The Many Incarnations of Moroccan Jewish Folklore’s Comic Sage

Nov. 16 2022

A simultaneously wise and foolish folk hero whose humorous adventures tend to satirize figures of authority? To an Ashkenazi Jew, this might sound like one of the wise men of Chelm or the tales of Hershele of Ostropol. To a Moroccan Jew, it is an apt description of the folkloric character named Seha. Marc Eliany, who has recently published a book of these tales, writes:

Rep­re­sent­ed in Jew­ish, Mus­lim, and Chris­t­ian sto­ries through­out the Mediter­ranean basin, Seha was depict­ed in a vari­ety of ways. In Jew­ish inter­pre­ta­tions, Seha was the prophet Eli­jah, the Baby­lon­ian Rab­bi Yose, an une­d­u­cat­ed spice-mak­er, a saint, a yeshi­va stu­dent, a wan­der­ing mer­chant, a jew­el­er, and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jew­ish Moroc­can res­i­dents. . . . When my grand­fa­ther, a rab­bi, told me sto­ries, he described Seha as sim­i­lar to him­self. My mater­nal grand­moth­er pre­sent­ed Seha as a socioe­co­nom­ic and polit­i­cal hero—as a reflec­tion of her own prox­im­i­ty to local polit­i­cal lead­ers. My pater­nal grand­moth­er, on the oth­er hand, trans­formed him into a comedic, self-dep­re­cat­ing figure.

In fact, self-dep­re­ca­tion in Moroc­can Jew­ish sto­ry­telling serves as a means of cop­ing with the lim­i­ta­tions of the dhim­ma sys­tem—a Mus­lim law that charged non-Mus­lims a tax in exchange for free­dom of reli­gion and prop­er­ty own­er­ship. Humor in Seha tales lessens the dif­fer­ences between Moroc­can Jews and their Mus­lim neigh­bors, ful­fill­ing a com­mu­ni­ty need to ele­vate the sta­tus of dhim­ma Jews.

Read more at Jewish Book Council

More about: Chelm, Jewish folklore, Jewish humor, Moroccan Jewry

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023