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Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco, by Aomar Boum
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There is a Moroccan saying: A market without Jews is like bread without salt. Once a thriving community, by the late 1980s, 240,000 Jews had emigrated from Morocco. Today, fewer than 4,000 Jews remain. Despite a centuries-long presence, the Jewish narrative in Moroccan history has largely been suppressed through national historical amnesia, Jewish absence, and a growing dismay over the Palestinian conflict.
Memories of Absence investigates how four successive generations remember the lost Jewish community. Moroccan attitudes toward the Jewish population have changed over the decades, and a new debate has emerged at the center of the Moroccan nation: Where does the Jew fit in the context of an Arab and Islamic monarchy? Can Jews simultaneously be Moroccans and Zionists? Drawing on oral testimony and stories, on rumor and humor, Aomar Boum examines the strong shift in opinion and attitude over the generations and increasingly anti-Semitic beliefs in younger people, whose only exposure to Jews has been through international media and national memory.
- Sales Rank: #1260148 in Books
- Published on: 2014-11-01
- Released on: 2013-10-16
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .70" w x 6.00" l, .74 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
Review
"Memories of Absence makes a much-needed contribution to the scholarship on Middle Eastern and North African Jewries. Moreover, Boum writes his setting so vividly that the reader can picture herself sitting at the cafe in Akka fending off flies and listening to the Hajj Muhammad's tales along with him. Further, he skillfully employs his arguments while never letting it subsume them."—Elizabeth Berk, Social Anthropology
"Groundbreaking . . . The book navigates truthfully and openly between the deception of nostalgia and the duty to confront reality, with complicated issues of identity, anti-Semitism, and a memory at play . . . At times, I felt like I was reading a novel; it seemed the only way to tell this story, counter to historical/archival accounts, which never serve biological memory, but rather disturb it."—Sami Shalom Chetrit, Journal of Palestine Studies
"Aomar Boum's Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco contributes admirably to the growing scholarship on the enduring significance of Jewish historical presence in North Africa . . . The circumscribed ethnographic scope of the book provides a window onto a broadly conceived notion of memory and wide-angled attention to its carriers . . . Scholars interested in the current state of affairs in the ethnography and historiography of Jewish North Africa will find many of the major themes addressed in this book."—Oren Kosansky, Review of Middle East Studies
"By focusing on memories and views of regular Moroccan Muslim men, whether they knew Jews or not, this book is an important contribution to the study of Jewish-Muslim relations from a Muslim point of view."—Rachel Simon, Princeton University
"Based on fieldwork conducted in southern Morocco buttressed by extensive archival research that includes previously unknown documents, this work makes important contributions to several fields, including Moroccan history, legal anthropology, and Jewish studies. Scholars in the interdisciplinary collective memory field will find this an essential text, and those interrogating the development of racism and anti-Semitism will find Boum's conclusions sobering . . . In sum, this is a beautifully written book that contributes to multiple scholarly fields. It presents a society whose collective memory is fractured by generational divides. The absence of Jews in contemporary Morocco has led to a disconnect between the generations, the oldest of whom remember friends and neighbors and create museums in their memory, the youngest of whom have reduced Jews to caricatures stripped of any long-standing tie to Morocco. For these young Moroccans, the idea that Jews could be indigenous Moroccans is now an alien concept. Boum underscores the role of everyday interaction in preventing the propagation of long-standing animosity."—Andrea Smith, H-SAE
"Nothing short of extraordinary, Memories of Absence is theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich, and infinitely sensitive to its subjects. A necessary and wonderful work for all invested in Muslim-Jewish relations, the cultures of North Africa, and the shaping of trans-generational memory in the contemporary world."—Sarah Abrevaya Stein, University of California, Los Angeles
"Aomar Boum says something truly new about the Moroccan Jewish past. He does not shy away from asking—and answering—hard questions about what local, regional, and national identities actually consist of, who they encompass and why, their internal contradictions, and their changing meanings. This is a highly original and important contribution."—Emily Gottreich, University of California, Berkeley
"In Memories of Absence, Aomar Boum empathetically traces the intimate—if often fraught—relations between Muslims and Jews across the southern oases of Morocco from the eighteenth century to the mass departure for Israel in the early 1960s. Boum assembles a unique archive of documents from threatened personal collections of letters and manuscripts to portray a lost social world of legal syncretism and community cohabitation. Masterfully weaving together fields of sociolinguistics, semiotics, ethnohistory, and anthropology into an eminently readable narrative, Boum reveals the various afterlives of Moroccan Jewish culture in ongoing museum projects, national festivals, and state-level politics. Memories of Absence thus makes a substantial contribution to study of the social life of memory."—Paul Silverstein, Reed College
About the Author
Aomar Boum is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and Faculty Fellow at the Université Internationale de Rabat, Morocco. He was born and raised in the oasis of Mhamid, Foum Zguid in the Province of Tata, Morocco. He is the coauthor of the Historical Dictionary of Morocco (2006).
