Despite the trauma of expulsion, many of Spain’s Jews reestablished themselves in Morocco, reshaping its Jewish community in their own image. The resulting communal rules and regulations indicate how fast the Spanish Jewish leadership regrouped, transplanting its traditions to Fez

Although Jews had lived in Morocco for centuries, a sudden influx of Spanish Jewish immigrants in the late 1300s irrevocably altered its Jewish community. Jewish life in Spain had rapidly deteriorated. Persecution had devastated communities, and many looked to North Africa for refuge. Fleeing a series of Spanish edicts and attacks against Jews in 1391, the first wave of emigrants settled mostly in Algiers.

A century later, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile united Spain and completed the Reconquista, wresting the last Moorish holdouts from Islamic rule. Spain had been under Muslim control for almost seven hundred years, since 711, but the struggle between Islam and Christianity there had dragged on for centuries.

When Granada became the final Spanish city to fall to the Catholic monarchs, they expressed their gratitude to God by either converting or driving out all religious minorities. Though Muslims were allowed to remain until the first decades of the 16th century, Jews were expelled in 1492, dispersing all over Europe, North Africa, and Asia.

 

By the Book

Thanks to its proximity to Spain, Morocco was a common destination for these outcasts. The city of Fez in particular had been a Jewish center almost since its founding in the eighth century. Lest the town’s concentration of Jewish merchants threaten their livelihood, local traders had pressed to restrict Jewish freedom of movement. The result was Morocco’s first Jewish quarter, or mellah, established in Fez as early as 1438.

The Spanish exiles may have welcomed this segregation, as it limited contact between Jews and Muslims and encouraged Jewish independence. But internal tensions soon arose, as the “community of exiles” clung to its customs, while Fez’s “resident community” resisted such changes. Initially, each group maintained its own language, leadership, and practices. Within a short time, however, Spanish Jewry’s rich religious culture dominated.

The writings of the city’s rabbis reveal the inner workings of its Jewish community. Halakhic literature and communal regulations produced by the sages exiled from Spain show that what triggered their followers’ formal split from the local Jews was a dispute in the early 16th century regarding the kosher status of meat, which soon spread to other areas of Jewish law. The resulting rabbinic rulings reflect the issues of greatest concern to the Jews of Fez as well as illuminating their daily lives and interactions with other populations in the city. 

The Castilian Exiles’ Book of Ordinances was composed from 1494 to 1753 by the sages of Fez. This work, including the most important rulings formulated by the rabbis to organize and regulate the community, was generally accepted by Moroccan Jewry across the board. With no publishing house in Morocco, manuscripts of the Book of Ordinances were handed down through the generations, until it was finally printed in 1869 in Leghorn, Italy, by Algerian rabbi Avraham Ankawa.

The book touched on almost every aspect of communal life, from synagogue dues, weddings, and matters of inheritance to business disputes with Muslim neighbors. The broad spectrum of issues it covers, as well as its daring approach to highly charged communal affairs, makes it a unique source of information on the social structure and history of Spanish (Sephardic) Jews in Morocco. It’s also a window onto the rabbis’ halakhic erudition and highly innovative interpretations of Scripture, giving us a sense of the various influences on these scholars.