Disappearing Diaspora: Deterioration and Restoration of Marrakech’s Lazama Synagogue

Abstract

This paper examines circumstances where religious practices challenge the survival of tiny diasporic communities. The persistence of such diasporic communities might be undermined by the need to fulfill religious practices that are insurmountable due to their small size. Using microscopic anthropological lenses, the paper focuses on a specific synagogue in Marrakech that innovatively mutates in its functioning to persevere and overcome the hurdles posed by religious practices. Practically, the synagogue let into its space non-Jews, by offering them varied services. Although that act of crossing community boundaries seems to undermine the local singular character of the community, the fact that it invokes shared cultural intimacy with Muslims attenuates these threats.

It was a late Saturday morning in the summer of 2023. I arrived at the Lazama1 synagogue at the invitation of Mr. Ohana,2 whom I had encountered on Friday at his shop on the outskirts of Marrakech’s mellah (Jewish quarter/neighborhood). He urged me to come to the synagogue the day after because he was having trouble getting a minyan (quorum of ten adult Jews) for that specific Shabat service. “Also—you’re a ‘Levy’ …” he added with a smile, insinuating that he needed me for the public Torah reading.3 I reassured him that I would attend the prayer. I was among the first to arrive. The service hadn’t started yet, because when I appeared, there were only three of us.4 We sat around the table next to the ornate door of the synagogue. We drank sweet mint tea and talked about this and that. We were encouraged by every Jew who passed the doorstep of the synagogue. When we numbered six Jews, Mr. Ohana began to lead the prayer, because it was late, and anyway, worshipers can pray even without a minyan until a certain section of the prayer. It appeared that Mr. Ohana was right, since, while praying, two more Jewish men entered the synagogue. However, even when we reached the end of the part of the prayer where one can pray without a minyan, the tenth Jew did not appear. Mr. Ohana decided to wait, even though the prayer could continue on the condition that some parts of it were omitted. He preferred that the prayer be complete; he did not wish to skip reading the Torah, as one cannot read it in public without a minyan.5 The worshippers turned to small talk and gossip between the men and between them and the two women at the Azara (women’s section). Occasionally, Ms. Bu’ashibah—an elderly Muslim worker, who lived in one of the synagogue’s small rooms of the compound—peeked in, worrying about the prayer not progressing. The minutes ticked by, and Mr. Ohana debated with the worshippers whether to proceed with the incomplete version of the prayer. Suddenly, Ms. Bu’ashibah burst into the synagogue hall with joyous cheers: “I found him! I found him! I found a Jew in the market (of the mellah)! I convinced him to change his route and come to the synagogue … Here he comes. Wait (for him) … He’s a tourist from America!” She was happy and satisfied with her accomplishment. Encouraged by the news, Mr. Ohana ignored her breach of conduct (according to Orthodox Judaism, women are not to enter men’s section) and harried outside to welcome the American Jew. It was not uncommon for a Jewish tourist, visiting the mellah of Marrakesh, to deviate slightly from his or her route to take advantage of the opportunity to pray in the old synagogue. A few minutes later, Mr. Ohana returned with a sad face. The person whom Ms. Bu’ashibah met was indeed an American tourist, but he was not a Jew. The tourist accompanied her because he mistakenly believed that Ms. Bu’ashibah invited him to the small Museum of the Culture of Southern Jews (MCSJ), part of the Lazama compound.

This short ethnographic excerpt can be interpreted in many ways; Ms. Bu’ashibah’s intervention could attest to the cultural familiarity of Muslims with Jewish religious practices and how it is expressed in the compound of the Lazama synagogue (understanding the concept of “minyan”). It could point at the opposite—how, in contrast to the not-so-distant past (before the mass emigration of Jews from Morocco), now a Muslim fails to recognize a Jew (compare, Levy 2020). Alternatively, it could indicate the highly flexible “boundary work” (Gieryn 1983) played out between the Muslim majority and the tiny Jewish minority, in the context of the Lazama, where the proportion of the religious groups is inversed.

However, for my purposes here, this otherwise insignificant ethnographic vignette serves as a springboard to discuss a different and intriguing question: how religious practices risk being a substantial obstacle to the perseverance of the existence of small diasporic communities. This point is of interest, since the conventional anthropological wisdom says that religion is supposed to work as an interpretive system that, among other things, assures the continuation of the group of people beholding it by sharing basic conceptions and premises about the world.6 Contrary to this Geertzian convincing perception of religion or, as Asad (1983, p. 237) puts it, it “having a paradigmatic status”, in this paper, I will demonstrate that there might be circumstances in which religious practices risk being annihilative for small diasporic communities. As the opening brief ethnography above implies, the very survival of a diasporic community might be undermined in situations in which religious practices and demands (mitzvot. mitzvah in singular) risk being insurmountable, thus being an obstacle to the perseverance of weak communities, where religion is paramount to their existence.7 Finally, I will present how the synagogue innovatively mutates in its functioning to persevere and overcome the hurdles posed by practices guided by faith.

To substantiate my argument, I first need to briefly discuss the varied manifestations of the singularity of the “Moroccan Jewishness” based on its historical past. Then, I will present an overall picture of the sociocultural structure of the contemporary Jewish community in Morocco focusing on the main challenges it faces by linking them to the sociocultural and demographic contraction the community is undergoing. Finally, I will show how the inability to fulfill certain Jewish practices risks deteriorating the already fragile existence of this diasporic community. Offering services directed to the non-Jewish and non-Moroccan public circumvents the challenges posed by the contraction of the community and even reinvigorates it. I will show how the very act of crossing the boundaries of the Jewish community by addressing non-Jewish audiences is a key strategy to overcome the existential threats that religious life imposes on its continuation. Yet, that very strategy seems to undermine the local singular character of the community and threatens its stability. Consequently, the appeal to Muslims is based on shared cultural premises that defuse the threat.

At this stage, it is crucial to point out that the dynamic presented here is not an inevitable result of the tiny size of diasporic communities. In her work on Cuba’s small Jewish community, anthropologist Ruth Behar showed that one way of coping with the size of the community is not by keeping rigid boundaries between Jew and non-Jew but rather the opposite; it turns the boundaries permeable. Thus, for example, she describes how someone who, according to Orthodox criteria, is supposed to be considered goy (non-Jewish) is educated on Judaism and becomes a leading figure in the Sephardic synagogue in Havana. In other words, unlike Moroccan Jews, Cuban Jews are flexible in their definition of belonging to a community and thus maintain a functioning cultural group (Behar 2007).

