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…
The French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, who has faced repeated charges of incitement of hatred toward Jews, was banned from performing in Morocco. Dieudonne was slated to perform on April 29 in Casblanca but organizers had to cancel because authorities withheld their permission for the show, Le Figaro reported Thursday, citing Moroccan media. The show…
Model of a Rabat Jewish bride in her finery / Jewish Museum in Casablanca I was fortunate enough to travel this month to both Morocco and Lithuania — the former for a class trip, the latter for an attempt to become acquainted with the land of my ancestors, including my ancestral hometown of Panevėžys (Ponevezh)….
Moroccan Berbers, seeking to build better ties with Jews, celebrate a traditional wedding / Getty Images One of the most intellectually stimulating weeks of my life was the one I recently spent in Morocco. More than the architecture or the food, the thing that stimulated me most — and that made me think of Ashkenormativity…
A Jewish-owned building was set on fire in a possible anti-Semitic attack in the Moroccan town of Oujad. The March 10 suspected arson in Oujad, located 120 miles south of the capital Rabat, happened at a structure inside a local Jewish cemetery, the news site Telquel.ma reported Thursday. No one was injured in the incident….
Moroccan Jews touted their country’s efforts to preserve Jewish cemeteries at the opening of an exhibition on Morocco in Paris. The preservation efforts, launched in 2010, have restored at least 167 Jewish burial sites, and were celebrated during the Feb. 1 opening of the “Contemporary Morocco” exhibition at the French capital’s Arab World Institute, the…
Morocco lifted its ban on the movie “Exodus: Gods and Kings” after Fox Studios and director Ridley Scott took out offensive dialogue. Morocco had banned the film because of dialogue that implied that one of the characters was God. In Islam it is forbidden to give God a corporeal form. The movie was banned on…
Call it a confirmation bias. Everywhere I turned this year, I saw a new expression of Arab Jewish identity. The revival seems to be happening across all fields — literature, food, music — yet somehow nobody’s talking about it. As an Arab Jewish writer (my family hails from Morocco, India and Iraq), I couldn’t be…
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