Morocco’s colonial mutation of Arab Jewishness in the 20^th century, the case of Elie Malka

ABSTRACT

The research on Arab Jewishness in the Middle East has developed in recent years across the disciplines of cultural and intellectual history and cultural studies. In this article, I present a unique Arab Jewishness, as expressed in North-African Jewish communities during the colonial period, through the case of Elie Malka, ethnographer, interpreter, legal expert and lexicographer from Morocco. The article discusses Malka’s overall endeavour and shows the centrality of Arabic language and culture in it. Malka conducted linguistic, ethnographic and legal studies, translated Latin-language texts into Arabic and Judeo-Arabic and vice versa, edited French-Arabic dictionaries, and taught Arabic to certain Jewish community sectors. I posit that Malka’s Arab Jewishness was unlike the Arab Jewishness that developed organically in the Middle East, but rather constituted a mutation within the general colonial mutation that evolved in North Africa.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Prof. Yaron Tsur, Prof. Yaron Ben-Naeh and Dr. Hila Shalem Baharad for there generous advices. Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their valuable and constructive suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The title featured alongside a Hebrew one, ‘ha-limud ha-‘ravi’ (the Arabic learning) and the Judeo-Arabic subheading, ‘b-had əl-məṣḥaf tətʿallmu təqraw u-təktbu əl-məslmaniyya bə-shala’ (This book will teach you how to read and write Arabic with ease). See Elie Malka, Manuel simple et pratique de lecture et d’écriture arabes (Rabat: Imprimerie Omnia, 1946).

² Ibid., 3.

³ Yehouda Shenhav and Hannan Hever, “‘Arab Jews” after structuralism: Zionist discourse and the (de) formation of an ethnic identity’, Social Identities 18, no.1 (2012): 101–118.

⁴ Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 1–14.

⁵ Yaron Tsur, ‘Colonial and Post-Colonial Jewries’, in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 8, The Modern World, 1815–2000, eds. Mitchell B. Hart and Tony Michells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 221–256.

⁶ Emily Gottreich, ‘Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Maghrib’, Jewish Quarterly Review 98, no. 4 (2008): 433–451.

⁷ Emily Gottreich, Jewish Morocco: A History from Pre-Islamic to Postcolonial Times (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2020), 150–156.

⁸ Joseph Chetrit, ‘Moroccan Judeo-Arabic’, Encyclopaedia of Jews in the Islamic World, ed. Norman A. Stillman 2017.

⁹ Ofra Tirosh-Becker, ‘North African Judeo-Arabic’, in Jewish Languages: Text specimens, grammatical, lexical, and cultural sketches, eds. Lutz Edzard and Ofra Tirosh-Becker (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2021), 252–296; Maria Luisa Langella, ‘Jewish Writing in Arabic in Arabic Characters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in Approaches to the History and Dialectology of Arabic in Honour of Pierre Larcher, eds. Manuel Sartori, Manuela E.B. Giolfo, Philippe Cassuto (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017), 474–492.

¹⁰ Kees Versteegh, The Arabic Language (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 160–163.

¹¹ Meir Bar-Asher, ‘Vestiges islamiques dans le parler judéo-arabe du Maroc’, Journal Asiatique 292 (2004): 361–380.

¹² On the Nahda, see: Peter Hill, Utopia and Civilization in the Arab Nahda (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020). For a new direction in the research on the Nahda, see articles in the special issue of the journal Philological Encounters from December 2021 (6:3–4) entitled ‘The Past and its Possibilities in Nahda Scholarship,’ edited by Feras Krimsti and John-Paul Ghobrial.

¹³ Philip Ch. Sadgrove and Shmuel Moreh, Jewish Contributions to Nineteenth-Century Arabic Theatre: Plays from Algeria and Syria, A Study and Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 17–31.

¹⁴ Lital Levy, ‘Jewish Writers in the Arab East: Literature, History, and the Politics of Enlightenment, 1863–1914’ (PhD diss., University of California, 2007).

¹⁵ Abigail Jacobson, ‘Jews Writing in Arabic: Shimon Moyal, Nissim Malul and the Mixed Palestinian/Eretz Israeli Locale’, in Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule, eds. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2011), 165–182.

¹⁶ Nahem Ilan, ‘For Whom Was the Farhi Haggadah Intended? On the Image of Egyptian Jews During the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal (JSIJ) 4 (2005): 35–59 [in Hebrew]; Guy Bracha, ‘The Exodus from Egypt: A Jewish-Egyptian Memory in the Circle of the “Jewish Nahdah” in Egypt’, Jama’a 25 (2020): 57–71 [in Hebrew].