1. Methodology

The study in the Lazama synagogue relies on an extended anthropological participant observation that began in 2015 and continues intermittently to this very day. It lasted from one and a half to two months each year (and occasionally twice a year). In addition, my post-cultural (Lizardo 2011) interpretation draws on broader research amongst other Jewish communities, especially that of Casablanca, which began in the late 1980s. My long-standing participant observation produced intimate knowledge of the people I constantly try to understand. This lengthy research forges long-lasting ties with many Jews in Morocco. All of this gives me a broad perspective that allows me to have a reliable interpretation that I reevaluate in every research period. The study of the different communities enables a deep understanding of both the uniqueness of each of them and the challenges they share.

The participant observation took place in several arenas in Marrakech. Firstly, it focused on the Lazama synagogue compound. I stayed there for many hours each day, following various visitors to the site: Christian tourists from Europe, Orthodox and secular Jews from North America, Muslims from the Maghreb in general and Morocco in particular, and Israeli tourists (some with Moroccan roots). I interacted with Muslim and Jewish tour guides, people who work in Lazama, and Israelis who found the small rooms at the perimeter of Lazama a convenient place to stay. In addition, I met with Jews who lived near the mellah and with Jews living in Gueliz (the new quarter of Marrakech). I also attended services at the Henry Kadosh synagogue (named after the late leader community) and Jewish sites such as kosher restaurants, the butchery, and a newly established small kosher supermarket. Other sites I occasionally frequented were the Jewish cemetery and the Al-Fassyin synagogue. I also met Muslims who live (or make a living) in the mellah (such as tour guides and souvenir sellers in the market). Additionally, I held meetings with community leaders and with other prominent members.

I participated in many public events: funerals, sermons in synagogues, holy days, commemorations, yearly national crown celebrations (organized by the Jewish community), and more. As expected, meaningful global events deeply influenced the community. Worthy of mentioning is the COVID-19 pandemic period. Dramatic political events in the Middle East also affected Jews. Surely, my interpretation of the local is always coupled with the global.

The information I collected during the long years of research was processed repeatedly while researching and during the periods when I was not staying in Morocco. I rely mainly on the interpretive insights of Clifford Geertz, but at the same time, I pay particular attention to power relations, to which Geertz was not sensitive (Lizardo 2011; Scott 1992).

Moroccan versus Jewish

In both the Hebrew and the English versions of Shlomo Deshen’s book “The Mellah Society” (“ציבור ויחידים במרוקו”), the author grapples with two tendencies in the study of Jewish societies. On the one hand, there exists the predisposition to underline the common and unified forms of Jewish existence all over the world stemming from shared religious guidelines and diasporic experiences of alienation, and, on the other hand, he points to the necessity to acknowledge the idiosyncratic histories and cultural premises of each community, formed by their unique contexts in the widely dispersed diasporas. In his words:

“Traditional Moroccan Judaism, as its name indicates, is part of the whole of traditional Jewish society. Each of the traditional Jewish societies, such as that of Yemen, Spain during the flourishing of Talmudic Babylon, and even Morocco, differ from each other in many details but are similar in their main traces due to the common Jewish base. After the consolidation of the Talmudic rabbinic tradition at the end of ancient times […] a broad and common sociocultural basis was found for the communities of [the people of] Israel everywhere”.

(Deshen 1983, pp. 12–13. My translation)

Note Deshen’s use of words when he makes the comparison between “differ from each other in many details” but “similar in their main traces due to the common Jewish base”. Deshen gives priority in this paragraph to the universal similarities among the Jewish diasporas (“details” versus “main traces”).

However, in a different piece relating to Moroccan Jews during the “classic” Sherifian period (roughly 18–19th century), Deshen reverses his view when comparing localism versus universalism of Judaism. He says that Jewish features:

“… are not universal in the Jewish Diaspora and they vary in matters of intensity and detail. I contend that although the disparate details of social structure that have been described are not unique to Moroccan Jewry, the entire, complex configuration of features is uniquely Jewish-Moroccan and further, it can readily be comprehended when viewed against the background setting of Sherifian times. The evidence we have indicates that Moroccan Jewish society was to a degree permeable to the influence of the Muslim majority. It was fractured by ties that linked individual Jews to Muslims, and these ties had ramifications in internal relationships within mellah society”.

(Deshen 1984, p. 220)

A more integrative and coherent viewpoint is offered by Clifford Geertz, who grants the same weight to both the universal (“Jewish”) and the particular (“Moroccan”) aspects of identity. He artfully writes about the double focal points of the identity of the Jewish community of the town of Sefrou—claiming that “from many points of view it looks exactly like the Muslim community; from as many others, totally different […] Moroccan to the core and Jewish to the same core, they were heritors of a tradition double and indivisible and in no way marginal” (Geertz 1979, p. 164).

Following Geertz (1971), I contend that, as against the arduous efforts of their clergies to impose a notion of standardized faith, religions have meaningful and even fundamental local manifestations and interpretations (see in the Moroccan Muslim context: Hammoudi 1993). This is particularly noticeable when observing religiose diasporic communities, as one can compare the versions of faith between the dispersed diasporas and between them and “their” homeland (comparison: Pattie 1990). For this reason, I focus on one Jewish style: contemporary Judaism as performed in Morocco. For that, I need to first situate in history the subject matter of the “Moroccan Jew”.

Here, I adopt a self-inscribed approach to identity (Barth 2010) and lean on the historian Daniel Schroeter, who claims that the seeds of a Moroccan-Jewish identity were planted during the pre-Alawid era (Alawids as of 1631 to the present). He says:

“If a self-defined Moroccan Jewry was a product of the colonial era, it was not without its antecedents in earlier periods. An argument could indeed be made that, from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries, a kind of cultural identity was formed in Morocco that distinguished Jews from other parts of the Jewish and Sephardi Mediterranean. It was probably in the ‘Alawid period, when the Jews in Morocco grew to be the largest Jewish population of any country in the Muslim world, that a synthesis occurred. It was a distinctive identity that is evidenced not only by particular characteristics, if not unique, to Morocco but also by the way Jews from Morocco were identified when they traveled to or settled in other lands in the Middle East and Europe”.

