Two Thousand Years Of Jewish Life In Morocco

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Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco

Author : Haïm Zafrani
Publisher : KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9780881257489
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (574 download)

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Book Synopsis Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco by : Haïm Zafrani

Download or read book Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco written by Haïm Zafrani and published by KTAV Publishing House, Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins of the Jewish community of Morocco are buried in history, but they date back to ancient times, and perhaps to the biblical period. The first Jews in the country migrated there from Israel. Over the centuries, their numbers were increased by converts and then by Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal. After the Muslim conquest, Morocco's Jews, as "people of the book," had dhimmi status, which entailed many restrictions but allowed them to exercise their religion freely. In the mellahs (Jewish quarters) of Morocco's cities and towns, and in the mountainous rural areas, a distinct Jewish culture developed and thrived, unquestionably traditional and Orthodox, yet unique because of the many areas in which it assimilated elements of the local culture and lifestyle, making them its own as it did so. Most of Morocco's Jews settled in Israel after 1948, and many others went to other countries. Wherever they went, their rich cultural heritage went with them, as exemplified by the Maimuna festival, just after Passover, which is now a major occasion on the Israeli calender.

Jews Under Moroccan Skies

Author : Raphaël Elmaleh
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781935604242
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews Under Moroccan Skies by : Raphaël Elmaleh

Download or read book Jews Under Moroccan Skies written by Raphaël Elmaleh and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews under Moroccan Skies tells the story of Jewish life in Morocco, describing in realistic detail how Jews and Muslims interweaved their lives in peace for centuries. The authors give us the rich history of Berber Jews, the Moroccan tzadikim, and Jewish mysticism in the country. They also describe the cultural differences between the Judeo-Spanish communities of the North, the Francophone urban Jews, and the Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Berber traditions. "No chapter in the long history of the Jewish people has more power and more relevance to our contemporary world than Moroccan Jewry. And it is the least known, by far! This wonderful book will draw you into its mystery, captivating and capturing your imagination. If you don't want to be tempted to travel, don't read this book. You will never be satisfied until you see it with you own eyes accompanied by the unparalleled teacher and guide, Raphael David Elmaleh! People all over the world have been waiting for Raphy to put his words down on paper. This magnificent book is the result. It is a gem!" -- Peter A. Geffen, Founder and Executive Director KIVUNIM Founder, The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, New York

Morocco

Author : Daniel J. Schroeter
Publisher : London : Merrell ; New York : Jewish Museum
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Morocco by : Daniel J. Schroeter

Download or read book Morocco written by Daniel J. Schroeter and published by London : Merrell ; New York : Jewish Museum. This book was released on 2000 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the conundrum of Jewish Moroccan identity, from the earliest times to the present day.

Jews and Muslims in Morocco

Author : Joseph Chetrit
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793624933
Total Pages : 507 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Muslims in Morocco by : Joseph Chetrit

Download or read book Jews and Muslims in Morocco written by Joseph Chetrit and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multiple traditions of Jewish origins in Morocco emphasize the distinctiveness of Moroccan Jewry as indigenous to the area, rooted in its earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. The creative interaction of Moroccan Jewry with the Arab and Berber cultures was noted in the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, characteristic poetry, and musical works as well as their shared magical rites and popular texts and proverbs. In Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists analyze this culture, in all its complexity and hybridity. The volume’s collection of essays span political and social interactions throughout history, cultural commonalities, traditions, and halakhic developments. As Jewish life in Morocco has dwindled, much of what is left are traditions maintained in Moroccan ex-pat communities, and memories of those who stayed and those who left. The volume concludes with shared memories from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual from Morocco, a Moroccan Muslim scholar, an analysis of a visual memoir painted by the nineteenth-century artist, Eugène Delacroix, and a photo essay of the vanished world of Jewish life in Morocco.

Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew

Author : Lawrence Rosen
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022631748X
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew by : Lawrence Rosen

