Memories of Little Jerusalem in Sefrou

In Sefrou, we explored what’s left of the city’s once very lively Jewish culture and its quarters, the Mellah. Before the mass migration (a modern time Exodus?) to Israel in the early 1960s, Sefrou was called Little Jerusalem. We visited the enclosed compound, now quite deserted, where the Jewish school and an orphanage used to be, next to the synagogue, still quite well preserved.

There were prayer books in Hebrew and old school books inside a cupboard, painted in turquoise, like the window panes in the synagogue. Green and blue, such beautiful colours, much used in Sefrou, and in all of Morocco. I read that the houses in Chefchaouen were painted blue by Jewish refugees in the early 1930s. Blue, the colour of the sky and heaven… Green, the holy colour of Islam, the colour of paradise.

A Moroccan family was living in the quarters, we talked with the friendly woman and peeked into her kitchen, played with a young child. Life goes on, people come and go… History nourishes these broken flutings, (The Manor Garden, Sylvia Plath). The courtyard would be a wonderful place for performances, a new, living culture. Some of us did our art projects in this environment, which both inspired and saddened us.  

We also visited the Jewish cemetery in Sefrou, where most of the tombstones looked abandoned. Small bright orange flowers were growing among the tombs. The brown mountain in the background has the same shape as Saana, one of the most cherished mountains in Kilpisjärvi, Finnish Lapland.

Today there are visitors from Israel who come to Sefrou to look for their ancestors’ home environment, searching for their homes in the medina and in the hills, their graves in the cemetery. On Youtube, I found an Israeli home video of a visit to Sefrou, where the visitors looked for the same places as we did. But we returned to the residence in the medina and opened the blue door of the four hundred year old house, once the house of a Rabbi. I wish the visitors from Israel had known about it, Dar Attamani, today Culture Vultures’ international art residence.

In this Wikipedia article you can read about the history of the Moroccan Jews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Morocco

Följ med på de judiska spåren i Sefrou, Marocko. För länge sedan, före massinvandringen till Israel, kallades staden för Lilla Jerusalem.

Becky and Hsuan 

The door leading to the synagogue,
Gaella talks with the guardian

The synagogue in Sefrou

Ana taking rubbings as future material,
Sharon assists

Hsuan and Sharon, in a nice choreography...

The Jewish cemetery in Sefrou

The mountain reminds me of Saana in Lapland

Before leaving, we washed our hands

There were Jewish homes in these hills

The green colour of Sefrou

Our stairway to heaven

The blue door to the residence,
once the home of a Rabbi

Saana in Lapland has its twin mountain in Sefrou, Morocco