Full Description
In this volume are gathered articles published by Yolande Cohen and her team, offering for a first time a global perspective on Moroccan Jews post-colonial migrations to France and Canada. Having herself migrated from Morocco to Montreal, she is uniquely attuned to the difficulties of living through such a massive exile. Why did they leave Morocco? When did this migration happen? And how can we analyze their journey? _x000D_
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She explores the many vivid memories of departures that she encountered when collecting oral histories of migrants both in France and in Québec. She finds the deep attachment some of them have to their King and to Morocco, making it an exception in the Arab Muslim world. The main disruptive forces in the displacement of these populations were French colonialism and its emancipatory promises and Zionism, both messianic and modern._x000D_
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After the establishment of the State of Israel and the subsequent Israel-Arab wars, most of them joined in the mass exodus of Jews from Arab lands, leaving their countries to go to Israel. With the ending of the French colonial empire and the decolonization process, a minority of westernized Jews went to France and to Canada, with the help of transnational Jewish organizations. _x000D_
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In Montréal, a city with a strong multi-ethnic Jewish Community, those migrants understood the crucial aspect of French language as an essential factor of integration. Yet, analyzing their trajectories and the words they used to represent their exile, allows us to understand the underlying traumas of their exiles.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Historiographical Framework On Canada
Scholarship on Moroccan Jews in Canada: Multidisciplinary, Multilingual and Diasporic
Yolande Cohen and Stephanie Tara Schwartz
Part I: The Jews Of Morocco and Their Departures
From synagogue to Mosque: my grand-father's house in the old Mellah of Meknes
Yolande Cohen and Noureddine Harrami
Zionism, Colonialism, and Post-colonial Migrations: Moroccan Jews' Memories of Displacement
Yolande Cohen
Part 2: Between Paris and Montreal
Marriage and Mobility of Moroccan Jews in Montreal and Paris
Yolande Cohen and Martin Messika
Sephardi Jews in Montreal
Yolande Cohen
Part 3: Memoirs Of Migration In Canada
Memories of Departures: Stories of Jews from Muslim Lands in Montreal
Yolande Cohen, Martin Messika, and Sara Cohen Fournier
Forgetting and Forging: my Canadian experience as a Moroccan Jew
Yolande Cohen
A piece of a Torah Scroll in my basement
Yolande Cohen
Appendix
Bibliography