Download or read book Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew written by Lawrence Rosen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drawn from Memory" is an important contribution to Moroccan studies, to the field of anthropology, and to academic approaches to biography. Rosen weaves the threads of his narrative together into a tapestry focused on the lives of four men: a raconteur, a teacher, an entrepreneur, and a cloth dealer, a Jew. Ordinary people have intellectual lives, Rosen tells us. They may never have written a book; they may never even have read one. But their lives are rich in ideas, constantly fashioned and revised, elaborated and rearranged. Rosen first encountered the four men he profiles in his book in the course of his academic research, and he then visited and revisited these men, and the towns in which they live, over several decades. He engaged them ina kind of continuous conversation. He spoke to members of their family, their neighbors, and the town people. Out of this wealth of material, he has constructed a narrative that takes the reader not only into four intensely observed individual lives but also, as it were, the history of Morocco s evolution across the span of many decades; he takes the reader not only into the outwardly lived lives of his subjects, but their innermost thoughts, their own perceptions of themselves and the evolving Moroccan world around them. At the same time, he manages to evoke the physical landscape, the towns in which these men live, marvelously well, so that the towns and their inhabitants come alive for the reader. Beautifully illustrated with archival and ethnographic photos, "Drawn from Memory" teaches us that that for Moroccans, and by extension Muslims in general, nothing in everyday social life is hard and fast, and the meaning and outcome of all interactions is the product of negotiation and relatedness."

The Sultan's Communists

Author : Alma Rachel Heckman
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 150361414X
Total Pages : 415 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sultan's Communists by : Alma Rachel Heckman

Download or read book The Sultan's Communists written by Alma Rachel Heckman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sultan's Communists uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly-independent Morocco. Closely following the lives of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Assidon), Alma Rachel Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and '60s, and how they survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy to ultimately become heroic emblems of state-sponsored Muslim-Jewish tolerance. The figures at the center of Heckman's narrative stood at the intersection of colonialism, Arab nationalism, and Zionism. Their stories unfolded in a country that, upon independence from France and Spain in 1956, allied itself with the United States (and, more quietly, Israel) during the Cold War, while attempting to claim a place for itself within the fraught politics of the post-independence Arab world. The Sultan's Communists contributes to the growing literature on Jews in the modern Middle East and provides a new history of twentieth-century Jewish Morocco.

Women and Social Change in North Africa

Author : Doris H. Gray
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110841950X
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Women and Social Change in North Africa by : Doris H. Gray

Download or read book Women and Social Change in North Africa written by Doris H. Gray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging analysis of grass-roots activism, migration, legal, political and religious changes as basis for social transformation.

The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa

Author : Reeva Spector Simon
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000227944
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa by : Reeva Spector Simon

Download or read book The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa written by Reeva Spector Simon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-20 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incorporating published and archival material, this volume fills an important gap in the history of the Jewish experience during World War II, describing how the war affected Jews living along the southern rim of the Mediterranean and the Levant, from Morocco to Iran. Surviving the Nazi slaughter did not mean that Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa were unaffected by the war: there was constant anti-Semitic propaganda and general economic deprivation; communities were bombed; and Jews suffered because of the anti-Semitic Vichy regulations that left them unemployed, homeless, and subject to forced labor and deportation to labor camps. Nevertheless, they fought for the Allies and assisted the Americans and the British in the invasion of North Africa. These men and women were community leaders and average people who, despite their dire economic circumstances, worked with the refugees attempting to escape the Nazis via North Africa, Turkey, or Iran and connected with international aid agencies during and after the war. By 1945, no Jewish community had been left untouched, and many were financially decimated, a situation that would have serious repercussions on the future of Jews in the region. Covering the entire Middle East and North Africa region, this book on World War II is a key resource for students, scholars, and general readers interested in Jewish history, World War II, and Middle East history.

Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco

Author : Issachar Ben-Ami
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780814321980
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (219 download)

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Book Synopsis Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco by : Issachar Ben-Ami

Download or read book Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco written by Issachar Ben-Ami and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among Moroccan Jews, saint worship is an important cultural characteristic, practiced throughout the population. Saint Veneration among the Jews in Morocco, the only book in English on this topic, contains essential information about Moroccan Jewry not available anywhere else. The Hebrew edition, published by Magnes Press in 1984, has become a standard classic in the study of the history, culture, and religious practices of Moroccan Jewry. In this new English language edition, based on ten years of fieldwork, Issachar Ben-Ami provides the basic historical and ethnographic information about saint veneration. He illuminates the intricate network that connects the saints and their faithful followers, while revealing the ideological fundamentals that sustain the interrelationship and ensure ritual continuity. Using material selected from more than 1,200 testimonies collected during the course of his research, Ben-Ami describes historical and legendary types of saints, customs and beliefs related to the saints or their sanctuaries, and the practices and ceremonies that take place during or outside the hillulah, the the festival that celebrates the anniversary of the death of a saint. Two chapters are dedicated to a comparison with the cult of saints among the Muslims in Morocco as well as to the relationship between Jews and Muslims in Morocco in what concerning saint veneration. In addition, Ben-Ami has included an exhaustive list of 656 saints-25 of whom are women-as well as documentation of the burial sites and legendary stories of the saints' lives as they have been told by their followers and worshippers in Israel. Also included are popular creative works such as legends, stories, dreams, and songs extolling the greatness and miraculous deeds of the saints. The picture that emerges from this study is that of a strong community of believing Jews who lived in the expectancy of the coming of the Messiah and welcomed miracles as part of their routine life. With the immigration of the Jews of Morocco to other countries, this fascinating world has disappeared, although it has found new ways of expression in Israel.

