Members of Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation spend some Sunday mornings immersed in a lecture on Moroccan Jewish culture. Thirty-eight of them are preparing to travel to Morocco this fall as a congregation.
They range in age from their mid-20s to 80s.
“Our people like to travel, so we look for opportunities to create a Jewish learning experience through travel,” Cantor Susan Caro, who is organizing the Morocco trip, said.
The virtual lecture series is titled “The Layers of Moroccan Jewish Experience” and presented by senior lecturer and historian Dr. David Mendelsohn.
“[Mendelsohn] wants our people to understand the larger context of what we are going to see because the Jewish history in Morocco is long and complicated,” Caro explained. “We’ll also be learning on the trip.”
The first lecture session, on June 22, focused on the Berbers — the indigenous people of North Africa — and Jews of Morocco. In the fifth century B.C.E., it’s believed that the first Jews settled among the Berber tribes and integrated into Berber society. Intermarriage between the two groups means that the Berber Jews could be considered indigenous to Morocco, according to NVHC’s event listing.
The next session describes the birth of Islam and the Arabian conquest of Morocco. Caro said she was most surprised to learn about this historical timeline.
“The layers of Jewish experience go back much farther,” she said. “People mostly think of Moroccan Jews as from the 20th century, maybe a little bit earlier [and] maybe even the Sephardic Jews who went from Spain, but there’s much earlier layers of Jewish community that go back centuries before that.”
The upcoming sessions in August will explore modern-day Moroccan Jews and the future.
“It’s part of our larger Jewish world heritage,” Caro said. “We come from many different places. Judaism is not a singular experience, so understanding Jewish communities around the world just adds to how we can understand our own part in a larger peoplehood.
“Part of our communal engagement is understanding who we are,” she added.
Several congregants approached Caro to suggest the trip, and she found Morocco interesting as well: “It’s just a place that’s fascinated me.”
The cantor was specifically drawn to Morocco due to its rich Jewish musical history.
“Some Jewish musical traditions from Morocco are quite old, and we try to take in and use different pieces of Jewish experience from around the world here in our worship,” Caro said.
But she added that there may not be many sites to witness this musical culture.
“A lot of the Moroccan Jewish music tradition is disappearing, and some of the worship that’s there right now is probably a late Ashkenazi arrival, which is not really native to Morocco,” Caro said. “There are still a lot of small pockets of places [where] we’re going to try and interact with local people to hear what’s going on there.”
Mendelsohn, who is attending the congregational trip, has many connections in the Moroccan Jewish community, which will help the travelers meet locals. Caro looks forward to the trip, specifically experiencing something new with fellow members of NVHC, in late October.
“That’s why the trip is actually limited in size and scope,” she said. “So that way, part of the experience is a very shared experience.”