(Schroeter 2008, p. 151)

The discussion over the extent of commitment to a general Jewish identity versus a commitment to a local one relates to or stems from the debate about the nature of diaspora. That is, should diaspora be seen as facing towards its symbolic center out there, from which (according to its myth or history) it is physically detached but connected to it by identity, or should it be seen as a group facing toward where it is located and from which it is affected. Seemingly, the Jewish community in Morocco represented for centuries a clear-cut and “classic” instance of the category “diaspora”—that is, a cultural group committed to its symbolic center (see: Cohen 2022; Safran 1991). It is true even for the Jewish community that currently lives in Morocco, whose members believe that, in the past, they were expelled from their homeland, the Land of Israel, and were dispersed to many destinations. According to conservative Jewish historiography, the dispersal occurred following a traumatic historical event—the destruction of the Second Temple around 70 BCE.8

One of the consequences of an existence that seeks to emphasize the emotional link to a long-gone homeland and the connections between communities scattered around the globe (based on the longing for the mythical homeland) is a certain turning of the back from the immediate sociocultural environment in the present. Indeed, the Jewish ethos of existence in the Diaspora (with a capital D) feeds the idea of structural strangeness.9 This dimension was reflected in William Safran’s (1991) highly cited article, which emphasized the importance of the ethos of the return of diasporic groups to their homeland. In this ethos is folded the implied message to the immediate environment that the future (near, far, or utopic) is somewhere else, in the homeland. Therefore, there is no unconditional and eternal commitment to the immediate social environment. Structural (i.e., steady) strangeness of that kind was pointed out by George Simmel, who, in the opening sentence of his essay, succinctly articulates this form of existence, an existence of a lack of belonging, inability, or desire to be rooted in the ground where the stranger resides:

“If wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of the “stranger” presents the unity, as it were, of these two characteristics”.

(Simmel 2008, p. 323)

According to Simmel, the epistemological detachment of the stranger from his place of residence is related to his relentless desire to be elsewhere. In his words:

“He is, so to speak, the potential wanderer: although he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going. He is fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries. But his position in this group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it, which do not and cannot stem from the group itself”.

(Simmel 2008, p. 323)

The stranger’s desire to get out of the place where he resides constitutes a distance from the “hosting” society. That distance, in turn, turns the stranger suspicious. Indeed, it is a vicious circle in which one outcome feeds the other.

I find the “strangeness” approach described above ideological more than ethnographic or historic. A more fitting approach that corresponds to Jewish experience (in Morocco, at least) contends that exile is not only a result of a physical expulsion from the space in which the nation existed in its past but also, and to a greater degree, a strategy of spiritual identification and the creation of connections with the majority group. Consequently, in time, the connections of a specific diaspora with its “sisters” reveal and even underscore the differences between them, resulting from their different local experiences. With such eyes, one should read, for example, the words of Jonathan Boyarin:

“… diaspora is not so much a shared predicament of loss as a shared strategy of survival, continuity, and the reproduction of meaning. While this account tends to emphasize ‘strong’ notions of collective identity, it is also open to the ways that interactions with collective others are fruitful and even necessary for group identity to persist in transformation”.

(Boyarin 2015, p. 21)

As noted, at face value, Jews who have lived in Morocco in recent years appear to embrace the “strangeness” approach. Members of the Jewish community perceive themselves as detached from their surroundings. “We live in a mental ghetto”, a Jew told me as we sat down to lunch at the exclusively Jewish Cercle de l’Alliance club in Casablanca. His friend added “If it weren’t for this club, and the club of the Cercle de l’Union, it is doubtful whether they would have remained Jews in Casablanca. Thanks to the shelter given to us by the club we can tolerate our existence here”.

Many indicators support this view, but some of them are not outcomes of the Jews’ choices. Officially, Morocco operates according to religious principles by Sharia law. Like his predecessors, the legitimacy of its leader, King Mohammed VI, also stems from his religious status—he is considered Emir al-Muaminin (Prince of the Faithful. See: El Founti 2021). Indeed, Morocco is formally a Muslim country. As Maghraoui (2009, p. 199) contends, “The centrality of Islam is ideologically so fundamental to the Moroccan constitution that it is not open to changes or amendment”.

It would be an oversimplification to assume that religion necessarily erects separating walls. Moroccan society is saturated with manifestations of cross-cultural and cross-religious phenomena to the point that one can talk about cultural affinity. This is aptly represented in the central manifestation of Maghrebi religious practices: hagiolatry (the veneration of holy men, known as maraboutism). Practices of hagiolatry are so central to the Moroccan collective identity that they offer an answer to the question “What does it mean to be Jewish/Muslim in Morocco?” Indeed, Maghraoui claims that at “the level of the people, the belief system has been more closely associated with popular forms of practices (maraboutism) and religious brotherhoods known as zawaya [simply put: religiose order. Author’s remark] which played important social and political roles for much of Moroccan history” (Maghraoui 2009, p. 198).10 Parallel to maraboutism also evolved a phenomenon called “הערצת קדושים” (saint veneration).11 Surely, this religious practice had its unique Jewish Kabbalist roots, but it presented a Moroccan style. Indeed, many researchers of Maghrebi Jews agree that hagiolatry prevailed amongst Moroccan Jews and has been, in fact, a distinct marker of their Moroccan identity.12 Not only symmetry between Jewish and Muslim practices of saint veneration is at stake here (Stillman 1996) but also crossing religious boundaries. Jews have made pilgrimages to Muslim marabout and vice versa (Ben-Ami 1998) and continue to do so.

What did this religious proximity, even intimacy, mean in everyday life? Without getting into historical details, it would be prudent to assert that, along with their structural and symbolic inferiority (embodied in the status of dhimmi), Jews were part and parcel of Moroccan history, economy, society, and culture, to the point that one cannot understand Morocco’s history without regarding the part Jews played in it (Gottreich 2020).13 Yet, as already stated, this period ended, ensuing global and local changes in modern times. These changes reshaped the Jewish experience.