¹⁷ Nissim Kazzaz, The Jews in Iraq in the Twentieth Century (Jerusalem: The Ben-Zvi Institute, 1991) [in Hebrew]; Reuven Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism: A Struggle of Identities in the Literature of Iraqi Jews (Jerusalem: The Ben-Zvi Institute, 2005) [in Hebrew]; Bashkin, New Babylonians; Aline Schlaepfer, Les intellectuels juifs de Bagdad: Discours et allégeances (1908–1951) (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

¹⁸ Sadgrove and Moreh, Jewish Contributions, 73–74.

¹⁹ Bashkin, New Babylonians, 67–84.

²⁰ In addition to French, Jews in Libya embraced Italian, while in northern Morocco their counterparts espoused Spanish, in line with the respective colonial regime and its cultural influence.

²¹ See for example: Guy Dugas and Patricia Geesey, ‘An Unknown Maghrebian Genre: Judeo-Maghrebian Literature of French Expression, Research in African Literatures’, North African Literature 23 (1992), pp. 21–32.

²² Yosef Yuval Tobi, ‘The Openness of Modern Judeo-Arabic Literature in Tunisia towards Muslim-Arabic Literature’, Pe’amim 130 (2012): 128. [in Hebrew].

²³ Langella, ‘Jewish Writing’, 480.

²⁴ Joseph Chétrit, ‘La question linguistique dans la presse judéo-arabe de Tunis à la fin du XIXe siècle’, in De Tunis à Paris Mélanges à la mémoire de Paul Sebag, ed. Claude Nataf (Pari: Éditions de l’Éclat, 2008), 45–71.

²⁵ Yosef Yuval Tobi, ‘L’ouverture de la littérature judéo-arabe tunisienne à la littérature arabo-musulmane’, in Entre Orient et Occident: juifs et Musulmans en Tunisie, ed. Denis Tanouji-Cohen (Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat, 2007), 255–275.

²⁶ Joseph Chetrit, ‘Changes in the Discourse and Arabic Language of the Jews of North Africa at the End of the Nineteenth Century’, Pe’amim 53 (1993): 90–123 [in Hebrew].

²⁷ Shmuel Moreh, ‘The Algerian Playwright Abraham Daninos and his Play Nazähat al-Mushtäq (1847): Between Fushä and ‘Ämmiyya’, in Studies in Canonical and Popular Arabic Literature, eds. Shimon Ballas and Reuven Snir (Toronto: York, 1998), 37–45.

²⁸ Tobi, ‘The Openness’, 123–124.

²⁹ Gottreich, ‘Historicizing the Concept’, 445–446.

³⁰ Haim Zafrani, Pedagogie juive en terre d’Islam: l’enseignement traditionnel de l’hebreu et du judaisme au Maroc (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1969).

³¹ Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862–1962 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), 103–104.

³² Gottreich, ‘Historicizing the Concept’, 450.

³³ Laskier, The Alliance, 321–323.

³⁴ On the circumstances surrounding the Malkas’ immigration, see Joseph Tedghi, ‘Translation of Hebrew Prayers into Judeo-Arabic by Shmuel Malka’, Massorot 13–14 (2006): 279–314 [in Hebrew].

³⁵ For details about the father’s biography and writings, see Tedghi, ‘Translation of Hebrew’.

³⁶ Eli Malka dedicated the book Essai d’ethnographie traditionnelle des Mellahs to his father, citing the latter’s help in editing the book and research. See Elie Malka, Essai d’ethnographie traditionnelle des Mellahs ou Croyances, rites de passages et vieilles pratiques des Israélites marocain (Rabat: Imprimerie Omnia, 1946).

³⁷ In the preface to Textes judèo–arabes de Fès, it says ‘One of us [Malka] who speaks the dialect of Fes since childhood’. See Louis Brunot and Elie Malka, Textes judèo–arabes de Fès textes, transcription traduction annotèe (Rabat: Typo-litho Ecole du livre, 1939), VII.

³⁸ On multilingualism see: Tirosh-Becker, ‘North African Judeo-Arabic’; Marilyn Booth, ed., Migrating Texts: Circulating Translations around the Ottoman Mediterranean (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019); Sooyong Kim and Orit Bashkin, ‘Revisiting Multilingualism in the Ottoman Empire,’ Review of Middle East Studies (2022):1–16.

³⁹ Oren Kosansky, ‘When Jews Speak Arabic: Dialectology and Difference in Colonial Morocco’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 1 (2016): 34–35.

⁴⁰ Edmund Burke III, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam (California: University of California Pres, 2014), 124–127; Susan Gilson Miller, A history of modern Morocco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 101–102.

⁴¹ Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, Oriental Neighbours Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2016), 55, 60, 108.

⁴² Louis Brunot was a scholar of the Arabic language who wrote exhaustive studies on the characteristics of Moroccan Arabic dialects. He was first a teacher in Algeria. From 1913, Brunot taught and researched in Rabat at the École supèrieure de langue arabe et de dialectes berbères. In 1920 he became Director of Collège musulman de Fès and the Head of Muslim Education. From 1935 to 1947 he was the director of IHEM. See: Spencer D. Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance, 1912–1956 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 18–19 and see in the index.