Forgotten Millions

Author : Malka Hillel Shulewitz
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 0826447643
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis Forgotten Millions by : Malka Hillel Shulewitz

Download or read book Forgotten Millions written by Malka Hillel Shulewitz and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2000-10-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the situations of the long-established Jewish communities of the Arab world, the forces that led them to immigrate to Israel, and the conditions that shaped their new lives in a Jewish state led by Jews of a different heritage

In Ishmael's House

Author : Martin Gilbert
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300170807
Total Pages : 403 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis In Ishmael's House by : Martin Gilbert

Download or read book In Ishmael's House written by Martin Gilbert and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In this epic examination, [a] celebrated historian explores the evolution of Judaism and Islam through a lens of Middle Eastern stability.” (Publishers Weekly) The relationship between Jews and Muslims has been a flashpoint that affects stability in the Middle East with global consequences. In this eloquent book, Martin Gilbert presents a fascinating account of the hope and fear that have characterized these two peoples through the 1,400 years of their intertwined history. Harking back to the Biblical story of Ishmael and Isaac, Gilbert takes the reader from the origins of the fraught relationship—the refusal of Medina’s Jews to accept Mohammed as a prophet—through the ages of the Crusader reconquest of the Holy Land and the great Muslim sultanates to the present day. He explores the impact of Zionism in the early twentieth century, the clash of nationalisms during the Second World War, the mass expulsions and exodus of 800,000 Jews from Muslim lands following the birth of Israel, the Six-Day War, and the political sensitivities of the current Middle East. Ishmael’s House sheds light on a time of prosperity and opportunity for Jews in Muslim lands stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan, with many instances of Muslim openness, support, and courage. Drawing on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources, Gilbert uses archived material, poems, letters, memoirs, and personal testimony to uncover the human voice of this centuries-old conflict. Ultimately Gilbert’s moving account of mutual tolerance between Muslims and Jews provides a perspective on current events and a template for the future. “A reliable source and a pleasure to read.” —Herman Wouk, Pulitzer prize winning author of The Caine Mutiny “Moving and important.” —The Independent

My Promised Land

Author : Ari Shavit
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0812984641
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)

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Book Synopsis My Promised Land by : Ari Shavit

Download or read book My Promised Land written by Ari Shavit and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

Alienated Minority

Author : Kenneth Stow
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674044050
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Alienated Minority by : Kenneth Stow

Download or read book Alienated Minority written by Kenneth Stow and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This narrative history surveying one thousand years of Jewish life integrates the Jewish experience into the context of the overall culture and society of medieval Europe. It presents a new picture of the interaction between Christians and Jews in this tumultuous era. Alienated Minority shows us what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in the Middle Ages. The story begins in the fifth century, when autonomous Jewish rule in Palestine came to a close, and when the papacy, led by Gregory the Great, established enduring principles regarding Christian policy toward Jews. Kenneth Stow examines the structures of self-government in the European Jewish community and the centrality of emerging concepts of representation. He studies economic enterprise, especially banking; constructs a clear image of the medieval Jewish family; and portrays in detail the very rich Jewish intellectual life. Analyzing policies of Church and State in the Middle Ages, Stow argues that a firmly defined legal and constitutional position of the Jewish minority in the earlier period gave way to a legal status created expressly for Jews, who in the later period were seen as inimical to the common good. It was this special status that paved the way for the royal expulsions of Jews that began at the end of the thirteenth century.

The Immigrant

Author : Daniel Ben Simon
Publisher : Kotarim International Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9789657589205
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (892 download)

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Book Synopsis The Immigrant by : Daniel Ben Simon

