The Sultan's Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging

By Alma Rachel Heckman

The Sultan's Communists uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly-independent Morocco. Closely following the lives of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Assidon), Alma Rachel Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and '60s, and how they survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy to ultimately become heroic emblems of state-sponsored Muslim-Jewish tolerance.

The figures at the center of Heckman's narrative stood at the intersection of colonialism, Arab nationalism, and Zionism. Their stories unfolded in a country that, upon independence from France and Spain in 1956, allied itself with the United States (and, more quietly, Israel) during the Cold War, while attempting to claim a place for itself within the fraught politics of the post-independence Arab world. The Sultan's Communists contributes to the growing literature on Jews in the modern Middle East and provides a new history of twentieth-century Jewish Morocco.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Nov 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781503614147

Book preview

THE SULTAN’S COMMUNISTS

Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging

ALMA RACHEL HECKMAN

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

© 2021 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Heckman, Alma Rachel, author.

Title: The Sultan’s communists : Moroccan Jews and the politics of belonging / Alma Rachel Heckman.

Other titles: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2021. | Series: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020021126 (print) | LCCN 2020021127 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503613805 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503614147 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Parti communiste marocain—History—20th century. | Jewish communists—Morocco—History—20th century. | Jews—Morocco—Politics and government—20th century. | Nationalism and communism—Morocco—History—20th century. | Morocco—Politics and government—20th century.

Classification: LCC DS135.M8 H43 2020 (print) | LCC DS135.M8 (ebook) | DDC 324.264/0750904—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021126

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021127

Typeset by Westchester Publishing Services in 10.25/15 Adobe Caslon Pro

Cover design: Rob Ehle

Cover image: Emblem of the Moroccan Communist Party from 1945 French Protectorate Surveillance Report. Source: Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN). Paper background: iStock.

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture

In memory of Lynne Carol Pettler Heckman (1949–2017),

the Garden Lady

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Note on Translation and Transliteration

Frequently Used Abbreviations

The Sultan’s Communists: An Introduction

1. Choices: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Interwar Morocco

2. Possibilities: World War II and Moroccan Jewish Belonging

3. Tactics: Jews and Moroccan Independence

4. Splinters: Disillusion and Jewish Political Life in the New Morocco

5. Co-optation: The Moroccan Cold War, Israel, and Human Rights

Scarification: A Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Gratitude is a small word for a big feeling. This book would not have been possible without the mentorship, friendship, solidarity, and generosity of many. Like the word gratitude, each name that appears in these few pages is a small unit of proper nouns that represents a profound contribution.

The genesis of this book lies in my undergraduate years at Wellesley College. Many thanks to Rachid Aadnani for letting me into first-year Arabic by overriding the enrollment cap. Through years of patient Arabic instruction and seminars in modern North African literature, Rachid has shaped a cohort of Morocco enthusiasts. Louise Marlow directed the Middle East Studies program at Wellesley and taught several critical courses in the Religion Department, giving me a rich background in history and thought in the region. Anjali Prabhu introduced me to the world of Francophone Maghribi literature, as well as the wide, rich world of postcolonial critical theory. Anjali encouraged and challenged me, advising me on an undergraduate senior thesis on questions of Muslim and Jewish exile in post–World War II literature in North Africa. Frances Malino’s course, Jews of Muslim Lands, launched my interest in Jewish history in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Fran was and remains a paragon of critical scholarship, mentorship, and friendship. Fran read this manuscript in its entirety during the summer of 2019 and provided critical feedback and encouragement. More than a mentor, Fran is family.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein advised me through the PhD program at UCLA and continues to provide unparalleled mentorship and support. This book would not exist without Sarah’s critical eye, uncompromising research rigor, and narrative structuring brilliance (Sarah suggested the chapter title progression for this book). Sarah is a model of scholarly achievement and acumen, as well as generosity. David N. Myers has been a rigorous interlocutor, asking difficult questions and helping me hone this project into one in conversation with multiple fields within Jewish history, including modern European Jewish history and the historiography of Zionism. Susan Gilson Miller, a founding figure in modern North African history, trained me in Maghribi historiography and lent her keen expertise to shaping this project since its earliest stages, generously sharing material relevant to several chapters and reading multiple drafts. James L. Gelvin trained me in the historiography of the modern Middle East and pushed me to consider how the history of Moroccan Jewish Communists relates not only to the modern history of the region and modern Jewish history but also to the history of other minorities in the modern Middle East; Jim provided invaluable suggestions and questions from the earliest stages of the project. In addition to providing guidance on the project from the beginning, Susan Slyomovics introduced me to Jean and Jacques Lévy, as well as Sion Assidon, for which I am very grateful.

