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Based on an unpublished memoir about the life of a seven-year-old Moroccan Jewish child in the 1940s in themallah(Jewish quarter) of Casablanca, this article examines the traumatic dimension of a child's memory vis-à-vis the precarious social milieu and the instability of the political street at the time. The article draws a parallel between the deterioration of the protagonist's mental and physical health during 1948 and political and social events relating to the formation of Moroccan national sentiment in Casablanca. It details the contradiction between the official narrative and the ‘homey narrative’, the impact of news and rumours about the war in Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel, and how the formation of a (trans)national politico-religious sentiments among the Jews of Casablanca and Purim festivities coincided with all these events and reflected their uncertainty. The protagonist's mental ‘crisis’ is analysed through concepts used in Deleuze and Guattari's metaphor of a ‘body without organs’ known as ‘BwO’, where schizophrenia is not connected to either an Oedipus complex or the libido; instead, it is related to the world's (dis)order and stems from the repressive social, political, and economic conditions of the milieu in which the ‘subject-patient’ is living. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is an analytical overview of the history of Moroccan Jewry, from pre-Islamic times to the present day, exploring the themes of myth, memory and political interests in the multi-faceted, continuous interactions between the community and Moroccan society as a whole. In referring to seminal developments in Moroccan political history, it analyses the different ways in which the Jews of Morocco experienced them as an integral part of the larger societal mosaic. This survey of the 2,000-year Jewish presence in Morocco employs a variety of classical and modern sources in order to locate the place of Moroccan Jews within the ebbs and flows of Moroccan dynastic history, particularly following the establishment of the first Islamic dynasty in the eighth century, C.E. It also engages with current historiographical debates on the subject matter. Overall, it provides clarity and order to the subject of Jewish-Muslim inter-communal relations in Morocco over the longue duree, a matter too often shrouded in myths and half-truths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]