Emancipation and Its Discontents: Jews at the Formative Period of Colonial Rule in Morocco

In 1918, the sultan of Morocco, under the control of the French protectorate authorities, issued a decree to reorganize the Moroccan Jewish communities. Often represented as "emancipation," the meaning of the legal and social reforms of the communities of Morocco were much more ambiguous and tentative than the term implies. Although the autonomous institutions of the Jewish community were weakened by the changes implemented by the protectorate government, Jews remained indigenous Moroccan subjects, and advocates of colonial emancipation failed to obtain French citizenship for Moroccan Jews, as was the case in Algeria. The French colonial government, European Jewry, and the Moroccan modernizing elite brought about far-reaching changes, but modernity was achieved without producing the general secularization of Jewish society. A larger sense of "Moroccan Judaism" was created out of what had formerly been loosely connected and relatively autonomous communities.