ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AS I CONCLUDE THIS BOOK, it is clearer now than when I first began my research how my work has been influenced by my own position in an increasingly globalized network of northern Moroccan Jews. I reached this conclusion partly while participating in a series of academic events about and for the Hispanic Moroccan Jewish community in Israel, some of which were organized by my late colleague and dear friend Nina Pinto Abecasis. As the daughter of immigrants from Tetouan, Pinto Abecasis had dedicated her academic career to the study and preservation of Haketia in academia and in popular media. “It would be wonderful if the whole world spoke Haketia,” she once remarked during a 2015 interview with the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, which left an impression on me. “It’s a blend of cultures—Jewish, Christian, Arab, Muslim, European and North African—that merge to create a unique harmony,” she explained with enthusiasm to the average Israeli reader.¹

As a third-generation member of the Moroccan Jewish diaspora myself—the son of an immigrant to Israel from Venezuela, whose close family members had left Morocco for Venezuela in the 1950s—I began to feel increasingly curious about this community that I had barely been exposed to as a child. My Venezuelan connection also helped me think about the local developments I witnessed in Israel in more globalized terms. These notions and other related ideas helped me reach the conclusions I have drawn from this study about diaspora-making as an ongoing process intertwined with evolving networks of devoted individuals, including academics and community leaders, who cultivate a diasporic consciousness among dispersed individuals.

As I complete this book, it gives me great pleasure to express my gratitude to the numerous scholars, colleagues, friends, family members, and other dear people, some of whom are vibrant members of the evolving Hispanic Moroccan community who, together and separately, made this almost decade-and-a-half-long research adventure possible.

The seeds for this book were planted in 2008, when I was a PhD candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). My PhD advisor, Relli Shechter, thoughtfully guided me as I was writing my work, titled Ethnicity in Motion: Social Networks in the Emigration of Jews from Norther Morocco to Israel and Venezuela—a project without which this book, even with its different archival work, inroads, and conclusions, would not have been born.

When I began thinking about a book, I had already left my academic cradle at BGU and gone to Tel Aviv University, where Yaron Tsur was incredibly generous, both intellectually and financially, in welcoming me into my postdoctoral world. His trust and continuous support have been crucial for my evolution as a researcher, and thus for this project too. At the Frankel Institute at University of Michigan, in the fall of 2016, members of the fellowship group Israeli Histories, Societies, and Cultures helped me tailor my work for an international audience while closely engaging with related works in the field. I am grateful to (in alphabetical order) Mostafa Hussein, Liora Halperin, Noah Hysler Rubin, Bryan Roby, Shachar Pinsker, Gavin Schaffer, Rachel Seelig, Ruth Tsoffar, Jeffrey Veidlinger, Shayna Zamkanei, Yael Zerubavel.

During 2018–19, the Jews in Islamic Contexts fellowship group assembled at the Katz Centre at UPENN helped me start thinking about the structure of this book. I am grateful to Esra Almas, Orit Bashkin, Nancy Berg, Chen Bram, Dina Danon, Keren Dotan, Yuval Evri, Hadar Feldman Samet, Michal Rose Friedman, Annie Greene, Alma Heckman, Kerstin Hünefeld, Arthur Kiron, Sifra Lentil, Lital Levy, Sarah Levin, Yoram Meital, Yigal S. Nizri, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Joseph Sassoon, Edwin Seroussi, Julia Philips Cohen, Heather J. Sharky, Reuven Snir, Deborah Star, Alon Tam, Alan Verskin, and Mark Wagner for their thoughtful remarks during the numerous opportunities I had to share my ideas with them on various levels of intensity.

My nomination as a faculty member at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism in October 2019, and as the head of the research hubs, first for “Israel and the Jewish world” in 2020, and then for “Communities and Mobilities” in 2022, both at the Centre for the Study of Israel (MALI), constitute substantial milestones in organizing and finalizing this book. I am grateful to a list of people at the institute with whom I have shared my ideas while preparing this manuscript: Avi Bareli, Natan Aridan, Ben Herzog, Paula Kabalo, Gideon Katz, Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, Kobi Peled, Arieh Saposnik, Ofer Shiff, and Havatzelet Yahel. I am particularly grateful to Roy Shukrun, a visiting member of my research hubs in 2021–22, for reading the full draft of this book and making valuable comments. The BGRI also provided generous support on top of the funds I received as an Alon Fellow from the Israeli Council for Higher Education, which helped me finalize this project. I am also grateful to Matthew Berkman, Flora Pazerker and Yakir Goldfarb for their help in preparing the final manuscript of this book.

