Rabbinic Tribunal Documents

Tonight I finally had some time to sit down and look at some of our photographs. I decided to start with the Rabbinic tribunal documents because those are all typed up and are easier to read than the handwritten entries. I should note that I don't read Spanish. Spanish is my mother's first language so I grew up listening to Spanish and I can understand a bit, but not well enough to read or understand these documents. I am so curious about what they say.

I decided to type up a few of the Rabbinic documents into google translate and see what they meant. Obviously, the translation is not perfect, but this was just for fun. I typed the documents up exactly as they are in Spanish but tweaked the English a bit in the translations below so it is easier to read. In some cases, the Spanish did not translate at all. Here is a sample of three.

19 de Julio de 1927
Revino Senor Presidente del Tribunal Rabinico

Reverendisimo Senor,
Tenemos el honor de acusaros recibo de la comunicacion que con fecha 23 Sivan pasado habeis dignado hacer a este Consejo.
El asunto de la carne kosher que teneis a bien recordarnos es de los que atencion nos merecen. Lo hemos estudie do y seguilos estudiando con el mejor dese de darle solución. 
En constante nuestra preocupacion de allegar recursos que parmitan balance nuestro presupuesto redudendo cuanto se puede el impuesto sobre la carne el cual se eleva a poco mas de 3 francos por kilo.
De los arbitrios que se nos augiere y otros mas, habremos de atenernos de preferencia a aquellos cuya aplicacion aparezca viable. Y en su dia nos apresuraremos a notificaros la soluction adoptada.
Dios guarde a V.R. muchos anos.
El Secretario
El Presidente

July 19, 1927
Lord Chief Justice Rabbinical
Rabbi,
We have the honor of receiving the accusatory communication on 23 Sivan last deigned ye do this Council.
The issue of kosher meat that you have sent is a good reminder that deserves attention.
We are studying the situation so we can be giving the best solution.
We are in constantly concerned to marshal our resources to balance our budget redudendo parmitan as can the meat tax which amounts to little more than 3 francs per kilo.
Of the taxes that we augiere and others, we will stick with preference to those whose application appears viable. And in his day we hasten to notify you of the solution adopted.
God keep V.R. many years.
the Secretary
the President

Tanger, 8 de Mayo 1938.
Sr. Presidente del Comite de la Comunidad Israelita de Tanger:

Senor Presidente:
Recibimos con verdadero placer su atenta comunicacion del 1 de los corrientes relativa a la constitucion del distinguido Comite que VD. preside.
Por el mismo oficio venimos a comunicarle que Su Excelencia el Mendub ha tenido a bien confirmar por decreto con fecha del 2 de Rabia Ter. de 1357 (3 de Mayo de 1938) los poderes del Comite en cuestion.
No nos queda mas que felicitar cordialmente a los electos, y, agradeciendo a Vd, senor Presidente, por la comunicacion de referencia, les reiteramos a todos el testimonio de nuestro afecto y perfecta consideracion.
El Secretario: M. Benidiba
El Presidente: Judah M. Azancot

Tanger, May 8, 1938.
Chairman of the Committee of the Jewish Community of Tangier:
Mr. President:
We received with great pleasure your note of 1 of the current (month) on the constitution of the distinguished Committee to VD. presides.
By the same office come to inform you that His Excellency Mendub has kindly confirmed by decree dated 2 Rage Ter. 1357 (May 3, 1938) the powers of the committee.
It remains for us to warmly congratulate the elected, and, thanking you, Mr. President, for the communication of reference, we repeat all the testimony of our affection and perfect consideration.
The Secretary: M. Benidiba
The Chairman: M. Judah Azancot

Tanger, 17 de Heshvan de 5699/11 de Novembre de 1938.
Sr. Presidente del Comite de la Comunidad Israelita de Tanger

