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Apr 6 08 10:23 PM

October 1991, Page 22

Maghreb Mirror


Andre Azoulay: Setting Examples for Arab-Jewish Coexistence

By Jamal Amiar
Andre Azoulay left Morocco to start a new life in Paris in 1966. But, as a Jew who grew up in an Arab land, he has never forgotten that coexistence was possible.

He was born half a century ago, in 1941, in the town of Essaouira, 150 miles south of Casablanca on Morocco's Atlantic coast. As an emigrant in the 1960s, he was one of the thousands of Moroccan Jews who left for North America, Europe or Israel.

Despite all the political problems between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East since then, ties between Moroccan Jews and the land of their birth have remained strong. One idea that kept coming back during all these past years of conflict in the Middle East is that if coexistence was possible between Arabs and Jews in Morocco, that should be possible elsewhere in the Middle East. And the more so if hundreds of thousands of Moroccan Jews themselves lived in Israel.


Setting Up "Identiti et Dialogue"
In the fall of 1976, Andre Azoulay took the lead in Paris in organizing Moroccan Jewish friends into a group that became known as "Identity and Dialogue," based upon the Sephardic Jewish history and culture that flourished in Morocco throughout the 500 years that have passed since the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain. "This Sephardic culture has, for a very long time, been neglected, unknown, and ill-known, and also often ill-treated in the Jewish world and in Israel itself, where it has long been considered as a kind of second-rate culture, Azoulay explains.

Identity and Dialogue's first concern, therefore, was to correct such negative images. Fifteen years later, he considers that the goal of recovering Moroccan Jewish identity has largely been met.

"I think that today all over the world, in the Jewish world in Israel, and on the Israeli political scene no one can deny the political, social and cultural reality of Moroccan Judaism," Azoulay explains. "In recovering and defending their identity, Moroccan Jews have become stronger."

Today more than 700,000 Israelis, one out of six of the population, are of Moroccan origin. What few Americans realize, however, is that every year thousands of Moroccan Israelis visit the land of their origin.

Another surprise is that, among Jews from Arab countries, Moroccan Jews are the only ones who have a federation of all the Moroccan Jewish associations around the world.

It was established in 1985 in Montreal, Canada, with leading roles taken by David Amar of Morocco and Rafi Edry of Israel. The following year, then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres visited Morocco.

Only 15 years ago, when Identity and Dialogue was set up, recalls Andre Azoulay, "Moroccan Jews living in Israel would change their names to make them more French-sounding than Arab-sounding, and tell their neighbors that they had come from Marseilles or Nice, rather than 'confess' that they came from Casablanca or Marrakesh. " Because that is no longer the case, Azoulay says, his organization is no longer so concerned with the problem of identity.

Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.
Jeremiah 33:3