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
For Anthropologists, not Students
By Cecilia A. Halter
Published in 2013, Aomar Boum’s book Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco, chronicles the generational differences of how Jews are viewed in Morocco. By presenting his work in a chronological fashion, starting with the opinions of the oldest generation and ending with the opinions of the youngest generation, Boum attempts to explore the changing opinions and explain how these different views developed. Published by Stanford University Press, Boum compiled ten years of ethnographic and archival research about southern Moroccan families into this succinct work, highlighting some aspects of Moroccan history in order to better understand the results of his interviews. While Boum sets out many goals for his work, and achieves many of them, his writing often proved difficult for me, a junior English major, to understand.
In his introduction, Boum nicely and considerately explains how his book will be laid out. He explains that he will recount interviews he conducted with southern Moroccans about their views and opinions of Jews in Morocco. Not only does it appear that he will try to explain why Jews are not always viewed as indigenous to Morocco, but also he will show the relationship between Jews and Morocco, Jews and other indigenous Moroccans, Jews and Israel, and how Moroccans view the relationship between Jews and Israel. By moving in chronological order, from oldest generation to youngest, Boum will take the reader through the changing opinions and explain how the modern day opinions of Moroccans about Jews developed because of the historical context. He brings about many interesting historical facts and data that give a good background to his work, trying to give every kind of reader an equal opportunity at understanding such a complicated issue. However, while his background did help give some sort of context for his work, Boum did not provide enough information for the average college student without any knowledge of the issue to truly benefit from his historical summaries. For example, Boum begins talking about the Zionist movement without first explaining it; only after my teacher explained that term to me did I understand what point Boum was trying to make.
Boum also goes through and explains his own background. This was crucial for me to understand how his studies were set up. As he set up his studies, he blatantly explains that he will choose not to interview women. While this shocked me at first, because I believe that women can have different and valuable opinions from their husbands, I understood that Boum was making that decision based on his own cultural heritage. However, this does make me think that the title is misleading. He should have titled it “Memories of Absence: How Male Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco,” so readers knew what to truly expect from the work. Boum’s explanation of his own heritage also helped rationalize some of his statements later in the work.
Moving past the crucial introduction, Boum’s first chapter, “Writing the Periphery: Colonial Narratives of Moroccan Jewish Hinterlands,” presents some questions at the opening of his first chapter to indicate what he will try to answer with that chapter. Personally, that aspect helped me as a reader expect what was to come and realize what aspects in the chapter were important. However, Boum then discusses Pierre van Paassen as a kind of introduction for the chapter. Perhaps this section did not make sense to me because I have no history with anthropology or Morocco, but these few paragraphs seemed to have little to do with anything else in the chapter or book. Boum then continues on with a history of Morocco, which may have been interesting for other readers, but went entirely over my head. However, other anthropologists probably would have benefited from such an explanation. Likewise, I somewhat enjoyed his history of the city of Akka, but was overwhelmed with the amount of details. While the historical details were too intense for me to understand, Boum also includes a basic Moroccan proverb (“A market without Jews is like bread without salt”), which helped me as an average reader understand his main point. Likewise, he told a story about Aby Serour which was also helpful to prove his ideas for a more general audience.