Distinguido y querido senor,

Estoy muy agradecido a VD. y al comite que tan dignamente preside por los sentimientos tan halaguenos para mi, expresados en su carta del 8 de Noviembre con motivo de mi nombramiento a la Presidencia del Tribunal Rabinico de Tanger.
Hago votos al Ser Supremo para oue este nombramiento sea enhorabuena para la Comunidad toda y para que nuestra colonia espiritualmente guiada por este Tribunal se mantenga y prospere dentro de las normas de nuestra Santa Ley.
Much confio en los sentimientos judios de ese Comite, y en su comprension de los problemas tan delicados como complejos con que se enfrentan los judios en estos momentos, para encontrar cerca de Vds. el apoyo moral y efectivo que me han de ser indispensables en el ejercicio de mi cargo.

Quedo de Vd., Senor Presidente, con toda consideracion.

atto.y.s.s.o.e.s.m.

Judah M. Azancot

Tanger, 17 Heshvan of 5699/11 Novembre 1938.

Chairman of the Committee of the Jewish Community of Tanger

Distinguished and Dear Sir,


I am grateful to VD. and the committee that so worthily presides by flattering for my feelings as expressed in his letter of 8 November on the occasion of my appointment to the Presidency of the Rabbinical Court of Tanger.
I pray to the Supreme Being for this appointment is oue congratulations to the entire community and for our colony spiritually guided by this Court will continue and flourish within the rules of our Holy Law.
Much relied on Jewish feelings of that committee, and in their understanding of the complex issues as delicate as they face the Jews at this time, to find near of you moral support and effective that I have to be indispensable in the my tenure.
I look to you, Mr. President, with all consideration.
atto.y.s.s.o.e.s.m.
Judah M. Azancot

And we are back!

We got home from Madrid on Monday and have had a couple of days to adjust to the time change.

Now that I have thought a bit of it more, I think the project has taken a bit of a different turn than I originally planned. The original plan was to photograph the registries, and if we got any additional documentation, that would be a bonus. Now it looks like we got many more documents and historical information than we expected, and probably a bit less of the registry-type information we expected.

The following is a list of the books we photographed:

1. 1. Minutes of the Comunidad from:

• a) 1896 - 1899
• b) 1911 - 1915
• c) 1915 - 1928
• d) 1928 - 1935
• e) 1931 - 1945
• f) 1941 - 1950
• g) 1954 - 1972

2. Rabbinic Tribunal documents from 1922 - 1945

3. List of library books in different yeshivot

4. Death registers from 1936 - 1943 and 1892 - 1961

5. Marriage registers - only some

6. Selected Proceedings of the Board of the Comunidad of Tangiers -  1861 - 1875

7. Caja - Grand Livre

8. Gemilut Chassadim 1955 - 1958

9. Ledger 1985 - 1997

10. Registro des Funciones

11. Tsvaot Umatanot

12. Assorted random documents

Now the task will be to figure out how to abstract the information for our registry database. We will also need to consider how best to share the other documentation we photographed.

This is me at the El Minzah. I will upload some samples of the books and more cemetary pics tonight.

Last day in Tangiers - Bittersweet

Friday was our last day in Tangiers before we flew to Madrid for the weekend. We had a few hours in the morning before our flight, so we thought we would head back to the old Jewish cemetery to try to find my great-grandmother's grave. I am not sure she is definitely buried there, but I saw a note in one of the books that said her name and "Rue Portugal" as the location of her grave, so that's all we had to go by. We headed down these stairs built with accessibility in mind (imagine them on a rainy day!) and past the chicken market (avian flu city) to the cemetery.

We seriously checked every grave in that cemetery - and no luck. It was not as hot at is was on Wednesday so we were able to spend more time, but it didn't make a difference. It also didn't help that the lady who lives on the cemetery property to guard it followed us around the entire time with her dog and was not happy with her first five dirham tip so we had to get some more change before we left. We did see the genizah which is located in the section of the cemetery for the Kohanim (priests) which we hadn't seen before.

Then it was time for one more coffee. See if you can spot Eli.

