Purim in Casablanca: Celebrating in Gaza's shadow

The Hill

10-03-2025

For Morocco's Jews, the festival of Purim, beginning March 13, has contemporary resonance, illustrating the tenuous existence of diaspora Jewish communities throughout history and the world. Last year and this, the Gaza War cast a shadow over the holiday, which is traditionally celebrated with costumes and sweets.
Purim commemorates a close Jewish brush with genocide in ancient Persia. As read from a scroll called a Megillah, it is a tale of palace intrigue, including the wily Jewish courtier Mordecai and his beautiful cousin Esther, destined to be queen and her people's savior. There is, of course, a villain: Haman, the evil architect of the plot to exterminate Persia's Jews.
In many ways, the Purim story exemplifies the history of Morocco's Jews for more than two millennia: an ancient, all-powerful potentate controlling his loyal Jewish subjects' fate.
Morocco's Jewish community, once 300,000 strong, now numbers about 3,000, most living in Casablanca. Hamas's brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel and subsequent conflict involving Gaza, Lebanon and Iran (ancient Persia) have raised questions about the North African kingdom's vaunted tolerance for its few remaining Jewish citizens.
At the same time, hope and confidence exist among Jews there. As in the original Purim story, today's Moroccan Jews have friends in high places. A modern Jewish Mordecai, a hero of the Megillah's palace drama, would be André Azoulay, who is Jewish. He is King Mohammed VI's senior — some say most influential — advisor. Azoulay, whose office is in the Rabat palace, comes from an old family from the coastal Atlantic city of Essaouira, which was once half Jewish.
A beautiful Queen Esther would be Andre's stylish daughter Audrey, former minister of culture and now the Director-General of UNESCO, which oversees grants to world heritage sites, including Moroccan Jewish neighborhoods.
Last Purim, a clamorous Casablanca crowd packed Ohalel Haim, a Chabad congregation. Nearby, a smaller, quieter group gathered at the elegant, historic Beth-El synagogue. For both congregations, listening to the Megillah had many echoes. Each welcomed American visitors and expressed cautious confidence regarding their community's safety, thanks to the kingdom's omnipresent security services. But local angry, large pro-Palestinian rallies concerned worshippers.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, the head of a Morocco-based media group, Ahmed Charai, published an article with the headline, 'We Are All Israelis,' which provoked a backlash in Morocco, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Since the Gaza War began, police and military guards at Moroccan Jewish sites have grown. Across town is Morocco's Jewish Museum. Last year, several armed, uniformed guards outside scrutinized holiday visitors. Inside, a glass display features a collection of scrolls, including 'The Hitler Megillah,' evidently a World War II-era parody with the Fuhrer's name replacing Haman's.
Last year, museum curator Zhor Rehihil said the October events in Israel and Gaza left her sad and frustrated. Despite no incidents or attacks on the museum, Rehihil, a Muslim with a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies, had to cancel long-standing intercommunal educational efforts, and an iftar fast-breaking dinner during Ramadan, which that year (and this) coincided with Purim. She worked hard but sometimes felt the war had destroyed all her efforts to promote peaceful coexistence.
In November 2024, Morocco's foreign minister, Nasser Bourita, reaffirmed his nation's diplomatic ties with Israel for the first time since Oct. 7 and the subsequent Gaza war.
However, this support was not unqualified. The government walks a diplomatic tight rope, both domestically and internationally. 'Morocco has strongly condemned, at the highest levels, Israeli attacks on civilians, hospitals, and schools, deeming them unacceptable,' Bourita told French publication Le Point.
'This approach [reaffirming diplomatic ties to Israel] should not be seen as abandoning the Palestinian cause. Morocco's position on Palestine remains a priority,' added Bourita. He emphasized Morocco's Jewish heritage as a basis for this complex relationship, given widespread anti-Israel protests in the kingdom.
Some Moroccan Jews claim, without persuasive evidence so far, that Jews first arrived in what is now Morocco sometime after destruction of Jerusalem's First Temple in 586 B.C.E. While retaining their religious identity, they became infused with Berber (also called Amazigh) culture, with some mountain tribespeople intermarrying and converting to Judaism.
Moroccan Jews experienced ups and downs over the subsequent 2,500 years. Jews often prospered as merchants and traders. But in Fez in 1033, inter-tribal warfare saw 3,000 Jews massacred.
When the 12th-century sage Maimonides fled the murderous Almohad Caliphate that ended Spain's 'Golden Age' for Jews, the city of Fez became his haven. The same fundamentalist Almohads that ultimately drove Maimonides to Cairo offered Jews remaining in the city a stark choice: leave, convert to Islam — or die. (Thus, converts' descendants today include a Muslim tourist guide named Mohammed Cohen.)
At the 15th century's end, many Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula by reconquering Spanish Catholics migrated to Morocco's coastal and inland cities. For a time, friction existed between local Amazigh Jews and these newcomers, but over centuries, it has faded.
Today, Morocco remains proud of its Jewish history, and — until the Gaza War — annually welcomed thousands of Israeli tourists. Acknowledgment of Jewish presence in Morocco seems ubiquitous. Synagogues and Jewish cemeteries are being restored at government expense, and several Jewish museums have appeared. Moroccan cities' protected Jewish quarters are being refurbished (and guarded) as commercial markets.
At the Museum of History and Civilizations in Rabat, in the Islamic section, is a clay oil lamp with a miniature menorah attached, found in the Roman garrison town Volubilis around the fourth century. Some tombstones recovered from the ruins bear Hebrew inscriptions.
In the original Purim story, Persia's Jews evade planned genocide, but the deliverance miracle was not unalloyed. In response to a previous decree, calling on Jews' enemies to kill them, the king issued a new, equally draconian proclamation. It authorized Jews to take up arms, and 'to assemble and to protect themselves, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish the entire host of every people and province that oppress them, small children and women.' The Megillah says Jews slaughtered 75,000 people.
'Most of us ignore the violence that concludes the Esther scroll,' writes Peter Beinart, author of the new book 'Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.' 'The ending reads differently when Jews wield life-and-death power over millions of Palestinians who lack even a passport. Today, these blood-soaked verses should unsettle us.
'More often, we look away. We focus on what they tried to do to us. Purim isn't only about the danger gentiles pose to us. It's also about the danger we pose to them.'