André Levy - Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist

Andr Levy

The University of Chicago Press

CHICAGO & LONDON

ANDR LEVY is a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel. He is coeditor of Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2015 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2015.

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-29241-0 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-29255-7 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-29269-4 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226292694.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levy, Andr, author.

Return to Casablanca : Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli anthropologist / Andr Levy.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-29241-0 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-0-226-29255-7 (paperback : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-0-226-29269-4 1. EthnologyMoroccoCasablanca. 2. JewsMoroccoCasablanca. 3. Jewish diaspora. I. TitleDT329.C 3L 48 2015

305.892'4064dc23

2015006382

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI / NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

For my parents.

In memory of my father, who unfortunately never traveled back.

In memory of my mother, who fortunately did.

So many people who bettered the content, shape, and logic of this book should be thanked! Unfortunately, I cant thank them all by name. This is particularly true with regard to the people in Morocco and Israel who opened their doors and hearts. Ill have to be satisfied, unfortunately, with only those who can be mentioned by name. As is customary in anthropological writing, and following the requests of many, the names and other identity markers of people appearing in this book have been camouflaged. I hope that the erasure of identity will not obscure my deep and sincere feeling of gratitude to them.

I would like to thank Harvey Goldberg and Yoram Bilu, my teachers in the deepest sense of the term. Michael Herzfeld, Susan Miller, and Larry (Lawrence) Rosen inspired me in different stations of my life.

Morocco, as a field of research, was practically neglected by English-writing anthropologists after the 1980s. Less as an anthropologist, and more as a native Moroccan, I saw that this writing was missing. Therefore, it was exciting to meet scholars of a younger generation who returned to this intriguing country. With one of them particularly, Aomar Boum, I keep up a constant exchange of ideas about Jewish-Muslim relationships in Morocco. I believe that I speak in the name of both of us when I say that these intimate relationships, with their fluctuations, are a source of comfort and hope for a better future in the Middle East.

Michal Baharav-Uzrad and Noa Leuchter read the manuscript in its initial form and wisely offered ideas to improve the text.

Last, but not least, I feel immensely indebted to my love, Ricky. She is the source of my thoughts and ideas.

My most primal memories, those deeply ingrained in me from the first years of my childhood, are connected with movement: movement between Morocco and Israel. One particular sensory memory is branded onto my body. It is the memory of being jolted around in a taxicab, our bodies bouncing as the cab passed over the train tracks on its way to the dock in Casablanca. We were heading for the ship that would begin our journey to Israel. My second memory is a visual one; my father held my hand tightly as we walked on the ships deck. He was afraid I might let go of his hand and slip on the wet surface. There were so many wonderful sights and I was curious to see them. A ship passed us in the distance; the people walking on the deck seemed like dolls able to walk on their own. The open horizons of the ocean mocked the perception of a child of five. Years later I still searched for those magical automatic dolls that knew how to walk on their own and wave goodbye with their hands.

The jolt of separation from Morocco at age five undermined the certainty of its memory. All that was left, adamant in their steadfastness, were the memories of leaving. Since that time, I repeatedly longed to return and strove to restore the memories from before our emigration; I attempted this through family stories or gatherings with relatives who left after us and who, unlike us, immigrated (later on) to France. When I was a youth, these relatives seemed to have a higher level of authenticity than my parents to anything connected to life in Morocco. They stayed behind, and they didnt have any of the bitterness that came with post-factum reflections about the decision to immigrate to Israel, which, I was then convinced glorified my parents memories of a place that for decades there was no possibility that we could return to. I also tried returning to Morocco by way of reflecting on my childhood in an Ashdod neighborhood which was mostly Moroccan: Morocco in Israel. When it turned possible, I sought to meet it again through journeys and went on voyages that were a mixture of nostalgia and the study of roots made by travelers like me, who were bound to Morocco. I am unable to claim that I succeeded. The intimacy which I crave is found again and again to be unattainable. Not that there is anything in Moroccos essence that is particularly unique; nonetheless, Morocco, to my regret, remains as elusive as ever.

This book comprises a retrospective view of an anthropological study over the course of around thirty years, a view that attempts in different ways if not to remove this bothersome obstacle then at least to decipher it. Moving between times and sailing between spaces, the book travels between Morocco and Israel; it turns toward the nineteenth century and returns back to the twenty-first century. Instead of separating times and places, the movement of the writing binds them together. Notions such as Morocco, Israel, past, present, and so forth arent complete, fixed categories that stand on their own or are independent of each other. From within this deliberately loose framework of times and spaces the reader is invited to wander amidst my life experiences, experiences that are personal but not idiosyncratic. In the personal vignettes one may find no small amount of a generic story.

The book is engaged in constant movement, in a sort of flnerie, and as such it is not a conclusion of my work, but a reference point, a moment, in the continuous inquisitive wanderings in which one may stop and reflect back. This continuous motion is not completely cut off from the place it left, and upon arriving at another, new place it does not emphatically demand total assimilation such that the past is denied, even if parts of it had been forgotten and had sunk into the depths of oblivion. The hint of nostalgia that crops up from between and within different sentences is the glue that synthesizes times and places which might otherwise seem separate and clearly disconnected. The nostalgia leaves its mark on the logical consecutive structure of an individuals life events that otherwise might seem out of place; it unites fragments of memories which seem scattered, engraved in the milestones spread in scattered spaces. Thus, the continuous movement in the book from one place and time to another comes together as one story, even if only for the moment of surrender to the nostalgia within these pages.