The Jews of Tetuan[1][2][3][4] are members of a community founded by Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal to Morocco, along with Muslims who had also been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula. They were distinguished by the characteristics of the Spanish-Andalusian culture that they brought with them: language, manners, appearance, dress, education and occupation. The community was called "Jerusalem de Maroco" - Jerusalem of Morocco, or "Little Jerusalem." It was served by renowned rabbis and dayanim, and the synagogues had a large collection of ancient holy books.
The Jews of Tetuan, like the rest of the Jews of northern Morocco, used to speak a specifically Tetuani dialect of Ladino called Haketia, which combines words from Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic.
The Jewish community in Tetuan was formally established in 1530 with Rabbi Ḥayyim ben Abraham Bibas, who came from a Sephardic family that had originally settled in Fes.[6] He founded a yeshiva and established the taqqanot of the Spanish Jews in Fes, which remained a major source of customary law in the city.[6] His synagogue was destroyed in 1610, but by 1727 the city had seven synagogues. One of his descendants is Rabbi Yehuda Bibas, considered one of the forerunners of Zionism. Among the founders of Jewish customs in the city was Rabbi Yaakov Halevi[he], the city's rabbi in the 17th century. Among the prominent Jews in the city during the 17th century was the poet and halachic arbiter Yitzhak Aruvash[he], who later moved to Italy. Rabbi Hasdai Almoshenino[he] (1640–1727) served as a judge in the city. He later moved his seat to Gibraltar. He is known for his books "Mishmeret Hakodesh" on Rashi's commentary on the Torah and "Chesed El".
The Sephardic Jewish refugees from Iberia were referred to within the wider Moroccan Jewish community as Rūmiyīn (Moroccan Arabic: روميين, lit.'Romans, Europeans, foreigners')[7] or Megorashim (Hebrew: מגורשים "expelled"), in contrast with the Bildiyīn (Moroccan Arabic: بلديين, lit.'of the country, natives')[8] or Toshavim (Hebrew: תושבים, "residents"). The descendants of the Megorashim in Tetuan (as in Tangier and other cities) maintained their own unique identity. According to Moisés Orfali, these Spanish-speaking Tetuani Jews would refer to all other Moroccan Jews—including Toshavim as well as Megorashim that became Arabized and lost the ability to speak Ladino—as forasteros 'outsiders'.[9]
The Jewish community grew in the 16th century as the city became an international commercial center. Jewish merchants established trade relations with Algiers, Tunis, Livorno, Lisbon, Gibraltar, and Amsterdam.[6] Tetuan also became a center of piracy, an activity in which Jews participated mostly as intermediaries in the sale of Christian captives.[6]
In the 19th century, the city was home to the Dayan Rabbi Yitzhak ben Walid (1789–1870), author of the book "And Yitzhak Said" (ויאמר יצחק) which includes information about the social, economic, and religious life of the city's residents. He supported the Alliance Israélite Universelle. In 1862, this organization established a Jewish school for boys in the city, the first Alliance school in Morocco, and in 1868 it also founded a school for girls. The schools provided modern education in Spanish and French, and also included Jewish subjects and Hebrew studies.
Zionism in Morocco dates back to the period just before colonization, around 1900–1912[10] due to the influence of European Zionist activists, and it was mostly limited to coastal cities, which had more direct contact with Europe as well as populations of Jews who received a European education, especially from the Alliance Israélite Universelle.[11][10][12] Among these coastal cities was Tetuan, where the Russian physician Dr. Ya'akov Barliawsky settled and established the Shivat-Zion (שיבת ציון 'Return to Zion') Association[a] around 1900.[10] The AIU facilitated the arrival of Dr. Jacques Berliowsky (Yaʿaqov Barliawsky) in 1891.[13]Judah Leon Jalfón[he], a rabbi in Tetuan, wrote to Theodor Herzl of the establishment of the Shivat-Zion society as early as 1900.[14] The society did not last long, but it started a Hebrew library.[15]
Zionist activity in Morocco was stifled after the formal establishment of French and Spanish colonial rule in Morocco in 1912, with the activity of local Zionist associations mostly limited to the dissemination of Zionist literature and the popularization of the shekel.[10] In 1919, the Tetuani Rabbi Judah Leon Jalfón[he], a pillar of Zionism in the Spanish zone, published an article in support of Zionism in El Eco de Tetuán, a Spanish newspaper, in which he fuses political and religious Zionism, described Zion (Palestine) as the birthplace of the Jewish nation, and described Zionism as "the idea of a people living in their free homeland."[16]
In the early and mid-1920s, envoys from Zionist organizations Keren Hayesod and the Jewish National Fund, such as Avraham Elmalih, Nathan Halpern, and Ariel Bension, encountered difficulties in soliciting donations and support from Northern Moroccan Jews in cities such as Tetuan and Tangier.[17][18] According to Ariel Bension, the main reasons for resistance to Zionism among Northern Moroccan Jews were that they saw it as an irreligious movement and not concerned with the interests of Sephardim.[17] In 1921, Zionists in Spanish Morocco elected to send Ariel Bension as their delegate to the Twelfth Zionist Congress, marking the first time Moroccan Jews were represented at any Zionist Congress.[19] The influential Zionist activist Samuel-Daniel Levy was born to a Sephardic family in Tetuan in 1874.[20]
