Moroccan Jews in France and Canada - (Canadian Studies) by Yolande Cohen

About the Book

In this book, the post-colonial migration of thousands of Moroccan Jews is analyzed. Based on oral histories and historical archives, these essays show the importance of colonialism and Zionism as disruptive forces that precipitated their massive exile and their settlement in France and Canada during the post-Shoah period.

Book Synopsis

In this volume are gathered articles published by Yolande Cohen and her team, offering for the first time a global perspective on Moroccan Jews' post-colonial migrations to France and Canada. Having herself migrated from Morocco to Montreal, Cohen is uniquely attuned to the difficulties of living through such a massive exile. Why did members of the Jewish community leave Morocco? When did this migration happen? And how can we analyze their journey?

Cohen explores the many vivid memories of departures that she encountered when collecting oral histories of migrants both in France and in Quebec. She notes the deep attachment some of them have to their King and to Morocco, making this an exception in the Arab Muslim world. The main disruptive forces in the displacement of these populations were French colonialism and its emancipatory promises and Zionism, both messianic and modern.

After the establishment of the State of Israel and the subsequent Israel-Arab wars, most of them joined in the mass exodus of Jews from Arab lands, leaving their countries for Israel. With the demise of the French colonial empire and the decolonization process, a minority of westernized Jews went to France and to Canada, with the help of transnational Jewish organizations.

In Montreal, a city with a strong multi-ethnic Jewish community, those migrants understood the crucial aspect of French language as an essential factor of integration. Yet, analyzing their trajectories and the words they used to represent their exile, allows us to understand the underlying traumas.

Review Quotes

Drawing on archival records and oral histories, Cohen and her co-authors track the mobility and experience of Moroccan Jews from their hometowns to Montreal and, in parallel, to France. With analytic rigor, ethnographic detail, and careful historiographic framing, the essays show how migration reshapes citizenship and home in North America. This collection is an indispensable anthropological and historical reference on Moroccan Jewish migration, settlement, and belonging in Québec and France.--Aomar Boum, Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies and Resident Member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco "University of California, Los Angeles."

In a brilliant retrospective, Canadian historian Yolande Cohen revisits her life-long fascination with the mid-century resettlement of Moroccan Jews in Montreal, where they not only found refuge, but also novel expressions for their own rich heritage. Elaborated with scientific data as well as highly personal recollections, her story of the integration of African-born Jews into an unfamiliar multicultural environment is a tale of amazing adaptability on one side, and open-hearted generosity on the other.--Susan Gilson Miller, Professor Emerita of History "University of California, Davis."

About the Author

Yolande Cohen (Author)
Yolande Cohen is Full Professor of Contemporary History at the Université du Québec à Montréal and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Knight of Québec Ordre national, and of France Légion d'honneur, she has received an honorific doctorate from Université de Montréal and ACFAS André Laurendeau 2024 prize for human sciences, arts and letters. Fervent adept of oral history, she has shown the multiple facets of women's and gender history in France and Canada and developed a unique historical perspective of Moroccan Jews' complex migrations patterns in the post-Shoah period.