In addition, I owe thanks to a long list of friends, colleagues, and mentors who, at different stages of this long project, read and heard my ideas and shared some insightful comments and tips. They include, again in alphabetical order, Menashe Anzi, Gur Alroey, Omri Asscher, Ofir Abu, Samir Ben-Layashi, Michal Ben-Ya’akov, Yoram Bilu, Aomar Boum, Guy Bracha, Adriana M. Brodsky, William Clarence Smith, Yolande Cohen, Itzhak Dahan, Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, Noah Gerber, Silvina Schammah Gesser, Harvey Goldberg, Sasha Goldstein Sabah, Susan Gilson Miller, David Guedj, Tamir Karkason, Amos Noy, Yaron Harel, Ethan Katz, Malka Katz, Sebastian Klor, Nissim Leon, Matthias Lehmann, André Levy, Guy Miron, Jessica M. Marglin, Dario Micolli, Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, Alejandro Portes, Amnon Raz Karkozkin, Leonardo Senkman, Hadas Shabat Nadir, Hila Shalem Baharad, Batia Siebzehner, Paulette Kershenovich Schuster, Raanan Rein, Lior B. Sternfeld, Maite Ojeda Mata, Orit Ouaknine Yekutieli, Alex Valdman, Shoshana (Susana) Weich Shahak, Adi Sherzer, Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Piera Rossetto, and Rona Yona. I am particularly grateful to Daniel J. Schroeter, one of the most eminent scholars of North African Jewish history; at the stage of preparing the prospectus and structure for this book in 2019, Daniel read several draft versions and contributed important insights. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers who read the original draft of my manuscript and contributed significantly to its improvement.

Luckily, the list of dear friends who helped this project mature includes, in addition, some of the scholars whose works focus on Hispanic Moroccan Jews: the Bentolilas, Yaakov and Yosi; David Benhamú Jiménez; Angy Cohen; Isaac Guershon; Nina Pinto Abecasis (Z”L); and Mitchell Serels. I also owe a major debt of gratitude to Oro Anahory Librowicz, Judith Cohen, Benito (Baruj) Garzon, Margalit Bejarano, Néstor Garrido, Jimmy Pimienta, and Elias Salgado, who read earlier versions of specific chapters of this book, shared their ideas, and helped make this book more accurate.

THE COMMUNITY’S ARCHIVE

In this work, I construct what is essentially ethnohistoric research, and this work would never have been possible without my ties with prominent members of the Hispanic Moroccan community worldwide. My archival research included repeated visits to a few of my interviewees’ homes, where I found valuable archival material. Though not organized according to any official archival standards, this material was essential for understanding the dynamics of the Hispanic Moroccan Jewish diaspora. Two remarkable examples are the rich collections of documents held by siblings Sidney and Gladys Pimienta and their brother, Jimmy Pimienta, who resided in Belgium at the time of this writing. These collections are the source of various documents used in this book and constitute objects of investigation in their own right.

The way in which I gained access to some of these sources and others revealed the truth of Axel’s insight that a diaspora is defined by, among other factors, its “archive.” The word archive itself comes from arche, Greek for origins, and from arkheion, Greek for a house where a publicly recognized authority keeps its documentation.² My ability to study the contents of such collections was made possible by the close connections between the topic of my research and my personal life—that is, my incorporation over the course of my study into the very web of ethnic knowledge production among the community and its prominent heritage preservers that this book documents.

I thus express my deep appreciation to many members of the Hispanic Moroccan Jewish community, first- and second-generation immigrants who, for almost a decade and a half, opened up their hearts and shared their life stories and perspectives. First and foremost, the Pimientas, Gladys, Sidney, and Jimmy; Soli Anidjar; David Benaish; Mois Benarroch; Lucy Benarroch; Simon Benoliel; Jacob Carciente; Sonia Cohen; Shlomo Dodo; Benito Garzón; Simone Melo Foinquinos (Z”L); Alicia Raz-Sicso; and many other dear people whom I interviewed, held conversations with, and exchanged correspondence with.

By introducing me to previously unfamiliar knowledge, thoughts, and life experiences, including those related to my own ethnic background, these individuals have significantly influenced my life and shaped my individuality as a researcher. These special people include some of my beloved family members: my grandmother Flora (Z”L), Alberto Mermelszteyn, Guila Moreno, Isaac Moreno, Jenny Mermelszteyn, and other more distant relatives, among them Rachel Israel, Lina Moreno, and Rebecca Serruya. Other contributors, no less valuable to this work, would rather remain anonymous, and I respect their wishes.