From 'Little Jerusalems' to the Promised Land

Zionism, Moroccan nationalism, and rural Jewish emigration

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3979288
AutoresAomar Boum (University of Arizona, autor correspondente)
Ano2010
Volume15
Fascículo1
Páginas51-69
Data de publicação2010-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of North African Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1362-9387 • E-ISSN: 1743-9345
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13629380902745876
OpenAlexW2165974459
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas18

This article provides an ethnographic and historical perspective on the migration of rural Jewish communities from the region of Sous, southern Morocco, to Israel in the early 1960s. Building on theories of the relationship between diaspora, homeland, and nationalism, and using ethnographic data collected among Moroccan Jews and Muslims from the region, I argue that even though the economic factors played a substantial role in persuading rural Jews to migrate to Israel, historical symbols of traditional messianic Zionism played a major role in the migration of rural Jewry. Unlike urban Jews who settled in different Moroccan cities after the Spanish Inquisition, Jews from Akka and other neighbouring hamlets have a particular view of history to which Zionism appealed. In this article, I use a historical narrative to argue that southern Moroccan Jews, whether their memory is based on supposition or fact, imagined their history as connected to Palestine. Accordingly, Zionists invoked these historical messianic symbols to which local rural Jews from Akka and other neighbouring villages subscribed to capture their political, religious, and national support. Henceforth, my contention is that although local and global social, political, and economic stresses in the first half of the twentieth century influenced this migration, the underlying cause is largely attributed to the imagined or real historical roots of these populations towards Palestine as opposed to the roots of Andalusian Jews

Ancient history · Archaeology · Diaspora · Emigration · Ethnology · Homeland · Judaism · Land of Israel · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Zionism · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law