His second chapter, “Outside the Mellah: Market, Law, and Muslim-Jewish Encounters,” presents case studies. This chapter gives anthropological data and statistics, but also uses quotes and reflection to help prove Boum’s points and opinions. This chapter seems to be written specifically for his peers, other anthropologists and scholars, rather than students learning generally about Morocco. However, the last paragraph of the chapter gave a brief and much needed synopsis of the major points. Only after reading that paragraph and getting extensive explanation from my professor was I able to scrape the surface of what Boum was trying to explain and get a hint of understanding.
In the next chapter, “Inside the Mellah: Education and the Creation of a Saharan Jewish Center,” Boum looked toward the difference between Jew and Muslim education, Boum regained my interest at first. However, Boum once again presented the material in a confusing manner for a general audience to read. I gathered that the schools were different for each religion, as Boum talks about the AIU without giving much background explanation on what that university actually was. This chapter, like the previous one, was confusing and I only understood Boum’s points after extensive explanation from my teacher. I think that Boum should have talked more about the history of the AIU and how long those schools were present in Morocco. Likewise, it would have been helpful if he had elaborated on the impact of those schools.
Chapter four, “‘Little Jerusalems’ Without Jews: Muslim Memories of Jewish Anxieties and Emigration,” begins with the narrative of a former soldier of the French Foreign Legion, Abbas. Afterwards, Boum presents his goals for the chapter. As someone with no background in Moroccan or Jewish history, I wish Boum had presented these two ideas in the opposite order, so I knew what I should be getting about of Abbas’ story. Boum does an excellent job of splitting up this complicated and details chapter into subheadings for each of his main points. His structure made it slightly easier for me as a total outsider to this topic to understand. Likewise, he generally provides a summary sentence at the end of each section. This chapter required extensive knowledge of the history of the Middle East and knowledge of this time period in general, which I did not have, but his subheadings and conclusions sentences helped me as a reader to understand.
Continuing on to chapter five, “Shadow Citizens: Jews in Independent Morocco,” Boum brings up the notion of ayn mika, or the plastic eye. He does an amazing job of explaining what exactly this term means before he uses it in context. Boum then chronicles some problems with independence, which was both informational and interesting. However, again in this chapter Boum assumes that readers know more about the Cold War history than a general college student might know. His discussion of the newspapers was interesting, as he chronicled the change to anti-Jewish opinions. Likewise, I truly enjoyed Boum’s comparison of two different Jewish museums, which highlights the two differing opinions of Jews in Morocco.
Boum’s final chapter, “Between Hearsay, Jokes, and the Internet: Youth Debate Jewish Morocco,” explores the feelings of modern day Muslins in Morocco about Jews. This final paragraph was by far the most interesting and straightforward for me. However, it was also the most disturbing because of the views that Boum reports Muslims feel toward Jews. Finally in this chapter I understood the whole point of the book, and the reason for all Boum’s emphasis on the historical background of Morocco. However, while I finally realized why he was including so much historical detail, I think that many college students would benefit from having their teachers explain the history of Morocco and then simply reading this chapter.
