The separatism of Moroccan Jews—whether out of identification with French culture or out of attachment to Jewish tradition—contributed greatly to the emergence of Zionist sentiment there in the 1940s. Whereas Jewish nationalism struggled in Europe against religious traditionalism and a widespread desire to integrate into European culture, both of these forces acted in the Islamic countries as catalysts for the spread of Zionism. By teaching Moroccan Jews about nationalism, European civilization offered a model for Jewish national emancipation. And once the European role in the Holocaust—and in particular that of France—had made identification with French culture far less attractive for Jews, Zionism became the dominant ideology among educated Jews in Morocco; indeed, graduates of the Alliance schools stood at the forefront of Zionist activism in that country. More traditional Moroccan Jews, too, were open to Zionist ideas, which struck a chord with the national beliefs inherent in the traditional Jewish worldview. Thus, while there were points of conflict between traditionalist Jews and Zionist activists in Morocco, these were mainly a response to the secularization that Moroccan Jews saw as the fate of religious emigrants to Israel, rather than any principled opposition to the creation of a Jewish state or to aliya.

 

With the emergence of Zionist idealism among Moroccan Jews, however, came the realities of dealing with a movement that had been built by Europeans and was alien in many respects to the Moroccan experience. The most important contribution of A Torn Community is its discussion of relations between the Zionist leadership and the Jewish state, on the one hand, and the Jews of Morocco, on the other, a discussion which rejects the extreme views that have until now dominated the debate, and offers a third, more complex view.

Tzur’s model, which we might call one of “elitist solidarity,” points to the endemic tension between two basic features of historic Zionism: Its European-style paternalism and its nationalism. In scholarly discussions in the past decade, it is the former which has enjoyed the lion’s share of attention. The tendency among many Europeans to distinguish between European and “native” cultures, which was based on a belief in the cultural and social superiority of the former, had a considerable impact not only on the European Jews who laid the ideological foundations of Zionism, but also on Jews from Arab countries, of whom many—and especially those who had been exposed to European culture—internalized a belief in their own inferiority. Their treatment at the hands of the Ashkenazi leaders of Israel in the early years of statehood cannot be understood independently of this context; rather, it was a clear function of the Eurocentric worldview that has prevailed in the West until the last few decades.

At the same time, however, Zionism’s nationalist element worked as a check against Eurocentric paternalism. Nationalism, after all, elevates national identity above divisive factors such as regionalism, class consciousness, or ethnic and tribal identity; it celebrates the idea that all members of a nation are equal by virtue of their membership in the same collective. Zionism, which developed in a European context but was meant for a nation dispersed throughout Africa and Asia, was drawn to each of these poles, and constantly found itself torn “between the hierarchical attitude of the colonial heritage, and the national ethos which was egalitarian and unifying.” At times these conflicting attitudes would find expression in a single turn of phrase. Tzur quotes, for example, remarks made by David Ben-Gurion at a meeting of the Steering Committee of the Histadrut labor federation in late December 1943: “With regard to two or three fundamental issues, the education of these [Sephardi] Jews is more difficult than that of those from Poland or Romania. It is not hard to teach them to use weapons, but to teach them Jewish pride or Jewish courage is harder than with Polish Jews, because they have been more downtrodden and humiliated.” Statements such as this one may have contained more than a trace of arrogance, but it would be a mistake to call them racist: Ben-Gurion describes a significant difference between the communities, but one which arises from their collective experiences, not their genetic profile. Such statements, moreover, came in a context of intensive efforts on the part of the Zionist movement to include the Jews from Arab countries in the national vision by bringing about their immigration to Palestine. “Ben-Gurion articulated a position calling for the integration of the Sephardi diaspora within the Zionist enterprise,” Tzur emphasizes, “without allowing his own negative ideas about the quality of the immigrants or their compatibility with the pioneering ideal to get in the way of his enabling their immediate inclusion in the nascent national body.”

