Abstract

This article examines the Alumni Association of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Tangier through the organization's bulletins, published between 1893 and 1913. The Alumni Association was a group of self-consciously modernizing Jews who, as graduates of the Alliance school, wanted to help spread European culture and values they had imbibed as students to other Jews in Tangier and beyond. Through their annual bulletins, the Alumni Association members created their own version of modernity, one inspired by yet distinct from that of the Alliance itself. The organization encouraged Jews to emulate Europe, yet it also promoted a feeling of belonging to a Moroccan Jewish community—a group with which few Jews affiliated before the colonial period. Using the Alumni Association as a lens, this article looks at the impact of the Alliance and its schooling on Jews in Morocco, and at how these Jews embraced the project of modernity in their own unique way.

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