Overall, Boum’s book provided a great insight into the history of Morocco and gave a detailed analysis of the changing opinions of Muslims toward Jews. Boum accomplished his goal of chronicling the changing opinions of Muslims toward Jews generationally and also gives historical context for the opinions. After careful analysis, this book seems to be aimed at other anthropologists, or at least people with an in-depth understanding of the history of Morocco, Jewish history, and the history of the Cold War Era. However, the last chapter was the most important, in my opinion, and could be read without first reading any of the other chapters. I think that other college professors and students would benefit from this book, but only if the teacher summarized the chapter for the students before the students read that chapter. Boum’s presentation of his data and chronological order of the book make it suitable for many different audiences, as long as each audience is provided some substantial background into the history of Morocco.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Book review
By Mary
There are few books an undergraduate student may actually read, enjoy, and apply into their life simultaneously. Aomar Boum through his work Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco was able to incorporate all of these elements. As a nursing major, I find it difficult to find relevance in other courses that doesn’t apply to my major. Boum shows the importance of generational differences, anti-Semitism as a result of the Palestine-Israel conflict, and even the power of social media that one can not only apply in their other courses but also into their life. Overall, Aomar Boum was successful in achieving his objective, making his subject relevant to outside his purpose, and making this applicable to his audience.
Aomar Boum clearly outlines the goal of his work to “answer the questions about the perceptions and both negative and positive attitudes of Muslim generations” of the Jewish community (Boum, 9). Boum divided each of his 80 Muslim respondents into generational sects: great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and young adults. His thought process was thorough and outlined specific political events throughout the Moroccan’s history that would influence the opinions of Jews. Throughout his work he included the direct quotes from his subjects regardless of their negative or positive connotation. In the beginning chapters, Boum shows the older generations co-existing and actually missing the presence of the Jewish community. In Chapter 1, Ali his tour guide expressed his sadness that the Jews left because the economic stability left with them. Because the Jews could not own land, they were forced to become merchants. When the Jews emigrated from Morocco, the market of merchants emigrated also. As described in Chapter 2, “When Jews left Akka, it was like a company of one thousand workers that went bankrupt” (Boum, 28). Unfortunately, the older generation’s nostalgic memories of the Jewish community were not similar to the younger generations. In one specific case in Chapter 4, his subjects fought over the perception of Jews. The grandfather, because he was exposed to his Jewish neighbors, believed “there is nothing wrong with Jews” because he “spent more than half of my life around them” (Boum, 99). The young adult on the other hand believed that Jews “are untrustworthy” as a result of his devotion to his Palestine allies (Boum, 98). Boum also touches upon the uneasy subjects such as the Muslim perception on the Holocaust. In Chapter 6, when Boum asks a young adult about his opinion of the Holocaust, the young man denied the number of Jews affected. He also believed that Jews over exaggerated their suffering for the attention and monetary reward. Aomar Boum perfectly achieved his goal by honestly exposing the uplifting and the disturbing perceptions of Jews through each generational cohort.
Although Aomar Boum represents the different generations and their perceptions on Jews, one important population seems to be left out: women. Boum explains in the introduction that he excluded interviewing women because their opinions would be altered based on the opinion of the male who is in charge the household. Decided, this is a legitimate reason for excluding women from being interviewed, but I believe that the women’s opinion of the Jewish population would have been a substantial finding. Because the book repeatedly references to the Jews compared to women as a result of their inferiority, the women’s opinion of Jews would have been important to analyze. In Chapter 6, Boum stated a popular saying that read “The Jew and the woman are alike; they are cowards and they do not show respect” (Boum, 136). One could question if Jews are compared to women, would women view them as their equal? Noting back to the women’s suffrage in America, the protesting women were especially racists towards African Americans because women wanted their rights to be addressed first. This would have been interesting to see if the racism in Moroccan women is also heightened. Regardless, Boum should have include the “How Muslims Men remember Jews in Morocco” in his title rather than “How Muslims remember Jews in Morocco”. This title change would have been more upfront about the Boum’s subject matter.