The late 19th century heralded profound and dramatic changes in Jewish life in Morocco, including their relations with Muslims. These changes relate mainly to the deep impact of French colonialism. One evident example of these changes was an acceleration of the flow of people from small villages to the main cities, Casablanca being the favorite target. In 1866, for instance, Casablanca had 7860 inhabitants. By 1952, Casablanca had almost 682,400 citizens, thus multiplying its population by a factor of 87 (Adam 1950), with Jews comprising an enthusiastic part of that human tide.14 Moroccan Jews were allured by those urban spaces that French colonialists inhabited; Jews aspired to benefit from both the economic opportunities created by the French bureaucratic mechanism and, also, by the egalitarian promise embodied in the universalistic rhetoric of French colonialism: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” (See Bensimon-Donath 1968). This esprit freed de facto Jews from their humiliating dhimmi status.

After the establishment of the State of Israel (1948), the end of French colonialism, and the independence of Morocco in 1956, Jews chose to emigrate (mainly to Israel, France, and Canada). Morocco’s Jewish population rapidly plunged. In the 1940s, the Jewish population in Morocco numbered more than 250,000 people; today, demographers estimate their number is 2000 at most.15 Emigration grew in parallel with urbanization processes; the more the overall decline of the Jewish population in Morocco grew, the greater their relative proportion in Casablanca was.

According to a report by the French ethnologist Pierre Flamand (1958, p. 331), in the year 1951, the Jews of Marrakech numbered exactly 16,458 people.16 Although, nowadays, there are no grounded statistics on the number of Jews in the Red City, the estimates I have heard from leading figures in the community speak of 60 to 90 people at most. It seems, then that the Marrakech Jewish community has almost completely vanished.

These demographic changes galvanized a post-emigration social form of Jewish life in Morocco: contraction.

2. Contraction

Scholars of the Jews of Islamic states tended to summarize the history of these communities by saying that they had reached their end. Thus, for example, the renowned historian Bernard Lewis states that:

There have been many chapters in the long history of the Jewish people […] The Judaeo-Islamic symbiosis was another great period of Jewish life and creativity, a long, rich, and vital chapter in Jewish history. It has now come to an end.

(Lewis 2015, p. 191)

The title of Udovitch, Valensi and Perez’s book (Udovitch et al. 1984)—The Last Arab Jews (1984)—dealing with the Jews of Jerba (Tunisia) also points in the same direction. However, the assumption regarding the demise of the communities seems to be somewhat hasty. While it is true that these communities have lost substantial portions of their size, they still deserve a scholarly look. Moreover, if this is the case, we better learn how communities approach their end. The concept of “contraction”, therefore, is to serve this analytical purpose well.

Contraction is a concept that grasps the core Jewish lifestyle in contemporary Morocco. It refers to two separated, yet interrelated, processes: on the one hand, the concept refers to the concrete fact of constant demographic diminution. On the other hand, contraction refers to the social convergence of the Jewish community inward, while cultivating the notion that they aspire to reduce the points of social contact with the population of the Muslim majority (the “stranger” concept). The idea of minimizing social contact is rooted in history, as the daily religious practices of both groups have dictated a certain spatial separateness, an inclination demonstrated by the confinement of Jews behind the walls of the mellah (Hirschberg 1968). Yet, and without delving into the question of whether the perseverance of this spatial confinement was an intrinsic process prompted by different religious practices or by the desire to suppress and control Jews, most researchers agree that, for a long time, spatial borders did not involve impenetrable sociocultural boundaries (Gottreich 2020).

Since the 1950s, separation from Muslims seemed almost inevitable, as the former regarded the Jewish alliance with the colonizer as a betrayal of national goals. The massive emigration between the mid-1950s to mid-1960s has deepened even more the cleavage.

The current separatist inclination has many manifestations that confirm and reconfirm the idea of strangeness. For instance, Jews do not speak fusha (“classical” Arabic), and only a few young people speak darija (colloquial Arabic) fluently. This leads Jews to ignorance that, in turn, nourishes existential fears and anxieties of the unknown. It is a vicious circle, as the negative emotions accelerate the process of disengaging from Muslim surroundings. That circle ontologizes the notion of strangeness. To be sure, the Jewish community council plays a crucial role in this context, as it provides many services targeted uniquely to Jews, thus encouraging avoidance, which severs even more the already existing detachment from the Muslim majority and, on the ideational level, fortifies the notion of strangeness (Levy 2003). Yet, the more the few Jewish communities disintegrate, the greater the difficulties in providing them with their needs, which, in turn, risks undermining the notion of strangeness. If, in the past, there were many committees of Jewish communities scattered over large areas in Morocco, today, there are a limited number of committees. For instance, the committee of Marrakesh is responsible for all of Southern Morocco, including the city of Agadir located far from the Red City on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean (some 250 km away). That effort itself to manage far away minuscule communities derives from the need to overcome challenges posed by the comforting notion of strangeness. But the challenges are overwhelming; the leadership of the Marrakesh community committee is troubled, for example, by instances in which lonely elderly Jews live in places far from the main cities. The fear is that a Jew may die without it being known, while religious practice demands not to delay a burial. And even if a death is known in time, the death of such a person poses complicated logistical problems, especially if there is a request to be buried in Marrakesh and not in a remote village.

Indeed, diminution has many more facets besides demographic shrinkage, all of which challenge the aspiration to maintain an autarchy detached from the Muslim surroundings. Note that, some four decades ago, when I first conducted fieldwork in Morocco, committees could provide extensive and highly comprehensive services from cradle to grave, but now, these institutions either dissolve or must be populated with Muslims to function. Applying to a non-Jewish constituency to fill in the ranks undermines the basic commitment to contraction. This solution is particularly problematic to institutions like synagogues, as they ideally must be kept strictly Jewish. Hence, I choose to focus on this ostensibly uncontested Jewish space and show how, even within such confines, separation is practically impossible. Unlike other Jewish spaces (like member clubs or some of the schools) that were uniquely Jewish some 60 years ago but now are ethnically mixed, even today, when the community is shrinking to the point that, in its current form, risks collapse, synagogues are ideally conceived as a strictly Jewish space (Levy 2020, 2023). But before discussing the Moroccan synagogue, it is essential to present a few ethnographic examples of contraction as it manifests in today’s Marrakech.

2.1. The Contraction of the Jewish Community of Marrakech

The brief opening ethnography of this article illustrates that the community has dwindled to the point that it is often difficult to recruit a minyan for prayer, even on Shabbat, when Jewish participation in prayer increases. The dramatic reduction is evident in every religious event that requires the involvement of many Jews. Such is the case in memorial ceremonies for the death anniversary of major figures in the community. During the death anniversary of Henry Kadosh—the dominant head of the community for many years—the committee managed to gather not more than twenty-five people at the ceremony.

