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BEYOND THE NATION-STATE: A NETWORK ANALYSIS OF JEWISH EMIGRATION FROM NORTHERN MOROCCO TO ISRAEL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2020

Aviad Moreno
Aviad Moreno*
Affiliation:
Aviad Moreno is a Lecturer at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede-Boqer Campus, Israel. He completed this article during his 2018–2019 fellowship at Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, PhiladelphiaPA, U.S. (aviadm@bgu.ac.il).
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Abstract

The post-1948 mass migration of Jews from Arab Muslim countries to Israel is widely seen by scholars as a direct result of decolonization and rising nationalism across the Middle East and North Africa, coupled with the emigration and immigration policies of regional powers. In this article I draw on local histories of northern Morocco to critique the existing literature. I apply new methods to reconceptualize that migratory experience as shaped by social and cultural processes, albeit ones that interacted with nationalist state policies. I provide a multilayered macro- and microanalysis of the process of Jewish emigration from northern Morocco and point to the transregional, interpersonal, communal, and institutional networks that jointly shaped the dynamic character and pace of migration to Israel (and to Europe and the Americas) among local Jews.

Keywords

IsraelJewish migrationmigration cultureMoroccoVenezuela
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

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5 I use “northern Morocco” to refer to the region that encompassed most of the Spanish protectorate zone in northern Morocco from 1912 until 1956, and the Tangier International Zone from 1923 until 1956 (which was annexed to the Spanish protectorate zone between 1940 and 1945). The Jewish populations of the region had maintained a Hispanic culture and idiom.

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81 ” Noʻar Dati mi-Tanjir be-Yisraʼel,” Hatsofe, 30 July 1954.

82 Letters courtesy of Reuben and Simon Benoliel.

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90 Interview with Reina conducted by the author, Israel, 2010.

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