Moroccan Jews

Moroccan Jews (; ; ) are Jews who live in or are from Morocco. Moroccan Jews constitute an ancient community dating to Roman times. Jews began immigrating to the region as early as 70 CE. They were much later met by a second wave of migrants from the Iberian Peninsula in the period which immediately preceded and followed the issuing of the 1492 Alhambra Decree, when Jews were expelled from Spain, and soon afterward, from Portugal. This second wave of immigrants changed Moroccan Jewry, which largely embraced the Andalusian Sephardic liturgy, to switch to a mostly Sephardic identity.

The migration of Moroccan Jews to the Land of Israel has occurred throughout the recent centuries of Jewish history. Moroccan Jews built the first self-made neighborhood outside the walls of Jerusalem (Mahane Israel in Wadi Salib, a neighborhood in Haifa that was populated primarily by immigrants from Morocco, against the conditions Mizrahi Jews faced in Israel. It led to the first of a series of violent demonstrations against the government, the Labor Party and the Histadrut around the country. Shay Hazkani sees the struggle of Moroccan Jews against Ashkenazi racism in Israel that led to the riots as an extension of their political radicalization in the anti-colonial struggle they had been engaged in against France in Morocco.

All ten of the founding members of the Israeli Black Panthers—a short-lived 1970-1971 protest movement that worked against "ethnic discrimination and the 'socioeconomic gap,'" a group inspired by anti-Zionist university students—were children of Moroccan immigrants.Bernstein, Deborah (1984). ''Conflict and Protest in Israeli Society''. Haifa University. pp. 133–137.

Mordechai Vanunu, a whistleblower who revealed information on Israel's nuclear weapons program and was later abducted by Mossad in Rome and incarcerated in Israel, was born in Marrakesh.

In Israel, many Moroccan Jews have risen to prominence in politics such as Amir Peretz, Orly Levy, Arye Deri, Miri Regev and Naama Lazimi.

Genetics

Over the years, the Moroccan Jews' DNA was examined and studied by numerous studies, the general image of it showed that in terms of Y-DNA it was mainly from the same Levantine source as the vast majority of the world's Jewry, meaning that they too are descendants of the Ancient Israelites from the Biblical times. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are apparently closely related, the minority non-Levantine component of their DNA is southern European.

Genetic research shows that about 27% of Moroccan Jews descend from one female ancestor. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA of the Jewish populations of North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya) was the subject of further detailed study in 2008 by Doron Behar et al. The analysis concludes that Jews from this region do not share the haplogroups of the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (M1 and U6) that are typical of the North African Berber and Arab populations.

Behar et al. conclude that it is unlikely that North African Jews have significant Arab, or Berber admixture, "consistent with social restrictions imposed by religious restrictions," or endogamy. This study also found genetic similarities between the Ashkenazi and North African Jews of European mitochondrial DNA pools, but differences between both of these of the diaspora and Jews from the Middle East.
In a 2012 study by Campbell et al., however, the Moroccan/Algerian, Djerban/Tunisian and Libyan subgroups of North African Jewry were found to demonstrate varying levels of Middle Eastern (40-42%), European (37-39%) and North African ancestry (20-21%), with Moroccan and Algerian Jews tending to be genetically closer to each other than to Djerban Jews and Libyan Jews. According to the study:

"distinctive North African Jewish population clusters with proximity to other Jewish populations and variable degrees of Middle Eastern, European, and North African admixture. Two major subgroups were identified by principal component, neighbor joining tree, and identity-by-descent analysis—Moroccan/Algerian and Djerban/Libyan—that varied in their degree of European admixture. These populations showed a high degree of endogamy and were part of a larger Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish group. By principal component analysis, these North African groups were orthogonal to contemporary populations from North and South Morocco, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. Thus, this study is compatible with the history of North African Jews—founding during Classical Antiquity with proselytism of local populations, followed by genetic isolation with the rise of Christianity and then Islam, and admixture following the emigration of Sephardic Jews during the Inquisition."

Miscellaneous

Jewish life in Morocco in the mid-20th century and the emigration of a rural Jewish village were depicted in the documentary '' Edge of The West'' by Arnan Zafrir.

See also

* History of the Jews in Africa
* History of the Jews in Morocco
* History of the Jews under Muslim rule
* Migration of Moroccan Jews to Israel
* Moroccan Jews in Israel
* Operation Yachin
* The Jewish Community of Fez
* Amazonian Jews
* Moroccans

References

Further reading

;Histories
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;Folktale collections and studies:
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* ''Jewish Folktales from Morocco: Tales of Seha the Sage and Seha the Clown''. By Marc Eliany. Introduction by Annette B. Fromm. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021.

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Jews and Judaism in Morocco
Ethnic groups in Morocco
Jewish ethnic groups
Sephardi Jews topics