Jewish-Muslim Mutual Trust Produced A Post Passover Pastry Party |
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou states that the hamsa (five-fingered hand symbol) constitutes perhaps the most visible shared protective symbol, used by both Jewish and Muslim communities in multiple material forms: metal jewelry (silver pendants, brooches), ceramic plaques hung in homes and businesses, painted decorations on doors and walls, embroidered motifs on clothing, and miniature versions attached to children’s clothing (Stillman, 1979). There was nothing like this closeness in European Christian-Jewish connections.
Dr. Chtatou also points out that one of the most striking aspects of Moroccan religious culture was the extent of shared pilgrimage, whereby Jews and Muslims went on pilgrimage to the same shrines, invoked the same intercessors, and engaged in overlapping if not identical ritual practices. This phenomenon—attested to at least since the medieval period and well into the twentieth century—works against received wisdom, which has often held that the familial structures of major Abrahamic traditions consisted of hermetically sealed devotional ecologies.
In Morocco, sacred geography was often contested, negotiated and ultimately shared in ways that defy facile narratives of either religious separation or tolerance as a top-down regime (Gottreich 2007).
Verbal protective formulas showed both convergence and distinctiveness, with both communities employing blessing formulas when offering compliments (to ward off inadvertent evil eye), spitting sounds or actions (tfu tfu tfu in Yiddish-influenced Israeli Hebrew, similar sounds in Amazigh), and religious invocations (Baruch Hashem “Blessed is God” for Jews, Bismillah “In God’s name” for Muslims, Mashallah “What God wills” in both) (Stillman, 1979). The functional equivalence of these formulas across linguistic and religious boundaries reflects shared underlying beliefs about the necessity of deflecting envy and supernatural harm through verbal-ritual action (Bilu, 1996).
Death and mourning rituals reflected shared values regarding rapid burial, ritual purification of the deceased, simple shroud burial, and structured mourning periods, though specific timing and practices differed ((Chtatou, 2022, December 29 ; Bilu, 1996). Both........