The organizers of the Henry Kadosh memorial ceremony (August 2017, see photo above) were hoping for some forty participants, but only about half of the seats were eventually taken. Moreover, about 20% of the participants (workers, like waiters, not included) were Muslims (Figure 1).

Demographic contraction entails additional difficulties that impair the community’s ability to operate. It, for instance, renders functionaries related to religious services redundant. For example, in the early years of my research on the Marrakech community, I found a Jewish butcher sitting idly by in his small shop. There were no buyers for his disappearing kosher goods. “I don’t keep beef anymore”, he told me sadly. “I (ritualistically) slaughter maybe a chicken or two for a week. The Jews bring frozen meat from Casablanca. All the Jews here have large freezers …” I rarely found the butcher in his shop on my last two visits to Marrakech. Another recent development has contributed to the fading of the butcher’s services: a small supermarket opened that sells kosher products (most of them imported from Israel).

Burial services are also not operating smoothly. At one funeral of a marginal figure in the community, there was no member of the chevra (Jewish gravediggers) to handle the burial of the dead.17 However, since it is customary to bury the deceased shortly after death, the person who buried the body and delivered all the prayers of the burial ceremony was the president of the community himself. The family barely managed to get a minyan to say Kaddish. Fortunately, Muslim workers in the cemetery also attended the burial ceremony, thus sparing the family the aggravation of the participation of a few people in the event.

Not only is the Marrakech community shrinking, but it is also not renewing. “There hasn’t been circumcision for almost a decade”, a Jew told me. For him, it was a clear sign of the aging of the community to the point of death. Indeed, there are almost no young people in the community, so there are no more Jewish schools (as can still be found in Casablanca).

2.2. Moroccan Synagogues

The origins of the synagogue as a space of Jewish worship are obscure, though, for a long period, many scholars assumed that it emerged not long after the destruction of the Second Temple on 5 August, 70 (Weingreen 1964). This view was undermined in recent decades, claiming, for instance, that Torah reading in synagogues was a ritual, performed already during the Second Temple time. However, no findings support rabbinic prayers in them. Synagogues were to be a substitute for sacrifice rituals performed at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Indeed, historical and archeological data demonstrate “that a non-sacrificial Jewish liturgical system had emerged by Late Antiquity; its prayer texts, though, have been preserved only from the late first millennium CE” (Langer 2020, p. 253).18

The above succinct description concerning the emergence of the synagogue and the varied activities taking place in it is only to assert that one needs not lose sight of the obvious fact that this Jewish institution alternated in its functions and styles throughout history. Therefore, one needs to be historically and ethnographically specific when discussing synagogues.

Unfortunately, however, the ethnographic study of synagogues in modern times MENA (Middle East and North Africa) is relatively thin. According to the historian Yoram Meital (2024), the synagogue is “easy to overlook when engaging with the political, secular history of Middle Eastern Jewry in the twentieth century” (p. 11). Meital associates this lack of interest with various variables; he ties it particularly to the fact that, compared to the dramas of colonialism, post-colonialism, Zionism, and Arab-Israeli wars, synagogues seem almost timeless capsules that raise no attention. This might explain why a book dedicated to the mellah of Marrakech overlooks its synagogues (Gottreich 2007).

That being said, it is apparent that, like other Jewish diasporas, synagogues in Morocco served as the main locus of community religious activities. Shlomo Deshen puts it unequivocally: “The synagogues were the core arena of religiosity in the mellah” (Deshen 1984, p. 86). Emily Gottreich also supports this claim, stating that “The religious and scholarly life of the mellah was naturally located in the synagogue, which, alongside or overlapping the home, is among the most important institutions in Judaism” (Gottreich 2007, p. 36).

Indeed, the study of Moroccan Jews emphasizes the extent to which synagogues were the focus of various public activities in the mellah, even though these activities were different from today’s Moroccan synagogues outside Morocco or those in European Jewish communities in parallel pasts. To illustrate, nowadays, synagogues are way more spacious than those past institutions in the Moroccan hinterland (a fact that reflects urbanization processes amongst Moroccan Jews). A unique feature in Morocco was the overwhelming presence of synagogues that were not public communal spaces but the private property of wealthy people. These synagogues were a source of prestige, through which the wealthy displayed their status. For that reason, synagogues usually were small and often formed part of the household of well-to-do families; these places did not exceed one room in size. These worship places were modest and difficult to notice from the outside. Emily Gottreich suggests that, precisely for this reason, we do not have sufficient historical documentation regarding the number of synagogues in Marrakech’s mellah (Gottreich 2007). However, according to Solomon Lasry, a reliable key figure of Marrakchi origins, he managed to document 28 synagogues that functioned in the mid-20th century in the mellah (see map below, Figure 2).19 The synagogues are marked as .

Shlomo Deshen, a Jewish-Orthodox anthropologist of Ashkenazi origins, underlines the fact that, unlike in Europe, the Moroccan synagogues were not a place of study.20 Apart from being a place of prayer, he claims, the synagogues served as ample ground for darshanim (preachers, lecturers). Without saying it explicitly, it is evident from his comparison to Ashkenazi synagogues that he sees this religious activity as an inferior and unsophisticated form of passive religious learning. Drashot (lectures) were simple stories bearing clear and explicit morals. However, Deshen overlooks the active aspects involved in drashot performances. For instance, he ignored the folklore surrounding the role of the darshan that gave rise to proverbs that mocked the subjects of the drashot. There was a common saying that, when a khakham (sage man) delivers a sermon, he delivers it for his needs. That is, the lesson to be learned from the sermon will always be in the best interest of the khakham. This would become apparent at the end of the drasha when the darshan asked for donations for goals related to the themes of the drashot.21 The popular criticism expressed on such occasions attests to the non-passive atmosphere within Moroccan synagogues.22 Not only did passivity not characterize Moroccan synagogues, but engagements regarding their activities were often imbued with agitation. Moshe Shokeid, an anthropologist who studied the Moroccan Jews immediately after their migration to Israel, was witness to many expressions of cultural continuity between Morocco and Israel, partly in religious life. He describes, for example, the behavior of believers within the synagogue walls who were far from being passive. He recounts that:

“However, peace did not prevail […] in the synagogues. In the central synagogue, loud quarrels frequently resounded about the way to lead the prayers and the reading of the Torah […] The competition for leading the prayer, a competition in which both young and old took part, created a raucous blend of noise, which marred the course of the prayer and led to a general outburst of complaints and other loud accusations”.