A host of other scholars and mentors deserve a great deal of gratitude. Aomar Boum has been a friend and mentor since before I began graduate school, providing support, research advice, archive material, editorial suggestions, and connections. Daniel Schroeter, another founding figure in Moroccan Jewish historiography, read many chapter drafts and provided detailed commentary; he has been incredibly kind and generous with time, resources, and his intellect. Jessica Maya Marglin is a meticulous scholar who has helped shape this project from when I met her in Rabat in 2009 and had not yet started graduate school; she read drafts of this manuscript, providing invaluable guidance and insight. Emily Benichou Gottreich read versions of this project and lent tremendous insight through years of scholarly interactions, as well as giving me access to documents in her possession. Ethan B. Katz read a draft manuscript as part of a UCHRI-funded Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop at UC Santa Cruz in February 2019 and raised important questions and suggestions that have brought the work into its current form. Lior B. Sternfeld read the manuscript in its entirety just before I submitted it to Stanford University Press; he not only improved the manuscript quality with his questions and comments but also provided the last bit of encouragement when it seemed I could no longer read the words on the page. Jonathan Wyrtzen gave valuable critique—he also suggested the title The Sultan’s Communists at a meeting of the Yale Jewish History Colloquium in fall 2018; I am grateful to Michael Rom for inviting me and to the attendees, including David Sorkin and Tsivia Frank. Orit Bashkin, Joel Beinin, David Biale, Constance Pâris de Bollardière, Lia Brozgal, Michelle U. Campos, Julia Clancy-Smith, Julia Phillips Cohen, Paris Papamichos Chronakis, Leena Dallasheh, Naomi Davidson, Omnia El-Shakry, Olivia Harrison, Liora Halperin, Mohammed Hatimi, Oren Kosansky, Daniel Lee, Pierre-Jean Le Foll Luciani, Elizabeth Marcus, Devi Mays, Tony Michels, Bryan K. Roby, Aron Rodrigue, Aline Schlaepfer, Joshua Schreier, Ben Schreier, David Stenner, Nick Underwood, and Orit Ouaknine Yekutieli all played important roles in shaping this work.

Between undergrad and graduate school, I received a Fulbright grant to Morocco. It was there that I met Simon Lévy, the Moroccan Jewish Communist who inspired me to write this book. At the time, he was the director of the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum in Casablanca. Lévy’s jokes, conversation, generous lunches, and more launched this project. Zhor Rehihil, the Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum’s curator and, since Simon’s death, its director as well, kindly allowed me to interview her and mentored me. Mohammed Kenbib, the noted and prolific historian of the Moroccan Jewish past at Mohammed V University in Rabat, served as a valuable mentor during the Fulbright year. Jamaâ Baïda, a scholar of the Moroccan Jewish press and director of the Royal National Archives, provided many valuable insights in developing this project. Vanessa Paloma introduced me to the contemporary Jewish community of Casablanca and provided friendship, event invitations, and pro-tips to studying contemporary Jewish life in Morocco. Mohamed Dellal helped with research into Vichy-era forced labor camp sites. James Miller, Saadia Maski, and the whole Fulbright gang of that year enabled this work: they include Sam Anderson, Kristen Johnson, Kimberly Junmookda, Caitlyn Olson, Stacy Pancratz, Megan Pavlishek, Lauren Peate, Weston Sager, Kendra Salois, Rod Solaimani, Rebecca Slenes, Matthew Streib, Anissa Talantikite, Cath Thompson, and Andrew Watrous.

