The Convergence of Judaism and Islam. Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

A Study of Jewish Communal Leadership in Meknes, 1750–1912 r 319

32. The history of charity in Judaism is beyond the scope of this essay. See Frisch,
    An Historical Survey of Jewish Philanthropy, and Frank M. Loewenberg, From Charity
    to Social Justice: The Emergence of Communal Institutions for the Support of the Poor in
    Ancient Judaism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2001).


33. Ben-Naeh, “Poverty,” 160, 164. Ben-Naeh suggests that this attitude may have been
    the result of European influence, as they considered the poor disgusting and dangerous
    (176).


34. See, e.g., the letter of recommendation sent for a poor talmid hakham, a copy of
    which was included among a collection of taqanot from eighteenth-century Meknes
    (JNUL F 16107: 49). See also the letter concerning a widow and her orphaned son who
    applied to the communal authorities for charity; although they worried that the young
    man would turn to alcoholism, they nonetheless found no fault with the pair for being
    poor (JNUL F 16107: 46).


35. See three letters encouraging Meknesi Jews to give charity from 1781 (JNUL F
    16107: 54–55).


36. See Amar, Taqanot, 73, 93, 340, 363.


37. There are taqanot with instructions for people to give gifts only to the poorest of
    their relatives who under no circumstances would be able to reciprocate. Ibid., 73.


38. AIU Maroc II B 12–98, Community of Meknes to AIU, Tammuz 5671 (1911).


39. Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 45–51.


40. Marcus, “Poverty and Poor Relief,” 176. See also Marcus’s observation that the
    Ottoman administration in eighteenth-century Aleppo did not provide social welfare,
    which was dealt with privately. Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Mo-
    dernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 77. See also Cohen, Poverty and
    Charity, 245, and Sabra, Poverty and Charity, 32.


41. This comparison has not been adequately explored and is undoubtedly overly gen-
    eralized. See Frisch, An Historical Survey of Jewish Philanthropy, 34–40, 50, and Sabra,
    Poverty and Charity, 4, 32.


42. Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence, 27; Ginio, “Living on the Margins of
    Charity,” 177; Sabra, Poverty and Charity, 32, 140–41.


43. Abdelhamid Larguèche, Les ombres de la ville: pauvres, marginaux, et minoritaires
    à Tunis, XVIIIème et XIXème siècles (Manouba: Centre de publication universitaire, Fa-
    culté des lettres de Manouba, 1999), 117–35.


44. The communal poor box appears in the Mishna. Frisch, An Historical Survey of
    Jewish Philanthropy, 100–101.


45. Amar, Taqanot, 421.


46. Frisch, An Historical Survey of Jewish Philanthropy, 105; Levi, The Jews of Meknes,
    70; Gerber, Jewish Society in Fez, 70; Ben-Naeh, “Poverty,” 186.


47. Amar, Taqanot, 73, 93. See also Levi, The Jews of Meknes, 70; Shlomo A. Deshen,
    The Mellah Society: Jewish Community Life in Sherifian Morocco (Chicago: University of
    Chicago Press, 1989), 65.


48. Kenneth L. Brown, People of Salé: Tradition and Change in a Moroccan City,
    1830–1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 92–93, 97; Ben-Naeh,
    “Poverty,” 187; Ginio, “Living on the Margins of Charity,” 172.