"Ddar Darek": Revisiting Jewish-Muslim Relations in Morocco
As the spirit of the Abraham Accords returns, we must promote Morocco's historical model of coexistence.
If you’re invited for atay (Mor. Ar. “tea”) and sweet briouat in the northern Moroccan town of Tetouan, you might be welcomed with a resounding, “Dkhoul marḥba! Ddar darek.” (Come on in! The house is all yours).
It’s certainly a greeting my Tetouani ancestors would have heard from their Muslim neighbours during the yearly Mimouna celebrations marking the end of the Jewish festival of Pesaḥ, or Passover. After a week of being ritually forbidden to store or consume leavened products (ḥametz), Moroccan Jews would eagerly collect flour from generous Muslim households to spontaneously make and serve mufletas, delicious crêpes cooked in gallons of oil and generously drizzled with honey. Needless to say, those who attend Mimouna parties may need to don a pair of sufficiently wide trousers beforehand.
My grandmother once recounted that during her early childhood, Jews in northern Morocco would travel from house to house throughout their respective cities on the night of Mimouna. Once assembled outside every door, they would stamp their feet and chant in Judeo-Arabic: “Ya Mimouna Shalom b-el-bab el-terbaḥ!” (O peaceful gathering at the gate of riches!). The identity of the tenants, ethnic or religious or otherwise, was of no consequence to the revellers, who would shower their hosts with blessings and songs.
The Mimouna was not an isolated event in Moroccan society, nor was it ever treated as just another day in the lunar cycle upon which Jews and Muslims jointly base their calendars. On the contrary, it was viewed as the highest expression of cultural tolerance and coexistence - a night when everyone could set aside their differences and come together to celebrate a shared history in the spirit of mutual respect.
A short essay published in 2023 by André Azoulay, the eminent Jewish advisor to two consecutive Moroccan monarchs, does much to convey the unique significance and power of the Mimouna as an emblem of peace. Yet, he also leverages this model to address present-day concerns about Muslim-Jewish peacebuilding.
“Between Jews and Muslims today, the contentious subjects are not religious, cultural, or historical. They are political, and our spiritualties have very little to do with them.”
André Azoulay & Rebecca Glasberg, ‘Essaouira/Mogador For Other Tomorrows?’, in Lia Brozgal & Rebecca Glasberg (eds.), A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Leïla Sebbar (California, 2023), 200.
While recent events in Europe may challenge Azoulay’s observation that religious, cultural and historical concerns largely do not play into more contentious aspects of Jewish-Muslim relations, his basic premise is substantially true. Namely, that these contentions are precipitated and amplified by broader political concerns which can foreseeably be resolved.
With the expected arrival of a renewed Trump administration in the White House, there will likely be a resurgence in the efforts made during the Abraham Accords to negotiate normalisation agreements and trade deals between the State of Israel and various majority-Muslim countries. The ultimate aim of the initiative is to not only make the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) more prosperous, but to normalise a culture of acceptance and friendship between the Abrahamic faiths who have long inhabited the region.
To this end, one element above all must be promoted and inscribed in the agreements themselves: inter-communal education. It would not do justice to the immense potential of the scheme if we were to simply cooperate in matters of commerce, agriculture, technology, and defense. It is only in learning about each other and our respective cultures that we can encourage future generations to engage in productive dialogue.
As the late Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z’l, once remarked:
“To defend a country you need an army. But to defend a civilisation you need schools. You need education as the conversation between the generations.”
Jonathan Sacks, The Power of Ideas: Words of Faith and Wisdom (London, 2021), 207.
Admittedly, steps have been taken in this direction. The United Arab Emirates and Morocco are committed to incorporating Holocaust education into their national curricula. As more countries begin to follow this trend, the scope of Jewish/Israel-related subjects should be extended to include the vibrant, though often painful, history of Jews from the MENA region. (I have written elsewhere about the pitfalls of institutions considering the Holocaust as the only teachable moment in Jewish history).
Of course, the Muslim nations are not alone in the Abraham Accords, and more work remains to be done by the United States and Israel to educate their citizens on the intricacies of Abrahamic relations from antiquity to present day. High school students across the board should at the very least be familiar with the ideas communicated in academic works such as Prof. Aoumar Boum’s Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco (Stanford, 2013), or Prof. Sarah Stroumsa’s Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain (Princeton, 2019). It is entirely feasible - one might say necessary - to translate influential English-language material on the subject into Arabic and Hebrew, and to disseminate them in classrooms and libraries.
Suffice to say, the road to genuine peace will be paved with education. When we know more about each other, we feel more in control of our present situation. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to share moments, to make friends. We create a space in which we can reflect on who we are in relation to others, and how we can reconcile our respective differences.
This is the spirit of the Abraham Accords, encapsulated in the age-old celebration of Mimouna. Of course, it may be some time before we see the parades and bonfires traditionally associated with Mimouna dotted across the entire MENA on the last night of Passover. However, we should grasp every opportunity to actualise this vision in our lifetimes, so that one day our children may reap what we have sown.