The Divergence of Judaism and Islam. Interdependence, Modernity, and Political Turmoil

(Joyce) #1

156 · Daniel J. Schroeter


Jewish agriculture in order to improve their chances as candidates for ali-
yah, or if the Jews of the Atlas themselves, aware of the obstacles in place
for aliyah, were responding to Grinker’s quest for Jewish agriculturalists
by representing themselves as farmers. What is clear, however, is that
Grinker’s mission contributed to the myth of Jewish farmers in Morocco
that helped facilitate the settlement in Israel’s periphery.


Conclusion


What emerges from this study of Jewish settlement in rural Morocco is
a rather complicated and diverse picture of relations between Jews and
Muslims that was often contingent on local circumstances and histori-
cal change. It questions some of the generalizations about Jewish life in
Muslim lands that are based either on the theory of dhimmi status or on
the more general stereotypes of Jews and their alienation from the land.
It also challenges assumptions made about the impact of colonial rule on
Muslim-Jewish relations, demonstrating that the changes brought to the
countryside were not only uneven but also sometimes to the detriment of
the Jews up until the time of the mass departure of arguably the last rural
Jewish community of the Muslim world.


Notes



  1. Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York: Colum-
    bia University Press, 1957), 4:151–71.

  2. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, “Jewish Occupational Selection:
    Education, Restrictions, or Minorities?” Journal of Economic History 65 (2005):
    922–48.

  3. S. D. Goiten, A Mediterranean Society, vol. 1, Economic Foundations (Berke-
    ley: University of California Press, 1967), 116–27.

  4. H. Z. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, vol. 1, From Antiquity
    to the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 262–63.

  5. David Corcos cites a number of examples from sixteenth-century travel ac-
    counts: “Yehude Marokko me-gerush Sefarad ve- ̔ad emtz ̔a shel ha-mea ha-tet-
    zayin,” in Corcos, Studies in the History of the Jews of Morocco (Jerusalem: Rubin
    Mass, 1976), 275, 279, 292.

  6. Haïm Zafrani, Etudes et recherches sur la vie intellectual juive au Maroc de la
    fin du 15e au début du 20e siècle, vol. 1, Pensée juridique et environnement social,
    économique, et religieux (Paris: Geuthner, 1972), 172–76.

  7. A good case in point is the example of a fatwa issued in the early seven-
    teenth century by a prominent jurist, ̔Issa al-Suktani al-Susi, which declared

Free download pdf