Zohra El Fassia: A Moroccan Jewish Singer’s Lost Fame in Israel

Algerian-born Moroccan Jewish poet Erez Bitton is often called the father of Mizrahi poetry in Israel. Four years after immigrating in 1948, the ten-year-old Bitton lost his left hand and eyesight after finding an old grenade. In this poem, from his anthology You Who Cross My Path, he draws on the story of Zohra El Fassia, a celebrated Moroccan singer of the 1940s who immigrated to Israel in 1962. Despite her fame, she lived there in poverty. Bitton, who visited her as a social worker, depicts her decline as both a personal tragedy and a metaphor for the broader experience of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Israel.