It was these same two tendencies, nationalist and Eurocentric, which underlay what often appeared to be conflicting policies of integration and discrimination regarding the Jews of North Africa. One major expression of the nationalist element was the policy of sending emissaries to encourage Zionist activity in Muslim countries. Substantial immigration from these countries was limited prior to statehood by the strict policies of the British government in Palestine, and by the fact that the plight of Europe’s Jews in the 1940s demanded that their immigration be given top priority. But with the creation of Israel in 1948, tens of thousands of Jews from Arab lands began streaming in, with the encouragement and funding of the state as well as of diaspora Jewish organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee.

However, the dramatic increase in the number of Sephardim in the young State of Israel gave them far greater representation there than in the Jewish world as a whole (Jews from Muslim countries constituted less than 15 percent of world Jewry, but more than half the immigrants during the first years of statehood), and raised fears among many veterans of the Jewish community in Palestine about the “native” character this influx would give their state. Moroccan Jews in particular aroused suspicion, largely because many of the early immigrants from that country came from the marginal segments of Moroccan society. “The number of… young people from the westernizing sector, who had grown up in the youth movements, was insignificant when compared with the flood of large, poor families and the other youth, most of them from the margins of mellah society…,” writes Tzur. Very quickly, “the impressions they left began to have their effect [on the Ashkenazi Zionists], forming a firm basis for the creation of a negative stereotype.” As a result, Moroccan Jewry as a whole was stigmatized. An example of this attitude can be found in an article by the journalist Aryeh Gelblum, which appeared in Ha’aretz in 1949, in which apprehension about growing Moroccan influence is presented together with a fear of the rise to power of Menachem Begin’s Herut party. Gelblum felt compelled to call for nothing less than a temporary halt to immigration from North Africa:

Even if such extreme statements were not a reflection of the views or policies of the Israeli leadership, there is no doubt that the rise of exclusionary attitudes contributed to a deceleration of immigration from North Africa in the years that followed, and later to a policy of selective immigration that prevented many Moroccan Jews from coming to Israel.

Indeed, the difficult absorption that Moroccan Jews experienced in Israel left a bad impression on their relatives who remained in Morocco, who consequently lost much of their enthusiasm for Zionism. The number of applicants for immigration declined, among both the wealthy and the poorer segments of the population. Improvement in the status of Jews under French rule in Morocco in the early 1950s further diminished the incentive to move to Israel. As a result, when the Jewish state again sought to encourage the large-scale aliya of Moroccan Jews in 1953, they were no longer in such a hurry to immigrate. “When Israel eased the limitations, and even tried in different ways to bring about the immigration of entire villages… they were unsuccessful. Neither the religious and Zionist elites nor the broader Jewish public stopped identifying with the Jewish state, but an awareness had grown of the difference between the Zionist ideal and its realization in practice….”

 

Tzur’s measured analysis in A Torn Community injects a needed sense of balance into the acrid debate which has dominated discussions about the origins of the ethnic divide in Israeli society. He avoids sweeping accusations against the Ashkenazi “establishment,” and offers none of the apologies for Israel’s treatment of Sephardim in the state’s early years which until recently were a commonplace of Israeli discourse. Rather, he portrays a Zionism that was not free of prejudices or injustice, but was nonetheless motivated by a sincere desire to foster solidarity among the disparate parts of a long-dispersed nation. The immigration of Moroccan Jewry to Israel was not part of a conspiracy to import cheap labor, but rather an intensive effort to gather the Jewish exiles into a state of their own—a dream that was shared by both the Ashkenazi leadership and the Jewish community of Morocco.

A Torn Community, like Tzur’s previous works, reveals the author’s impressive ability to sketch a broad picture without skimping on the complexity of the details. Combining the tools of sociological analysis with those of a first-rate historian, Tzur paints a portrait of one diaspora community during a brief but fateful period, and in the process sheds light on some of the most divisive questions regarding the history of the Jews in the twentieth century. A Torn Community is therefore indispensable for any serious discussion of the relationship between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Israel and in the diaspora.