Moroccan Jews and the Spanish colonial imaginary, 1903–1951

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relationship between Spanish colonialism and Moroccan Jews. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Spanish writers and politicians revived Spain’s Jewish heritage and used it to fortify cultural and political ties with Sephardic Jewish communities across the Mediterranean, and especially in Morocco. This revival of Spain’s Jewish identity has often been associated with the liberal ‘Philo-Sephardic’ movement of the early twentieth century, but, as I argue in this article, Philo-Sephardism survived until the end of the colonial period and implicated, along the way, Spaniards of all ideological stripes, from liberals to fascists. In both its liberal and fascist iterations, Philo-Sephardism was a platform for challenging France’s cultural influence among Moroccan Jews and for asserting Spain’s legitimacy as a colonial power. Philo-Sephardism was also strengthened and shaped by the extensive participation of Moroccan Jews, who contributed to the movement by collaborating with Spanish scholars and incorporating Philo-Sephardic discourses into their representations of Moroccan Jewish life. In what follows, I examine the contributions that Moroccan Jews made to Philo-Sephardism and especially to the academic and cultural institutions created under Francoism, such as the Maimonides Institute in Tetouan. I place particular emphasis on Isaac Benarroch Pinto’s novella ‘Indianos tetuaníes,’ published by the General Franco Institute for Hispano-Arab Research in 1951. This fascinating but virtually unknown literary text illustrates how some Moroccan Jews inserted themselves within Francoist culture and within Spanish imperial projects that wove together the histories of Spain, Morocco, and Latin America.

KEYWORDS:

• Spain
• Morocco
• Jews
• colonialism
• Franco
• Philo-Sephardism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following colleagues for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article: Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo, Daniela Flesler, Dara Goldman, Jamie Jones, Brett Kaplan, Tabea Alexa Linhard, Jessica Marglin, Susan Miller, Harriet Murav, Bruce Rosenstock, and David Stenner.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The photograph appears on page 9 of an album of photographs owned by the Spanish National Library, call number AFRFOT/LF/1.

2 For García Figueras, see Valderrama Martínez (1956, 110–111, 816–832); Martin-Márquez (2008, 215–223); Calderwood (2018, 170–178).

3 The history of the Maimonides Institute is summarized in Valderrama Martínez (1956, 325–336).

4 The three passages come from Prophets: Hosea 12:11, Amos 3:7–8, and Isaiah 51:16. I would like to thank Jessica Marglin for helping me to identify the sources for the text on the board.

5 Throughout the Protectorate period, the sultan, while based in the French zone, remained the figurehead of the Moroccan state in all of the territories that came under French and Spanish rule. His representative in the Spanish zone was the caliph, whose authority was, in theory, tied to the sultan’s authority. Despite this clear hierarchy of power, the Spanish colonial authorities, under Franco, began to surround Caliph Mulay al-Hasan with the pomp and rituals of the sultanate, such as the annual celebration of the caliph’s accession to the throne. Mateo Dieste (2016) has argued that the Spanish Protectorate adopted these symbols as a means of representing the caliph as a second sultan, in competition with the sultan in the French zone.

6 For Morocco and the Spanish Civil War, see Madariaga (2013, 257–335).

7 For an introduction to scholarly debates about the concept of convivencia, see Akasoy (2010).

8 See Martin-Márquez (2008); Rohr (2011); Calderwood (2018).

9 See Rohr (2007, 2011); Ojeda Mata (2013, 51–63, 286–294).

10 All English translations are mine.

11 The phrase appears in the title of Pulido’s most important work on the Sephardim, Españoles sin patria y la raza sefardí (1905).

12 Spanish writers of this period use a number of terms to refer to Sephardic Jews, including israelitas españoles (‘Spanish Israelites’), hebreos (‘Hebrews’), and various spellings of the term sefardíes (‘Sephardim’). These terms were also used by Spanish-speaking Moroccan Jewish writers.

13 Galdós draws heavily upon Pulido’s work in the novel Aita Tettauen (1905), in which Galdós attempts to represent the hakitía spoken by Moroccan Jews (Pérez Galdós 2004).

14 Unamuno’s letter is reproduced, without a date attribution, in Pulido Fernández (1905, 104–105).

15 See Martin-Márquez (2008), as well as Fernández Parrilla and Cañete’s contribution to this issue. Costa’s metaphor of the ‘Hispano-Moroccan brotherhood’ exemplifies the rhetoric of exceptionalism that, as Fernández Parrilla and Cañete argue, underwrote Spain’s colonial intervention in Morocco.

16 For a partial list of Pulido’s Moroccan correspondents, see Pulido Fernández (1905, 480).

17 See Pulido Fernández (1904, 180–191; 1905, 483–491); Israel Garzón (2008, 436).

18 For the Spanish Civil War as a conflict between two competing views of Spain, see Juliá (2004); Álvarez Junco and de la Fuente Monge (2013, 353–457).

19 A few scholars have noted this tension between Philo-Sephardism and anti-Semitism in Francoist culture, without analyzing the tension in detail. See, for example, Rohr (2007); Domínguez Arribas (2013).

20 See Domínguez Arribas (2013); Rohr (2007, 3–5, 65–82). Franco and his collaborators also used the idea of the ‘Judeo-Masonic conspiracy’ to persecute the Catalan people, who were associated, in the Francoist imaginary, with the Jews (Illas 2011, 77–79).

21 For the varied Moroccan Jewish responses to the Civil War, see Blin (1992, 101–113); Rohr (2007); Ojeda Mata (2013, 218–222); Kenbib (1994, 570–571).

22 Valderrama Martínez (1956, 325–326) reproduces the text of the letter.

23 The quote, with a picture of the meeting, appears in ABC, 19 December 1939, page 5.

24 For the creation of the CSIC and the School of Hebraic Studies, see the ‘Noticias’ section at the end of the first issue of the journal Sefarad (1940), page 249.

25 Along these lines, Tomás García Figueras wrote in 1939: ‘The Protectorate is not utility; it is sacrifice. Its sense is purely spiritual  … Spain has never had the smallest territorial ambition through the work of its Protectorate. Spain is not a colonialist nation, nor does it have imperialist ambitions in the material sense. It does have them, on the other hand, in the spiritual sense’ (289–290; italics in original).

26 Jalfón’s announcement is reproduced in Valderrama Martínez (1956, 327–328). 

27 According to a report submitted to the Spanish Protectorate authorities in 1951, all of the students enrolled at the Maimonides Institute opted to study to become Hebrew teachers because there were few job openings for rabbinical judges and notaries and because the other professions required more years of study (Bensabat 1951).

28 I take this information about the school’s curriculum from Bensabat (1951); Valderrama Martínez (1956, 330–331).

29 The report is part of the large collection of documents that García Figueras donated to the Spanish National Library in 1966.

30 Israel Garzón (2008, 439–440) offers biographical sketches of several members of the Benarroch family.

31 For Jewish migration from northern Morocco to South America, see Miller (1996).

32 I offer a detailed analysis of the General Franco Institute in Calderwood (2018, 167–192). I summarize some of my analysis in this and the next paragraph.

33 For the idea of Hispanidad, see Martin-Márquez (2008, 49–50); Krauel (2013, 175–179).

34 For reconsiderations of Spanish national identity in the context of colonial Morocco, see also Martin-Márquez (2008, 12–63).