It was time to say goodbye to the El Mizah, which was fine with both of us. Its a nice hotel, but the staff are over/underwhelming, to say the least. Fourteen waiters wearing fez hats standing around and it still takes an hour and 15 euro to get a coffee.

And then off to Ibn Batotuta International Airport for the flight to Madrid.

We made it to Madrid about an hour before Shabbat. This is the view from our hotel room on Gran Via.

Tonight we walked around the city and stopped for beers in a bar that also had karaoke. This was the one english song.

One more day in Madrid...

Chefchaouen and Tetouan

Update on the Marriages 1 book: We contacted the Rabbi of Tangiers today (he is in Israel) and he told us that the Marriages 1 book we wanted access to is locked up in his office. He told us it it just an abstract of information written in greater detail in the other books that he gave us, but we cant confirm this until we go through what we have photographed carefully. I think that the only marriages books we photographed recorded marriages from 1930 - 1940. I guess this means another trip to Tangiers!

We hired Ahmed this morning to take us on a day trip to Chefchaouen and Tetouan. Chefchaouen is 110 kilometers from Tangiers, but the roads and the quality of the ride mean that it takes a very long time to get there! We did have a "limo" though from the early 80's... PS when you get the option of 1000 dirham for a car with with no AC or 1500 dirham for a car with AC, it is not the time to be cheap!

Chefchaouen reminded us of Tzfat. The walls and houses are all painted blue. It is totally gorgeous and very peaceful. I told Eli we are painting our apartment blue when we get home. Now he is saying it looks like the inside of a swimming pool.

We took lots of blue pics.

We also explored the Kasbah, built in 1492. It is not blue so I wont post a pic here now. I dont want to ruin my blue theme. After a couple of hours wandering around (and of course, sweating profusely), Ahmed drove us to Tetouan. We wanted to go see a famous Rabbi's grave that Eli's dad told us about. When we got there, the gate was locked and no one was in sight.

We managed to find another entrance on the other side of the main entrance to the cemetery, where the guard and his family (and turkeys) lived, so he unlocked the gate and let us in. We went to go visit the graves of Rabbi Yitzchak ben Gualid and his family. His grave doesnt have anything written on it because he was very modest.

I dont think my blue skirt was a coincidence!

We headed back to Tangiers, and did some shopping because we leave tomorrow. We did see the same van with a blaring loudspeaker on top of it that we have been seeing all week, advertising for Cirque Amar. It sounds like those trucks in Meah Shearim announcing funerals. We were told by the guy giving out 2 for 1 vouchers that the Circus is in Malabata (near Tangiers) and has an alligator and lions. I am not sure what goes down at a Moroccan circus, but I am not too keen to find out. Eli would be especially nervous considering the chaos and the wild animals and the potential for major safety hazards.

Now we are back at the El Minzah, for our last night in Tangiers : (
Off to Madrid tomorrow!

Another wild day!

This morning started out great, as per usual. We enjoyed our breakfast in the El Minzah with our "white" coffee and headed over to the communidad. We spent two hours photographing books and we are done! Except for the one book that is still in the synagogue that we are trying to get our hands on. It is the book that started the whole project, the Marriages 1 book. The Rabbi left it in the shul and he is in Israel with the main communidad guy too, so we have been trying to get in touch with him to get us access to the book.

We dropped our equipment at the hotel and headed back out to go to the old Jewish cemetery. On the way there, we stopped at a bank machine for some cash. I got the cash and put my card away, and then for some reason, I thought the machine didnt give me my card back! I made a whole stink at the bank and made them open up the bank machine from the back. Turns out the card was in my purse the whole time. We snuck out of there pretty fast!

Haha! Then we headed over to the old Jewish cemetery with Abdelsallam outside of the Medina, on rue Portugal.

We spent about an hour and a half looking for my great-grandmother, Esther Haligua's grave, but no luck. Unfortunately, there is no guide to old Jewish cemetery and its pretty huge. There is also no shade, and every path has unmarked graves that need to be avoided while walking through. We said a prayer at the front of the cemetery for my great-grandmother and all the people buried there.