When I traveled back to Morocco for further research in 2013, Simon Lévy had passed away, but his sons Jean and Jacques Lévy, as well as Simon’s wife Incarnation, were unwavering in their generosity in giving me access to Simon’s personal papers and library and providing interviews. Jean and Jacques also generously read and provided comments and corrections for this book. Incarnation, who has since died, hosted me for two months’ worth of long lunches and stimulating conversation while I worked in Simon’s library. It is with great sadness that I report that Jean Lévy, too, passed away in the winter of 2020—Jean had provided me invaluable access to materials and his own time, in addition to continuing his father’s work restoring Jewish sites across Morocco. Sion Assidon, André Azoulay, Maurice Serfaty, and Fahd Yata were generous with their time and stories in agreeing to sit for interviews. The leaders of the Parti du progrès et du socialisme (PPS) of Morocco, in particular Nabil Benabdallah, were enthusiastic and helpful in finding rare items for this project, notably the photo of Léon René Sultan. Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh shared with me original documents from his time in the Moroccan Communist Party and allowed me to interview him at his home in Paris. Khalid El Ghali and Myriem Khrouz were generous with their time and resources at the Royal National Library of Morocco.

At UC Santa Cruz, Nathaniel Deutsch has been the ideal colleague. Nathaniel read and commented on a full draft of the manuscript and multiple versions of the introduction; in addition, through our discussions about framing, he helped sharpen the book’s argument. Nathaniel provided invaluable mentorship, support, and collaboration throughout the writing process. A number of others in the UCSC community provided inestimable support and critique of the project, as well as much-needed moments of levity; they include Mark Amengual, Bettina Aptheker, Murray and Sheila Baumgarten, Dorian Bell, Hunter Bivens, Benjamin Breen, Terry Burke, Vilashini Coopan, Muriam Haleh Davis, Jennifer Derr, Martin Devecka, Lindsey Dillon, Madeleine Fairbairn, Mayanthi Fernando, Renée Fox, Amy Mihyang Ginther, Camilo Gomez-Rivas, Johanna Isaacson, Kate Jones, Peter Kenez, Peter Limbrick, Kristian Lopez-Vargas, Nidhi Mahajan, Marc Matera, Samantha Matherne, Greg O’Malley, Grant McGuire, Sara Niedzwiecki, Roya Pakzad, Maya Peterson, Jackie Sue Powell, Thomas Serres, Juned Shaikh, Ajay Shenoy, Amanda Smith, Elaine Sullivan, and Bruce Thompson. I am grateful to Crystal Smith for her expert notetaking during the UCHRI-funded Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop, to the Committee on Research (COR) at UCSC for research support grants, and to the sponsors of the Neufeld-Levin Chair in Holocaust Studies, which has supported research and production of this book. I thank Margo Irvin of Stanford University Press for her participation in the manuscript workshop in Santa Cruz in February 2019, her enthusiasm for the project, and her work toward its completion. I am also grateful to Cindy Lim and Emily Smith of Stanford University Press for their time and help in the publication process.

I spent a stimulating sabbatical in the fall of 2018 at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as part of the fellowship cohort, Jewish Life in Modern Islamic Contexts. I am grateful to Professors Samuel Z. Klausner and Roberta G. Sands for supporting this fellowship and to Steven Weitzman for facilitating and convening the group. In Philadelphia, Lital Levy and Heather Sharkey read my work, providing helpful feedback and questions. I am grateful to the other fellows at the center, who gave critical insight on the project and camaraderie: Esra Almas, Nancy Berg, Chen Bram, Dina Danon, Yuval Evri, Annie Greene, Kerstin Hünefeld, Yoram Meital, Aviad Moreno, Hadar Feldman Samet, Joseph Sassoon, Alon Tam, Alan Verskin, and Mark Wagner. At different stages, my research has been sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Takiff Family Foundation Fellowship, the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Ralph and Sarah Monkarsh Graduate Fellowship, a UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) Bluma Appel Fellowship and a CJS Roter Research Travel Grant, the UCLA International Institute International Fieldwork Fellowship, a FLAS grant, and the Posen Society of Fellows.

