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Jewish Moroccan Foodways

Community

⚠ A MAJOR MOROCCAN CUISINE WHOSE COOKS ALMOST ALL LEFT, and it is filed under the existing Sephardi root because that is what it is. Jews lived in Morocco for some two thousand years — a Berber-speaking and Arabic-speaking indigenous community, the TOSHAVIM, joined after 1492 by the MEGORASHIM expelled from Spain and Portugal, who brought Iberian cooking and Judeo-Spanish speech into Fes, Tetouan, Sale, Rabat, Meknes, Marrakech, Essaouira and the Atlas villages. The community numbered in the hundreds of thousands in 1948 and is now a few thousand: ⚠ THE FOOD IS NOW COOKED MAINLY IN ISRAEL, FRANCE AND CANADA, and that emigration is part of the record rather than an epilogue to it. The kitchen: SKHINA / DAFINA, the sealed pot of meat, chickpeas, wheat berries, potatoes and whole eggs left overnight for Shabbat lunch — the sabbath-observance constraint that produced a technique; PASTELS and the fried pastries; MOUNA, the sweet bread; couscous for Mimouna and for weddings; fish with CHERMOULA; preserved lemon and olive; matbucha and the cooked salads; HARIRA-adjacent soups for fast-breaking; and the sweets of MIMOUNA, the distinctive Moroccan Jewish festival at the close of Passover, when neighbours brought the leaven back. Judeo-Moroccan Arabic is a recorded language of its own. ⚠ AND IT IS NOT "MOROCCAN FOOD WITH A RELIGIOUS LABEL": kashrut, the sabbath and the festival calendar shaped the techniques, and the two kitchens influenced each other in both directions.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Moroccan Jews community documented
  • Toshavim community documented
  • Megorashim community documented

Languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Tachelhit

What is recorded

  • Jewish communities lived in Morocco for approximately two thousand years, comprising an indigenous Berber- and Arabic-speaking population, the Toshavim, joined after 1492 by the Megorashim expelled from Iberia. The community numbered in the hundreds of thousands in 1948 and now numbers a few thousand; the cuisine is now practised principally in Israel, France and Canada. Skhina or dafina, a sealed overnight pot for Shabbat lunch, is documented as a technique produced by sabbath observance. Mimouna, marking the close of Passover, is documented as distinctively Moroccan Jewish. Judeo-Moroccan Arabic is a separately recorded language. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Moroccan Diaspora Foodways documented

    ⚠ A SEPARATE MOVEMENT that must not be merged with the labour migration: a different population, period and cuisine.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.