the pump’s handle, up and down, and he imagined that the flames were getting closer.

When one of the Schlemiel twins told Benjamin Cohen that his son was trapped inside a burning building, he raced to the merchant’s house and tore at his hair. (Fortunately, his wife and daughter were off in the woods searching for mushrooms, so they didn’t share his panic until much later.)

“What have I done?” he moaned. “I’ve cursed my son!”

At that moment, Yakov stumbled out the front door.

“My boy!” Benjamin rushed forward.

“Stand back!” shouted Rabbi Yohon Abrahms, the schoolteacher, (and leader of the fire brigade,) as he splashed Yakov with a bucketful of water.

Panting and drenched, the young boy fell into his father’s arms. “Are you all right?” Benjamin asked. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

“I’m hot and I’m wet,” Yakov said.

“The fire is out!” Gittel Cantor said.

The entire village cheered. Yakov was lifted from his father’s hug and hoisted onto the schoolteacher’s shoulders.

“Papa!” Yakov shouted. “I got the stain out!”

“What stain?” Benjamin called back as the crowd carried Yakov away.

“The blood stain!” Yakov shouted. “Catch!” He threw the skirt to his father.

Benjamin almost caught it, but he stumbled, and dropped the cleaned white skirt in the muddy street. Sighing, he bent down and pried it from the muck. It had been a lovely piece of work.

He knocked on the merchant’s door.

Shoshana Cantor, the merchant’s wife, who had been searching her house for signs of damage, answered. “Is there another fire?”

“No,” Benjamin Cohen said. “I finished your skirt, but it got a little dirty.”

He squeezed out some of the water before handing it to her.

Shoshana Cantor held the limp soggy garment between two fingers. “This is a little dirty?”

“I’m sorry,” the tailor said. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

“Forget about it.” The merchant’s wife waved her other hand. “My husband often buys me clothes that are just too nice. It will make a change to wear something I don’t have to worry about keeping clean. Besides, your son just saved our home from a fire. Consider it a fair trade.”

“Thank you,” Reb Cohen said.

He turned to go back home and realized that his son was safe and all his work was done. The Rosh Rush was finally over! A feeling of lightness and joy began to fill his heart. He started to hum, and naturally his feet began to move.

Shoshana Cantor watched the tailor hop from her doorsteps, dance into the road, and slip in the mud. He fell and splashed flat on his tuchas.

“Are you all right?” she called.

“I’m wonderful!” Benjamin Cohen grinned, as he jumped to his feet, and danced all the way home.

THE END

THE COUNCIL OF WISE WOMEN by Izzy Abrahmson is available in print, ebook and audiobook. More information at lightpublications.com/council

Copyright 2024 by Mark Binder, All Rights Reserved