A rabbi’s dream of Morocco

It’s on a Jewish study trip to Morocco (with the inimitable Melbourne educator Paul Forgasz) in the city of Fez that I dream of my deceased Rosh Yeshivah, Rabbi Azriel Goldfein. We are in our daily Gemara class but I’ve fallen behind and ask him to help me catch up on the last pages of a Talmudic tract. He is reluctant but concedes, saying he only has a few minutes.

“How odd,” I think when I wake, to dream of my austere Ashkenazi Torah teacher in this most Sephardi of lands. But then, on reflection, perhaps not so odd – for Fez was once a place of Jewish scholarship and academic excellence. It is still regarded as the intellectual capital of Morocco, Casablanca being the economic capital and Marrakesh the political one.

It was here that Maimonides fled to escape the radical Almohad Muslims. It was here he is said to have studied at one of the oldest universities in the world. It was here in one of the supposedly 13,000 seductively serpentine alleys in the Melah (ancient Jewish area) you can find the tiny house that Judaism’s greatest philosopher – revered by all Jews, Ashkenazi and Sephardi – lived for a few years before migrating to Egypt. An incongruous sign alerts you: “Four metres to Moroccan Restaurant at the Philosopher Maimonides House.” I wonder what the illustrious Rambam would have made of this.

The historical and current relationship between Jews and Muslims in Morocco is a story of some horror and yet more of honour. There were times of forced conversion and even brutal intimidation of Jews and other non-Muslims. Yet for the most part Jews thrived, built countless shules and houses of learning and practised their Judaism without fear. They did not suffer the endless pogroms, auto da fes and expulsions as they did in Christian Europe. In modern times (before 1948) some 200,000 Jews lived here and, unlike the rest of the Arab countries, Morocco did not force them to leave. Under the centuries-old Moroccan monarchy Jews have been protected and fully accepted by their fellow citizens. The current King’s closest adviser is a Jew.

I felt more comfortable wearing my kippah in Moroccan cities than I often do in Melbourne’s CBD. The community may have shrunk to just several thousand, but in Casablanca you can find a minyan, kosher food and a Jewish school. Most astonishingly, Jewish Dayanim sit as respected officials in the Casablanca Court.