Next we went back to the hotel to cool off a bit. We tried to call a few contacts in Tangiers to get access to that one book, but no luck yet. We did hear that one of the men we were looking for was possibly at the "Casino" but no additional information.

So we headed off for our tuna lunch and ate it in the park overlooking the sea.

We wandered around and tried to find the Casino. We thought we found it but no one answered the door and we werent sure the parking garage attendant who led us there was right about the location.

Back to the hotel for some more cooling off, and then we headed over to the Medina to see our friend Muchsin who sells watches and has good information and tips. We wanted to find out if we were getting ripped off for a trip to Tetouan and Chefchaoun tomorrow. He said we were not getting ripped off. He didnt want to come with us though, because he just got back from the Hajj in Mecca.

We stopped for a tea at our favorite Cafe Central, and our waiter was nice to us this time and took a photo without being asked!

We decided to give the Casino another try to track down someone who could get us access to that last book. We walked back up and rang the bell. Success! We found the Casino!!

Our contact was NOT there, but his wife was!! She said we could find him around the corner tomorrow. Its a good thing that we gave ourselves a week to do this project. Just finding the right people to open doors is a challenge and a very lengthy process.

We ended our day at Cafe de Paris, with these guys:

Nothing has changed in that place in a hundred years, including the bathroom! HA!

Birthday Update

Celebrating my 29th birthday in Tangiers! We are having a very successful trip so far. We got off to a rocky start on Sunday when we were not able to find the communidad or our contact person and we walked up and down some hilly streets in 35 degree heat with all our equipment.

Eventually, we found our contact by hunting him down bit by bit until it ended with us in his living room with his wife and son. His wife was mid-boureka making, btw.

We have photographed about 4500 pages so far of minutes, death registers, marriage registers, rabbinic tribunal records and a bunch of stuff we cant read or recognize but are sure has value.

More on what we discovered and what books we have photos of later. 

Today we photographed for four hours in the morning, and then we waited in line for an hour at what must be the most popular tuna sandwich restaurant in Morocco.

After a quick snarf of our sandwiches (we were late because the line took so long) we found our guy and headed off to the new Jewish cemetery.  The pics of the cemetery and shul are on our other camera, so will post them later. We visited the following graves: Mose Benzaquen (my great grandfather), Jacob Benzaquen (my great uncle), Fortuna Haligua (my great aunt), Allegria Haligua (my great aunt), Aureile Reiner (our friends grandmother), Amram Assayag, and Simy Elmaleh. It was quite an adventure as it was seriously hot, there were tons of thorns and bushes to climb through, and we had a hard time locating the graves. But with my dad on bbm directing us, Eli reading the maps, and our guide telling us he knew where the graves were all along, we succeeded.

Then I wanted to go back to the hotel, but our guide was adamant we continue, even though our clothes were soaked through with sweat and Eli's foot was bleeding from thorns he fell on in the cemetery.

We visited Rue de Synagogue in the Medina and saw the Nahon shul again. We took some pics of the beautiful architecture and artifacts. It is so sad that the shul is desolate and empty and there are no more services there ever. 

We had some more fun when we got back to the hotel and had to change rooms for a third(!) time because "the agency did not give us the information", a running theme in Morocco.

We have a few more books left and then we are going to explore the city a bit more. Will keep this blog updated now that we have internet. Yesterday was Eid al-Fitr and apparently the whole Morocco was online so the internet went down. At least thats what the guy in the fez and bloomers at reception told us!

Here's us at an Eid photoshoot last night. You pay the guy to sit on his backdrop. This was seventy five cents Canadian. Totally worth it!

Success! I figured out how to enable comments! Now you can read my blog and leave me messages! Yay!

Update: We are headed to Barcelona on Thursday, August 16th and then we fly to Tangiers on Sunday, August 20. I am anxious to get there already and see what books they have for us to digitize.

