Finding Home: The Revival of My Moroccan Roots (Part 1)

When it comes to self-identifying as a North African/ Moroccan Jew, not many people can relate. Living in Toronto, Canada I felt quite isolated because I never fit in with the Jewish community I grew up in. I always felt connected with my Arab Muslim friends more. I got confused about this. Shouldn’t I inherently be connected with people of my religion? As I got older, the less I got confused. My connections made more sense to me.

(My Maternal Grandmother & Grandfathers’ Wedding in Casablanca, Morocco)

To give you a background on my ethnicity, both sides of my family come from Morocco. This is dated back to my great great grandparents. Around the 1960s my Mother’s family came to Canada to escape antisemitism, and my Dad’s family left for Israel when he was 2 years old. When I was born, Judaism was important through deep-rooted values and intense Jewish education. But the missing puzzle piece during events and holidays were my Moroccan traditions. Overtime, intergenerational trauma made it quite clear reasoning. Although very tricky to understand, with any trauma, you want to forget the person or place that caused harm to you. Thus, the Moroccan side of my family slowly faded.

The amount of times I can count being the first Jew and Moroccan Jew that people have met, is beyond a count I can remember. I was astonished to think why and how can this be the reality? Jews from Arab lands were prominent people and helped contribute to many of these societies. I realized that the Jewish education I received never once mentioned Sephardic history or the tragedies we faced weren’t in the history books.

The more I pondered about my identity and why I felt isolated was clear. With the lack of education and understanding of Sephardic Jewish history is a combination of intergenerational trauma and failure in the education system. I was inspired to know where I came from and connect the missing pieces of what made me love Arab and North African culture so much. I was ready to embark on my journey home to Morocco. Flight booked and luggage packed, I was about to take an intense 3-week trip into self-discovery.

Read Part 2 here: https://medium.com/@abitanrachel/finding-home-the-revival-of-my-moroccan-roots-part-2-da10c66eba3c