The following people provided solidarity, editing, research companionship, and encouragement: Ceren Abi, Vanessa Arslanian, Reem Bailony, Beeta Baghoolizadeh, Jenna and Alex Barron, Michal Bornstein, Aubre Carreón Aguilar, Michael Casper, Jaya Aninda Chatterjee, Jeremy Epstein, Vanessa Fernández, Chris Gratien, Peter Haderlein, James Heckman, Jonathan and Darlyn Heckman, Gin Hoffman, Graham Hough-Cornwell, Selah Johnson, Samantha Keefe, Rachael Lau, Katie Levy, Pauline Lewis, Siobhan O’Keefe, Idir Ouahes, Emily Peters, Hanna Petro, Caroline Elizabeth Robertson, Chris Silver, Eoghan Stafford, Onyx (V.) Starrett, Anoush Suni, Nefertiti Takla, Caroline Tall, Anna Thieret, Ying Wang, Jess Weyer, Jennifer Willis, and Murat Yildiz.

David Joshua Epstein was a constant source of support, humor, encouragement, editorial acumen, and unconditional love throughout this process. Although he is a medical doctor, he has become one of the world’s foremost experts in modern Moroccan Jewish political history and is available to answer any reader questions.

Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother, Lynne Carol Pettler Heckman (August 8, 1949–July 8, 2017). She was my first and best editor, my most constant source of encouragement and support, who died of cancer before the completion of this work. Her favorite word was calamity.

NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION

For Arabic transliteration, I followed the guidelines of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES). For Hebrew transliteration, I hewed to the system used by the Library of Congress. In cases of names or some newspaper titles, I deferred to the most common representations as they appear in archival documents or in publication. I chose not to use diacritical markings in transliteration.

All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

FREQUENTLY USED ABBREVIATIONS

ADATAM—Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc (Association for the Defense of Former Workers of Morocco)

AFASPA—Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (French Association for Friendship and Solidarity with the People of Africa)

AFSC—American Friends Service Committee

AG—Association Générale (General Association), est. 1919

AIU—Alliance Israélite Universelle (Universal Israelite Alliance), est. 1860

ALN—Armée de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Army)

BAHAD—Brith Halutzim Datiyim (Alliance of Religious Pioneers)

CAM—Comité d’Action Marocaine (Moroccan Action Committee)

CCIM—Conseil des Communautés Israélites du Maroc (Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco)

CGQJ—Commisariat Général aux Questions Juives (General Commissariat for Jewish Questions), est. 1940

CGT—Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor)

FDIC—Front pour la Défense des Institutions Constitutionelles (Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions), est. 1963

FLN—Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front)

HIAS—Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, est. 1881

JDC—Joint Distribution Committee, est. 1914

LDH—Ligue des droits de l’homme (League for Human Rights)

LICA—Ligue international contre l’antisémitisme (International League Against Anti-Semitism), est. 1928

MENA—Middle East and North Africa

OCP—Office Chérifien des Phosphates (Sharifian Office of Phosphates), est. 1920

ORT—Organisation Reconstruction Travail (the most common English translation is derived from the original Russian of the group’s name; hence Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades, although literally in French this translates to Organization Reconstruction Labor), est. late nineteenth-century Russia, activity extended to North Africa in the 1950s

OSE—Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (Organization to Save the Children)

PCF—Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party)

PCM—before 1939, Parti Communiste du Maroc (Communist Party of Morocco); after 1943, Parti Communiste Marocain (Moroccan Communist Party) until its ban in 1960

PDI—Parti démocratique de l’Indépendance (Democratic Party for Independence)

PLS—Parti de la Libération et du Socialisme (Party of Liberation and Socialism), est. 1968

PPS—Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme (Party of Progress and Socialism), est. 1974

SFIO—Section française de l’internationale ouvrière (French Section of the Workers’ International)

UFM—Union des Femmes du Maroc (Union of Women in Morocco)

UGSCM—Union générale des syndicats confédérés du Maroc (General Union of Confederated Syndicates of Morocco)

UMT—Union Marocaine du Travaille (Moroccan Labor Union)

UNEM—Union Nationale des Etudiants du Maroc (National Union of Moroccan Students), est. 1956

UNFP—Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (National Union of Popular Forces), est. 1959

