Accidental Pilgrim: My Moroccan Adventure

There are moments you’ll never forget: like the first time you display Jewish pride in an Arab country, the first time you purchase a bar of soap made from donkey’s milk, or the first time you see a Muslim lady with full Islamic face covering taking a selfie.

I had to move out of my place in England for a couple of weeks to make room for visiting relatives, and figured out that instead of renting a hotel in North London, it would be cheaper to get Airbnbs in Morocco. My plan was to find a modest spot for remote working and writing, and do a little sightseeing in the afternoons. I certainly was not looking for an extraordinary Jewish experience that was rich, plentiful, eye-opening and sparked a new love affair with this North African land.

As soon as I’d booked the flights, 48 hours before leaving, my concern was how safe it is to travel as a Jew. It’s been an intense few months in England with barefaced antisemitism, hence mixed feelings about visiting a Muslim country.

The first dilemma was whether I should brazenly wear my kippah, or cover my head with a baseball cap. I traveled with a cap I bought at the NOVA music festival exhibition in New York. It’s a more subtle show of Jewish pride.

My cover was blown by the Uber driver who was taking me to see the historic Slat Al-Zamir synagogue in Marrakech. “You’re Jewish?” he asked. I nodded. “We love Jews! We have so much Jewish history here! You know the Mellah was built for the Jews?” The Mellah was the Jewish residential area — the Moroccan equivalent of the Eastern-European ghetto but without the pogroms.

I removed my NOVA cap and asked him, was it safe for me to show my kippah? He smiled warmly. “Of course!” My heart warmed.

Morocco was refreshingly different from Los Angeles or London, like being suddenly satiated by a glass of water when you didn’t realize you were thirsty. There were few tattoos on display, tourists dressed modestly, almost nobody had pet dogs with inane references to their “fur babies,” and there was no canine residue strewn on sidewalks. There were no Pride flags, no over-Botoxed foreheads, nobody was drunk on the streets, and almost nobody was taking selfies, except for the lady in the niqab. I wonder what she asked her friend since her head garment only had a small gap for vision – “Do my eyes look good in this?”

My dear friend Olivia Schwartz, co-founder of L.A.’s legendary Chai Center, says that “Jewish tourism is grave-hopping,” and after visiting Marrakech’s elegant Slat Al-Azama shul, I stopped at the historic nearby cemetery. It was Friday afternoon, and erev Shabbat is a propitious time to visit the graves of distinguished dead Rabbis. I just didn’t realize quite how many distinguished dead rabbis were buried there. It was extraordinarily moving to be the only person visiting a plethora of Torah giants.

I don’t know how it’s possible to absolutely love the Moroccan kabbalistic tradition without realizing you absolutely love the Moroccan kabbalistic tradition, but somehow I’d managed it. One of my all-time favorite Torah commentators is the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, “the Holy Light of Life.” His name was Rabbi Chaim Ibn Attar, he lived and taught in Jerusalem, and was born in Salé, Morocco. The Ohr HaChaim Torah commentary brings extraordinary mystical insights to answer “simple” questions about the text, and his insights are profound.

Another notable local was Rabbi Abraham Azoulai whose masterwork was the “Chesed L’Avraham” (“Kindness of Abraham”), although some say the grave is really a memorial because his final resting place is in Israel.

Marrakech cemetery is split into separate sections for rabbis, children and adults, and many of the rabbis names are lost or forgotten because their teachings were never printed. The reason for this was that the printing press had not made it to Morocco during their lifetime. The Ohr HaChaim was an exception; he was traveling to Israel via Italy, and his teachings were published in Livorno, which allowed his wisdom to survive and thrive.

The part that pierced my heart was this question: quite how many other manuscripts had been lost to history? Everyone handwrote their teachings and mystical insights, but the majority of those writings didn’t survive. We say that Torah is a tree of life, but what happens when some of those branches just disappear?

On Shabbat I went to Beth-El, the community’s primary functioning synagogue, and it was primarily an older crowd. Most people looked disengaged, but when the prayers began every word of every prayer was said out loud, and nearly every person knew those words by heart. I’ve never seen anything like it. Stepping out of my western Ashkenazic bubble, I was thrust into the world of elderly Moroccan Sephardim. This was Jewish literacy par excellence, a testimony to the rigorous Jewish education of their youth.

Just when I thought I was beginning to understand the Moroccan Jewish experience, I came to understand quite how little I understood. Meanwhile, just when I thought “they love Jews over here,” I faced some anti-Jewish prejudice with a twist.

As I was buying a bottle of water at a late-night mini-market, the shopkeeper saw my kippah and said, “You’re from Israel!” “No, I’m from England, but I’m Jewish.” “You’re from Israel!” he replied. “No, I’m from England.” We repeated this exchange a few times, until he said “We like Jews here, but not Israel. I am pro-Palestinian. Netanyahu is a monster.”

I used Google Translate to explain Hamas’ pogrom on Oct. 7, 2023, and he looked surprised. This didn’t feel like conscious Jew-hatred, but someone who had absorbed what he heard on the news. Local TV channels include the Palestine and Egyptian channels, and it feels unfair to blame people for believing propaganda they have been fed for years. The dichotomy is that genuine affection toward Jews coexists with deeply negative views of Israel.

