Introduction: Teaching Me How to Pray

Abstract

The work opens with a vignette of a Muslim guard at a Jewish cemetery in Meknes explaining how she came to work there as well as expressing excitement that she will have a chance to demonstrate “how Jews pray” to my class on their field trip. The theoretical grounding section discusses the units of analysis (Muslim performances of authority in Jewish spaces, as well as the moral selves and experiences of the Muslim guards and guides). I then move on to a discussion of performance studies methodologies as well as framing moral experience. The introduction closes with an explanation of the indigenous metaphor that frames the work: “drinking the milk of trust” which is the moral and biological training process by which one comes to be authentically linked to a shared Judeo-Muslim heritage.