Moroccan Synagogues- A Survey

No discussion of Morocco or the customs of the Jewish community, almost all of whose members left that country, would be complete without an understanding of one of the most specific phenomena of this country: the veneration of tzaddikim holy men. This reverence is shared by Moslems, but for different reasons. Sermons in the synagogues by the spiritual leaders of Moroccan Jewry have considerable impact on their audiences. Even today, pilgrimages made by Moroccan Jews to the tombs of the tzaddikim are linked to these rabbis' prophesies. The tzaddik is considered according to Kabbalah to be the "foundation-stone of the world", it is he who hands down judgments made by God. This conviction is deeply rooted in Moroccan Jewish ritual and folklore, and is the basis for the belief in the Tzaddik's power of intercession in return for exemplary conduct on the part of the supplicant. The principles which the rabbis of Morocco thus imparted to their contemporaries and to future generations combined an understanding of the needs of others together with charity, hope for redemption, and love of one's neighbour.

In Ouzan, a town which no longer has a Jewish population, a Moslem cemetery attendant Hassan intoned all the ziaras* for us in Hebrew at the grave of the Tzaddik of Ouzan, Rabbi Amram ben Diwwan. Near his tomb-marker a mound of stones supporting a centuries-old tree is a synagogue whose walls are decorated with portraits of holy men. It is located next to pictures of the king and crown prince of Morocco. The attendant, who fulfills his duties with obvious fervour, never forgets to give visitors candles which are lit while the supplicatory prayers are recited. At Ouzan as elsewhere, Jewish visitors are immediately directed to the tomb of the local Tzaddik, to benefit fully from the spiritual and material aid the visit is said to confer. In Morocco, some places of worship are built near the tomb of a famous Tzaddik, and the synagogue at Ouzan is no exception.

At the Jema'a el-Fna central square in Marrakech, merchants stream in from the surrounding mountain areas, and story-tellers, jugglers, musicians, soothsayers, and snake charmers attract an ever-growing crowd of curious locals and tourists. The dress varies. Some men wear traditional clothing, while others are dressed in western style; women often have a veil (haik) or caftan, but others wear trousers and do not cover their faces. The dominant hue is the reddish ochre of the buildings, contrasting with the snowy peaks of the Atlas mountains in the distance. Morocco is a crossroads of Berber, Arab, Spanish, Portuguese and French cultures.

The Jewish quarter or mellah of Marrakech is close by. The rudimentary style of houses in the quarter extends to buildings in the mellah as well: the slightly irregular red clay walls have an unfinished quality to them like the huts niched in the slopes that blend into the landscape of southern Morocco. The houses and synagogues of the former Jewish communities of the Atlas are even more rudimentary than those of Marrakech. The mellah has long been deserted by the few Jewish families still residing in the city.

Most of the synagogues in Marrakech are still located in the mellah, which is now a Moslem quarter. The "Negidim" synagogue was built at the end of the 19th century: a window in the ceiling is the only source of light for the synagogue's three small rooms. The entrance is through an unmarked door in a dim alleyway that leads through a portico to a rectangular room reserved for women. The small rooms of the synagogue are in a row. The ark is against the wall facing in the direction of Jerusalem. The lectern is located in the centre of the western wall. Red clay benches covered with coloured fabric and small cushions line the sides. In the centre of the synagogue between the lectern and the ark is a row of wooden chairs.

The other synagogue of the mellah is the "Alzama," built at the turn of the century. Strikingly, it is one of a series of buildings constructed around a large, well-tended central courtyard. The eastern side has only recently been embellished by a gallery (ezrat nashim) for women an innovation in Morocco, where women traditionally remained at the entrance to the synagogue or in a separate room. The original wooden movable lectern has been replaced by one of marble along the eastern wall. Sketches made in the 1950s by the architect Ya'acov Pinkerfeld, made it clear that the women's gallery did not exist at that time and that four pillars divided the interior into two naves. The walls are painted in blue and white. The large, rectangular synagogue has a much less intimate feeling than the Negidim synagogue. On the floor above the Alzama synagogue is a Talmud Torah School, a soup kitchen and the community centre. There is a local legend that the synagogue was built during the Second Temple period by Jews who had never lived in Eretz-Israel and had not witnessed the destruction of the Temple. Hence they were not bound by the same rituals and prohibitions as other Jews and ate meat during the period of mourning from the 17th of Tammuz to the ninth of Av (the day on which both the first and second Temples were said to have been destroyed).