(Shokeid 1977, pp. 80–81. My translation)

I remember that, as a child in the very first years of our emigration from Morocco to Israel, there were frequent heated arguments, to the point of shouting between different worshipers, regarding the question of what the most accurate way to pronounce words written in the Torah was. The tendency toward such debates did not begin only after immigrating to Israel. Passivity, therefore, was not common in synagogues in Morocco.

2.3. Lazama

The myth says that the Lazama synagogue was built in 1492, after the expulsion of Jews from Spain following the Alhambra Decree.23 The large majority of these Jews (Megorashim, Hebrew for deported) fled to Egypt and Morocco, countries that conflicted with Spain. Megorashim were not welcomed by the local Moroccan Jews (Toshavim, Hebrew for residents), as their practices, language, dress, etc. looked strange in their eyes. There were occasional disputes about many minhagim (customs), resulting in the ostracizing of the Megorashim. However, a few generations later, the wheel turned, and Megorashim drew a cultural line. They kept strict social and cultural boundaries between them and the Toshavim (Bar Asher 1981, p. 126). They, for instance, built synagogues to run according to their specific ritualistic and liturgical style.

The Lazama was established, therefore, in this context of cultural divergence between the two Jewish ethnic groups. Probably, it was built by Megorashim, but there is no historical documentation to support the date of the establishment of Lazama, nor that the leader initiating its building was Rabbi Izhak Deluya (the first).24 It is unclear even if such a rabbi is a historical figure, although there are fascinating miraculous stories about him. Worth mentioning is the story of a rabbi who went early in the morning to ask for the forgiveness of Rabbi Deluya after realizing that he had made a mistake in a halakhic argument with the revered Deluya. He found Rabbi Deluya standing by the well to wash his hands ritualistically. The rabbi, to his astonishment, did not draw water from the well, but rather, the waters rose on their own.

Whatever one can do with these mythical accounts, constant efforts are made nowadays to affirm different parts of information about the establishment of Lazama, particularly the date of its founding. Indeed, 1492 (the year of the expulsion from Spain) turned into a typological number.25 For example, the number 1492 is mentioned by tourist guides, Muslims included, as the year of the founding of Lazama. Mr. Ohana also mentions this date in each encounter with Israeli visitors to the compound. Additionally, the year is inscribed on the exit of the locale and mentioned in fliers written in English, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, and Hebrew that provide basic information about the premises. Even the internet code of the locale is a manipulation of the numbers 1.4.9.2. The unceasing efforts invested in fixing the year 1492 as the date when the synagogue was founded aim to link it to one of the profound events in Jewish history in general, and that of the Moroccan Jewish past in particular. Moreover, the synagogue associated itself with what turned out to be the elitist stratum of Maghrebi Jews: The Megorashim.26 Apart from that, a symbolic prestige is bestowed on Lazama by the very antiquity of the institution: the synagogue has been active for over five hundred years. No wonder a repeated saying among the remaining few synagogue goers is that they will not lend a hand to cutting the long chain of prayers. They publicly swear on every occasion that they will make every effort to ensure that the chain of prayers in Lazama is not interrupted. However, despite these rhetorical commitments, over the past decade, I have witnessed increasing cancellations of prayers, including on Shabbat itself, due to the inability to gather a minyan, as the relevant group of worshipers is aging daily. In fact, during the days of writing this article, another worshiper died, thus reducing even more the number of regular attendees. In such a low number of worshipers, everyone counts. Indeed, dying of old age endangers the continuity of the chain of services in Lazama.

The synagogue complex has a structure that resembles architecturally the traditional Moroccan madrassas (literally, a place of study). It is a square two-story building with an inner courtyard. In its center is a fountain. One side of the square serves as the prayer house (parallel to the mosque in madrasas). The remaining three sides are divided into small chambers used for religious study. The chambers were divided according to the level of study.27 Today, most chambers on the first floor host the exhibition of the MCSJ. Yet, until a few decades ago, the chambers were used as classrooms for children, most of whom were from families living in the mellah, and some were outstanding students who came from far away, from the Atlas Mountains. In such a case, there were families of Jews in the mellah who hosted the children; they took care of their needs and provided them with a bed in their home, and only during long school breaks, they would return to their parents’ homes.

During the days when the community was vibrant, the maintenance of the complex was based on a combination of tuition and donations. Nowadays, Mr. Ohana, who tends the place, must be creative to finance Lazama’s needs. It is accomplished by exploiting inner Jewish resources or Muslim ones. One way to finance religious life from within Jewish resources is by lending the Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) to Jewish tourists who need it. Thus, for example, Mr. Ohana, who functions as the Gabay (manager of the synagogue) of the Lazama, lends Torah scrolls to groups of Jewish tourists, who, rather than going to one of the two active synagogues in Marrakech, choose to pray at the hotel where they stay. There was also when the Gabay lent groups of pilgrims Torah scrolls, which would be transferred to the remote saints’ sanctuaries.

People who borrowed the scrolls were expected to donate generously to the synagogue. For example, while I was talking to Mr. Ohana about the future of his small store on the outskirts of the mellah, he received a phone call. It turned out that the Torah scroll, which had been loaned to Jewish tourists from France who came to celebrate Abuhatzira’s death anniversary in Erfoud (in the region of Tefillat in Southeastern Morocco), had to be returned to its place in the synagogue. Mr. Ohana, who was too busy to take care of the Sefer Torah, asked a Muslim worker in his shop, Abdullah, to accompany me to meet one of the tourists who had come to retrieve the Torah scroll. Since halachically only a Jew is allowed to carry the Torah, I was asked to do the carrying of the scroll back to the synagogue. Mr. Ohana put a hat on my head so that I wouldn’t carry the Torah book without a head covering. I didn’t notice that the tourist handed me the scroll upside down; he also pushed a generous bundle of Euro bills into my pocket to give to Mr. Ohana. Thus, I found myself strolling in the medina of Marrakech with a Sefer Torah upside down in my arms, Euro bills shoved in my pockets, following Abdullah back to the synagogue (Figure 3). The chaperoning was required, because Mr. Ohana worried that people would harass me on my way to the synagogue.

