Saddiq and Marabout in Morocco

Abstract

The chapter by Norman Stillman, Shusterman-Josey Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, contributes to the study of Middle Eastern Jewry at two different levels. One is that of Moroccan Jewish ethnography where the chapter treats religious leadership, and describes its unique characteristics. In Jewish Morocco marabout-type leadership, and the associated rituals, are late developments, probably not much earlier than the mid-nineteenth century. Later they gained much saliency, and in latter-day Israel attained major dimensions. In precolonial Morocco, although the potential was there, the phenomenon was far less important. This brief but pithy chapter is commensurate with that situation. At another, and implicit, level the chapter addresses a major problem in the comparative study of Jewish societies. As Stephen Sharot argued earlier in his contribution, Jewish cultures are variously informed, sometimes molded, by the surrounding non-Jewish majority. But beyond this general point, on which historians are generally agreed, there are open questions about the nature and details of this influence, which Sharot indicates, but does not explore. In the present study Stillman compares nuances of difference within a particular cultural trait, that is common to Jews and to non-Jews in the same region. This comparison highlights the limits of Jewish acculturation.