Aomar Boum’s objective, regardless of the inclusion of the opinion of women, was clearly elaborated throughout the book. Despite being a book geared towards an anthropology class of Morocco, I found this matter very relevant to outside of this course. This book addresses the issue of generational differences. As a nursing major, I encounter generational differences throughout my other nursing courses. Different generations have different learning styles, different opinions on medicine, and even different political views. Boum makes the generational difference very apparent throughout his book with the divide between Muslim Moroccans who previously lived amongst Jews verse those who did not. Boum notes “Younger generations are reproducing new Moroccan ideas about Jews by importing external religious and political thought and adapting it to the social, cultural, and historical realities of Morocco society”. This was very relevant for any reader to see how specifically a population is so heavily influenced by political and religious events. Specifically in Chapter 6, it was also interesting to see the power of social media. Boum credits social media to “help both rural and urban Moroccan youth go beyond the limited media traditionally regulated by the state and political parties to express themselves freely about the Israeli policies toward Palestinians” (Boum, 134). The youth are now able to express their opinions and gather information about the Jewish community without even encountering a Jew. Hatred was established by a simple click on the internet. As an undergraduate, I believe it is important to address this situation because of how many college students are on social media. With this point, Boum shows his well-rounded thoughts and ideas on why Muslim Moroccans have their perceptions of Jews. Boum also addresses the effect of the Palestine-Israel conflict. This event precipitated most of the negative feelings towards Jews. Blindly coming into a North African classroom, my knowledge of this conflict was embarrassingly small. This book is relevant to show the readers how much this conflict affects other countries’ besides the United States’ perception on the conflict. Overall, Boum has great relevance to almost every college student’s life regardless of their major.
Despite Aomar Boum having great relevance to outside the classroom, I found some of his material difficult to follow as a student with no prior knowledge to Moroccan history. Before reading the first five chapters of the book, I suggest a history lesson of the political and religious events in Morocco. Although this book is very relevant to undergraduate students, a lot of the material can be over the readers head if he or she has no prior information on the subject. I knew very little about the independence of Morocco and how this specifically affected the Moroccan citizens. I knew little about the Zionist movement let alone what a Zionist was. It was hard to get through the first five chapters without a google page up. Boum would have been more effective with undergraduate college students if he included a political background before it was addressed. I found a lot of Boum’s material irrelevant in the first few chapters simply because I could not understand the material.
Reading a book for a class should be more than understanding the minimum information for an assignment; a book should be applicable for the course as well as outside the classroom. Boum was successful in achieving his goal by showing his audience the Muslim perceptions of the Jews based on their generational sect. Boum was also able to achieve relevance outside the specific aim; Boum addressed the issues generational differences, social media, and the Palestine- Israel conflict. These outside issues made this book applicable to readers outside of a Moroccan anthropology class. Overall, Aomar Boum receives the highest praise from his book Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Memories of Absence
By Liz
Boum, Aomar. Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco. Stanford UP, 2013. Print.
In the well-researched and balanced novel Memories of Absence, by Aomar Boum, he describes the complex and shifting relationship between Moroccans and Jews throughout different generations. In order to accurately collect information, Aomar systematically interviewed and represented men of all ages, races and religions in Morocco. The older generations are filled with first hand experiences and interactions between Jew’s that lived in their towns and depended on each other, usually referring to the town of Akka.
As time progressed and the Jews begin to move out of Morocco around World War II, there is an obvious change in perspective. The younger generations no longer have a personal relationship with any Jews. The opinions they formed about the Jews are stereotypical based off of hearsay and various media sources. It is a sad reality about the youth that Boum brings into the light. Facts about the holocaust and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts are questioned and researched by various news sources in Morocco. This book seeks to unearth the feelings that four generations of Moroccan Muslims hold about their former neighbors. Boum furthers this task by trying to get at the reasons for these feelings and how the younger generations, whom have never encountered a Jew, developed those feelings.