Download or read book The Immigrant written by Daniel Ben Simon and published by Kotarim International Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-18 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a 16 year-old Jewish boy who left Morocco, the country of his birth, and immigrated to Israel, leaving his parents and younger brothers behind. With insight and wit he describes his meeting with Israel and how the country received its new immigrants. It is the compelling story of the price paid by anyone who leaves his comfort zone and moves to a new country. The auther describes how the newness of immigration remains and gives birth to dilemmas, even after the passage of many years. He asks, what should the immigrant do with the past? Deny it? Forget it? Make room for it? Live a double life? This is Daniel Ben Simon's sixth book about Israeli society. For the first time, he reveals his own story, the story of a 16 year-old Jewish boy who grew up in Morocco and leaving friends and family behind, went to Israel to begin a new life. The book deals with his double identity, the confrontation between his Moroccan past and new Israeli present, and the enormous difficulties of leaving the country of his birth for another and of integrating one life into the other. One of the reasons for the book's great popularity in Israel is that for the first time since its founding in 1948, a serious study has been made of the results of the mass immigration of Jews from Morocco during the 1950s. It has been argued that their block voting for the Likud, Israel's right-wing party, over the past 40 years is the result of the socialist Labor Party establishment's discriminatio. That argument, and the integrations of the Moroccan immigrants into Israeli society, are dealt with seriously, humorously and with finesse by Ben Simon. ************************************* Daniel Ben Simon's memoir is not only a fascinating, painful and eye-opening record of the encounter between the newly-born State of Israel and the massive Jewish immigration from North Africa, it is also the very personal, very moving story of one young intellectual who, despite pain and insult, became a leading figure in Israel's politics, journalism and education. A touching tale of pain and love. Amos Oz

The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times

Author : Reeva Spector Simon
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231507593
Total Pages : 577 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times by : Reeva Spector Simon

Download or read book The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times written by Reeva Spector Simon and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-30 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite considerable research on the Jewish diaspora in the Middle East and North Africa since 1800, there has until now been no comprehensive synthesis that illuminates both the differences and commonalities in Jewish experience across a range of countries and cultures. This lacuna in both Jewish and Middle Eastern studies is due partly to the fact that in general histories of the region, Jews have been omitted from the standard narrative. As part of the religious and ethnic mosaic that was traditional Islamic society, Jews were but one among numerous minorities and so have lacked a systematic treatment. Addressing this important oversight, this volume documents the variety and diversity of Jewish life in the region over the last two hundred years. It explains the changes that affected the communities under Islamic rule during its "golden age" and describes the processes of modernization that enabled the Jews to play a pivotal role in their respective countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first half of the book is thematic, covering topics ranging from languages to economic life and from religion and music to the world of women. The second half is a country-by-country survey that covers Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, the Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

Jewish Communities in Exotic Places

Author : Ken Blady
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0765761122
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (657 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Communities in Exotic Places by : Ken Blady

Download or read book Jewish Communities in Exotic Places written by Ken Blady and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish Communities in Exotic Places examines seventeen Jewish groups that are referred to in Hebrew as edot ha-mizrach, Eastern or Oriental Jewish communities. These groups, situated in remote places on the Asian and African Jewish geographical periphery, became isolated from the major centers of Jewish civilization over the centuries and embraced some interesting practices and aspects of the dominant cultures in which they were situated.

Where the Wind Blew

Author : Michel Emile Bensadon
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781481820882
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Where the Wind Blew by : Michel Emile Bensadon

Download or read book Where the Wind Blew written by Michel Emile Bensadon and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This memoir of coming of age in Morocco in the 1950s is also the memoir of a lost nation. The author's childhood coincides with the end of the idyllic Sephardic culture that had flourished in Tangier for centuries. This is the story of two paradises lost: the dreamy childhood which ends when Michel's parents' marriage breaks apart; the end of Morocco's colonial rule which had allowed the Jews to live peacefully alongside the Arabs. The "wind" in the title is Simoun, an infamous blast that blew in from the Sahara and terrified the author as a child. The wind is also the symbol for the wild forces at work in that part of the world and the havoc they wreaked upon the author's family, and the Jews who left soon after. Michel was the privileged child of a "mixed" marriage. His Sephardic father, the son of a well-established Tangier dynasty, married his Ashkenazi mother, a young Viennese fleeing the Nazis. Lily arrived in Morocco as a "refugiada," (a refugee) in the guise of an exotic dancer.The inter-Jewish culture clash was acute. This cultural incompatibility between Michel's parents was soon to erupt: Lily left, and abandoned her husband and children. The story explores the chaos that followed, and the struggles the author's father endured to survive in a declining Moroccan city which grew unfriendly to the Jews. This is also the story of a father and a son and the reversal of authority which overtakes them: a cataclysm is inevitable. The author has recreated the rich tapestry that was his Sephardic culture; a world redolent of spices, populated by exotic extended families and lavish celebrations. The book spans the crucial years 1949-1960, and provides a time capsule of that vanished Eden. Morocco remains an enigma. Its once blossoming Jewish community has shrunk from 15,000 at the time of the story to about 200 currently. This is the definitive portrait of the lost Sephardic paradise.