WJC—World Jewish Congress

THE SULTAN’S COMMUNISTS: AN INTRODUCTION

Jews don’t do politics.¹ The Moroccan Jewish writer and former Communist Party leader Edmond Amran El Maleh wrote this provocative statement in his 1980 semiautobiographical novel Parcours immobile (Motionless Journey). The statement was tongue-in-cheek: El Maleh had been a prominent figure in Morocco’s anticolonial movement, much to the chagrin of most members of the Jewish community, who sought to stay out of political trouble. He was not alone in his activism. In the 1960s, Abraham Serfaty, a fellow Jewish Communist, proclaimed his Arab-Jewish identity as a way of underscoring his Moroccan patriotism.² Serfaty, who had worked with El Maleh in Moroccan Communist politics, had also been rejected by the majority of the Jewish community. More recently, Simon Lévy largely withdrew from Communist politics in the mid-1990s after having been a leading figure in the party since the 1950s. Lévy then established the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum in Casablanca, an institution that expressed his most dearly held belief: that Moroccanness and Jewishness are inextricable from one another.³ Lévy, too, would struggle in his relationship to the Moroccan Jewish community in service of what he saw as his patriotic duty to his homeland. Outcasts of the Moroccan Jewish community, persecuted by the colonial authorities and the postcolonial state, by the end of the twentieth century these three men would be hailed by the Moroccan monarchy itself, held aloft as national heroes and emblems of Morocco’s Jewish heritage.

These men were among the most famous Moroccan Jews of the twentieth century. All were active in the national liberation struggle of Morocco against the colonial protectorate rule of France and Spain; all were deeply patriotic and committed to their vision of an idealized Morocco. When Morocco gained its independence in 1956, each was profoundly optimistic for the future of his nation and the place of Jews within it, even in the face of the great waves of mass Jewish migration to Israel that had begun in the late 1940s. That optimism would be severely tested. Each man ran afoul of the post-independence regime of King Hassan II (r. 1961–1999), which often resulted in imprisonment and torture, even as the majority of the members of the Moroccan Jewish community at home and abroad embraced the monarch as their primary protector. For most Moroccan Jews across the twentieth century, Moroccan Jewish Communists such as El Maleh, Serfaty, and Lévy represented political liabilities to the security and stability of the community, first in relation to the French and Spanish colonial authorities and then under the authoritarian rule of King Hassan II. How strange it is, then, that these dissidents have since become the international face of the Moroccan state’s much-touted tolerance of Jews and embraced as nationalist heroes. Once reviled within the dominant Moroccan Jewish community and regarded as godless Communists in a Muslim-majority nation, their names and faces now appear regularly in the Moroccan press, they are the subjects of documentaries and conferences, and they have foundations in their honor supported by the Moroccan government. How is it that they have become the pride of the nation, the Sultan’s Communists?⁴

The prerequisite for understanding this apparent paradox is the history of Moroccan Jewish migration and the composition of the pre-migration Moroccan Jewish population. Morocco was once home to a diverse Jewish population, including Amazigh (Berber) Jews who had lived in Morocco since before the Muslim-Arab conquests began in the seventh century, Arab Jews arriving from other parts of the Arab-Muslim world, and Sephardi Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. At its height in 1945, the Jewish population in Morocco numbered approximately 250,000; during the 1950s and 1960s, nearly the entire community left the country, primarily for Israel. This book explores the motivations of the Moroccan Jews who remained, looking beyond the historiographical flashpoints of 1948 (the establishment of the state of Israel), 1956 (the year of Moroccan independence), and the subsequent regional wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973. Adopting this temporal focus disrupts conventional periodization to reveal a nuanced story of patriotism and idealism, of quests for belonging and experiences of alienation that challenge triumphalist nationalist narratives that end in 1956 or with Jewish migration to Israel. This study examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves as active citizens in a newly independent Morocco, how Communism enabled their participation in Morocco’s national liberation struggle, and how Communism and political activism sought to resolve the apparent paradox of Jewish political belonging in Morocco. The Jews of Morocco and of the wider region were not passive objects, uprooted by colonialism, Zionism, and Arab nationalism. Rather, they were (and remain) active participants in the political life of their homelands—whether in situ or in the diaspora—embracing, resisting, and recombining political affiliations.

This story is at once deeply Moroccan and inherently transnational: its characters travel between Morocco, France, Spain, Algeria, Israel, and the United States. I ask several complementary questions across the five main chapters: What did it mean to be a Moroccan Jew under colonial occupation? What political strategies and affiliations were available, and how did they change over time? How did Jews of different political stripes relate to each other, to Jewishness and Moroccanness as dynamic categories, and to the state? What happened to those radicalized Jews who remained in Morocco, and what were their relationships to those who left? As the chapters that follow reveal, the answers to these questions demonstrate how an examination of Moroccan Jews sheds light on the position of Morocco in the world over time and contributes to regional and global narratives of Communist politics in the twentieth century.