This research mission, and a previous one dealing with the synagogues and ritual objects of Marrakech, are part of an extensive survey project conducted by the Centre of Jewish Art of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, which I have the privilege of directing. Because there are so many Moroccan synagogues, we chose to deal first with synagogues which are still in use during the week, or on the Sabbath and holidays. The purpose of these surveys is to preserve the cultural, liturgical and visual heritage of the Jewish communities as a whole. The documentation process involves a detailed description and a scale model drawing of the synagogues and ritual objects, studying their ornamentation, deciphering inscriptions and initials, recording dimensions and identifying the materials and methods used in making the objects. Everything is photographed and the information and photographs thus obtained are recorded in the Index of Jewish Art, a vast repository of investigative themes for researchers, teachers, students, and the public at large.**

The Marrakech mellah is only one example of a quarter studied in Morocco. Synagogues were built in virtually the same way from one city to another and almost all are located in narrow alleys. Their entrances provide no clues that these are synagogues, even when the doors open on to a large and lavishly ornamented synagogue.

The largest mellah in Morocco is in Fez. It was the first separate Jewish quarter in Morocco and dates back to 1438, a period of religious fanaticism spurred on by the Almohades dynasty. At this time, the Sultan Abu Sa'id built a separate quarter for the Jews at Fez el-Jedid near the royal palace, in an attempt to protect the Jewish population of the city. The origin of the word mellah is unclear. It may have referred to salty land (from the Hebrew word melah "salt"), which was unsuitable for agriculture. However, a more gruesome explanation is that the Jews were assigned the less than enviable task of salting the heads of opponents of the regime before the heads were displayed in the market square. Regardless of etymology, the word applied to all the Jewish quarters of Moroccan cities.

Fez el-Bali (the "old city ") had a Jewish quarter, granted to the Jews by the founder of the city, Idris II, in the ninth century. We have no information on the houses or the synagogues in this quarter. There is a legend that the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, the Rambam, (Maimonides) lived there in the second half of the 12th century.

Our survey revealed a wealth and diversity in the design of ritual objects, which no previous study of the Moroccan community in Israel had found. One explanation is that the massive wave of immigration to Israel in the 1950s took place so hurriedly that the Jews were unable to bring the objects they had cherished for centuries to their new land. The few objects which were brought to Israel were quickly replaced by modern Israeli-made ones.

Our survey attempted to assess Islamic, Berber, Spanish and European influences on the design and decoration of synagogues and ritual objects of Moroccan Jews. Synagogues subsequently built by Moroccan immigrants in Israel consist of an admixture of various regional traditions, so that it is virtually impossible to pinpoint the features characteristic of each region. A similar phenomenon existed in Casablanca where, in the early 1900s, the Jewish community was composed of people from very different geographic areas. Here, iconographic traditions fused and it is impossible to find a synagogue that is representative of the traditions of one particular area. Thus, for purposes of classification, architectural and stylistic traditions of Moroccan synagogues and ceremonial objects were broadly categorized as northern, central and southern.

