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(Moshe) Benarroch was born in Morocco and lives in Israel. He
writes in three languages, Hebrew, Spanish and English and his
poetry has been published in hundreds of magazines and anthologies
worldwide. He was featured poet in the international Austin poetry
festival, 1999, in poetrymagazine.com (july 2000) and has read his
poetry in Israel, Spain and the US. He has published books of
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Moshe Benarroche, an Israeli poet, born in Tetuan, Morocco, in 1959, is
one of the first Jews of North Africa who has publically acknowledged the
Amazigh connection to Sephardic Jews (Jews of former Sefardia, i.e., Spain).
In an interview, conducted by Karen Alkalay-Gut, Benarroche explains:
Before the Arab conquest of Morocco, there was complete tolerance of
any cult in the country. Many Amazigh tribes converted to Judaism and
Christianity (St. Augustine was an Amazigh), and probably all the Jews
from Morocco and Spain are of Amazigh descent.
Kahena was the legendary Amazigh queen. She was a Jew, and she stood
off the Arabs for years. They had to bring all their soldiers from
Byzantium to defeat her.
While researching Moroccan names, Benarroche discovered that :
...more than 2/3
of them are Amazigh names — including my name, which originally was
Benarous or Benaros; the meaning is “sour.” So when I found about the
Amazigh..., I felt I found the missing link of Sephardic Jewish history. I
don’t count myself as a specialist of Amazigh culture, although I can see
where the Spain of the three religions comes from: it’s from the Amazigh
people. They had this tradition in them already!
...I find that many Jews in Morocco have family names in a language
they have forgotten. This is amazing.
But more than that, it is that some Jews from the Atlas and other
remote areas in Morocco spoke the Amazigh language; and maybe some old
Moroccans in Israel still do. They were called Schleuchs, but Scleuch (Tachlehit)
is a version of Amazigh, the closest one to Hebrew.
Benarroche raised the issue of arabization, which has not only affected
North Africa, but Egypt, as well, a country that did not define itself as
Arab until Abdul Nasser's regime:
Are the Amazigh a remote people? Is their tradition foreign to me?
How could that be? I met them everyday in Morocco; they are everywhere. It
is said that, some years ago, it was an offense to call an Amazigh an Arab.
But after 1956 and Moroccan independence, there
began a complete Arab oppression (at the same time it began in Egypt under
Nasser. This is told in a book by Leila Ahmet, A Border Passage, in which
she speaks about the making of an Arab, or how the Egyptians were
convinced to think as Arabs), and people stopped speaking about being
Amazigh.
The Internet is bringing all these injustices to the ground. The
Amazighs are the natives of the Maghreb. All the Jews in Morocco are
descendants of Amazigh tribes, and since these were the same Jews that
emigrated into Spain since the 8th
century, all the Jews from Spain are Amazigh, too.
Benarroche, who usually publishes his poetry in Hebrew, wrote the
following in English:
Tamazgha, my lost country
Tamazgha, land of the free people,
Kahena El Dahyan, my queen mother
jew and woman
who fought the arab invasion
in the eighth century
My Amazigh name, Arous, Benarrous, Benarroch
lost in centuries of wars
intolerance
in my country
where christians, jews and pagans
lived and believed by each other
Rise my Amazigh people
from the ruins of Rome
the intolerance of Islam
the decay of Europe
Rise my Amazigh people
and teach tolerance to this world
where the forgotten are the right
where the lost stone
leads the light
Rise Kahena, Queen of Jews and Amazighs
Raise for your memory
this new world in this new millennium
demands justice for all that is called past.
The poet explained his reason for his choice of language for this
particular poem:
I couldn’t think of writing this poem in any other language than
English. Why? I need a few years to really understand that. But, socially
speaking, I don’t think anyone in Israel would understand what I am
talking about. This comes after many years of trying to understand the
Maghreb, and the relation between Jews and Muslims in this country. Here
in Israel I have this feeling that I still have to explain that Jews from
Arab countries are real Jews, and that they have a history, a culture, and
not only exotic food, to offer.
Being both Jewish and Amazigh creates a double non-existence in arabized
and islamized North Africa. Not only is North Africa not recognized as
legitimate Amazigh land, but if a person identifies as anything other than
Muslim, that individual is not perceived as being a "real" North African by
the official constitutions of the respective countries or by many of his/her
compatriots. Nevertheless, Benarroch considers himself to belong to more
than one group of people, and yet, not quite fitting in any.
When I say that all the Moroccan Jews are Amazigh, and when I say
that I am Sephardi, or a Moroccan, or a Jew, and Israeli, etc., I am not
talking about identity. I don’t say: this is my identity. I don’t like the
word “identity”; in the languages I know, it comes from the root “identical.”
An erroneous concept of history begins, because no one person is like any
other person. We should be talking about something else. In Hebrew I would
say “Shayakhut,” or “pertenencia” in Spanish; I should find a more precise
word in English than “belonging,” “being part of a group.” You can be part
of many groups, just as you can have more than one nationality.
Multiculturalism should mean people who have more than one culture. I feel
that — having been born in the northernmost city of Africa, the last
before Europe starts, being a Jew, speaking four languages, and having my
history — I belong to one hundred cultures. I fit into all of them; and at
the same time, I don’t fit in any of them, because, too often, people try
to pigeonhole me, or define me. This happens in Israel, surely; but less
often in big cities, in cities with people from many countries — New York,
Paris, London, or Barcelona, where I am just one more of those rare people
coming from everywhere and from nowhere.
For the full interview by Ms. Alkalay-Gut with this multi-lingual poet,
see: An Interview
with Moshe Benarroch.
source: www.waac.info
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