By David Volk, Special to JTNews
The Internet isn’t especially helpful when you want to visit Jewish Morocco. Oh sure, there are quite a few sites that mention the history of the Jews in this North African country, but there’s really not much practical information on what to see and where to go.
If you want the real scoop, you’ve got to go to Raphael Elmaleh.
Although he bills himself as the country’s only Jewish tour guide, as I discovered during a recent visit to Morocco, he’s more than just your average guide who happens to know the right places and people. He is the right people and everyone who is anyone knows him.
A native Casablancan who chose to stay in England after being sent to boarding school, Elmaleh reluctantly returned for a short visit to take care of his ailing mother and stuck around. His mother convinced him to take a job with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, traveling to remote villages to find Jews interested in moving to Israel.
His travels into the country’s furthest outposts sparked his curiosity and led him to look for more signs of Jewish life.
“I started to do my own research on the Jewish heritage of Morocco, a history lost for 2,500 years. It made me fall in love,” an article in the j. Jewish News Weekly of Northern California quoted him as saying.
He found evidence of Jewish populations in the least likely of places.
For example, Elmaleh says he went to visit a distant southern village to check out reports of a long-abandoned synagogue and discovered an elderly Muslim man who had agreed to watch over the building when the last Jews left town years before. After the man gave Elmaleh the keys, the de facto caretaker asked him, “What took you so long?”
Elmaleh likes the story because it illustrates the unique relationship Muslims and Jews have had here. While people from both religions have been duking it out with whatever weapons are at hand in other countries for centuries, both groups have peacefully co-existed in Morocco for more than a thousand years.
He attributes much of the good relationship to the sheer size and longevity of the country’s population and the Berbers’ tradition of tolerance. Many Jews fled there after the destruction of the first Temple and the community grew so large that there were more than 260,000 at the close of World War II.
The Jewish population went into rapid decline after the foundation of Israel with more than 100,000 people emigrating between 1948 and 1967. As communities shrank and later disappeared, the last Jews to leave often turned to Muslims or Arab Berbers for help and asked them to watch over their synagogues.
They took their responsibilities so seriously that many synagogues remained undisturbed until Elmaleh arrived on the scene.
“I fell in love [with Morocco] because in the south the Berber people were so warm to the Jews,” he told me. “I wanted to restore the synagogues just to revive the history.”
What began with a bit of curiosity has become Elmaleh’s life’s work. He started by removing all of the items found in five synagogues in such cities as Taroudant, Tetouan, and Er Rachidia. Then he transferred them to the permanent collection of the Moroccan Jewish Museum in Casablanca to protect against theft while he worked on restoration efforts.
“We have artifacts, stuff that the Jews left behind. Pieces of hanukkiyot, more than 20 Torahs. There are 20 boxes we haven’t even gone through yet,” he said.
So far, he’s completed work on 18 synagogues in southern Morocco and still has 12 to go. He also plans to restore 18 in the north.
It’s just a matter of money, which isn’t exactly in abundant supply these days.
Time is also a concern, especially in the south, where synagogues are crumbling, according to Chris Silver, a 25-year-old Middle Eastern studies graduate from the University of California at Berkeley. Silver has observed Elmaleh’s restoration efforts and is working to publicize the need for international help to save synagogues and communal buildings that he has described as being so beautiful “they would make you cry.”
“You can see in some of these places if they’re not restored now, they’re [going to be] lost forever,” Silver said.
Although synagogue interiors are often in good shape, harsh desert conditions are taking their toll, he said. Often, the fixes don’t cost much — there’s just not much money available.
“For $6,000, a 300-year-old synagogue can be restored,” he said. “On the inside it’s in amazing condition. It was abandoned for use some years ago, but it’s brutally hot during the peak of summer.”
After recent flooding, the roof needed patching up and the interior needs some clean up, but it’s worth it, Silver said, adding, “There are places that are in very good condition that would require even less money.”
As Silver puts it, “there are unbelievable synagogues that are tucked away seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The south is just a treasure trove of Jewish life, or at least it was,” because it was the historic center of where Jews first settled here and it’s at the crossroads of a number of caravan routes.
So far, most of the money has come from the Joint Distribution Fund, the Moroccan government and private donations. Elmaleh has also given speeches in the U.S. to raise money for his work.
When Elmaleh isn’t working on restoration, he’s usually busy leading tour groups to Jewish sites throughout the country.
His insider knowledge comes in handy because many Jewish landmarks are difficult to find. In Marrakech, for example, maps of where the city’s old Jewish neighborhood is located are so confusing that the only way to find the old synagogue is through dumb luck, with a tour guide or help from the area children who will point you in the right direction — for a price.
The reason landmarks are so difficult to find is that Moroccan Jews didn’t put religious symbols on the exterior of their institutions, preferring not to wear their faith on their sleeves, Elmaleh said.
Elmaleh’s tours not only point out hard-to-find places people know about, but also hidden gems like the furniture store in Essaouira where the second floor was once the women’s section of a synagogue.
Silver also contemplated starting a business offering tours of Jewish Morocco. There are other Judaica tours, of course, but most are offered by larger companies and the guides aren’t as passionate as Elmaleh. After spending six months there brushing up on his Arabic language skills and studying Jewish Morocco, Silver runs a close second.
Silver believes there is growing interest in Jewish Morocco because people are interested in visiting countries that are off the beaten track. Being in North Africa makes it exotic and it’s far enough away from the Middle East to be considered safe. It’s also relatively inexpensive.
If Raphael’s business is any indication, Silver may be right. Elmaleh currently has tours booked through October 2009.
Like the tours, Elmaleh would still continue his restoration work even if there wasn’t growing interest from the outside world.
“It is not about demand. It is love to create and restore this heritage,” he said. “If you go to Tunisia, all the synagogues are broken down and no one’s taking care of them. For us to create and restore these synagogues, it allows us to bring back the heritage. That is what I’m doing to show that there was a heritage [of Moroccan Jews} for many centuries.”
David Volk is a freelance writer living in Seattle.