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■      Page 10 - The Canadian Jewish News, Fridj^y, September 29th, 19(S7
JEWISH LIFE
' '-y- By VictwMilki.
■ ., Casablanca, Rabat, Fez, Marrakesh - aniyoiie who has been to Israel has met Jews from these Moroccan cities and a great deal is known of their life and cuistoms while they still lived in Morocco. ■
But how many people have heard of Taourirt, Tineghir, Zerkent or Ouarzazate, remote, primitive villages on the edge of the Sahara In Southern MorocccP These, too, and others, have their Jewish communities, many of whom are now leaving the Middle Ages behind them and making a leap into the twentieth century, in Israel.
Only 30 years ago, the Jews of Southern Morocco lived in virtual slavery. The French administration had not yet extended its firm hold on the area, and the old customs prevailed. Every Jew was the serf of a Moslem, who, in turn, became the "protector" of his slave's family.
The Moslem was the of^^ ficial guardian of the interests of the Jewish family he "owned," and they paid him a regular tribute of several gold coins for his "protection." When a Jew-idi girl reached marriageable age - about ten years old, generally speaking - the explicit permission of the family's Moslem protector had to be obtained before she could be married. For this, too, payment in gold was exacted.
Today, these Jewish communities are fast disappearing, as their members make their way northwards, eventually to emigrate to Israel.
Last mcHith, together with a cameraman, I visited scxne of them. I found that a number of places, Taourirt, for example, had no rabbi, no shochet and nobody to give religious instruction of any kind.
The siynagogue in Taourirt is in a kind of grotto, witii scHne dim daylight Altering in through a hole in the roof. There is no electricily, of course, and candles are used for illumination when darkness falls. When it rains in Taourirt, the raindrops patter the Scrolls of the Law in the s^noagoguei
llie niellah(Jewishghetto) is a scene of dilapidation, squalor and misei^. About 15 families still live there, 150 people making some kind of living as cobblers, jewellery craftsmen, joiners and artisans. These trades are passed on from father to SOT. TTiere had even been a wandering Jewish camel driver once, whose home was in the Taourirt meUah, but he had left the country.
Jewish tradition survives strongly in the villiage, but superstition has become intermingled with rabbinic teaching^ so that it is now difficult to say where super-stitiOT ends and religi<Mi begins.
Some years ago, a university man who"* made a"" serious study of the Jews of . Southern Morocco, M.Pierre Flamand, asserted that there was a Jewish community fliere which celebrated Ramadl^ (an Arab month xi fasting, commemorating the handing down of the Koran) as a Jewish holy festival, but I heard nc^ing of any such practice Lii the village m ^estion.
The.Jewish ctHnmunities of Southern Morocco are a veritable treasure-house of folk-lore and tradition to which the overwhelming ma- . jority of theni have remained faithful. They have preserved their ancient usages and customs and their traditional costume, but these will all disappear as the communities diisperse.
Soon, it will be impossible to tell the difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish cemetery in Southern Mor-(Qcco. I visited tliat at Tine-g^, famous for tlje great rabbis burled there. It lies In the middle of the desert, unmarked and with no boundary wall. There was no inscription on any of the graves,
Before long the desert Jeyifartrf-^^orocco will be U^e more "than a memory, iHit before the final chapter is written, some record will have been made for posterity, A foreign film unit is due to start shooting isom? time this month. But how-, ever colourful it may turn out to bo, it cannot hope to give more than an indication of the vitality and unusual qualities of Southern Morocco's Jewish communities:
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