The simplicity which is characteristic of the synagogues of Marrakech and southern Morocco contrasts sharply with the lavishness and impressive size of those in northern Morocco, in particular in Tangier. The latter were also located in the mellah and most date from the second half of the 19th century. They were concentrated in one street, "Synagogues Street," recently renamed "Synagogue Street" because only one remains open. A small, unobtrusive door opens on to a narrow alleyway that in no way hints at the monumental size of the synagogue itself. Like most synagogues in Tangier, it is rectangular, and divided by pillars into three naves. A wall painting of the tablets of the law and a crown appear above the ark on the eastern wall, similar to Ketubot (marriage contracts) in synagogues in Gibraltar. A large sculpted wooden lectern is placed near the eastern side. The only exception to the Tangier model is the Nahon synagogue where the tevah (lectern for Torah reading) is placed in the centre of the southern wall. The walls are painted sky blue or yellow and verses from the Bible mentioning the name of the donor of the synagogue are inscribed on them. The Assayag or Mass'at Moshe synagogue is similar. It is named for its founder, Moses Azencot, who was sanctified shortly after his death. The women's gallery extends along the northern, eastern and southern sides of the synagogue. It opens out on to a terrace where the sukka can be built for the festival of Tabernacles (sukkot). Daylight enters through a square skylight and the windows in the upper gallery.

In cities in the centre of the country, such as Fez and Meknes, the synagogues are much smaller but testify to a wealth of ornamentation in the local style. The Em Habanim synagogue located in the mellah of Fez was built in 1927 and renovated in 1932. It is rectangular and the ark is on the eastern wall. The lectern could apparently be moved. The building is used today by Moslem families evicted from condemned housing.

The Sadoun Synagogue in Fez is one of the most lavish we saw in Morocco, and is comparable in style to Em Habanim. The walls are completely covered in stucco with tinted glass panes in the windows above them. The influence of Moslem art is obvious; the mosques, the public buildings such as the palace and the houses of Fez are decorated with ornate carved stucco work and zelliges (ceramic tiles) in Andalusian style. These are also found in a simplified version in the only synagogue which remains to this day in Sefrou, a locality which had an important and dynamic Jewish community. One of the oldest synagogues in Morocco is the Ibn Danan in Fez which dates back to the 17th century. This synagogue has no stucco work and the lectern is built into a carved wooden partition. According to local tradition, this synagogue was built by Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 who arrived in Fez and decided to build a synagogue for themselves after the local Jews refused to let them pray in theirs.

Regional differences in synagogue architecture and furnishings are also apparent in ritual objects. For example, in northern Morocco the Torah scrolls were wrapped in a velvet, conical mantle (mapa) embroidered in gold thread by professional artisans. In central Morocco, the scrolls were protected by a me'il, a stiff mantle covered in richly-embroidered velvet and gold thread but whose motifs differ from those found in the northern regions. The mantle was placed over another cover of plain cloth. The community of Fez placed the Torah scrolls in two covers before wrapping them in a mantle. In southern Morocco, the Torah cover is simple, and made out of plain, unembroidered cloth. The scrolls are tied together with a braided rope, the hamla. This braid is used daily in the south to hold the Torah binder but is also used in private homes to ward off evil spirits.

The rimonim (finials placed over the staves of each Torah scroll) are called tapuhim (literally "apples"), and also differ from one region to another. In the north, they are often in the shape of towers. In central Morocco, the finials are shaped like towers, while others are flat and cast in copper, in particular very beautiful ones in polychrome enamel which are found only in this region. In the south, the finials are hexagonal and shorter than the ones in the north, and are made of silver of lesser purity, decorated with much simpler floral motifs.

One characteristic common to all Moroccan synagogues is the abundance of qandils (oil lamps in memory of the deceased) suspended by chains and ending in a silver or copper ring in which the lamp is set. The wick has been replaced in many lamps by electric light bulbs which remain lit all day.

Two synagogues in Tangier yielded particularly interesting discoveries. One is a shavuot ketuba (a "marriage" contract for the festival of Shavuot) similar in all points to a regular marriage contract, except that the bride and groom are God and the Jewish people, and the witnesses are Moses and Aaron. In addition to the standard ketuba text, there is a liturgical poem on the unity of God and the Children of Israel written by Rabbi Israel Najjarah, a Kabbalist from Safed.

In general, this survey in Morocco led to the discovery of unexpected monumental and spiritual treasures, which call for further and more systematic research. Advances in the current peace process now make this a real possibility.