The restored building “testifies to a period when Islam and Judaism had an exceptional closeness, complicity and intimacy,” said Andre Azoulay, an adviser to Moroccan King Mohammed VI. Azoulay, himself a member of Essaouira’s Jewish community, launched the project in partnership with the Moroccan Ministry of Culture. The Jewish community has been in Morocco since antiquity and grew over the centuries, particularly with the arrival of Jews expelled from Spain by the Catholic kings after 1492. Since 1997, Casablanca has housed a Moroccan Jewish Museum, the only one of its kind in the Arab world. And in Fez, the country’s spiritual capital, a museum dedicated to the Jewish memory is under construction.

Source: Taipei Times January 20, 2020 15:56 UTC