The Sultan’s Communists presents the untold story of Jewish radicals’ involvement in Morocco’s national liberation project. In so doing, it challenges standard narratives of the Jewish past, the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as international leftist and imperialist histories. Until recently, most narratives have told a story of mass uprooting or Zionist salvation. In Moroccan historiography, most works either end after Morocco’s political independence in 1956 or follow the vast majority of Jews who left the country. In contrast, this book examines the Jews who stayed in Morocco after independence and their political activism, which stood at the intersection of colonialism, Arab nationalism, and Zionism. The chapters extend from the beginning of leftist movements and demographic upheaval in the 1920s, through the high point of Jewish political activism in the immediate postwar period, to Morocco’s repressive post-independence political history in the 1970s, concluding with a discussion of the 1990s and the Moroccan state’s lionization of its Jewish past. This scope, encompassing both the colonial and the Cold War contexts, brings into view the connections between the demographic and ideological shifts within both Morocco’s Jewish population and Moroccanized Communism, as well as the power of the Moroccan state. As such, this book is simultaneously a history of Moroccan Jewish Communists and, more broadly, a history of Morocco and its Jews in the twentieth century.

The Narrative Power of a Minority within a Minority

This book is about a minority within a minority—Jews in the Moroccan Communist Party—and how they became the most famous of Moroccan Jews. In short, this is a story of how a small group of people gained prominence both within Morocco and internationally, in ways that ultimately conferred benefits on all parties involved. Unearthing this story sheds light on the very mechanics of colonialism and anticolonial agitation, the history of Zionism in the MENA and its detractors, the formation of a modern nation-state out of a colonial legacy, and the Jewish role within the state-building process. Finally, studying Moroccan Jewish Communists demonstrates the possibility of Jewish patriotism in the MENA long after independence and regional wars with Israel that contributed to the massive Jewish exodus from so much of the region, including Morocco, during the 1950s and 1960s.

In the words of Edmond Amran El Maleh, to write this story of Moroccan Jewish Communists is to play a game of complex margins. ⁵ Historiographically speaking, The Sultan’s Communists straddles four overlapping circles of scholarly debate; first, the formation of Moroccan national identity politics, and the place of Jews within it; second, Jewish involvement in radical leftist politics, both in the MENA region and in other heartlands of Jewish radicalism; third, Jewish Studies as a field that in recent years has enjoyed an efflorescence of writing regarding Jews of the MENA; and fourth, Middle Eastern and North African Studies, which has increasingly included Jewish minorities in narratives of anticolonial nationalist politics. On the first point, The Sultan’s Communists advances previous work in the field by being the first book to recount the sweep of twentieth-century Moroccan Jewish history into the twenty-first through the prism of radical politics.⁶ Uniquely, this book addresses Moroccan Jewish identity formation and politics in the post-independence, Cold War world of Zionism and Arab nationalism that would have an outsized effect on Moroccan Jewish patriotism and citizenship models.

On the second point, The Sultan’s Communists joins a small but growing literature on Jews and radical politics in the MENA.⁷ These works have largely focused on the Middle East, with a few exceptions that treat North Africa. Scholarship that purports to address Jews and radicalism on a global comparative level has historically given the MENA little, if any, attention.⁸ Although this book is not a comparative study, there are notable similarities across the different colonial contexts of the MENA and even with Ashkenazi Jewish radicalism in Europe and the Americas. As I have written elsewhere, perhaps paradoxically, Jewish participation in Communist politics was a unique strategy to achieve normalization through conscious pariahdom, whether in the more traditionally construed Ashkenazi context or in the less examined MENA lands. ⁹ Despite its focus on Morocco and its unique context, this book complicates the nebulously defined, yet widespread, phenomenon of Jewish involvement in radical politics in the twentieth century.

