"Yours or Ours?" Muslims Performing Selfhood in Moroccan Jewish Cemeteries Open Access
Driver, Cory Thomas Pechan (2017)
Abstract
My dissertation asks how Moroccan Muslims use performance of affiliation with the former Moroccan Jewish community to create their social identities and develop their idealized moral selfhood. The subjects of my research are the men and women who serve as guides and guards to and at, respectively, Jewish cemeteries and synagogues.
My ethnographic research took place primarily in cemeteries because they offer a material space where performers can mediate issues of loss, nostalgia, friendship, ritual responsibility, authority, authenticity and cosmopolitanism, along with negotiating financial, moral and spiritual capital. Performers and performances of selfhood creation by Muslim Moroccans depend heavily on the residual material presence of Jews in Morocco for the effectiveness of their acts.
My research argues that the guards and guides use performances of ritual and caring acts purposefully to create moral selves that separate them from other members of their now homogenously Muslim community. As a means of claiming an authentic alternative self that is profoundly Moroccan, but simultaneously undermines notions of a mono-ethnically Arab and mono-religiously Muslim Morocco, Imazighen stress their close ties with Jews. Amazigh respondents perform Jewish rituals, like praying for deceased Jews, cleaning tombs and celebrating Passover, to preserve ties that connected ethno-religious communities for hundreds of years, but have ceased since the Jewish mass-emigration from Morocco.
Other people with whom I work use their ties with Jewish sites to harness power and prestige in their communities. For women particularly, running a Jewish site that is frequented by tourists who bring economic capital to rural areas can be a valuable source of social capital as well. Guarding a Jewish site is an avenue for accumulating a position of authority that she may not have another means of accessing in a small village.
Lastly, and most importantly, many of the Muslim Moroccans take care of graves, and seek to preserve Moroccan Jewish traditions, because they had a close Jewish friend or adoptive family.
This dissertation is situated at the intersection of Jewish Studies, the Academic Study of Religion and Middle East and North African Studies.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction. 1
How to Pray. 1
Performance Studies, Practice Theory, Shaping Identity & Creation of the Self. 2
Identity Interdependence. 15
Situating Work on Muslim Performance of Jewish Affinity in Morocco. 22
Theoretical Issues. 27
Parasitism... 31
Dissertation's Contributions to Scholarship. 36
Ethnography, Reflexivity & Humanity. 39
Sites. 43
Chapter Discussion. 49
Chapter 1: Orientation: Arrival and Framing the Work of Ethnography: 56
Getting There. 56
Doing Ethnography as a Nus-Nus. 57
Immediate Failures. 61
Outside the Gate. 65
Lessons from an Unpleasant First Visit: 70
The Stakes. 74
Delimiting the Ethnographic Task. 78
Chapter 2: Moroccan Muslims Locating Moroccan Jews in Time and Space. 82
Pre-Islamic Morocco. 85
Arab Invasion and Islamic Morocco: 87
Legends of a North African Jewish Kingdom... 91
Exiles. 97
Saint Veneration. 99
Colonialism and Differentiation. 102
Exodus/Contraction. 105
Return. 112
Comparative Research: Cape Verde. 116
Comparative Research: Oman. 119
Comparative Research: Uzbekistan. 122
Chapter 3: Passover Professionals. 127
Matzah Expertise: 127
Passover with Hamou: 131
Passover with Toudert and Rebha: 136
Seders as Performative Acts: 139
Passover - A Performative Case Study: 144
Quasi-Objects, Subjectivity and Noise: 149
Chapter 4: Guards - Building Muslim Authority in Jewish Cemeteries. 152
Places of Contradiction. 154
Sefrou. 156
Repertoire. 168
Essaouira. 169
Authentic "Experts". 179
Timzerit. 180
The Heart of Performance: Recitation of Relationships. 187
Rabat. 188
Chapter 5: Using the Audience to Create the Self: Moroccan Muslim Guide's Performance of Authenticity 200
Defining "Self" through the Other. 202
Farming & Integrity. 204
Trading & Formalizing Ties. 208
Prosperity & Trust. 214
Persecution. 218
Contacts and Boundaries. 221
A Strange Dinner - Weirdness as a Defining Personality Trait. 223
To Aghbalou! - Rural Power, Repertoire and Ethnopoetics. 229
Arab Idol Interruption - Why do You Care So Much?. 236
Drinking the Milk of Trust. 242
Moha's Friend: Mimi 250
Chapter 6: Blessings and the Business of Cemetery Tourism... 259
Attractive Narratives: Prying Tourists out of Major Cities. 261
It's all About the Guide: Shaping the Experience. 266
Why Start a Grave Tourism Company?. 269
Authenticity and Authority. 272
NGOs, Cemeteries and Tourism... 281
The Blessings of Jewish Graves. 284
The Essaouira Project. 294
Rehabilitating the "House[s] of Life". 295
Chapter 7: Expectations and Feedback: What do the Tourists Say. 302
Inward and Outward. 302
Moroccans Love to Say How Much They Love Jews. 310
Last Jew of the Atlas. 318
A Land of Friendship. 324
One of Yours, or One of Ours?. 328
Conclusion. 333
Chapter 8: Conclusion: Changing Flavor of the Milk of Trust. 337
Jewish Ties as a Mechanism to Create the Self and "Otherness". 338
Performing Alternative Histories. 340
The Material of Jewish Sacred Spaces. 341
Recommendations for Future Research. 341
Significance of this Project. 343
What's Next?. 345
Bibliography. 347
Bibliography: Non-Print Sources. 369
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