Moroccan Jews See Attrition as the Enemy

Michel Meyer Edery, a Jew who has lived his entire life here, received two sets of phone calls in the hours after suicide bombers launched deadly attacks across his city and at the Jewish community center he frequents.

His brothers in Israel and France called to tell him it was high time to leave Morocco.

And Edery’s many Moroccan friends -- Muslims -- called to make sure he was safe and to tell him how appalled they were at what happened.

“I gave him a big kiss when I saw him again and saw that he was OK,” said Mohammed Ouhane, a Muslim who has been Edery’s friend since the two middle-aged men were teens. The pair surveyed the damage at the community center, where blood dappled the interior walls and broken glass and masonry covered the floors.

Morocco, an ancient kingdom on the northern African coast, has long prided itself as a tolerant, multicultural society where Muslims and Jews have coexisted with an ease unequaled in the Arab world.

Jews first arrived here with Phoenician traders two millenniums ago, and the community thrived through thick and thin for centuries. While the population has dwindled in the last 50 years, it remains a uniquely vital Jewish presence among Muslims.

But today, Moroccan Jews are faced with new questions about their survival, haunted by a sudden sense of vulnerability. The targets in Friday’s bombings, in this country unaccustomed to political violence, included a Jewish cemetery, a hotel where Israeli tourists were staying and a Jewish-owned restaurant, in addition to the community center, itself the heart of the old Jewish Quarter in downtown Casablanca.

“We have to reconsider everything,” Serge Berdugo, president of the Moroccan Jewish Community, said in an interview Monday. “Not just Jews but all Moroccans. Our mistake was to think we were immune.”

The Moroccan Jewish community numbered 290,000 in the early 1950s, according to Berdugo; today there are fewer than 5,000. Most are in Casablanca, where, like other Moroccans, they migrated over the decades as the city became the economic center of the country. At today’s rate of attrition, there is a real concern that the community will die out over the next generation.

Some Jews are convinced the synchronized string of bombings, which authorities blame on radical Islamists from Casablanca’s slums, was aimed specifically at Jewish interests; others think the larger goal was to destroy the secular way of life and moderate form of government represented by Morocco under King Mohammed VI.

“We are starting to panic a little,” Edery, who owns a small garment factory, said Monday. “The government will tell us that we can open up our clubs and they will give us security, but it will never be completely peaceful again. There is fear.”

Edery, 41, has decided to follow thousands of Moroccan Jews before him and will leave the country. It’s a decision he says he made before Friday’s attacks, and it has more to do with economic opportunity and the future of his children than worries about security.

His six brothers and sisters have already left; they last came home for their mother’s funeral 10 months ago. His apartment building on Rue Galilee was inhabited by 15 Jewish families 10 years ago; today, five Jewish families remain.

“The Jewish community here is disintegrating,” he said. “I’ve lived my life, I’m fine and not worried about myself. But I have to give my kids a platform where they won’t suffer.”

Jewish youth here customarily finish their high school exams and then must go abroad to university. And most don’t return, building their lives in other countries, usually Israel, France, the United States or Canada, where jobs and potential spouses are more readily available.

Edery’s eldest son is almost 18 and will take his exams in a few weeks. Then the family will move to Israel, where Edery said he will be given an apartment, a job, some cash and be taught the language.

Israel actively encourages Jews from other countries to move to Israel, to fortify the state and the collective Jewish identity.

An estimated 600,000 Moroccan Jews live in Israel, Berdugo said, having taken with them their brand of mystical Judaism and colorful foods, dress and customs. Unlike immigrants to Israel from Iran, Syria and a host of other Muslim countries, however, Moroccan Jews readily return to Morocco for vacations, to visit the graves of their ancestors, or to pay homage to Jewish martyrs, saints and revered rabbis.

Edery and other Moroccan Jews here say they have not felt inhibited in the practice of their faith. Edery lives a couple of blocks from the community center, in a neighborhood that counts no fewer than 30 synagogues, all tiny, and several kosher butchers.

He prays every morning and attends service every Shabbat.

Yaakov and Rosette Ruimy keep their menorah and Shabbat candles on a small table near their front door. He keeps several dozen velvet skullcaps in a chest of drawers. The couple, born and raised in Casablanca, have been married for 27 years, and they say they have no intention of leaving Morocco.

“When something like this happens, we all get together, Jews and Arabs,” Yaakov Ruimy, 47, said. “It’s against the kingdom, an attempt to destabilize the kingdom. We are all Moroccans.”

The Ruimys’ eldest son left eight years ago for Israel. Their daughter left 2 1/2years ago for the U.S. Their 19-year-old left six months ago. Eight-year-old Avishai, a precocious and friendly boy, is the last child at home.

“They’ve made their lives abroad,” Yaakov Ruimy said. “It makes me very sad. It’s a shame.... The kids are leaving and the old ones are dying.”

Rosette Ruimy’s brother was the only Jew hurt in Friday’s attacks: He broke a leg when he was caught a few yards from the community center. No Jews were among the 42 people killed. If the bombers had attacked a night earlier, hundreds of people would have been caught inside the center. But on Friday, it was closed.

Berdugo said the special place of Jews in Morocco is rooted in history. Jews were here long before the Muslims and both were driven from Spain by the Catholic monarchs during the Inquisition. There were periods when Jews were forced into ghettos or persecuted. During World War II, however, Morocco harbored Jews and others fleeing the Nazis. Later, Morocco, unlike other Arab countries, did not expel its Jews, he noted, and Jews who left could retain citizenship and property.

As Arab countries go, Morocco has had good relations with Israel and worked behind the scenes to promote peace between Israel and Egypt and then the Palestinians.

Although then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel led a large delegation to King Hassan II’s funeral in 1999, official relations soured after the intifada broke out, and Israel’s trade office in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, was closed in November 2000, amid huge anti-Israel demonstrations.

A former tourism minister whose family came to Morocco in 1492, Berdugo said he remains confident that there is a future for Jews in Morocco.

A number of Moroccan Jews are well connected. One of the most powerful men in the country is Jewish: Andre Azoulay, a key advisor to the monarchy for more than a decade.

“In numbers, we are not so big,” Berdugo said, “but in a symbolic way we are very important for Morocco. We are proof that this is a tolerant and open country.”

Still, the specter of radical Islam has become a concrete threat. Central Casablanca is a cosmopolitan place of palm-lined boulevards where French is heard at least as readily as Arabic. But drive a few miles to northern slums like Sidi Moumen, described by authorities as a breeding ground for radical Islam and home to most of last week’s suicide bombers, and the picture changes.

“In our neighborhoods, in the center of the city, Jews and Arabs mix. We grew up together, there is no anti-Semitism,” Edery said. “But if you go to the suburbs, where it’s all Muslim, the people don’t understand what a Jew is.”