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CHAPTER IX The Alliance and the Jewish Communities in Independent Morocco: 1956-1962 Dans Ie Maroc independant les juifs ne seront victimes d'aucune discrimination . A~ad Balafrej, /stiqlal Party Secretary in 1955. 1. Educational and Social Activities: The Impact The massive departure of Jews to Israel, France, and the Americas from both urban centers and from the Atlas mountains after the protectorates were dismantled and Morocco was unified, did not signify a complete dissolution of their communities. Whereas 240,000 Jews lived in Morocco in 1952, the communities remained sizable: 160,000 in 1960, with continued emigration since the early 1960s. As late as 1966 thre were 60,000 Jews in the country, and only after the Arab-Israeli War of June 1967 did the size of the community decrease significantly once again. Yet in 1962 the communities were still of great numerical significance despite the departures. Whereas in the late 1950s and early 1960s Algerian Jewry on the eve of the country's independence were hurriedly leaving for France, and where a similar trend was already in motion in Tunisia, the Moroccan Jewish communities moved more slowly. As seen in chapter VII, 13.2 percent of the employed male and 23.8 percent of the same category of employed female Jewish population were employed in the administrative sector of independent Morocco (1960). Further, the educational and extraeducational activities of the AIU, the OH, the Lubavitchers, ORT, and OSE eventually continued to function unhampered, even if, as we shall see, they were confronted with difficulties. These organizations now faced reduced problems. And as impoverished Jews from the Atlas and other regions departed for Israel and overcrowded conditions in the me/raJ: of Casablanca to which Jews migrated in the 1940s and 1950s was reduced through emigration, these organizations could better concentrate on the urban population. Educationally, the AIU led the way with more than eighty schools and 33,000 students in 1956. The AIU supported the arabization policies and, at 321 322 The Jewish Communities and the Alliance between 19.56 and 1962 the same time, continued to develop Jewish education together with the OH. It also collaborated with ORT, the JDC, and other organizations. The problem of arabization was foreseen by Reuben Tajouri in the pre-1956 period. Until his death in November 1960 and his replacement as AIU delegate by Elias Harrus, and unlike Semach, his less compromising francophile predecessor, Tajouri had faced reality: Arabic had to be taught at all grade levels at the AIU, in order to win sympathy for the network from a future independent Moroccan government on th,e one hand, and to prepare Jewish youths, culturally, for the new Morocco. But Tajouri's tactic of training Arabic teachers at the ENH and thus solving two problems at once, preparing both Arabic and Hebrew teachers, was perhaps relevant for young emerging teachers. Yet what was supposed to be done with teachers already employed at the AIU schools who had known French and Hebrew, but no literary Arabic? After all, both the Moroccan-born teachers, now a majority of the network's personnel (70 percent), and their non-Moroccan counterparts were not prepared to meet this new challenge. Tajouri, howevf:r, found a devoted partner in Halm Zafrani, one of the few AIU teachers from the ENIO who had learned lih:rary Arabic at his native community of Mogador and later at several French institutes for Arabic language education in Rabat and Casablanca. He was destined, after 1956, to become both an AIU functionary and an inspector in the new Ministry of National Education, for Arabic studies in Jewish schools. 1 As the AIU was in .a hurry to expose its personnel to Arabic education, Zafrani, together with his wife, prepared special Arabic instruction manuals for the teachers in the early part of 1956 and organized "crash" courses in Arabic during evenings, weekends, and vacations; the AIU did not wish to be left behind as Morocco moved toward independenc1 ;: and, at the same time, wanted to avoid alienating the nationalists, most of whom considered the AIU an anachronism and did not acknowledge the AIU position that without its presence Jewish education in the communities would be endangered . The AIU, then, was arabizing as rapidly as possible for the privilege of preserving its immense influence in Morocco. Zafrani's efforts brought concrete results. And the dual effort of the ENH and Zafrani led 0 the emergence in the late 1950s a.nd early 1960s of...

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