Then there was the day that Achmed insisted I went to shul. Achmed was an older taxi driver who was taking me to my next Airbnb in the lower Atlas mountains. “Synagogue!” he exclaimed. “You see it!” Here, in the heart of the indigenous Berber communities, there was the Rabbi Salomon Bel-Hench synagogue, in the village of Setti Fadma on the mountains of Ourika Valley. The synagogue was in pristine condition, and the centerpiece of the sanctuary was the grave of Rabbi Hench. He was highly respected as a local tzaddik, this was a once-thriving Jewish community, and his grave is still visited on his hilula (date of his passing). I had just been trying to get to my next rental apartment for remote working, but once again it led to an accidental and highly meaningful pilgrimage.

One thing that struck me was how remote synagogues were so well maintained even though Jews had not lived in the area for a long time. As a Moroccan friend in Israel explained the phenomenon: “Imagine you’re living in America but your father was bar mitzvah’d at the shul in [pick your city in Morocco]. It’s your heritage and your family synagogue. You want your son to have his bar mitzvah there. The expat Jews pay the locals to keep their shul in fine form, ready to be used at any point.”

I continued to experience pro-Jewish warmth from local Muslims. I was looking for a shirt in a souk and mentioned to the owner that I’m Jewish, and how the locals had given a very positive reception. He responded with, “There are no Jews here, no Muslims and no Christians. Here we are all one people.” I bought the shirt from him.

That quote turned out to be part of the bedrock of contemporary Moroccan psyche. When the Vichy French authorities demanded that Morocco hand over its Jews in 1940, which would almost certainly have led to their deaths in the Holocaust, Sultan Mohammed V famously responded “There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only Moroccan subjects.” Similarly, he is attributed to have said “Moroccan Jews are my subjects, and it is my duty to protect them against aggression.”

The politics of Jewish residency became complex. The Sultan protected the Jews, but also forbade them to support Zionism because of its war with Arab nations. There were anti-Jewish riots in the Moroccan towns of Oujda and Jerada, 47 Jews were killed and Sydney Jewish News described it as a “pogrom.” In 1961, after Morocco’s independence from France, King Hassan II came to a special arrangement with Israel to allow more Jews to leave the country, under Operation Yachin, which led to 97,000 Jews emigrating. Over the last 70 years, Morocco’s Jewish community of 300,000 people has been reduced to fewer than 3,000.

A question I repeatedly asked myself during the trip was, why I had heard so little about Moroccan history in all my years of Jewish education? Why is the focus almost entirely on Eastern European Hassidic teaching – which I love – and barely mentioning this other great Diaspora center of learning in Morocco?

My final week was in the coastal town of Essaouira, which was a major trading port for centuries. Its position on the Atlantic coast, paired with reliable trade winds, made it a natural crossroads for traveling merchants. It also once housed over 30 synagogues.

I faced another “accident,” discovering that my final Airbnb was a five-minute walk from the resting place of the tzaddik Rabbi Chaim Pinto, along with other righteous rabbis. He’s also got a great final resting place, located immediately on the beachfront.

Essaouira’s Jewish focal point is Bayt Dakira, a beautiful synagogue preserved within a museum-cum-cultural-center. I decided to pray there on my own one morning, and ended up giving an ad hoc Judaism 101 question-and-answer session for visiting groups of tourists. Whilst there I also met Tarik Ottmani, the local mayor, and an older man who introduced himself as “Andre.” I made the connection a couple of days later and realised it was André Azoulay, who has served as senior advisor to the last two kings of Morocco, and is one of the only influential Jewish figures in the Arab world.

The final accidental pilgrimage was whilst wandering through the souk with no plan but a gut feeling to just walk forward. I noticed a tiny store which had classic items of aged Judaica including large mezuzot that looked like they had come from synagogues. The elderly shopkeeper told me that there was a synagogue next door, and pointed out the tiny plaque. Needless to say, the next morning prior to leaving for the airport, I was given a private tour of the Rabbi David Bel-Hazzan synagogue, no bigger than 10 x 25 feet, and kept in pristine condition.

Eventually, it was time to leave. I had dreaded the anti-Israel activism in Morocco, but my expectations were turned on their head. Maybe I’ve been reconditioned since spending so much time in England recently with its growing antisemitism. I didn’t see any Palestinian flags at all, and the only hint was some pro-Palestinian stickers in a left-wing feminist coffee shop called The Sisterhood in Essaouira’s Mellah. Their coffee was more palatable than their politics.

There are still unresolved questions. Does Morocco have genuine warmth toward Jews, or is it a way to reignite lucrative Jewish tourism? Does it even matter? Their ongoing efforts to protect Jewish heritage, maintain synagogues and cemeteries, their preservation of Hebraic culture – what difference the intention if everyone benefits?

It’s impossible to say that Morocco is “pro-Jewish” or “anti-Israel.” Both truths exist simultaneously, and it is one of the most welcoming places in the Muslim countries.

I went to Morocco looking for a place to write, and left with newfound love of the country, its people, and the desire to get back there as soon as possible.

Marcus J Freed is an actor, writer and founder of the Jewish Filmmakers Network. @marcusjfreed, www.marcusisalive.com.