There are other venues for Mr. Ohana to collect donations to maintain the synagogue. For instance, he installed a charity box at the synagogue’s door for (mostly) Jewish visitors to donate money. These activities are part of the struggle to maintain Jewish life intact.

The maintenance of the locale cannot be achieved by applying to Jewish sources solely. Contrary to the inward inclination (i.e., contraction), members of the Jewish community must cross religious borders and apply to Muslim resources. Indeed, recruiting Muslim staff is vital. They include the guard at the entrance, Ben Jalil, who has held this position for many years. He supervises all Muslim workers (see Levy 2023). He is entrusted with the collection of entry fees. In addition to him is Ms. Bu’ashibah, mentioned at the beginning of the article. Unlike all the other employees, Ms. Bu’ashibah lives in the compound, in one of the rooms allocated to her and her elderly mother. Ms. Bu’ashibah is responsible for everything related to nutrition. Until about two years ago, there was only one kitchen, so it had to be kosher. Today, there are two kitchens; one is designed to meet the needs of all the Muslim workers in the complex. The split between the two kitchens makes Ms. Bu’ashibah’s job much easier, as she can cook lunches for the Muslim staff without being bothered by questions of Jewish kashrut. At the same time, she cooks kosher meals for Jewish sojourners who come to Marrakech for relatively long periods and need regular arrangements of kosher meals. Indeed, Ms. Bu’ashibah knows the basic rules of kashrut very well, allowing her to prepare meals for kosher-observant Israelis. These visitors reward her with modest sums of money, and she is usually grateful to them. The synagogue management deliberately ignores these informal arrangements that add to her basic income that she receives from the community committee in Marrakesh.

Khadija is also present for long hours each day, cleaning the synagogue and the courtyard. In addition, there is Ali, who serves as a jack of all trades; he takes care of the maintenance of the place. He replaces burnt lightbulbs or repairs a broken lock. He also builds the traditional sukkah every year. Lately, he has been promoted and now serves as the vendor of a small new Judaica shop. Community resources fund all staff. In addition to these people, two state police officers are stationed in the synagogue, whose job is to maintain security at the site. These are replaced once every few months. Although not employed by the Jewish community, they attend the communal dinners with the rest of the Muslim staff, to which I have been invited from time to time.

Muslim presence within the Jewish space is not limited to work-related activities. Muslim religious practices can take place in the complex. Thus, for example, when Ben Jalil realizes that he is detained in Lazama and risks being late for the prayers at the nearby mosque, he lays out his prayer rug, and installs it in the direction of Mecca, using the azimuth to Jerusalem (to which the synagogue is directed), and prays. This action is not considered unusual, neither for Muslims nor for Jews who regularly attend the compound. Muslims are present in the synagogue compound not only through the demonstration of their religious observances. They sometimes act as the guardians of the Jewish faith, thus crossing interfaith boundaries and serving as a kind of kashrut overseer. For example, Muslim employees have complained to me more than once that Israeli tourists smoke in the synagogue but that it is “haram” (forbidden) according to Jewish law.28 Also, when inviting me to join their meals, they remind me (since I am a Jew) that their food is not kosher. It turns out that they are trying to juggle between the Middle Eastern rules of hospitality and the desire to show respect for the laws of kashrut in Judaism.

The synagogue also hosts activities that aim to manifest convivencia, or cohabitation, between Muslims and Jews. For example, during Ramadan, in June 2017, two Moroccan NGOs (the High Atlas Foundation and the Association Mimouna) hosted a breakfast at Lazama with the Jewish Community of Marrakesh. It included the traditional Iftor (daily break of the Ramadan fast). The Association Mimouna, along with the local Chabad organization, also distributed food baskets to the poor of Marrakech’s mellah, so that they could celebrate the Iftor despite their economic hardship.

By and large, synagogues are “first and foremost, a place of prayer, a place of thrice daily religious worship, and a place of Torah lessons and of rabbinical sermons”, but they are also “a place that gathers people into a community, such as on festivals …, and even facilitates interpersonal encounters …” (Davidovitch 2019, p. 2). The question that arises is what happens when the balance between the religious activity and the social activity of the synagogue is violated. In the case of Lazama, the synagogue lost much of its religious purpose and became a host for promoting Moroccan sociopolitical agendas. These activities attest to the mutation Lazama is undergoing. The most striking fact of the changes that the complex is going through is, without a doubt, the establishment of a museum that presents exhibits related to the not-so-distant past of Jewish existence in Southern Morocco.

2.4. The Lazama Museum (MCSJ)

When writing about Moroccan museums dealing with Jewish heritage, anthropologist Aomar Boum contended that “Chaykh Omar Museum (COM) in Akka and the Jewish Museum of Casablanca (JMC) are two such institutions—to my knowledge the only ones in the country—where Moroccan Jewish culture is foregrounded” (Boum 2010, pp. 49–50).

Since the period in which Boum reported about the museums, there has been a dramatic increase in the preoccupation with the image of the Jew in Morocco. Without accounting for the reasons behind this fascinating phenomenon, and as part of this preoccupation, additional museums and exhibitions were opened. “Mimouna Association”, for example, set up a traveling exhibition dealing with Jewish history and culture in Morocco. In the city of Essaouira, a Jewish Museum (Bayt Dakira—the house of memory) was opened following the initiative of Mr. André Azoulay, the senior adviser to King Mohammed VI, and as mentioned, in the Lazama synagogue, the MCSJ was opened.

Some might contend that the Lazama exhibition cannot be considered a museum; the locale is structured and designed so poorly and unprofessionally that it does not match the minimum required to be considered a museum. Some would add that the MCSJ is too small to be considered a museum. Saying that, I endorse the statement that, since “in most countries, there is no ‘statutory’ protection for the label ‘museum’, in practice anyone can set up a firm, construct a factory or restore a cemetery and call it a museum” (Ginsburgh and Mairesse 1997, p. 15). The fuzzy boundaries of such an institution are demonstrated in ICOM’s (the International Council of Museums) definition of a museum: “a non-profit making, permanent institution, in the service of society and its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches and communicates, and exhibits for study, education, and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment”. Therefore, I uncritically endorse Lazama’s MCSJ self-definition as a museum.

