A Jewish-Muslim Day In Morocco

On December 12, 2024, I set out with four colleagues of the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) to meet with members of the rural community of Tafza in the Al Haouz province, Marrakesh region, which is located in the mountain range that bore the horrendous epicenter of the September 2023 earthquake. Unlike the countless visits that members of our Moroccan and US non-profit organization have made to many hundreds of village communities in this area since that natural disaster, this recent December visit was of a different, yet still humanly essential, restoration purpose.

The president of the Moroccan Jewish community in Marrakesh, Jacky Kadoch, who received the authorization of the provincial governing authorities, had asked that we perform a sacred duty at the Tafza Jewish cemetery. Our purpose that day was to gather and bury again the human bone remains that had emerged from the ground from the years of terrible erosion, likely exacerbated by the previous year's earthquake.

The High Atlas Foundation's re-tombing of human remains is an honored service that we perform with urgency upon request. It is vital that the re-tombing be done together with the people in closest proximity to the historic mountain cemetery, since doing so also holds importance for them.

The Sunni Muslim Kingdom of Morocco's caretaking of Jewish cemeteries in all parts of the nation is a natural acceptance of all its communities. It requires no explanation, no persuasion, only the confirmation of a day and a time when men of all ages gather to restore what the collective community sees as part of their own indelible and revered past.

When we arrived that morning, roughly 30 people were already gathered with their tools to traverse the 1,200-square-meter cemetery, pick up every observed bone, place them in a cloth sack or covering (as per Moroccan Jewish and Muslim traditions), and re-bury them in a new grave that Tafza residents had dug, lined with brick, and built to endure for the next millennia.

As we walked together with the people of Tafza through all parts of the cemetery with our eyes to the ground, we also spoke about the work needed to redress and end the erosion of this degrading mountain slope. We identified the critical points at which to add and level soil and plant non-bearing fruit trees in a manner allowable by Jewish custom. We spoke about the three Jewish village communities who left the area several generations ago, to which this circa 1,000-year-old cemetery belonged. We went to the unmarked burial site of a revered rabbi, whose name this adult generation of Tafza people no longer recall. Local oracles of knowledge about this cemetery, great-grandparents of today's farming families, are no longer alive.

We addressed the exigency of bone reburial, but an enormity of restoration work remains. Even with the highly commendable national initiative of the Moroccan Jewish community led by Serge Berdugo with financial backing of the Moroccan government following Royal instructions that restored 167 Jewish cemeteries, a large number still require attention.

The presence of the Moroccan government representatives that morning was warm, helpful, and kindred. It felt as if together we created that day a sub-community of Moroccan protectors of the past and future. It is a Moroccan Jewish custom at the anniversary of the passing of their righteous ones (the occasion referred to as a hiloula) to eat together and enjoy a shared moment of bounty. On that December day, it was not an anniversary of anyone passing, though it might have been. But we did break bread, dipped it in local raw honey and olive oil, drank tea made with local herbs, and shared a moment atop infinite previous moments of Moroccan Muslim and Jewish people from government, civil society, and small businesses, from city and rural places, completing something that was calling to be done.

HAF implements community development projects based on the local people's collective needs for initiatives that meet their individual and shared priorities.Our main expertise is in facilitating those introspective conversations that result in an action plan for the people who will be the beneficiaries of the development they want most. For us, and as is underscored by global experience, projects endure and meet the people's goals of their lives because of the communities' dedication in carrying them out.

That day, we all experienced the miracles and blessings of Morocco which find their way into our daily affairs. It explains the reason why I feel that to be of service in Morocco is so important to me.

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is a sociologist, a former Peace Corps Volunteer who served in the High Atlas Mountains 30 years ago, and the President of the High Atlas Foundation in Morocco.