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The Curse of the Saint

Judaism, Spring, 2001 by Daniel J. Schroeter

IN THE SUMMER OF 1997, OUR RESEARCH THREESOME reached the village of Tillit in the Dades Valley, on the southern side of the Moroccan Atlas Mountains. My group included Joseph Chetrit, an Israeli scholar of Moroccan origin from Haifa, and Abderrahmane Lakhsassi, a Moroccan Berber scholar from Casablanca. It was the first of four summers of fieldwork at sites in rural Morocco that Jews once inhabited. In our effort to map the historical and cultural landscape of Jews who once lived among Berbers, the dominant population in rural Morocco, we encountered at every site of Jewish significance, at least one shrine of a holy man (qadosh). Tillit was no exception, and in theJewish cemetery lay the tomb of Rabbi Abraham HaCohen. According to tradition, he came from the Holy Land as an emissary, but ended up marrying a local woman and staying in Tillit. Legend tells us that saints are buried in the Dades Valley since the destruction of the First Temple. "This is Jerusalem!" Rabbi Abraham Ha-Cohen supposedly said. The cemetery where the tomb was found was quite large, surrounded by houses, but few tombstones remained at the graves. Several dispersed tombs had been redone in recent years, including the tomb of Rabbi Abraham Ha-Cohen. The mellah or Jewish quarter of this rural village may have contained as many as 300 Jews a half a century ago before the mass departure of the Jewish communities of the Atlas and Sahara in the 1950s and early 1960s. Today the mellah is still in good condition since most of the houses, buildings, and synagogues are inhabited by the Muslim population (often not the case for many mellahs we visited that lie in ruins). Mirroring the imposing fortresses (qasbahs) dotting the near-desert Dades landscape, the mellah houses seemed to tower over the narrow and intricate maze of passages through this former Jewish quarter. On at least one of the houses, I observed a satellite disk, not at all uncommon in even some of the most remote mountain villages in Morocco.

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In my rationalist frame of thinking, the Jewish veneration of saints seems like an aberration in Judaism. As much as it may be possible to analyze the phenomenon, or even to rationalize it in the context ofJewish tradition, it is this occult practice more than any other aspect of Moroccan Jewish culture that for me challenges the myth of a common Jewish identity. For my Moroccan-Israeli colleague as well, the veneration of saints and the beliefs and practices associated with it is very disturbing and backward. Therefore, with some uncomfortable hesitation, I admit that after visiting dozens of these sites throughout Morocco over the last four years, I find something compelling about these shrines and the surrounding landscapes. While it may be easy to dismiss the superstitious practices associated with these tombs of holy men (and occasionally holy women), there is a subjective factor, an inescapable sense of aura that surrounds these shrines that are frequently situated in awe inspiring landscapes where the desert and the mountains meet. Here, scattered along the many precipitous gorges, lush wadis and oases, plateaus and valleys, mountains and desert, were about two hundred Jewish communities in Berber villages and small towns until their mass departure in the 1950s and early 1960s. Any self-respecting Jewish community had at least one saint.

Out of respect for the Moroccan Jewish practice, I would join my Israeli colleague in lighting a candle at the grave of the holy man and recite the customary prayer for the qadoshim. We were generally well-equipped with candles, but on this occasion at Tillit our supply had run out. We left the cemetery, crossed the road and climbed a hill, reaching a sacred cavern (known as Ifri n 'Buwmdin). The entrance to the cave had collapsed and a fig tree was growing out of it. The site was once frequented by theJewish population. It was a calm day and the air was still. We were almost ready to depart for our next destination, and as we descended the hill, my Israeli colleague took out his wallet to tip a local guide who had led us to the site. Suddenly a gust of wind snatched the wallet out of his hand. Papers, credit cards, business cards, bits of paper with names and phone numbers flew helter-skelter in the wind as his bulging wallet fell to the ground along the rocky hillside. Giggling children, watching our bemusement, scurried off along the hillside to try to recover the contents of the wallet. That evening, as we were discussing the day's events, our Moroccan colleague joked that the reason why the wallet incident happened was because we had failed to light candles at the tomb of Rabbi Abraham HaCohen: the curse of the saint. What none of us were willing to admit, was that at some level, there was a touch of seriousness in the joke. Had we lighted the candles, would the incident have occurred? Rationally dismissing such superstition, we nonetheless did not neglect even on one occasion for the rest of our trip and in the three subsequent journeys in Morocco to light candles at the tombs of venerated saints. Was it out of respect for tradition alone, or were we hedging our bets?

The Curse of the Saint

Judaism, Spring, 2001 by Daniel J. Schroeter

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