Boum begins to elucidate how the oldest generations of Moroccans consider their relationship with the Jews as mutually beneficial. At first glance it seems as if the Jews are being treated poorly and irrationally. They don’t have many rights or the ability to own land but they have all the control over the markets. Without the Jews the local markets could not grow or prosper, they added salt to the economy. (14) The Jews were responsible for trade between rural communities and other cities. In return, the Muslim tribal lords protected the Jews as we can see in the various case studies Buom gives. The two groups may not have been equal but peacefully lived in communities together. In an interview with Hajj Najm Lahrash, he explained how the Muslims needed the Jews for “economic survival” and the Jews depended on the Muslims for “personal security” forming an interdependent relationship. (29)
As time continued and news of the Holocaust begins to travel down to North Africa, the Jews grew increasingly worried about where they stood within the community. With rumors of France, the protectorate of Morocco at the time, capturing Jews and the Sultan of Morocco “planning to implement a set of policies against Jews”, they begin to migrate out of Morocco. (88) As the movement of European Jews to Palestine began, the Moroccan Jews were not far behind. Palestine was “the Promised Land” where Jews thought things would be safer. The migration of Jews from Morocco to Palestine continues when Morocco is finally given its independence in 1956. Boum sets out to describe how this generation of interlocutors failed to include the Jews in the nationalist movement. When the Islamist nationalists failed to incorporate the Jews the Zionist movement took advantage. The Zionists facilitated the continuing migration of Jews from Morocco to Palestine in the years after World War II and Moroccan independence. This had a great affect on the markets and economies in Moroccan cities. However, the Jews had to abandon their markets because they were afraid that they were no longer wanted in Morocco and did not want another Holocaust to happen.
The Moroccan government, according to Buom, has turned a plastic eye towards the history of their country’s relationship with Jewish inhabitants. Rather than dealing with the historical importance of Jews it is easier and less controversial to ignore the past completely. (130) Just because the Moroccan state disagrees with today’s conflict in Palestine and the Jews that live there does not mean you can erase history. The national political influence controlled much of the press and documents that were created during its rule. The national museums created were influenced by the governing power at the time therefore choosing what relationships and parts of Jewish history should be included.
The movement of the Jews out of Africa to Palestine is the beginning of the conflict that affects how the younger generations of Moroccans consider the Jews. Without ever personally meeting a Jew, this generation has formulated their negative opinions and made Jewish people the punch line to their jokes. Buom shows how the media influences the younger generations to have “narrow and misinformed perspectives of the Jews.” (157) There are museums and other ways that those who have never interacted with a Jew could learn about them. Both religions have similar values: education and family. The state can monitor and control certain ideas and issues that are broadcast in newspapers and on TV but they lose power with the rise of various social medias where students can express themselves freely (141). Students can start and create movements on Facebook or Twitter that spread like rapid fire beyond their small towns or cities. It is possible and easy to connect with a much larger population. Moroccan students use the Internet to confirm their biases against Jews rather than research the various different perspectives. Like most young adults they tend to think their ideas are the correct ideas. Older generations are embarrassed by the ignorance of the younger Moroccans and their opinions of the Jews.
Interestingly, Aomar Boum points out in the beginning that his own race and appearance as a black male can sometimes cause him to be mistaken as a “Falashi (Ethiopian) Jew” (2). Ethnographers can attest to the fact that who your interlocutor is affects the information you are given. The people he interviews might have made assumptions about his personal religious beliefs, especially because it is taboo to be a Moroccan Muslim studying Judaism, and catered their answers to him.
This topic is not easily tackled; it is clear that Aomar Buom put in a great deal of research to jump over various religious, racial and ethnic boundaries when collecting his data. This novel is well organized, tackling the issues both chronologically and thematically. Beginning with the Jews role in the Mellah and moving on from there. It focuses on historical aspects such as the Holocaust and the beginning of the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel. It then moves into a more modern survey of how the media skews our views and how the younger generations formulate opinions based without actually knowing the full story. I think that Aomar accomplishes all the goals and themes he set out to. It is evident that the position and relationship of the Jews changed over the generations and what caused these changes. In order to understand this book having a slight background on Morocco and the conflict with Palestine and Israel would help. This book is appropriate for undergraduate students who are learning about Jewish history, various religious relationships or how African Jews began to migrate out of Morocco.
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