Declaring that the MCSJ provides a Jewish perspective would be erroneous; it is more likely a combination of a Moroccan Jewish-Israeli one, an outcome of an initiative of a young Israeli of Moroccan origins who eventually relocated to Marrakech. He is the living spirit behind the project, which, in various ways, offers a counteraction to the desire to maintain the synagogue. After all, the act of museumization is an act of preservation. Thus, it is an act that declares the death of the synagogue or even the community at large.

The heart of the museum consists of two parts: an exhibition of black and white photos (without any apparent order) and thematic rooms. In the distant past, these thematic rooms were, as mentioned, study rooms. Today, these rooms house a few exhibitions: a study room, the material culture of the Amazigh Jews in the Atlas Mountains, a music room, and a video room that briefly presents the history of the Jews of Southern Morocco. As with any self-respecting museum, there is a cubicle selling Judaica artifacts.

Until not long ago, the synagogue had a side entrance, simple in appearance, often closed, and uninviting. Above the door was a small plaque with the name of the synagogue. Behind the door was a dark corridor. Thus, only those who deliberately came to the site (like worshipers) could recognize the entrance to Lazama. About five years ago, the large entrance, which used to be the main one, was reopened. This entry is conspicuous and is open for long hours. It is wide open, so everyone can easily peek at the beautiful indoors. It seems that the change in entrance mainly shows the shifting emphasis on the function of the locale: from a place of prayer to a tourist site.

Immediately upon entering the inner courtyard of the site, visitors experience a drastic change in their senses. Those who enter the site after walking through the side alleys of the mellah are exposed to very little visual stimulation. Outside, the dominant color is reddish earth-brown, the walls are high, and there is plenty of shade. The horizon of the traveler in the alleys is very close. Thus, the inner courtyard gives a sense of surprise and calmness at the same time. The walls of the courtyard are decorated with arabesques in blue and white colors. Green trees are planted in the yard; when in season, the orange color of the oranges, the yellow of the lemons, and the red of the pomegranates stand out. The sound of the gushing water of the fountain in the center of the courtyard adds to the relaxation (especially if they come from the bustling and stormy market of the mellah).

Round mosaic tables are scattered in the inner square, and chairs are arranged around them. Visitors enjoy sitting down, resting, and benefit from the peaceful atmosphere of the place. Some order sweet tea with mint and eat biscuits. The museum’s exhibition is almost an excuse to sit and relax. Indeed, few are interested in the museum’s exhibitions. Only a small part of the visitors read the explanatory page posted there, and it is evident among the tourists that they have an unpleasant feeling, almost reluctance, to enter the synagogue, even though they are encouraged to do so.

Admittedly, a small sign asks those entering the synagogue to wear a kippah on their head, but no one supervises this request. Those who enter stay only a few minutes, take pictures of the building, and immediately leave. The only ones who spend time in the synagogue are Jews and, even more so, Jewish Israelis. These usually come in organized travel groups or large families. When it comes to an organized trip, the guide tells a little about the place, about the “magnificent past” of the community, about the fact that, today, there is a minority of Jews who pray there, and, interestingly, not one of the guides I heard mentioned the fact that, today, the Jewish community of Marrakesh is struggling to organize a minyan to pray. For the most part, the Jewish travelers (Israeli and non-Israeli) take advantage of the visit to have the privilege of praying in the old synagogue.

The Israeli Jews tend to demonstrate a sense of ownership of the place. They do so in various ways, starting with the fact that some of them refuse to pay entrance fees (under the pretext “Since when is it necessary to pay entrance fees to a synagogue?!”) and ending with taking over the space. They ignore the fact that there are other travelers, who are not necessarily Jewish, who want to take advantage of the relaxed ambiance. The Israelis become too loud, and their takeover of the space often prevents access to different corners of the complex.

The steadiest income to the compound is provided by entry fees, defined as “donations” (trouma). The definition of the entry fees as a donation comes from two different motivations. Firstly, since the money is not considered an “entry fee”, it is exempt from taxes. Secondly—and perhaps, most importantly—many Israeli visitors cannot conceive the idea that they need to pay entry fees to a synagogue. Yet, donating to a synagogue is a well-established practice. However, donations are, by definition, voluntary. Consequently, Ben Jalil was compelled to confront Israeli tourists who refused to donate or wished to donate only to the charity box. Indeed, Israeli tourists felt “at home” in Lazama, allowing themselves to behave in ways that otherwise would be considered embarrassing.

From the descriptions of the behavior of the various sorts of tourists, it appears, then, that, while the non-Jews enjoy the stay in a pleasant, protected, and even tranquil complex, taking advantage of the opportunity to observe Jewish material culture, the Jews, and especially the Israelis among them, treat the place mainly as a house of prayer. In this sense, a kind of overlap is created in the split between a museum or a tourist site (for non-Jews) and a house of worship (for Jewish-Israelis). Precisely because of this, it is surprising that the living spirit behind the establishment and maintenance of the museum is an observant Israeli.

2.5. Concluding Remarks

This article presented ethnographically a dilemma that a numerically shrinking religious diaspora community faces: The intersection of religion with a shrinking diaspora engenders difficulties and challenges that require community members’ creativity so as to maintain the unique identity of their Jewish community. The path chosen by the Jewish community in Morocco in general, and that of Marrakech in particular, was a selective opening of the community’s borders. This opening is less challenging than it seems, because, as shown above, Moroccan Jews have a long history of crossing religious boundaries. In contrast to the ostensible tenet that religion necessarily establishes high and impenetrable boundaries, the history of the Jews in Morocco demonstrates not only fruitful meeting points between them and Muslims but also an intimate acquaintance with religious practices and even the crossing of actual religious boundaries.

Therefore, although it seems that the solution to the demographic contraction (i.e., recruiting the Muslims to fill in the ranks) may endanger the autonomous and distinct identity of the Jewish community in Morocco, inviting them into discrete Jewish spaces strengthens the chances of survival of the small community.

As a concluding statement, I should note that, due to the scope of the paper, I did not address significant aspects relating to the issue dealt with here. I am referring to changes in diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, the ensuing entry of tens of thousands of Israeli Jews into Morocco each year, and the impact of their presence on the Jewish community.