This paper reconsiders three years in the lives of Jews in Morocco and their families which chose to emigrate to Israel. Relying on personal letters sent and received by Moroccan Jews in both places—and secretly intercepted by the Israeli intelligence apparatus—the paper shows that the period between Moroccan independence in 1956 and the Moroccan uprising in Israel, known as the Wadi Salib revolt, in 1959 was a major juncture for both groups. It argues that the ultimate negative perception of Moroccan independence by Moroccan Jews in Morocco was a determining factor in the strategies taken by Moroccan Jews in Israel. Up until the early 1950s, Moroccan Jews who had already immigrated to Israel saw Ashkenazi racism, as well as economic hardships, as reasons to leave Israel and return to Morocco; however, the pleas by their families still in Morocco made Moroccans in Israel abandon the plans of returning. Despite a rapprochement between Jews and Muslims in Morocco in the aftermath of Moroccan independence, many Jews in Morocco felt that a better future awaited them in Israel. Another argument the paper makes is that abandoning the concrete plans of returning to Morocco brought about a radicalization of the resistance of Moroccan Jews in Israel to racism. Moroccans in Israel started framing their struggle in terms of other anti-colonial and anti-racist revolts from around the world, using language that was new to them. For example, letters include drawing comparisons between the Wadi Salib revolt and the black civil rights movement in the U.S., and between the repression of the revolt by the Israeli state and the and the Nazi occupation of Europe. Moroccan Jews even likened their revolt to actions of Palestinian Fedayeen. The paper also considers the methodological concerns of using a primary source, originally created for nefarious means, for studying “history from below”.

When Morocco finally obtained its independence in March 1956, widespread enthusiasm engulfed the kingdom. More than two decades of popular anticolonial struggle had finally ended the French and Spanish protectorates. To many Moroccans, their country now formed part of the wave of decolonization sweeping across the globe. A new world based on freedom and justice seemed within the reach of the peoples of Asia and Africa. Nevertheless, Morocco was facing daunting challenges. The flight of Western capital, in combination with the steady emigration of European technocrats, was pushing the national economy to the brink of collapse. What could be done to prevent the deteriorating economic situation from undermining Morocco’s political achievements? The kingdom's new political elites quickly identified Morocco’s sky-high illiteracy rate of 85% as a fundamental threat to its survival. The uneducated masses endangered not only the nation’s ability to participate in the global economy, but also its very sovereignty. Beginning in the summer of 1956, the country’s largest political party, Hizb al-Istiqlal, organized a national literacy campaign in coordination with the Ministry of Education. A central component was Manar al-Maghrib, a weekly newspaper dedicated to teaching all citizens to read and write. But it did much more than that. Printed in large letters with full vocalization (tashkil) and accompanied by numerous photos, each issue provided its readers with information about hygiene, agriculture, and current events. My paper argues that Manar al-Maghrib operated on two levels: domestically, it sought to reform the uneducated rural masses in accordance with the universal standards of modernity, such as wage labor, the use of technology, female emancipation within the constraints of the nuclear family, formalized education, the use of Western medicine, and patriotism; internationally, it positioned Morocco as a worthy member of the global community of “progressive” nations. In so doing, it allowed the country’s urban elites to assert themselves as the guardians of the country’s future. They had already embraced the universal standards of modernity and would now strive to guide their less fortunate compatriots from the “darkness of ignorance” to the “light of knowledge”. Their leadership was the ultimate service to society. Soon enough, King Mohammed V joined their efforts to cement the royal family’s hegemony over public discourse. The national literacy campaign thus offers a unique window onto state-formation and social transformation in post-independence Morocco.

Over the last century, the Moroccan archival landscape has shifted dramatically, witnessing growth of both nationally and privately held collections. While the Archives du Maroc has pushed to integrate Jewish histories within a nationalist framework, pursuing agreements with international organizations to share their digitized collections and hosting private archives, like that of Edmond Amran El Maleh, institutions like the Musée du Judaïsme Marocain focus on almost exclusively documenting Jewish religious and cultural traditions. Furthermore, informal collections can be found in synagogues, Jewish senior homes, and private residences across Morocco. Internationally based archives, like the Ben-Zvi Institute, also compete to document Moroccan Jewish lives. Since little has been written about the politics that inform the various curatorial practices of this fragmented archival landscape, my paper will focus on unpacking the objectives of individual archives in Morocco (such as, the Musée du Judaïsme Marocain and Bayt al-Dhākira) as well as the factors that have influenced the behavior of potential donors. Surveys of collections at these archives and interviews with archivists reveal the important role that tourism (particularly, Jewish tourism) plays in curatorial decisions, as these spaces overwhelmingly invest their resources in exhibits that display elite material culture, leaving most their documentary collections uncatalogued. Likewise, interviews with potential Moroccan Jewish donors, both diasporic and resident in Morocco, demonstrate clear preference for explicitly Jewish archives over, for example, the Archives du Maroc. I conclude by arguing that this fragmentation of the Moroccan Jewish archival landscape discourages historical inquiry outside traditional parameters that tend to focus either on Muslim-Jewish relations or intracommunal dynamics. Such a shift in orientation will help elucidate entanglements between minoritized groups, like Jewish and Black communities in the region - a subject that has occupied the margins of scholarship, particularly recent research on the history of racialized enslavement.

This paper examines what I call "mnemonic literature" and its producers' rewriting of silenced histories of the emigration of Moroccan Jews. Mnemonic literature refers to a rich and growing body of literature that depicts Moroccan Jews before, during, and after their emigration after Morocco's independence in 1956. Authored by Moroccan Muslims, this literature, which includes novels such as Aourid's Cintra, al-Tazi's Ana al-mansi, and Miliani's Casanfa, delves deep into Jewish-Muslim relations and recreates the context in which Jewish emigration from Morocco took place. This paper demonstrates that the mnemonic and historiographical stakes of this literary engagement with the formerly taboo topics of Jewish emigration cuts deep into Moroccan notions of citizenship and understanding of history as a space for civic engagement. This engagement, the paper reveals, is twofold: firstly, mnemonic literature accounts for the loss of Moroccan Jews. Secondly, this literature creates the conditions for the writing of a history that has so far remained outside the interest of Moroccan academic historians. The works under study in this paper will be contextualized within the ongoing historiographical debates about tārīkh al-zaman al-rāhin (history of the present) that have been taking place in Morocco since the early 2000s.