JTA
- 6 October 2002
Posted 10 October 2002 on Religioscope
Growing
anti-Semitism and poor economic prospects are threatening
to extinguish two Jewish communities on the North African
coast.
After
the expulsion from Spain in 1492, a small number of Jews escaped
across the Strait of Gibraltar to two fortress cities that
Spanish kings were establishing as beachheads in North Africa.
Despite
the Inquisition on the Iberian mainland, the Jewish inhabitants
of Ceuta and Melilla largely were left alone for the next
five centuries. They were joined by other Sephardic Jews over
the centuries.
Their
descendants now are leaving the enclaves, which are surrounded
by Moroccan territory, and returning to Spain.
“In
10 years, perhaps there will be no one here,” said
Mesod Bengio, a Jewish perfume merchant in Ceuta.
Ceuta
and slightly smaller Melilla are unlike any other part of
Spain, where no Jews lived — at least not openly — until religious freedom was reinstated in the 19th century.
Jews
in Ceuta and Melilla, which measure about eight and five square
miles, respectively, have lived cheek by jowl, but largely
in peace, with Christians, Muslims and a small minority of
Hindus.
Historical
evidence shows Jews living in Ceuta as far back as the 12th
century. The Jewish presence in Melilla is said to have started
several years after the expulsion with a Spanish aristocrat
who had Jewish ancestors.
Ceuta’s
total population is around 70,000; Melilla is slightly smaller.
Though their Jewish communities today are small — some
300 in Ceuta and around 800 in Melilla — they still have
functioning Sephardic synagogues, schools and butcher shops.
That’s down from their peak in the late 1960s, when there
were about 600 Jews in Ceuta and 1,000 in Melilla.
However,
the communities’ future has grown uncertain since the
September 11 attacks and Moroccan King Mohamed’s renewed
claims of sovereignty over the cities fired up young Muslim
inhabitants.
In
the past year, eggs, rocks and bottles have been thrown at
Ceuta’s Sephardic synagogue while Jews were at prayer,
Palestinian flags and graffiti glorifying Osama bin Laden
have been painted on synagogues and churches, and graves in
Melilla’s Jewish cemetery have been desecrated.
Meanwhile,
Moroccan claims over the enclaves have become more vociferous
since last summer’s crisis with Spain over Perejil Island,
an uninhabited island a mile and a half from Ceuta. Moroccan
troops occupied the island, but were swiftly kicked off by
Spanish soldiers.
Morocco
argues that if Spain wants Gibraltar back from Britain —
which has held it since the early 18th century — then,
by the same logic, it should be prepared to give Ceuta and
Melilla to Morocco.
“Now
they’re Spanish,” said another Ceuti Jew, Jose
Benchimol. “Who knows what could happen in 10 years?”
Some
commentators sketch worst-case scenarios.
“If
anyone doesn’t think that within a year or two we’ll
be at war over Ceuta and Melilla — be it terrorism or
open war” — then he “doesn’t want
to see the obvious,” one columnist wrote in Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.
What
might Moroccan rule be like for Jews in the enclaves?
“Morocco
has always accepted Jews,” said Benchimol, who spent
12 years as vice president of Ceuta’s Jewish community.
He noted that there are still Jews in Rabat, Morocco’s
capital, who “live peacefully and have endured the
intifada without repercussions.”
However,
many Jews who today live in Ceuta and Melilla fled there from
Morocco after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Morocco was swept
up in the Arab world’s outrage over Israel’s victory.
Benchimol
echoed Spanish leaders’ frequent assertions that Ceuta
and Melilla are paragons of interfaith harmony. The leaders
of the different faith communities “always wish each
other happy holidays,” he noted.
Still,
he conceded that interethnic harmony doesn’t always filter
down to the population at large — particularly to Muslim
youths who have become radicalized since Sept. 11.
Madrid’s
chief rabbi, Moshe Ben Dahan, is a former Ceuta resident.
He moved there from Morocco with his family after the 1967
Six-Day War, when he was 12 years old, and later moved to
Madrid after yeshiva studies in Israel.
Ben
Dahan downplayed the impact of anti-Semitism in Ceuta and
Melilla. Yet he acknowledged that the communities are dwindling — primarily, he said, because there’s little future
for young Jews in the enclaves, whose economies are dependent
on tourism, trade and government subsidies.
“The
Jews are going to big cities like Madrid, Malaga and Barcelona
where there are more possibilities for educated people to
work,” the rabbi said. “The young people
are leaving and the old are dying.”
