Moroccan Jews in Their Hour of Decision: Carlos de Nesry’s Reflections

Carlos de Nesry

1958

The Test

The Jews of Morocco are in the limelight today. The condition of the Jews in a given country always has a certain international dimension. It is a kind of sociological test and a touchstone of evolutionary developments. After having been ignored for a long time, the Jews of this country find themselves under the scrutiny of observers…

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During the twentieth century, especially in the 1940s and 1950s, large numbers of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) left their native countries amid upheaval and anti-Jewish violence. Most went to Israel, while others settled in Europe or the United States. In some places, such as Libya in 1949 and Iraq in 1950–1951, nearly entire communities departed within months. In others, like Morocco, emigration was gradual: more than 250,000 Jews lived there in the early 1950s, but independence and later events prompted tens of thousands to leave. Today, only about two thousand remain. This text notes that some MENA Jews fled, while others chose to stay.

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Creator Bio

Carlos de Nesry

20th Century

Carlos de Nesry was born in Tangier, Morocco, the son of chief rabbi Yaḥya Nizrī. De Nesry believed Tangerian Jews were more agnostic and West European in their thinking than their coreligionists in North Africa; he attributed these characteristics at least partly to their formal education in European schools like the Alliance Israélite Universelle. A strong supporter of Moroccan independence, de Nesry encouraged his fellow Jews to contribute to the cultural and political life of the new country, an appeal he pushed in his 1958 Les Israélites marocains à l’heure du choix. In addition to serving on the Tangier Court of Appeals and being an active journalist, de Nesry took an active role in Jewish community affairs. A man of keen literary ambitions, de Nesry once circulated a petition asking the Nobel Committee to award him the prize for literature.

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