Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 1 | Page 78

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

borrowed a great deal from the culture of the Other” (p. 119). Babre accuses Memmi of orientalism in his description of his own mother, who
Memmi had claimed was an “illiterate and superstitious ‘Bedouin’ woman” (p. 121). Barbe concludes that due to the conflict between Israel and the
Arab world, an “idealized past where both communities cohabited harmoniously offers an optimistic model of Jewish-Muslim relations based on
the recognition and respect for the Other” (p. 123). It isn’t clear what exactly Memmi has to do with this, except that the author prefers that
Memmi’s comments should be critiqued.
Subsequent chapters examine the role of Jews in rebuilding Oran, and interactions between Jewish butchers and cultural figures in Morocco and
Algeria. The last five chapters deal with the issue of Jewish women in North Africa. Two chapters examine the importance of the Alliance Israelite
Universelle, an educational institution, in educating Jewish women. Three chapters deal with the issue of the tragic figure, Sol Hachuel in Morocco.
Hachuel was born to a Jewish family in 1834 in Tangier. Seventeen years later, after some flirtations got her into trouble, she was beheaded at the
order of the Muslim governor for being a Muslim apostate.
Yaelle Azagury argues that “the heroic figure of Solika (Sol) Hachuel fascinates like no other historical figure from this community.” Since she is
said to figure so prominently in Moroccan Jewish collective memory, the author accepts the logic that this story must be harshly critiqued. The
story doesn’t have enough exact historical details. “Did Sol have a mother or a stepmother? Are there any male figures to be taken into account” (p.
192)? One wonders, if Sol was a historic Muslim figure of great importance, such as Saladin, or a Christian—such as the victims of the Salem
Witch trials—if such probing questions about the exact number of relatives they might have had, would be used to cast aspersions on his historical
authenticity? Azagury argues that the secret reason that she is remembered is not because she was beheaded, and supposedly declared “I was born a
Jew and will die a Jew” (p. 191), but because her story is a “means by which to think the unthinkable, in this case to imagine a specific type of
sexual collusion—otherwise strictly forbidden—between two communities, the Muslim and the Jewish” (p. 192). This is an interesting academic
sleight of hand. The scholar argues that Sol is of primary importance in Moroccan collective memory, without providing evidence of this, then
claims that in fact, the story is a secret attack on her for having engaged in relations with Muslims, without any evidence of this either. Yet she
concludes that the story is a “cautionary tale th