The Not-So Forgotten Jews of Marrakesh

Daniel Estrin
Brandeis University and Ben Gurion University of the Negev

As I wander aimlessly through the maze of crooked alleyways that make up the Jewish quarter of the old city of Marrakesh in southern Morocco, I gaze up at the tall buildings and can’t help but smirk. Here I am, a Jew studying for a year in Beer Sheva, Israel, who descended (that’s what you say in Hebrew when you leave the country) from Beer Sheva with a friend during winter break to go visit the slums of the Jewish quarter, passing houses that once belonged to Moroccan Jews before they ascended to Israel and ended up in a hole called Beer Sheva. The thought that I may have passed some old guy in the streets of Beer Sheva who once used to live in one of these houses instilled in me a sudden sense of belonging to a place that would otherwise be an exotic tourist destination. To tell the truth, I wasn’t expecting to emotionally invest myself in Morocco any more than the obligatory exchange of travelers’ cheques.

We’re on a search for Yaffa Ben-Harush, one of the few remaining Jews left in the Jewish quarter, the Mellah. With address in hand, we scour the Mellah in attempt to find this unique Jewish living remnant of the days of yore, when a large Jewish community filled the Mellah—"yore" having lasted until about fifty years ago when most Jews moved en masse to Israel, were hoarded into temporary immigrant camps (Unique Phenomenon in the Hebrew Language: "temporary" in Hebrew always means "permanent"), many of which eventually became the development towns of today. Many Moroccans live in Beer Sheva, where I am living this year.

Entering the old city of Marrakesh is an experience in time-travel back to medieval times: the city is walled with gates, the open-air bazaar features snake charmers and storytellers, the narrow streets are lined with screaming vendors selling their goods, the occasional donkey passes through the tight squeeze. The chaos of sellers and smells and screams is amplified in the Mellah, and scores of men of all ages sit idly on the roads. After most of the Jews left and Muslims moved in and occupied the Jews’ houses, the Mellah truly became the slums of Marrakesh. We are searching for Yaffa’s house, 33 Saka Rd., to no avail. An old man sitting on the street near an orange vendor asks us what we are looking for. When we mention Yaffa’s name, he gets up and takes us to her house—apparently there aren’t too many Yaffas around Marrakesh.

We stop abruptly in a narrow passageway. In front of us is an enormous green arched door with a large brass knocker and doorknob in the middle. A small woman dressed in striped fabric answers the door, her headscarf tied simply around her head and her wide eyes staring up at us. "Yaffa?" We ask. She mutters something in Arabic and scurries off inside the house. A couple of seconds later she gestures for us to enter. We step into the middle of a beautiful living room-cum-courtyard, two stories high with no roof. Tiles intricately painted in blue decorative patterns cover the floor and walls; some Lubavitch Jewish calendars are tacked up around the room.

Then a large, stout woman appears from the kitchen, a colorful scarf wrapped around her head and gold necklaces dangling from her neck. Her eyes are piercing. "Bonjour," Yaffa states, sitting down with us. We begin to speak in our pidgin French, telling her we are students from Israel. She begins to speak in a French-accented Hebrew: "I lived in Israel for a couple of years. But it was hard. I like it here better." Yaffa is not alone; there are many accounts of Moroccan immigrants who left Israel dissatisfied and returned home.

Yaffa disappears into the kitchen for a while as we sit on the couch in an adjoining room. Her Hebrew isn’t so hot, and neither is our French. She returns, screams at three women-servants carrying a large kettle of tea and some biscuits to the table, and hits the one who answered the door on the top of her head; apparently because she didn’t clean the table well enough before they set the food down. Yaffa and her three servants join us around the table.

Our conversation over tea and biscuits is frustrating because of the language barrier, and repeatedly interrupted by Yaffa yelling something in Moroccan Arabic to her servants. Yaffa thinks we are yeshiva bukhers who are soliciting for money; we are trying to explain to her that we are not yeshiva bukhers…it’s quite an uncomfortable visit. She tells us to come back the next day and she will direct us towards the synagogue.

Friday afternoon we stumble upon Yaffa’s house again. Yaffa is not home, but a young boy—a friend of Yaffa’s son Moshe—takes us to the synagogue. We enter through a narrow door into the synagogue courtyard that is beautifully tiled blue and white. The synagogue itself is well kept; many prayer books rest on the shelves in the back, the ark is made of smooth dark marble, and a clock hangs on the wall that says "Ashdod Industries" in Hebrew. Ashdod is another immigrant town not far from Beer Sheva; I chuckled again, imagining a dissatisfied Moroccan immigrant leaving Israel to return to Marrakesh—bringing back with him a timely reminder of the Holy Land.

Old men that live in rooms in the synagogue complex wander into the synagogue, nicely dressed. They mutter, "Shabbat Shalom." The tenth person to enter is a tall, white-bearded man wearing a traditional Moroccan robe, or jalaba, and with his entrance the Friday night service begins. The Song of Songs is read out loud, each man reading a chapter. When it comes to my friend Noam’s turn, he reads the chapter carefully; when he mispronounces, the men shout out the correct pronunciation. After that the men skip over Noam and me for the remainder of the reading. Immediately following is the Kabbalat Shabbat prayer, sung out loud in a semi-drone, reading one prayer immediately after the next, as if there were no break between the last word of the first prayer and the first word of the next. The service ends as abruptly as it began, "Shabbat Shalom" is exchanged again with the congregants, and everyone disappears back into their respective rooms in the synagogue complex.

Why weren’t they elated to see us? We helped complete the minyan! Why weren’t they excited to see two young Jewish males at their synagogue in the middle of the slums of the Mellah in Marrakesh? We came from Israel!

All of these questions run through my mind as we leave the synagogue and enter the real world of Marrakesh where Moroccan after Moroccan follows us—"Hello! How are you?" they ask in every language imaginable—and hassles us to buy hashish or attempts to swindle us into some kind of purchase. In this world, we are branded as Tourists with Fat Wallets. That night, and at Yaffa’s, we had hoped to be seen differently, to be welcomed into the bosom of their dwindled Jewish community. But to them we were tourists as well—passing visitors into their insular community of men who get up from their beds, walk next door to synagogue, pray in the same fashion they have been praying for decades, and return to their rooms.

Besides, I imagine that the fact that we came from Israel didn’t impress too many of them, either. Been there, done that.

[Posted 4/7/05]