(JTA) — Several hundred Moroccan Jews protested against U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s characterization of Western Sahara as occupied by the North African kingdom. The April 30 protest in Mazagan, 120 mile southwest of Rabat, was part of Mimouna, a traditional North African Jewish celebration held the day after Passover, and it featured group singing of…
The line to enter New York City’s B’nai Jeshurun synagogue on Sunday night went around the block. But the 700 people who crowded the sidewalk on West 88th street weren’t there for services. Or for a wedding. Or a late-night bar mitzvah. They came to celebrate a king — a Moroccan king, to be exact….
(JTA) — Raizel Raskin’s office feels like a cluttered museum of Moroccan Jewish heritage. A photo from an old Jewish summer camp lays on the table. Another, of a rabbi meeting Moroccan dignitaries, hangs on the wall. Outside the door is a bookshelf filled with Hasidic tracts translated into Arabic. But the rest of Chabad’s multistory…
The Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed concern at what it describes as a proliferation of expressions of anti-Semitism in Morocco. Shimon Samuels, the center’s director of international affairs, conveyed this concern Monday, following the airing of videos from Sunday’s mass demonstration in Casablanca in support of Palestinians, which featured men dressed as haredi Orthodox Jews destroying…
A pro-Palestinian demonstration in the Moroccan city of Casablanca featured men dressed as Orthodox Jews who were being led at gunpoint by masked men wearing kaffiyehs. The demonstration was held Sunday with permission from local police, according to a report which appeared Sunday on the news website alyaexpress-news.com. It also featured a video of the…
(JTA) — Why the Jews want etrogs, Mohammed Douch does not entirely understand. What he does know is that they are his main customers. Each August and September, Jewish merchants come from around the world to his remote grove in the highlands of Morocco — an hourlong hike through mountains, over rocks and along cliffsides….
Am I a person of color? You’d think there would be a straightforward answer to a question like that. And for a while, I thought there was. I thought the answer was yes. When I look at my grandparents — four Mizrahim, or Jews from Arab lands — I see people who were born in…
The Moroccan government plans to rehabilitate the ancient Jewish quarter of Marrakesh. The Jewish quarter renovation, estimated to cost $20 million, is part of a larger $32 million city rehabilitation effort jointly funded by Morocco’s housing ministry and the City of Marrakesh, Morocco World News reported. Marrakesh’s Jewish quarter, known as the Mellah, was built…
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