Third, in studying a minority within a minority, this book engages with some of the most fundamental questions in modern Jewish Studies regarding political emancipation, citizenship formation, and communal affiliation in a nationalizing global context. Over the last few decades, scholarship on Jews of the MENA has boomed, reorienting Jewish Studies in more inclusive directions and greatly enriching the field in the process. The Sultan’s Communists contributes to new work on Jews under colonial occupation and their responses to it, as well as on Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism in the Arab world.¹⁰ Further, because the book focuses on the Jews who remained in Morocco after the mass migrations to Israel of the 1950s and 1960s, it reminds readers that Jewish history in the MENA outside Israel did not end, either in those decades of demographic upheaval or now. Indeed, as this book points out, Jewishness in Morocco has become an increasing source of interest and investment in Morocco and abroad, a trend reflected in scholarship and in tourism alike. In short, the story of Moroccan Jewish Communists is an essential component of modern Jewish history, with thematic resonance across Jewish Studies.

Fourth, The Sultan’s Communists contributes significantly to the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa. Within the field of Middle Eastern Studies, North Africa has often been neglected. Within historiography of the MENA as a whole, minority groups, including Jews, rarely feature in narratives of anticolonial agitation and the politics of modern nation-state formation during the twentieth century. In writing the story of Moroccan Jewish Communists, this book tells the story of Morocco in the MENA and of Jews in MENA political life. It gives nuance to narratives of citizenship formation and MENA nationalism by centering some of the MENA’s most ardent Jewish patriots.

In the middle of the 1940s, the Moroccan Jewish population reached its peak at approximately 250,000. Of that number, a small but disproportionate percentage were members of the Moroccan Communist Party (hereafter referred to as PCM, after the French acronym for the Parti Communiste Marocain). The mid-to late 1940s also represented the height of the PCM’s popularity in Morocco, although reliable numbers are harder to establish. Across the sources, the number of party members likely rests somewhere between five hundred and the low thousands (though the figures for event attendance were often many times more than the basic membership count). Most Moroccan Jews were not very politically active throughout the twentieth century; hence, Edmond Amran El Maleh’s cynical comment, Jews don’t do politics. Most Moroccan Muslims were part of political parties other than the PCM, including, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, organizations more radical than the PCM.¹¹

Moroccan Jewish Communists fought for an idealized Morocco that never quite came to fruition. The party emerged out of the French Communist Party and other leftist groups in Morocco during the interwar period, partnered with anti-fascist politics. During the interwar period, Moroccan Jews were drawn to a wide array of political affiliations: it was possible to be simultaneously Zionist, pro-France, and Communist. Anti-fascist activism in response to the Spanish Civil War, as well as the rise of Nazism and its attendant propaganda, spurred Moroccan Jews and Muslims to join leftist organizations. These organizations overlapped with the Communist Party of Morocco. During the Second World War, the Communist Party of Morocco transformed into the Moroccan Communist Party, becoming an anticolonial national liberation party with a Muslim-majority leadership and membership.

The Moroccan Communist Party was the primary avenue for Moroccan Jewish expressions of patriotism and participation in the national liberation movement. Following the Second World War, Moroccan nationalists, including Jews, took advantage of the newly established United Nations and the relative weakness of France to fight for freedom from French and Spanish colonial rule, which had been established in 1912 and was soon to end in 1956. Under colonial rule, many individuals—including colonial officers, Muslims, and even Jews themselves—saw Moroccan Jews as complicit with colonization. Yet, the anti-Semitic persecutions of the Vichy period undermined Jewish relations with colonial authorities. As a result, Moroccan Jews were increasingly primed to support political alternatives to France, including Zionism and Communism. In rejecting French colonial rule, Moroccan Jewish Communists identified primarily with Moroccanness. For them, Moroccanness as a social and political concept evolved into a nationalist patriotic identity predicated on a narrative of precolonial protection under the sultan and, with that protection, a legacy of social harmony between Muslims and Jews. That model of social harmony, in turn, drew on romanticized narratives of the Convivencia (living together) of Jewish life in medieval Muslim Spain, mapped onto modern Morocco. The sultan became an important symbolic and then active figure during the war, while the mainstream national liberation organization Istiqlal (Independence) issued its Manifesto for Independence in 1944. The PCM followed suit in short order. In fact, every viable political party came to support a vision of Moroccanness inextricably bound to the institution of the monarchy.

