Muslim Custodians of Jewish Spaces in Morocco: Drinking the Milk of Trust by Cory Thomas Pechan Driver

Abstract

Reviewed by: Muslim Custodians of Jewish Spaces in Morocco: Drinking the Milk of Trust by Cory Thomas Pechan Driver Laura Limonic (bio) Muslim Custodians of Jewish Spaces in Morocco: Drinking the Milk of Trust By Cory Thomas Pechan Driver. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 190 pp. In 2014, Cory Thomas Pechan Driver traveled to Morocco from the United States to continue the fieldwork that would culminate in his doctoral dissertation in anthropology and later the book, Muslim Custodians of Jewish Spaces in Morocco: Drinking the Milk of Trust. This was not his first Moroccan pony ride, he explains, as he had some insider knowledge of Morocco and Moroccan culture from his days as a Peace Corps volunteer. Yet despite vast research and previous experiences, his authority on Morocco in general and Jewish life in Morocco in particular was frequently contested by those he interacted with during his fieldwork. Driver begins the book, particularly in chapters 1 and 2, by exploring how he grapples with constructing authority and legitimacy as an ethnographer, a scholar, and a Jew. Throughout the narrative, he interweaves his own story of being at the margins, of occupying the space of a nus-nus [half and half], giving the reader insight into how one gains authority and insider status while remaining firmly on the border. Authority rests not only on knowledge, Driver shows us, but also on the acceptance of one’s authority by others. Analogously, Driver explores the complicated ways in which Muslims construct roles as the keepers of the Jewish past, as cemetery caretakers, and as links to a Jewish community that exists only in memories. In chapter 3, Driver provides a detailed history of Jewish life in Morocco beginning in the third century CE, through the expulsion of Jews from Spain, and ending with the colonization of Morocco. During the period of colonization, when Moroccan Jews were less likely than in earlier eras to study religion and participate in religious life, the caring of Jewish cemeteries began to be handed over to Muslim caretakers. This laid the groundwork for contemporary Muslim caretakers of Jewish cemeteries. In the mid-twentieth [End Page 51] century, increased violent acts against Jews prompted large-scale Jewish emigration and left Muslims to care for the Jewish sites left behind. The heart of the book is in chapters 4 through 7, when Driver begins to recount the individual stories of Muslims who are tied to Morocco’s Jewish past. He tells of his encounters with cemetery caretakers, friends, and tour guides. In chapter 4, Driver describes a Moroccan Passover Seder he hosted with three Muslim friends—all of whom had ties either directly or indirectly to Jews who had once lived in a small mountainside town. Driver’s tales are both moving and humorous, illustrating the performative aspects of religious rituals as well as the delusion of relying on memory as a placeholder for truth. In one instance, Driver tells of hosting a Seder with Hamou, an older Muslim with a deep connection to a Jewish family who had emigrated from Morocco decades prior, along with two sisters who had grown up hearing from their father the stories of Seders shared with Moroccan Jews. Hamou had high expectations for the Seder, as did the two sisters. Hamou took great pains to recreate what he remembered as an authentic Moroccan Jewish Seder, but his memories were often at odds with the author’s attempts at religious and cultural authenticity. While Driver attempted to introduce rituals and foods he recalled from Seders in the United States, Hamou was dismayed at the Passover menu. Driver writes that Hamou “reminded me that the name of the holiday was not Pesach [as I was calling it] but Eid djaj/Holiday of Chicken, and that eating the chicken was his favorite part as a child” (59). Driver’s Seder was decidedly not the Seder of Hamou’s memories. Hamou’s memories are of a Jewish past that no longer exists in Morocco, and of Seders that have likely been imperfectly reconstructed in memory. As Driver poignantly notes of his Moroccan cohosts: “They wanted to remember for themselves a world in which Muslims and Jews celebrated each other’s...