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This article was downloaded by: [American University Library]On: 25 March 2014, At: 21:01Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

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Jewish Culture and Society in North

AfricaYolande Cohen

a

aUQAM (University of Quebec, Montreal), Canada

Published online: 06 Dec 2013.

To cite this article:Yolande Cohen (2013) Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, Journal ofModern Jewish Studies, 12:3, 519-520, DOI: 10.1080/14725886.2013.853395

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2013.853395

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Jewish Culture and Society in North AfricaEMILY BENICHOU GOTTREICH& DANIEL J. SCHROETER (Eds)Indiana University Press, 2011386 pp., $29, ISBN 978-0-25-335509-6

This volume focuses on the study of contemporary North African Jewish culture. It aimsto develop a shared historical space for the study of Jewish and Muslim culture as an areain and of itself.

Aomar Boums essay on southern Moroccan Jewry calls for the critical use of bothEuropean narratives and nationalist post-colonial ones. Underlining the racial para-digm French Colonial power has produced first in Algeria and then in Morocco, heintegrates this bulk of knowledge to fill the silences left by contemporary nationalisthistoriography on the question of the Jews. Boums essay echoes in a different waySchroeters call for emancipation from national frontiers in the study of NorthAfrican history.

In an illuminating shorter piece, Yaron Tsur explores the transnational ties thatwere established by North African Jews with what he calls the western Sephardi dia-spora. This superb analysis of the multiple sectors of North African Jewry underlinesthe demise of the western Sephardi Jewish diaspora, while the New Levantine one isthriving.

Susan Miller presents the multifaceted aspects of Jewish life in Tangier at the turn ofthe 20th century. She shows how many communities, together but separately, had built acosmopolitan city, where everyone knew their specific space and worked within thoseboundaries: the navigation of borders was especially pronounced in the economicsphere, where a native capitalism that brought Jews into lucrative partnerships withMuslim and Europeans was born(146).

New data concerning gender, colonialism and theAlliance Isralite Universellepresentanother narrative regarding the controversial role of the Alliance. Studying thecorrespondence of female institutrices of the Alliance, Joy A. Land introduces us tothese European-born teachers and headmasters (directrices dcoles) who shaped thefirst schools that opened in Tunisia in 1882. As the first secularizing women teachersin the region, they were both the mediators of European culture to their students,but also had to face the difficulties of feeling deeply isolated in their own personal lives.

The role of AIU in the westernization of Maghribi Jews is also achieved for Jewish

girls by the transition to the French language. Keith Walter shows that it was theequal number of girls and boys attending those schools that allowed the languageshift to happen in the community. The adoption of French represents a shift intheir conception of individual and communal identity, which provided a culturaland social capital to the Jews. It was the prerequisite of their internal exile, and oftheir possible departure to France, even if it did not lead them to acquire Frenchcitizenship.

Jonathan Katz tackles this very question of the failure of AIUs lobbying to awardMoroccan Jews French citizenship. A detailed analysis of AIU School in Marrakechshows the tensions within the Jewish community concerning its Westernization.

Several factors explain the rise of this tension, including the experience of colonialism,the rising tide of nationalism and the Palestine question. Faycal Cherif analyses the shiftsthat occurred in Jewish-Muslim relations in Tunisia during World War II.

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Jamaa Badas short piece on the first wave of Moroccan Jewsemigration (19481956) attests to the ideological battle that major political parties represented in theirpublications, from their clandestine departure to Israel, called for by zealous Zionists(Le jeune Maghrbin), to the reassuring voice of the community, which professed

its love of Mohamed V (

La voix des communauts

).The essays gathered in this volume have succeeded in renewing our approach to thishistorical sub-field. The authors refer to the Jews of North Africa as North African Jews,not as Sephardi, Maghribi, or Mizrahi Jews. Their multi-faceted relations with the domi-nant Muslim cultures is well identified, while we can also see the many transformationsEuropean colonial powers have provoked. All these elements confer an immense valueto the volume, which will retain an important place in the construction of this area ofstudy.

YOLANDECOHEN

UQAM (University of Quebec, Montreal), Canada 2013, Yolande Cohenhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2013.853395

Jews and the Making of Modern German TheatreJEANETTE MALKIN & FREDDIE ROKEM (Eds)University of Iowa Press, 2010304pp., 43.50, ISBN 978-1-58-729868-4

This edited collection of essays traces, discusses and evaluates the Jewish influence onGerman theatre with a particular focus on the early twentieth century. One of thestrengths of this volume and one of the underlying threads is that it discusses the

Jewish contribution not as a separate entity but as part of a theatrical co-creation. Infact, Jeanette Malkin poignantly remarks that in this volume Jews are not seen as con-tributorsbut as part of the fabric(3).

At the same time, some of the contributors make it clear that this co-creation wasnot necessarily seen as such by contemporary gentile commentators and practitionerswho only rarely appreciated the Jewish contribution. Instead they often subscribed toanti-Semitic sentiments and claimed some sort of domination by the Jews. Andalmost all Jewish practitioners discussed here felt a distinct pressure to assimilate inorder to fit in. In fact it seems that the less Jewish they became the more likelythey were to succeed in a theatre world which in retrospect seems much more cosmo-politan and liberal than it was actually being perceived by its contemporaries.

In her introduction Jeanette Malkin maps out the territory of this volume and pro-vides a useful list of Jewish practitioners (2). The sheer number of actors, directors,stage designers, dramaturges, etc. on this list is testament to the fundamental Jewishinfluence. Steven Aschheim then argues that the performance of identity wascrucial for an aspiring Jewish middle class that wanted to disassociate themselvesfrom the eastern European ghetto life of the past. It was all about blending in

with the German Bildungsbrger(22). Peter Jelavich discusses the variations in

Jews

involvement across the spectrum of theatrical performance by assessing their perspec-tive on German Bildung (39), linking it to an enlightened understanding of Bildung

5 2 0 J O U R N A L O F M O D E R N J E W I S H S T U D I E S