⁴³ Brunot and Malka, Textes judèo-arabes; Louis Brunot and Elie Malka, Glossaire judèo-arabe de Fès (Rabat: École du livre, 1940). A review of the joint study was published in the Jewish newspaper L’Union Marocaine: Benzade, ‘Lecture Sabbatique’, L’Union Marocaine, 30 October 1936, 1.

⁴⁴ Malka, Essai d’ethnographie. Malka published another edition of the book in Paris, 1976, under a different title: Elie Malka, Essai de folklore des Israèlites du Maroc: rites, cèrèmonies, coutumes et thèrapeutique d’autrefois (Paris: Imprimerie CIPAC, 1976).

⁴⁵ Elie Malka, Essai sur la condition juridique de la femme juive au Maroc (Tanger: Imprimerie des Éditions internationales, 1952); Elie Malka, David Amselem, and Abraham I. Laredo eds., Les Taqanot des juifs expulsès de Castille au Maroc, règime matrimonial et successoral (Casablanca: Imprimerie de Fontana, 1953).

⁴⁶ Elie Malka, David Amselem, ‘Condition et statut lègal des juifs au Maroc à la fin du XVe siècle’, Revue Marocaine de Droit (1953): 55–74.

⁴⁷ For example: Elie Malka, ‘Le règime matrimonial en droit rabbinique gènèrale et d’après la loi de castille’, La Voix des Communautès, 1 August 1950, 1; Elie Malka, ‘Le legs au profit de la temiiîie marièe’, La Voix des Communautès, 1 January 1951, 4. Elie Malka, ‘Le mal magique et la thèrapeutique d’autrefois chez les Israèlites marocains’, Extrait de Bulletin de l’enseignement public au Maroc 226 (1954); Elie Malka, ‘Un èpisode de l’histoire juive au 17ème siècle: Le pseudo-Messie Sabbetay Tsevi’, Extrait de Bulletin de l’enseignement public au Maroc 233 (1955).

⁴⁸ Elie Malka, Le statut personnel et successoral et droit hebraique et en droit musulman: situation particuliere de l’israelite marocain, sous la direction de Haim Zafrani (Thèse d’État, Universitè de Paris VIII, 1981); Elie Malka, ‘Les sources du droit hèbraïque et du droit musulman et leur èvolution’, in Juifs du Maroc: identite et dialogue, actes du Colloque international sur la communaute juive Marocaine: vie culturelle, histoire sociale et évolution Paris, 18–21 decembre 1978 (Grenoble: Pensèe sauvage, 1980), 73–81.

⁴⁹ It is not my intention to discuss the validity of Malka’s conclusions, but rather to present them as indications of his outlook and ideology. These issues are discussed in other studies.

⁵⁰ Brunot and Malka, Textes judèo-arabes, I. Brunot made the same argument in his book on Arabic in Morocco: Louis Brunot, Introduction à l’arabe marocain (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuv, 1950), 18. Similar arguments concerning the Arabic spoken by Jews of Muslim lands were recently made by Ella Shohat: Ella Shohat, ‘The Invention of Judeo-Arabic: Nation, Partition and the Linguistic Imaginary’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 19, no. 2 (2017): 153–200. For a new study on the Moroccan Arabic see: Enam Al-Wer, Uri Horesh, Bruno Herin and Rudolf De Jong eds., Arabic Sociolinguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022),106–130; 156–188.

⁵¹ Kosansky, ‘When Jews Speak Arabic’, 5–39.

⁵² Brunot and Malka, Textes judèo-arabes, I.

⁵³ Ibid., I; Louis and Malka, Glossaire, VII–IX.

⁵⁴ Louis and Malka, Glossaire, 5, 34.

⁵⁵ Malka, Essai d’ethnographie, 9.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 11.

⁵⁸ According to Oren Kosansky, on the other hand, Malka and Brunot’s choice of transcribing Judeo-Arabic in Arabic—rather than Hebrew—script, as written by Jews, was due to their wish to erase or downplay written Judeo-Arabic and its affinity to Hebrew, which stood for Jewish nationality possibilities. Kosansky, ‘When Jews Speak Arabic’.

⁵⁹ Elie Malka, al-ʻAwāʼid al-ʻatīqah al-Isrāʼīlīyah bi-al-Maghrib min al-mahd ilá al-laḥd (Rabat: Thānawīyat al-Kitāb, 1962).

