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In recent years Israel has witnessed an astonishing revival of hagiolatric traditions . Old-time saints’ sanctuaries are glowing with renewed popularity, new ones are being added to the native “sacred geography,” and the list of contemporary charismatic rabbis acknowledged as tzaddikim (sing. tzaddik, a pious man, endowed with holiness) is constantly growing (Gonen 1998). The cult of the saints in contemporary Israel clearly exceeds narrow ethnic boundaries, but the imprint of the Jewish Maghrebi legacy of saint veneration has been evident in many of its manifestations (Bilu 2001). Given the central role of Moroccan Jews and their descendants in this hagiolatric revival, my aim in this chapter is threefold. First, by way of introduction, I situate Jewish Moroccan saint worship in the proper historical context and present its current manifestations in Israel. Second, focusing on the vicissitudes of Maghrebi-based sancti¤cation in one setting, the town of Netivot in southern Israel, I explore the processes by which charisma is manufactured, maintained, and contested under present-day “modern” and “postmodern” circumstances. Noting that Weber, in introducing charisma to the social sciences, asserted that “charismatic authority” may be alleged or presumed rather than actual (Weber 1946:296), I take a constructivist approach to charisma, viewing it as tenuous, processual, and amenable to calculated use and manipulation. Third, shifting my gaze from processes and mechanisms of charismatization to the setting where they have been deployed, I seek to account for the fact that these activities have been thriving in places such as Netivot, situated in the urban periphery of the country. JEWISH SAINT WORSHIP IN MOROCCO AND ISRAEL Saint worship played a major role in the lives of the Jews in traditional Morocco and constituted a basic component of their ethnic identity. In form, style, and 2 The Making of Saints and the Vicissitudes of Charisma in Netivot, Israel Yoram Bilu prevalence this cultural phenomenon clearly bears the hallmarks of indigenous saint worship, perhaps the most signi¤cant feature of Moroccan Islam (Crapanzano 1973; Eickelman 1976; Geertz 1968; Gellner 1969). At the same time, however, it was also reinforced by the deep-seated conception of the tzaddik in classical Jewish sources (Goldberg 1983; Stillman 1982). Most of the Jewish Moroccan saints were charismatic rabbis, distinguished by their erudition and piety, and were believed to possess a special spiritual force, which did not fade away after death. This force, akin to the Moroccan Muslim Baraka (Rabinow 1975; Westermarck 1926), could be utilized for the bene¤t of the saints’ adherents. In contrast with their Muslim counterparts, most of the Jewish Moroccan tzaddikim were identi¤ed as such only after their deaths. Therefore , their miraculous feats were usually associated with their tombs. At the same time, however, the strong sense of inherited blessedness inherent in the Jewish notion of zekhut avot (literally, the virtue of the ancestors) allowed for the emergence of some dynasties of tzaddikim. The best known were the Abu-Hatseiras, the Pintos, and the Ben-Baruchs (Ben-Ami 1984). Generally speaking, the presence of the saints was a basic given in the social reality of Moroccan Jews, a central idiom for articulating a wide range of experiences . The main event in the veneration of each saint was the collective pilgrimage to his tomb on the anniversary of his death and hillulah (celebration) there. In the case of the more renowned saints, thousands of pilgrims from various regions would gather around the tombs for several days, during which they feasted on sacri¤cial cattle, drank mahia (arak), danced and chanted, prayed, and lit candles. All these activities, combining marked spirituality and high ecstasy with mundane concerns, were conducted in honor of the tzaddik. In addition to collective pilgrimages, visits to saints’ sanctuaries were made on an individual basis in times of plight. As intermediaries between God Almighty and the believers, the saints were considered capable of solving problems that included the whole range of human concerns. The presence of the saint was also strongly felt in daily routine, as people would cry out his name and dream about him whenever facing a problem. At home, candles were lit and festive meals (se’udot) were organized in his honor. In many cases the relationship with the saint amounted to a symbiotic association spanning the entire life course of the devotee. Rather than a frozen set of cultural vestiges, however, Jewish Maghrebi hagiolatry was a dynamic system, accommodating to shifting circumstances , in which new saints and shrines successively emerged, sank, and resurfaced . The social...

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