Returning to routes
In 1945 Morocco was home to more than a quarter of a million Jews, the largest such population across the Middle East and North Africa. Today, perhaps 2,000 Jews reside there, while nearly a million Jews of Moroccan descent constitute a vibrant and highly mobile global diaspora. Through migration and their shared history, memory, and culture, they shaped what it means to be a Moroccan Jew.
Through case studies in diverse centers of Moroccan Jewish life—from the Negev desert to cosmopolitan Montreal—this thesis focuses on migrants’ agency in navigating the political upheavals of the twentieth century and examines how the notion of their origins in Morocco inspired community development, identity construction, and collective action. It details unexplored episodes of Jewish life in independent Morocco, such as the teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle who helped build the nation-state, or the teacher of Moroccan descent born abroad who found that Morocco was where she belonged. Offering new perspectives on under-researched communities, this thesis follows the routes taken by migrants and illuminates the networks which, across vast distances, bind the members of this diaspora to each other and to their roots.
Through its many revealing and sometimes personal stories, this thesis posits that Moroccan Jewish history did not end with mass emigration, but rather entered a new chapter. Blending macro and microhistory, it tells the story of how Moroccan Jews became Moroccan Jews by overcoming the challenges of migration and building connections in a modern example of transnational diaspora-making in a globalized world.