A Study of Jewish Communal Leadership in Meknes, 1750–1912 r 313founded in 1860 to promote the education and political emancipation of
Jews outside of Western Europe, primarily in the Middle East, the Bal-
kans, and North Africa.^97 It opened its first school in Morocco in 1862
and steadily expanded its scholastic network throughout the precolonial
period.
Meanwhile, ideas about charity prevalent in nineteenth-century Eu-
rope were undergoing significant change, rooted in events of the sixteenth
century. Poverty was no longer considered an acceptable fact of life, de-
serving of pity and material aid; it was a deplorable state that could, with
the correct policies, be eradicated. Begging came to be seen as especially
egregious, and attempts were made to put beggars to work. European Jew-
ish communities had begun to adopt these views as early as the seven-
teenth century, and by the late nineteenth century they were widespread.^98
In London, for instance, new charitable organizations created after 1859
believed that the poor had the potential to pull themselves out of poverty
with the proper education, supervision, and carefully regulated aid.^99 Nor
were Muslims in the Middle East immune to these ideological currents. In
Egypt, welfare reforms instituted midcentury introduced policies more in
line with European opinions on poor relief. Centralized poor houses were
created in Cairo, beggars were cleared from the streets, and able-bodied
vagrants were drafted into military service.^100
Studies of the changing nature of charity among Middle Eastern Jews
have yet to be conducted, but it is clear that new practices in nineteenth-
century Meknes were related to European influences. For instance, at the
end of the nineteenth century the Jewish leaders of Meknes established a
hospital for the sickly poor.^101 Although providing hospitals for those who
could not afford private medical care has a long history in Muslim societ-
ies, no evidence of similar practices among Middle Eastern Jews exists.^102
Meknesi Jews’ decision to provide medical care most likely stemmed from
the influence of European “modernizers.” Jews in London, for instance,
began to provide medical care based on new developments in hygiene and
medicine.^103 European consuls working in Morocco often invited Western
doctors or helped to establish hospitals as part of their efforts to reform
Moroccan society.^104 Similar evidence that Meknes’s Jews were increas-
ingly aware of the implications of Western medicine is found in a taqanah
from 1881 proscribing a number of changes in how charity was organized.
Among them, the communal leaders decreed that the money collected
from taxes on kosher meat was to be used to clear the trash in the millāh,