⁶⁰ Elie Malka, al-ʻAwāʼid al-ʻatīqah al-Isrāʼīlīyah bi-al-Maghrib min al-mahd ilá al-laḥd (Casablanca: al-mūltaqa, 2003); Elie Malka, al-ʻAwāʼid al-ʻatīqah al-Isrāʼīlīyah bi-al-Maghrib min al-mahd ilá al-laḥd (Marrakesh: ātṣālāt sbw, 2013).

⁶¹ Elie Malka, Mūjaz al-qawānīn al-isrāʼilīya al-maġribīya fī al-aḥwāl al-šaḫṣīya wa l-irttiya (Rabat: Imprimerie de l’Agdāl, 1955).

⁶² Malka, Le statut personnel; Malka, ‘Les Sources du droit’.

⁶³ See for example: Haïm Zafrani, Mille ans de vie juive au Maroc: histoire et culture, religion et magie (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1983); Haïm Zafrani, Traditions poétiques et musicales juives en Occident musulman (Paris: Editions UNESCO, 1998).

⁶⁴ Brunot and Malka, Textes judèo-arabes, I–IV.

⁶⁵ Malka, Essai d’ethnographie, 10.

⁶⁶ Malka, Essai sur la condition, 14.

⁶⁷ Louis and Malka, Glossaire, II.

⁶⁸ For a comprehensive discussion on the influence of colonialism on Malka, see: Kosansky, ‘When Jews Speak Arabic’.

⁶⁹ Malka, Essai d’ethnographie, 11.

⁷⁰ Tedghi, ‘Translation of Hebrew’, 279–281.

⁷¹ Elie Malka, Dictionnaire pratique français-arabe des termes administratifs (Rabat: Imprimerie èconomique, 1939); Elie Malka, Nouveau dictionnaire pratique d’arabe administratif (Tanger: Editions internationales, 1951).

⁷² Elie Malka, Pour rèdiger et traduire, lexique moderne français-arabe des termes, expressions, formules (Rabat: Imprimerie de l’Agdāl, 1961).

⁷³ Elie Malka, Dictionnaire pratique des termes juridiques, français-arabe (Paris: Éditions France-sèlection, 1972); Elie Malka, Nouveau dictionnaire pratique français-arabe des termes juridiques et administratifs (Rabat: Librarie Iraqi, 1975); Elie Malka, Lexique français-arabe de la protection civile et du secourisme (Paris: France-Sèlection, 1972).

⁷⁴ Malka, Dictionnaire pratique, I.

⁷⁵ Empire chérifien: protectorat de la République française au Maroc, bulletin officiel, édition française (Rabat, 1912–1957).

⁷⁶ Malka, Dictionnaire pratique, II; Malka, Nouveau dictionnaire, 9.

⁷⁷ Malka, Dictionnaire pratique, I–II; Malka, Nouveau dictionnaire, 9.

⁷⁸ Malka, Dictionnaire pratique, I. In a short review of the dictionary by a Jewish newspaper, the Muslim target audience of the dictionary was cited: ‘Index bibliographique’, Noar, 8 January 1952, 3.

⁷⁹ Malka, Manuel simple, 2.

⁸⁰ Shlomo E. Glicksberg, ‘The Rabbinical Seminary in Morocco 1950–1967’, Pe’amim 131 (2012): 33–66 [in Hebrew].

⁸¹ Moshe Amar (ed.), The Hebrew law in Moroccan communities (Jerusalem: The Institute of Moroccan Jewish Heritage, 1985), 291 [in Hebrew].

⁸² Malka, Essai de folklore, preface (no page).

⁸³ For example, in the introduction to the book Essai sur la condition juridique de la femme juive au Maroc Malka thanks M. Thabault, Director of Public Instruction in Morocco, and M. Terrasse, Director of IHEM and M. De Laubadere, Director of the Centers for Legal Studies.

⁸⁴ The preface to the book Essai d’ethnographie traditionnelle des Mellahs was written by Maurice Botbol the Inspector of Jewish Institutions in Morocco and in his introduction, Malka thanks AIU Officials. The book Essai sur la condition juridique de la femme juive au Maroc was dedicated to David YomTov Semach, who was the AIU delegate in Morocco and the preface was written by Reuben Tajouri who replaced Semach as AIU delegate in Morocco.

⁸⁵ For example: Benzade, ‘Lecture Sabbatique’, L’Union Marocaine, 30 October 1936, 1; Remy Beaurieux, ‘L’essai d’ethnographie traditionnelle des Mellahs d’Elie Malka’, La Voix des Communautés, 1 February 1950, 3.

⁸⁶ See, Michel Abitbol, ‘Zionist Activity in the Maghreb’, Jerusalem Quarterly 21 (1981): 61–84; Yaron Tsur, A Torn Community: Moroccan Jews and Nationalism, 1943–1954 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001) [in Hebrew]; Alma Rachel Heckman, The Sultan’s Communists, Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020).

⁸⁷ Kosansky, ‘When Jews Speak Arabic’, 32-33.