An Historical Hinge

I am writing this entry on November 13, 2023.  Occasional readers of this blog may have been confused by the last few entries, referencing events of our Moroccan trip that took place nearly two months ago.

“Are you back in Olympia?” one friend recently asked. 

I explained a couple of blog entries ago that I have been struggling to both write new entries and more generally come to a psychologically healthy place given the horrors of October 7 in Israel and Gaza and all the subsequent compounding of horrors.

Prior to October 7, I had planned to do a presentation at our synagogue’s monthly Senior Schmooze session that I would call “Traveling Jewishly.”  I would talk about the Jewish history of Morocco and Spain, discuss Jean’s and my experiences and explorations of the Jewish sites and people we encountered, and show pictures along the way.  But someone asked me a few days ago whether I would have gone to the Jewish places I went to and been as upfront about my own Jewishness with the guides we followed if we were to do the trip now. I instantly felt the hinge of the October 7 event.  No, I don’t think I would do the same tour.  No, my own sense of safety as a Jew in Morocco and even in Spain would be different now.

Nevertheless, our experiences – especially my personal experiences and emotions – in traveling Jewishly on the recently completed trip feel important to document. So… here are a few incidences and perhaps insights that highlight the Jewish angle of the trip.

In Meknes

I informed our guide, Essam, that I was Jewish, and he brought us to a jewelry shop in the souk that he said was owned by a Jewish merchant.  The shop did indeed have a bit of Judaica mixed in with many non-Jewish pieces.

When Essam greeted the shop proprietor, he introduced me as Jewish.  The man suddenly began to tear up, opened his arms, and hugged me.  He explained that he was in the process of closing the shop in the next few weeks because he was moving to Israel to be with his extended family.  Then he switched gears to see what Jean wanted to buy.  He assured me that he would make an especially good deal for us.

Jean looked at some bracelets that she liked, but I informed the shop owner that we really weren’t in the market.  Soon, he separated me from Jean and we began a bargaining session – one that I honestly had no interest in being part of.  He poured me a cup of sweet tea.  We talked about Israel. And my protestations of disinterest in purchasing anything notwithstanding, I ended up indeed buying Jean a bracelet.

The thing is, of course, that that shop looked in no way like it was about to close.  The proprietor was extremely intent on bargaining.  And my best guess is that he was in no way Israel bound.  I doubt he was even Jewish.  To which I say, “THAT’S an authentic souk experience!”

In Fes

The city of Fes is one of the world’s most important historic urban centers. As various sultanates and empires conquered then lost the area now known as Morocco, Fes was at times the political, intellectual, or religious capital, and/or center for trade and commerce.  It still has what is claimed to be the oldest continuously operated university in the world and is now Morocco’s second largest city (nearly 1million inhabitants).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fez,_Morocco

Like much of the rest of Morocco, there is an extraordinarily important Jewish heritage but few Jews remaining.  There were far more Jewish bodies in the cemetery we visited than living Jews in town. Wikipedia pegs the number now to be about 150.  Our guide in Fes, Khlefa, said that there are about 40 families living in the Ville Nouveau portion of the city.

But around the year 1150, and for ten years thereafter, the Jewish physician and scholar, Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) lived in Fes.  He was said to have written his most profoundly influential work, the “Mishna Torah”, while in the city.  More on Maimonides later in this blog, as he was born in Cordoba, Spain, but chased out when Jews were forced to convert to Islam, be executed, or go to exile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides

The Jewish cemetery in Fes was larger and more orderly than the one in Meknes.  The lack of names on most of the tombs was said to reflect the abrupt and massive death of the population that occurred due to a pandemic.

There was also substantial monumentation to the significant Jewish personages in Fes. Note the three languages, French, English and Hebrew.

Khlefa did bring us to a couple of synagogues, which functioned now as historic sites more than actual sites of worship.  To me, their residual beauty spoke in wistful harmonies.

Inside Synagogue Al Fassiyine in Fes.

An historic synagogue restored.

Entering a restored – but empty – synagogue in Fes.

In Seville

I knew we would be in Marrakech during Rosh Hashanah. I also knew we would be in Seville during Yom Kippur. Fortunately, I found a progressive Jewish congregation in town that was open to Jewish travelers attending services. So, we booked the hotel where the Yom Kippur services would occur, registered and paid for the privilege of joining the congregation, and I was able to spend the day with fellow Jews fasting and praying on the holiest day of the Hebrew calendar. Jean got laundry done and was able to relax a bit and order restaurant meals in her mostly fluent Spanish.

The congregation in Seville was tiny.  For the High Holy Days, it brought in a rabbi from Barcelona to lead services. Attendance drew from a small set of American Jewish ex-pats living in southern Spain, as well as the few Spanish Jews living year-round in the area. 

Yom Kippur services were mostly in Hebrew and Spanish, but there were also English language siddurs available and some English translations throughout the day.  With the combination of my broken Spanish and minimal Hebrew skills, I surprisingly got by.  Also surprising for me was that many of the tunes – like I experienced in Marrakech – were Ashkenazi, not Sephardic.  In the land of Sepharad, there were almost no native Sephardic Jews!

Of course, we all know why the Jewish community is so tiny in Spain. As was described to us by a Road Scholar tour guide, in 1492, the King and Queen of Spain struck a deal with the Catholic pope.  The church would help fund Christopher Columbus’s expedition and others like it, but only if the Spanish royals would help cleanse their country of heathens. Thus was born the Spanish Inquisition, which, to my surprise included not only conversion, murder or expulsion of the Moors (Muslims) and Jews, but also the Christian protestants.

Throughout the rest of our visit to Spain, the results of the various successful efforts to rid the country of its religiously tolerant past was a constant theme.

In Cordoba

As the Jewish Quarter in Morocco is commonly called the Mellah, so is the name in Spain called the Juderia. And the reality is basically the same, but with more direct and effective tragic consequences.  The Spanish Jewish Quarters have no Jews because they were “inquisition-ed” out of them!

Cordoba is, however, a very significant part of the world Jewish story, as the birthplace of the aforementioned Maimonides.  Our Road Scholar tour guide took us briefly to the Juderia to see a statue of Maimonides and visit a tiny synagogue site.  Jean and I split from the group for a half hour around lunch time to return to the Juderia and run through a local Jewish museum.

Statute of Maimonides in Cordoba’s Jewish Quarter.

A tradition is to touch the foot of Maimonides and then press your lips to your hand. 

Inside Cordoba’s synagogue.

Cordoba’s Jewish Museum

Inside Cordoba’s Jewish museum.  “Casa Sefarad:  A unique view In the heart of the Jewish Quarter.”

It would be the last “Jewish thing” we would do on this trip. 

I will leave it for another blog entry to explore non-Jewish aspects of the last portion of our trip to Morocco and Spain.  But the retrospective context of Jewish loss in Sepharad and the current crisis in Israel and its effects on the entire world – not just the Jewish world – has left me profoundly troubled.