The Wave of Persecution That Put Moses in Moroccan Haggadahs

April 11 2023

In the standard seder liturgy, Moses—the apparent protagonist of the exodus narrative—goes unmentioned, with his name appearing not once. But Jewish communities from Morocco and Western Algeria traditionally add a text in Judeo-Arabic near the beginning of the Haggadah that makes extensive mention of the biblical prophet. Joseph Chetrit explains why:

As can be discerned from the Arabic language of the two versions discussed here, the text about Moses was formulated at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. . . . It seems [therefore] that the return of the figure of Moses and his role in the exodus story came at a time when the Jewish communities in Morocco and other lands of North Africa and Andalusia (Muslim Spain) were allowed to return to open practice of their Judaism at the end of the 13th century under the rulers of the first Marinid sultanate. The connection is a dramatic and even tragic event of long duration that nearly destroyed all the North African and Andalusian communities at the beginning of the reign of the fundamentalist Muslim Almohad caliphate.

During the Almohad persecutions (ca. 1121–1269), Jews were forcibly converted to Islam en masse, and authorities did their best to stamp out every trace of Jewish practice, even as many of these apostates clung to their ancestral faith in secret—in an adumbration of what would happen two centuries later in Christian Spain. This experience, Chetrit writes, would shape the practices of these Jews’ descendants after the Almohad dynasty collapsed and many conversions were reversed:

The hidden Jews saw their return to Judaism as a second exodus from Egypt. Moreover, because of the forced Muslim education they received, and the Muslim sermons they were forced to hear in the mosques, the central figure etched in the minds of the converted Jews was the figure of the prophet Mohammad, who has always been at the center of Islamic worship and belief. The community leaders who sought to restore Jewish life and Jewish consciousness among the survivors of the apostasy needed to obliviate the image of the prophet of Islam and counter it with a central Jewish figure that would overshadow it.

Hence their need for the image of Moses. . . . From the end of the 13th century and through the 14th century, the image of Moses appeared in other Judeo-Arabic poems and texts that were at the core of the Judeo-Arabic culture and poetry that developed from that time among Moroccan Jewry and until the community’s dispersal in the third quarter of the 20th century.

Recordings of the recitation of the text can be found at the link below.

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More about: Anti-Semitism, Conversion, Haggadah, Moroccan Jewry, Muslim-Jewish relations

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula