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WORK TITLE: Return to Casablanca
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Israeli
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo21263591.html * http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/return-to-casablanca-jews-muslims-and-an-israeli-anthropologist * http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2016/02/departing-and-returning-to-morocco.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
N/A
PERSONAL
Born in Casablanca, Morocco; immigrated to Israel, 1960s.
EDUCATION:Received doctorate from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Anthropologist; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel, senior lecturer; Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University, visiting scholar, 2015-16.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Moroccan-born anthropologist André Levy holds the post of senior lecturer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He is the coeditor, with Alex Weingrod, of Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places, and the author of Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist.
Return to Casablanca brings Levy back to his birthplace, a city and a nation from which he and his family had emigrated about half a century earlier. Levy had been born into the Jewish community in Casablanca, a community that had numbered as many as a quarter of a million members before World War II but has dwindled to only a few thousand in recent years. Levy’s work is quasi-autobiographical (by returning to Morocco he is returning to his homeland), but it is also an anthropological study of a relatively tiny Jewish community surrounded by a Muslim-majority nation. How, Levy asks, do the Jews of Casablanca interact with their Muslim neighbors? What happens to Jewish identity in the twenty-first century when Jews choose to live outside Israel, yet in a place with a long history of Jewish settlement? Return to Casablanca, declared A. Rassam in Choice, “provides valuable insights into the understanding of personal and group identity, [and] of the meaning of ‘home’ and exile.”
Morocco is also fascinating for Levy for professional reasons. Some of the greatest anthropologists of the twentieth century, including Kevin Dwyer, Clifford Geertz, and Paul Rabinow, performed their fieldwork in the North African country. As a result, the author’s memoir-cum-anthropological study “is a highly personal work for Levy, as made evident by his brief discussion of his personal history,” wrote Lauren Pagan and Brianna Majsiak in their introduction to an interview with the author in Justice. “’The fact that I was born there, [and] left early—I was eager to confirm the memories that I wasn’t sure if they were at all true or not—if they were just the imagination of a five-year-old kid or whether they were concrete and real memories—this on the one hand. On the other hand, it was the intellectual interest that it so happened that the most important development in anthropology took place in Morocco.” “As a quasi outsider,” Pagan and Majsiak continued, “Levy possesses a unique perspective regarding the Moroccan-Jewish experience, and given such, he recognizes the subjectivity of his fieldwork.”
The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev anthropologist suggests that the Jews of Casablanca continue to survive by limiting their contact with the Islamic world that surrounds them. “Levy posits that as Israel gained more and more Moroccan Jews into its citizenry,” explained a reviewer for American Associates Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “the wall between Muslim and Jewish Moroccans gained more and more bricks.” Although they can interact freely with their neighbors (Jewish men will play cards with Muslim men, for instance), they choose not to do so except for specific purposes: shopping, sharing public areas (like the beach), and working. In these instances, the Casablanca Jews treat their Muslim neighbors not as part of a group, but as individuals. Rachel Simon, writing on the Jewish Book Council Online, called Return to Casablanca “an important contribution to the study of Jews in the Muslim world: not many communities still exist, and the Moroccan one is the largest. The book is also of interest for minority studies and its exploration of the notion of ‘diaspora.’”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, April, 2016, A. Rassam, review of Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist, p. 1203.
Justice, January 26, 2016, Lauren Pagan and Brianna Majsiak, “Reaching across Cultures: Visiting Scholar André Levy Launches Return to Casablanca.”
ONLINE
American Associates Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, https://aabgu.org/ (January 8, 2016), “A Look at Moroccan Jewry Past, Present and Future.”
Jewish Book Council Online, http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/ (March 25, 2017), Rachel Simon, review of Return to Casablanca.
University of Chicago Press, http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (March 25, 2017), author profile.*
About the Author
André Levy is a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel. He is coeditor of Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places.
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Tuesday, March 21, 2017 | Last updated: 2:09am
Reaching across cultures
Visiting scholar André Levy launches “Return to Casablanca”
By Lauren Pagan | Published 01/26/16 1:21am | Updated 01/26/16 1:21am
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By ALL PHOTOS BRIANNA MAJSIAK/the Justice
PEN IN HAND: After the book launch, author André Levy signed copies of “Return to Casablanca.”
According to Moroccan-born Israeli anthropologist and author André Levy, “In my eyes, anthropology, more than any other discipline in the social sciences, aspires to be present in life itself, in order to make sense of it and to give it meaning. It attempts to understand human action from an immediate closeness of which there is no comparison in the social sciences.”
This quote is taken from the beginning of Levy’s new book “Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims and an Israeli Anthropologist” and encases the methodology of anthropology according to Levy.
Levy, a visiting scholar for the 2015 to 2016 school year at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, is a senior lecturer in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received his doctorate in Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has focused his research on the decreasing Jewish presence in modern Casablanca. His anthropological fieldwork focuses on Jewish-Muslim relationships in Morocco.
A field study itself, Levy’s recent book “Return to Casablanca” authentically captures the Moroccan-Jewish way of life among their Muslim neighbors. Combining his skills as an anthropologist and his background as a Moroccan, Levy’s “Return to Casablanca” blends ethnographic research with the nostalgia of a man returning home.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies hosted an event to feature the launch of Levy’s book. David Ellenson, director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and visiting professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, introduced the event’s speakers, Roy Mittelman, director of the Jewish Studies program at City College of New York, and Levy himself.
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FRIENDS IN THE FIELD: Mittelman (left) came from Manhattan to speak at Levy’s (right) book launch on Wednesday in the Mandel Reading Room.
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RED FLAGS: Levy conducted research and fieldwork in Morocco for 15 to 20 years before writing “Return to Casablanca.”
A longtime friend of Levy’s, with expertise in Jewish communities, Mittelman introduced “Return to Casablanca” as a premier work in its field and presented his favorite elements of the book as an anthropologist. He focused on the theme of nostalgia and the idea of the “Other,” drawing from his own time in Morocco performing photo-ethnographic fieldwork. Mittelman explained that the book’s encounter with the “Other” was similar to his own personal encounters. He further explained how difficult it is to try to break through the circle from the outside.
In a follow-up interview with the Justice, Mittelman shared more regarding his own fieldwork and time spent in Morocco. While Levy’s connection to Morocco is more straightforward, Mittelman’s love for the country is equally as strong.
“What drew me to Morocco originally was seeing a way of being Jewish that was very different than what I had seen before. It was a form of living a life that seems so a part of — not compartmentalized — the way I am used to celebrating my Jewish identity here in the states. It seemed to be so inexorably related to daily life that I thought it was very, very beautiful,” said Mittelman.
Mittelman’s own photo-ethnographic fieldwork in Morocco stands in conversation with Levy’s. “I am really, really, intensely interested in how Jews and Muslims get along with each other, how they look at each other in a mostly Muslim environment. I think it’s really fascinating to look at that relationship, so I try to spend some time trying to tease out how Muslims see Jews and how Jews see Muslims,” Mittelman explained.
The crowd that gathered for Levy’s book launch spoke languages from Hebrew to Arabic to English, all laughing among themselves as jokes were tossed around the room, drawing from the humor of each language. Levy’s work combines a familiarity with all of these and, in doing so, strikes a chord with not only his fellow anthropologists but also his readers.
Visibly humbled by his reception by the audience and his peers, Levy took to the podium to impart one last story. According to Levy, his book is a personal voyage of sorts, one in constant motion, and, just as his voyage has no clear end itself, his written work similarly lacks conclusion. That being said, Levy shared with his audience what would have been the conclusion to “Return to Casablanca.” Today, Levy wears a ring given to him by his mother following his late father’s passing, but in his youth, he was incapable of wearing it, as it riddled him with feelings of claustrophobia. When Levy was five years old, he and his family moved from Morocco to Israel, where Levy’s father struggled immensely to find work and stability. During his postdoctoral research at Harvard University, Levy once more experienced a time of uncertainty, until his hire at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel, for which his family relocated once more. This final move closed this transient cycle for Levy and is what allows him to wear his father’s ring with pride. Concluding on that personal note, Levy thanked his audience, who rose and applauded the author.
Copies of “Return to Casablanca” were made freely available to all those in attendance, and Levy signed copies after the event.
“Return to Casablanca” is a highly personal work for Levy, as made evident by his brief discussion of his personal history. In an interview with the Justice, Levy further explained his motivations for pursuing fieldwork in Morocco. “The fact that I was born there, [and] left early — I was eager to confirm the memories that I wasn’t sure if they were at all true or not — if they were just the imagination of a five year old kid or whether they were concrete and real memories — this on the one hand. On the other hand, it was the intellectual interest that it so happened that the most important development in anthropology took place in Morocco under the influence of one of the greatest anthropologists of the 20th century, Clifford Geertz.”
After meeting Geertz, Levy was inspired to try to understand Morocco in different ways. “He [Geertz] was, kind of, a complete stranger to Moroccan society, while I was a stranger in a way, because most of my life I was out of Morocco. But on the other hand, even when I was out of Morocco, I grew up in a neighborhood that was composed of Moroccan immigrants to Israel. I had this ongoing complicated relationship with Morocco which made me a sort of insider, but not really, and I wanted to compare it to Clifford Geertz, Paul Rabinow [and] Kevin Dwyer — all of these important anthropologists that did their fieldwork in Morocco between the 1960s and the 1980s,” Levy explained.
According to Levy, it took a year and a half to physically write the book and 15 to 20 years to conduct his research and anthropological fieldwork.
As a quasi-outsider, Levy possesses a unique perspective regarding the Moroccan-Jewish experience, and given such, he recognizes the subjectivity of his fieldwork outright in the title of his book “Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist.” When he was asked if the results of his fieldwork would have differed had he approached his research from the Muslim-Arabic perspective, Levy shared his wisdom on authenticity versus objectivity.
“Knowledge is positioning-dependent. That is, knowledge is not objectively free-floating in the air. Knowledge is mediated by the person who perceives it, and the positioning of the person, therefore, will influence what kind of information, what kind of understanding you have,” Levy said. “It’s better to do a work that positions yourself in your product so that people understand why you understand things in this way, and therefore, that is why I am involved in the book. I am imbricated in the text, and people can understand me understanding other people,” he added.
— Brianna Majsiak contributed reporting.
A Look at Moroccan Jewry Past, Present and Future
January 8, 2016
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Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of Moroccan Jews emigrated to Israel, while others moved to France. By the second decade of the 21st century, the number of Jews living in Morocco had dwindled from a peak of a quarter million to no more than 3,000, the vast majority of them residents of Casablanca.
In his new book Return to Casablanca, anthropologist Dr. André Levy assesses the impact of this massive emigration on those Jews who decided to stay in his native Morocco. Dr. Levy is a senior lecturer at BGU’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Flag_of_Morocco_hexagram.svg
A Moroccan flag used in the early 20th century featured a star of David, harking back to a time when Morocco’s Jews were numerous.
The book provides personal insights into the effects of the diminished Moroccan Jewish community’s establishment of “spatial divisions of spheres in order to obtain better control of interactions with Muslims.”
Dr. Levy posits that as Israel gained more and more Moroccan Jews into its citizenry, the wall between Muslim and Jewish Moroccans gained more and more bricks. This concept — what Dr. Levy calls “contraction” — depicts the way that modern Moroccan Jews deal with the ramifications of their demographic dwindling,
Today a very small minority, Moroccan Jews are “lacking a spirit of their own; their entire existence is dependent on the nurturing radiation of the homeland,” says Dr. Levy.
Turning his attention outward from Morocco, Dr. Levy goes on to explore the greater complexities of the Jewish diaspora and the essential paradox at the heart of his adventure – leaving Israel to return home.
Buy the book here >>
Levi, Andre. Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an
Israeli anthropologist
A. Rassam
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1203.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
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Full Text:
Levi, Andre. Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli anthropologist. Chicago, 2015. 219p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226292410
cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9780226292557 pbk, $27.50; ISBN 9780226292694 ebook, contact publisher for price
(cc) 53-3566
DT329
2015-6382 CIP
This book is a combination memoir, ethnography, social history, and a critical analysis of Jewish identity in Israel and the diaspora. The focus is
on a small Jewish minority living in Morocco. Levy (Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev), an Israeli anthropologist who was born in Morocco and
migrated to Israel with his family in the fifties, has written a sensitive book on the dynamic transformation of Jewish identity and communal
solidarity of the Jewish community of Casablanca. Levy weaves his own personal journey into that of the larger Jewish community and its
transformation under French colonial rule, postcolonial upheavals, and the formation of the modern nation-state of Morocco, defined by its Arab
and Moslem identities. The political tensions that followed the founding of the Jewish state of Israel exacerbated the anxieties and fears of the
Moroccan Jews, who undertook a massive migration first to Israel and later to France. Levy's study of the small community (around 3,000) that
chose to remain behind in Morocco provides valuable insights into the understanding of personal and group identity, of the meaning of "home"
and exile, and of the transformation of human communities. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.--A. Rassam, CUNY
Queens College
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Rassam, A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Rassam, A. "Levi, Andre. Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli anthropologist." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic
Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1203+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661697&it=r&asid=80bd2d057703a282bce83de04cf03619. Accessed 5 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449661697
Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims and an Israeli Anthropologist
André Levy
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The University of Chicago Press 2015
219 Pages $27.50
ISBN: 978-0-226-29255-7
amazon indiebound
Review by Rachel Simon
André Levy’s Return to Casablanca focuses on the implications of the mass Jewish emigration from Morocco—both for the emigrants themselves and for those Jews who chose to remain in Morocco. Levy was born in Casablanca and moved to Israel with his family as a child in the 1960s. He narrates this book from a personal standpoint, describing his upbringing, studies, and family relations, as well as his visits to Morocco and encounters there.
While a good number of studies have been made regarding Morocco’s emigrants, very few have been conducted on the small Jewish community that stayed in Morocco. It is estimated that of the 250,000 Jews who lived in Morocco before the mass emigration, only some 3,000 remain, the majority of whom live in a small area in Casablanca. (Despite several requests, Levy was unable to receive population data from various Jewish organizations, apparently because of concern about exposing the dwindling numbers of the community lest this jeopardize aid from international organizations.)
A major focus of this book is the contraction of the Jewish community of Morocco and its effects on daily life, living environment, and relations with Muslims. Moroccan Jews mostly live in close proximity to each other and to their main communal institutions. Their contacts with Muslims are multifaceted; while often Jews try to keep a distance from Muslims, they do engage with the latter while working and shopping, and as neighbors. In these settings, they treat one another as individuals. One chapter deals with the unique relations between Jews and Muslims on the beach, especially among card-playing men. The idea of “diaspora” is also examined. What is “diaspora” for Moroccan Jews, Morocco or Israel?
Levy’s work has many merits: it is nuanced, detailed, intimately told. It would have been interesting, however, to learn more about the social and economic structure and conditions of the community that remained in Morocco. The book also would have benefitted from stricter editing (e.g., Cyrenaica is in eastern, not northern, Libya [p. 64]; Dar al-Harb means House of War, not House of Sword [p. 64]; a man is a “widower,” not a “widow” [p. 83]). This book will be an easier read for those accustomed to anthropological writings.
Return to Casablanca is an important contribution to the study of Jews in the Muslim world: not many communities still exist, and the Moroccan one is the largest. The book is also of interest for minority studies and its exploration of the notion of “diaspora.”