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

316 r Jessica Marglin

leaders eventually proved willing to accept innovations in poor relief and,
consequently, the relinquishment of some authority.

* * *

Questions of poverty and its relief figured prominently in precolonial
Meknes. At the individual level, Jews were constantly asked to give to
the poor. At the communal level, the challenge of caring for the city’s
Jewish poor constituted one of the most pressing issues facing the com-
munity’s leaders. The history of poverty and charity in Meknes concerns
both how Jewish leaders organized charity and how the Jewish leader-
ship maintained itself. Charity was a responsibility saddled on Meknes’s
leaders as well as a tool they used to their advantage. Although I do not
deny the religious significance of charity, I argue that in their responses
to poverty, Meknes’s Jewish leaders were doing more than simply fulfill-
ing the religious injunction to give charity. They simultaneously built and
maintained a structure of communal authority. Charity was not merely a
religious injunction; it pervaded the very nature of Meknes’s Jewish lead-
ership structure. In addition, a careful study of the organization of poor
relief calls into question dichotomies between “modern” and “traditional”
approaches to poverty. It addresses the ways in which ideas about poverty
began to change in the late nineteenth century, adding another chapter
to the story of Europeans’ impact on Moroccan Jews. Further studies of
poverty and charity in the Moroccan context would add to these debates;
my hope is that this beginning will be enhanced by further research.

Notes

1. Mordechai Amar, ed., Taqanot of the Rabbis of Meknes (Jerusalem: Hevrat Ahavat
   Shalom, 1996) (Hebrew).


2. On the authors of these taqanot, see Moshe Amar, “On ‘the Taqanot of Meknes’ in
   the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” (Hebrew), in Hevrah ve-Qehilah, ed. Avra-
   ham Haim (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, 1991), 41–42. Collections of responsa from
   Meknes include Raphael Berdugo, Mishpatim Yesharim: She’elot u-teshuvot, Hotsa’ah, 2d
   ed. (Jerusalem, 1993); Messas Sar Shalom, Divrei Shalom (Meknes: Sayag, 1895); Shmuel
   Amar, Dvar Shmuel (Casablanca: Razon, 1940). Archives consulted in Jerusalem include
   the Jewish National and University Library (JNUL), the library of the Ben-Zvi Institute
   (YBZ), and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (AHJP). In Paris I
   consulted the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) and the Ministère des
   Affaires Etrangères (MAE).