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CHAPTER I: Background of the Activities of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Morocco: The T'raditional Jewish Society
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CHAPTER I Background of the Activities of the Alliance /sral?/ite Universelle in Morocco: The T'raditional Jewish Society At the time of Moroccan independence the Jewish communities there were by far the most important in the Muslim world. Moreover, they ranked among the world's largest along with North American, Soviet, French, Argentinean, South African, and British Jewry, and were estimated at between 210-240,000. The Moroccan Jewish communities, like their counterparts elsewhere in the Muslim world, were and still are neglected by scholars. H. Z. Hirschberg, who pioneered in the writing of scholarly studies concerning Maghribi Jewry, deplored the treating of this diaspora as a backwater of Jewish history, with only a handful of scholars giving the Jewish periphery the attention it deserves. l Only recently has Moroccan Jewry received serious attention from scholars who recognized the importance of the population that has dwelt in the area for 2,300 years. 1. The Maghribi Jewish Communities before the Advent of Islam The recorded history of the Maghrib begins with the founding of Carthage in 813 B.C. For 667 years, until its fall to the Romans, Carthage shaped North Africa into its own Semitic mold; not even the Romans were able to uproot the Oriental civilization left by the oldest and most tenacious colonizers of the Mediterranean, the Jews and Phoenicians of Palestine.2 The number of Jews who left Palestine with the Phoenicians after 586 B.C., when the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem took place under Nebuchadnezzar, is difficult to ascertain. It is known, however, that the Jewish population in the Maghrib was numerically strengthened in A.D. 70, the date of the second destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem by Titus. While many of the survivors fled to Babylonia, a significant number of the Jews sought refuge in North Africa. Until the fall of Car8 Activities of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Morocco 9 thage to the Romans (146 B.C.), the Jews, in partnership with the Phoenicians , placed North Africa under Semitic influences. Later, under the Romans, the state religion became Christianity. The Romans were succeeded by the Vandals, the Vandals by the Byzantines, and the Byzantines by the Arabs. In the areas which became Algeria and Tunisia, there were also the Turks, representatives of the Ottoman Empire. The Punic and Jewish impact on the region apparently had far-reaching consequences. In fact, the major source on the spread of the Punic language in North Africa is Saint Augustine; his writings confirm that the Berbers, the earliest inhabitants of North Africa, were speaking Punic several centuries after the fall of Carthage to the Romans. Semitic culture, then, had become deeply rooted among the indigenous population and, as Andre Chouraqui points out, the similarities of Hebrew and Punic were bound to bring about, right from the start, a deep association of Jews and Berbers in the Maghrib; Hebrew and Punic were sister languages. Modern research has confirmed the ancient traditions by showing that Hebrew and Punic shared a common ancestry; these similarities explain the extraordinary extent of the spread of Jewish beliefs in North Africa that prepared the ground for the acceptance of Christianity and eventually of Islam.3 Under the Pax Romano, Judaism in the Maghrib entered a new phase. The Romans allowed the Jewish faith to organize under a naSI, a patriarch resident of Palestine, who was both a spiritual and temporal leader. Hierarchy reached into every community through the primates who headed each province and through the local heads of the communities, thus foreshadowing to some degree the later developments of the Christian hierarchy. Each community was headed by a religious assembly in which full Jews, proselytes , and semiproselytes shared equally, and was governed by an administrative council, usually of nine members, elected by the community. The council directed the finances, supervised the religious organization of the town and represented the interests of the community before the courts and the authorities. It distributed relief, decided on the construction of the synagogues, schools, and libraries. The synagogues were the center of all Jewish activity, of prayer, preaching, study and justice. Jewish communities were granted a large measure of autonomy, of which they were temporarily deprived only during the worst of their struggles against the Romans.4 Details on the spread of the Jewish faith among the Berbers are scarce. We learn from Hirschberg's guess that it is impossible to assume that the conversion of many Berber tribes...