21
Waiting for the Messiah?
Until the second half of the twentieth century, the response by European
and American Jews to the Enlightenment and more recent developments
within western society passed by unnoticed among Jews of North Afri-
can or Middle Eastern Sephardi background. Most Jews in these regions
remained blissfully unaware of the contradictory movements which had
emerged from the moral agonizing of German Jews in the first half of
the nineteenth century. For these Jews, religion was traditional and
unproblematic. Nor, for the most part, did European Jews attempt to
disturb their equilibrium. So, for instance, the ‘cultural and moral elev-
ation’ through which the Alliance Israélite Universelle, founded in 1860,
aimed from its headquarters in Paris to improve the social and legal
status of the Jews in these regions meant essentially indoctrination not
in any particular form of Judaism but in French culture, and the deci-
sion of many francophone North African Jews to chose France as their
place of refuge rather than Israel in the 1950s was more cultural than
religious.
These traditional communities were accustomed to tolerating a wide
span of religious observance and took the strains of modernization in
their stride. If anything, they saw as a greater threat to their Jewish iden-
tity in European society the possibility of Ashkenazi homogenization,
leading in reaction to a particular pride in specifically local cus-
toms. Hence, for example, the enthusiasm with which the family and
community picnics of the Mimouna festival are celebrated on the day
after Pesach by Jews of North African origin. The origins and signifi-
cance of the festival are unknown, and it is popular just because it is
distinctive (and enjoyable). Hence even the much assimilated Moroccan
Jewish community of Paris has begun to celebrate the Mimouna in
recent years.^1
The Mimouna is also widely observed in Israel under the influence of
over a million Israelis of Moroccan origin. But, apart from Moroccans,