One of the reasons why the Moroccan Communist Party appealed to Jews was its universalist, expansive definition of Moroccan at a time when most national liberation parties foregrounded an Arabo-Muslim Moroccan national identity. Although the meaning of Moroccanness evolved over time, for Moroccan Jewish Communists it meant embracing Moroccan cultural and national identity formations to the exclusion of all others. In other words, embracing Moroccanness entailed a commitment to Moroccanize, to accept Jews as an integral part of the nation and to reject French, Spanish, or Zionist politics as threats to the Moroccan nation; it meant both a pluralistic Morocco free to develop its full potential and a narrative of precolonial Muslim–Jewish peaceful coexistence. In fighting for independence through a universalist party that defined Moroccanness broadly, Jews fought to demonstrate their authenticity as Moroccans and their belonging to the Moroccan nation. As a result, they demonstrated the legitimacy of the monarchy as their protector, in the figure of the Commander of the Faithful, the sultan-turned-king. During the late 1950s through the 1990s, prominent Moroccan Jews rejected specific policies of the monarchy and its turn toward authoritarianism. They did not, however, attack the legitimacy of the monarchy itself. They fought for an idealized vision of Morocco, while, simultaneously, the majority of Moroccan Jews were leaving the country.

By the time King Hassan II died in 1999 and his son King Muhammad VI ascended to the throne, the most prominent remaining Jews were working in the service of the centralized state apparatus known as the makhzan in Arabic. These figures included dissidents who had been welcomed home from exile in France, freed from prison, and rewarded for their patriotism, becoming the Sultan’s Jews and thereby the emblems of purported Moroccan tolerance of its Jewish minority and of political opposition after decades of repression. The elevation of these Moroccan Jewish dissidents allowed the makhzan to atone for an authoritarian political past, bolstering what Susan Slyomovics has called its performance of human rights¹² while simultaneously highlighting Morocco’s exceptionalism in the MENA for its commitment to the Moroccan Jewish past and present.

The story of Morocco’s Jewish Communists is both exceptional and emblematic of the history of Jews in Morocco and of Moroccan political life across the years of colonial occupation through independence and the Cold War. The legitimacy of the makhzan, of Jews as Moroccans, and of the Moroccan Communist Party as authentic to the values of Moroccanness all came to support and serve one another. While bolstering their mutual legitimacy, the makhzan and Jewish Communists also proved each other’s Moroccan authenticity. As the following chapters demonstrate, a triangulation of historical contingencies and necessities ultimately enabled both Jewish Communists and the makhzan to combat a legacy of colonial sectarian politics through one another. Each aimed to restore, according to the nationalist narrative, the precolonial and pre-Zionist patriotic harmony between Muslims and Jews, loyal subjects of the sultan-turned-king, the Commander of the Faithful, and the protector of his Jews.

Belonging and Colonial Complications

Contestations over the politics of belonging were at the heart of imperialist incursions in Morocco well before the establishment of the protectorate in 1912.¹³ In the nineteenth century, some Moroccan Jews received consular protections from European powers and became protégés, as in the well-documented cases in the Ottoman context. As Jessica Marglin has written, Moroccan Jews had considerable agency and fluidity in positioning themselves as either European, Jewish, or Moroccan to achieve optimal legal outcomes, due in part to the mapping of a consular protection system onto indigenous Moroccan Halakhic (Jewish law) and Shari’a (Muslim law) courts.¹⁴ Additionally, Morocco had prohibited Christian Europeans from residing in Muslim quarters, so European envoys and merchants stayed in the Jewish quarters, the mellahs, of Moroccan cities. It was a Jew living in the mellah of Fez who helped disguise the French explorer, Father Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), as a rabbi so that he might more easily move through the Moroccan holy city of Fez unmolested; the explorer’s observations culminated in his 1888 work Reconnaissance au Maroc (Investigating Morocco), which exemplified the growth of French power leading to the Moroccan protectorate treaty of 1912. French power, of course, had been growing in Morocco and in North Africa more broadly since the beginning of the nineteenth century. French Jewish politics and the colonial mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission) also extended into Morocco in the work of the Alliance Israélite Universelle long before the formalization of the protectorate treaty.

The Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) encouraged the