By a treaty[21] between France and Spain on 27 November 1912, Tetuan and its Jewish community came under Spanish rule with the establishment of the Spanish protectorate in Morocco, which had Tetuan as its capital. Spanish Africanists in the Spanish military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs espoused political philo-Sephardism (filosefardismo), which sought to sponsor the Sephardic community in Morocco, pursue its Hispanicization, and promote within it a sense of loyalty to Spain.[14][22] The policy of philo-Sephardism was welcomed by part of the Sephardic elite, especially those who had been Spanish protégés, had business ties with Spain, or held Spanish citizenship.[14] Unlike the territory to the south under French colonial rule, there were no antisemitic laws passed in the territory under Spanish colonial rule.[b][22] In colonial documents, Jews were referred to as 'Hebrews' or 'Israelites' and were considered neither "indigenous" nor "locals"; they were instead viewed by colonial authorities as "mediators" between the Spanish colonial authorities and the local population.[22]
Musical genres in the musical traditions of Jewish communities in northern Morocco included romances, ballads, and coplas, or "paraliturgical poems in rhyming couplets and triplets," among other genres.[27][28]
Education
Rabbinical scholars in Tetuan did not study only in local synagogues; many Tetuani scholars went to study in Fes, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.[24]
Unlike nearby cities under European rule, such as Tangier or Ceuta, where there was no Jewish religious education and no evidence of use of Jewish languages—Hebrew and Haketia or Ladino—Tetuan had active Jewish religious schools and Hebrew and Haketia were spoken as a part of daily life.[29]
Following Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah's death in 1789, Mulay Yazid ascended to the throne, which resulted in a horrific slaughter of Moroccan Jews who had refused to back him in his struggle with his brother for the crown. When he entered the city of Tetuan, the city's wealthy Jews were punished by being tied to horses and dragged through the streets, and his soldiers broke into the Jewish quarter and disrupted the community.[30]
A synagogue in Tétouan in the late 19th century.Jewess of Tetuan (1879) by Jean-François Portaels
In 1859, when the Hispano-Moroccan War broke out, the residents again rioted against the city's Jews, killing about 400 of them. Most of the others fled for their lives.[30]
About 200 years ago, the new Mellah was built and the Jews of the old Mellah, who had been expelled from it generations earlier, were moved to it. The new Mellah was built of straight, parallel streets and long, narrow alleys, similar to most of the Mellahs of Morocco. It excelled in order and cleanliness. The synagogues were beautiful and well-kept.[8] In 1900, the "Shivat Zion" Association was founded in the city, the first Zionist association in Morocco (together with the "Shivat Zion Association", which was founded at the same time in Mogador). At the initiative of the association's president, Rabbi Yehuda Leon Kalfon, a Hebrew library was established in the city with modern Hebrew literature. In the late 1940s, Rabbi Dr. Salomon Ben-Shabbat established the "Rambam Institute" in the city, which researched the poetry and literature of Sephardic Jewry.
The city's old cemetery, which is over 300 years old, has tombs with a unique shape, with a human face embossed on the tombstone.
The Jews of Tetuan had close ties with the Jews of Gibraltar, from where its founders came. There were family ties between the communities and the mutual sending of students to educational institutions[9]. There were also extensive trade relations between the communities. For many years, the Spanish authorities imposed a blockade on Gibraltar and its ongoing supplies were dependent on Morocco[10]. Morocco's only port city on the Mediterranean coast was Tetuan, and with the help of the goods that arrived from there, the Jewish merchants of Gibraltar were able to transport supplies to the citizens of the colony and to the British army.
↑Herbert Richter, German consul general in Tetouan, unsuccessfully sought to pressure Spanish authorities into passing anti-Jewish measures and also sought to incite hostility between Muslims and Jews.
↑López Alvarez, Ana María (2003). La comunidad judía de Tetuán, 1881-1940: onomástica y sociología en el libro de registro de circuncisiones del rabino Yiṣḥaq Bar Vid Al Haṣerfaty. Colecciones del Museo Sefardí. [Toledo, Spain]: Madrid: Museo Sefardi; Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección General de Bellas Artes y Bienes Culturales, Subdirección General de Museos Estatales. ISBN978-84-369-3680-3.
↑Abecassis, Nina Pinto (2014). Ha-Ṭaṿas, ha-megohats ṿa-ḥatsi ha-ishah: kinuyim, humor u-folḳlor ba-śiaḥ ha-yom-yom shel Yehude Ṭetụ 'an dovre ha-Ḥaketiyahהטווס, המגוהץ וחצי האישה: כינויים, הומור ופולקלור בשיח היום־יום של יהודי טיטואן דוברי החכתייה[The Peacock, the Ironed Man and the Half-Woman: Nicknames, Humor and Folklore in the Day-to-day Speech of Tetuan’s Haketia-speaking Jews]. Ben Zvi Institute.
↑El Bouzidi, M hamed (2025-09-05). "Jews of Tetouan during the 15th and 17th Centuries: A historical Study of the social, political, and religious Structures and Dynamics". Jewish Culture and History: 1–14. doi:10.1080/1462169X.2025.2554524. ISSN1462-169X. As for the educational and linguistic spheres within Moroccan regions under foreign control, such as Tangier and Ceuta, no evidence was found of a functioning or organized Jewish educational structure, in contrast to what is well documented in major centers under Islamic authority, such as Fez and Tétouan. Nor was there any indication of the use of Jewish languages such as Ladino or Haketía, which were traditionally associated with institutions of religious education and rabbinical training. On the contrary, historical documents – foremost among them the statutes proclaimed by the Bishop of Ceuta, Agostinho Ribeiro, during Sunday Mass on 4 January 1609, in Mazagan (which were also enforced in Tangier and Ceuta) demonstrate the extent of restrictions imposed on Jews in these centers. Jews were forbidden from using any language other than Portuguese or Spanish, and from possessing books considered contrary to Christian doctrine. This reveals a linguistic and educational policy aimed at erasing the cultural and religious distinctiveness of the Jewish community.3
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