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•Liturgical: Mizrahi Hebrew |
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Berber Jews are the Berber-speaking Jewish communities which used to live in certain parts of Atlas mountains in Morocco. Their origins are not clear as one theory builds the case for "Judeo-cized Berbers" while another defends the "Berber-ized Jews" thesis. Between 1950 and 1970 most emigrated to France or Israel.
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Jews settled in the Maghreb in Roman times and the Jewish community in the Roman province of Africa was of great importance.[1] The acceptance by the Berbers of Judaism as a religion, and its embrace by a number of tribes, occurred over time.[2] French historian, Eugène Albertini dates the judaization of certain Berber tribes and their expansion from Tripolitania to the Saharan oases, to the end of the 1st century[3]. Marcel Simon for his part, sees the first point of contact between the western Berbers and Judaism in the great Jewish Rebellion of 66-70[4].
At the time of the Arab conquests in northwestern Africa, there were, according to Arab historian Ibn Khaldoun, some Berber tribes that professed Judaism. Supposedly, the female Berber military leader, Dihya, was a Berber Jew. She is said to have aroused the Berbers in the Aures (Chaoui territory) in the eastern spurs of the Atlas Mountains in modern day Algeria to a last, although fruitless, resistance to the Arab general Hasan ibn Nu'man.
Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the tensions between the indigenous Jewish communities and the indigenous Arab communities increased. Jews in the Maghreb were compelled to leave due to these increased tensions. Today, the indigenous Berber Jewish community no longer exists in Morocco. The Moroccan Jewish population rests at about 4,000 persons with most residing in Casablanca, some of whom might still be Berber speakers.
In the past, it would have been very difficult to decide whether these Jewish Berber clans were originally of Israelite descent and had become assimilated with the Berbers in language and some cultural habits — or whether they were indigenous Berbers who in the course of centuries had become Jewish through conversion by Jewish settlers. André Goldenberg and Simon Lévy favoured the second interpretation.[5].
Franz Boas wrote in 1923 that a comparison of the Jews of North Africa with those of Western Europe and those of Russia "shows very clearly that in every single instance we have a marked assimilation between the Jews and the people among they live" and that "the Jews of North Africa are, in essential traits, North Africans".[6]
The theory of a massive Judaization of the Berber population was called into question by a recent study on the mtDNA (transmitted from mother to children). The study carried out by Doron et al. that analysed small samples of North African Jews (Libya (83); Morocco (149); Tunisia (37))[7] indicates that Jews from north Africa lack typically North African Hg M1 and U6 mtDNAs. Hence, according to the authors, the lack of U6 and M1 chromosomes among the North Africans renders the possibility of significant admixture, as between the local Arab and Berber populations with Jews, unlikely. However these conclusions must be strongly moderated by the fact that Hg M1 and U6 are not found in every Berber ethnic groups. For example a study by Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. (2004) found no M1 and U6 in Tunisian Berbers from Chenini-Douiret,[8] and another one by Loueslati et al. 2006 found no M1 and U6 in Tunisian Berbers from Jerba.[9] Moreover according to this same study by Doron et al. "in view of the historical records claiming the establishment of the North African Jewish communities from the Near Eastern Jewish communities, it is noteworthy that the communities do not share their respective major founding lineages".