Thanks to a proclamation from Mayor Muriel Bowser, Washington, DC officially recognized yesterday as “Mimouna, a Festival of Good Neighbors.” Yet this traditional North African Jewish celebration, which in recent years has become increasingly mainstream in Israel and even in parts of the Diaspora, in fact took place last week, marking the conclusion of Passover. Mimouna’s origins and etymology are unclear. One common explanation states that it marks the anniversary of the death of Maimon ben Joseph, father of the great Rabbi Moses Maimonides; another that it is a leyl emunah, or “night of faith.”

Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy take the occasion to discuss not just the holiday itself, but also the musical traditions of North African Jewry, the Moroccan Jewish community of Montreal, and that community’s greatest musician, Samy Elmaghribi, with Christopher Silver. (Audio, 54 minutes.)

Stephen Daisley writes about the slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim:

Yaron and Sarah were murdered in a climate of lies and vilification and hatred. . . . The more institutions participate in this collective madness, the more madness there will be. The more elected officials and NGOs misrepresent the predictable consequences of asymmetric warfare in densely populated territories, where much of the infrastructure of everyday life has a dual civilian/terrorist purpose, the more the citizenries of North America and Europe will come to regard Israelis and Jews as a people who lust unquenchably after blood.

The most intolerant anti-Zionism is becoming a mainstream view, indulged by liberal societies, more concerned with not conflating irrational hatred of Israel with irrational hatred of Jews—as though the distinction between the two is all that well defined anymore.

For years now, and especially after the October 7 massacre, the call has gone up from the pro-Palestinian movement to put Palestine at the heart of Western politics. To pursue the struggle against Zionism in every country, on every platform, and in every setting. To wage worldwide resistance to Israel, not only in Wadi al-Far’a but in Washington, DC. “Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what it looks like.