I had a nightmare last week that we got to the Jewish community centre in Tangiers, and the curator(?) over there showed me a cupboard and told me all the archives are in there. I opened the cupboard, and there were five Dr. Suess books in Hebrew and he was like "yeah, that's all that there is". And I kept saying, no, we came really far, I know forsure there is at least the marriage book... The weirdest part about it was that the curator guy was a friend of mine who lives two blocks away from me in Toronto...

Travel Plans!

We just booked our tickets to fly to Tangiers in August! Our trip is 10 days total - 7 work days. We are going to fly direct to Barcelona, spend the weekend there, and then fly to Tangiers on Sunday. Our plan is to work on our project from Sunday to Friday, and fly to Madrid for the second weekend, and then back home.

We booked Air Transat for the round trip Europe trip, and Air Arabia Maroc for the trip from Barcelona to Tangiers. We haven't booked Tangiers-Madrid yet but I think we will fly Ryanair. I kind of want to wait to book it until we are in Tangiers and we have more information re: the project, but I don't want to get stuck in Tangiers either!

It was hard to try and guess how long the project is going to take us, because we don't know how many books there are, or how long each book will take to photograph. Once we have the equipment, we will set up a trial run here in Toronto to see how long we can expect it will take to photograph the books. We figured a week with 8 hour days will be a good first go at it and then we'll go back to do whatever is left in Tangiers and start on registries in other Moroccan Jewish communities.

Registries

To properly prepare for my project, I've been doing some research on what registries actually exist in Tangiers.

I read in "Sephardic Genealogy - Discovering your Sephardic Ancestors and their World" that Tangiers has a birth register from 1892 and a civil marriage register from 1927. I guess that the civil marriage register is the one I saw (Marriage 1) in my earlier post.

Based on some correspondence with a different Sephardic genealogist, I've been told that there are death registers since 1935, circumcision registers since 1891 (including some births of girls) and marriage registers since 1900. The genealogist also heard of other older books (including a registry of real property) that were in very poor condition.

The death registry is less important to me, as the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in Tangiers have been digitalized and is searchable on this fantastic site-- http://www.beit-hahayim-tanger.com/index.php. 

I am hoping that we can find a way to link a search result to a photo of the actual page from the registry once we have a database set up. 

At my great-grandfather's grave in Tangiers - I used the website above to find the exact location

Background to my Projects

I am starting this blog to document my journey to digitalize the Jewish community records of Tangiers, Morocco. My maternal grandfather, Aaron Benzaquen, was born in Tangiers in 1915 to Mose and Tamar Benzaquen. My maternal grandmother, Vida Haligua Benzaquen, was born in Ksar Al-Kabir (we think), Morocco in 1925(?). My grandparents emigrated to Canada in 1959 with my aunt and uncle. My mother was born in Toronto. My grandmother passed away on May 26, 2010, two days after my wedding. My grandfather passed away shortly thereafter, on July 1, 2010.

Grandpa and Me at my wedding

I have always been curious about my maternal family history. While my grandparents were alive, they never wanted my family or me to travel to Tangiers. They remembered Tangiers as a beautiful, international city with gorgeous beaches, cafes, and friends. When they went back for a visit in 198?, Tangiers was different. Going back was painful for them and they said to visit Tangiers now was too different than the city they remembered.

Last summer, in July 2011, my husband Eli and I travelled to Spain for a vacation. I really wanted to go to Morocco, but Eli didn't want to go to Morocco without his dad (more on that later). We travelled from Barcelona all the way down the coast to Algeciras, Spain. We decided to take a short trip to just the north of Morocco and see what we could discover about my grandparents and their hometown, Tangiers.

We were especially curious to see if there were any Jewish records or archives that registered my grandparents marriage. After they passed away and their apartment was packed up, my mother received a copy of my grandparents' Ketubah (Jewish marriage certificate) that she had never seen before.

It listed their names as Aaron and Kvida, not Vida, as we had always known her as. No one was familiar with this name Kvida, and we wondered if that was what her name had always been, if it was a handwritten typo on the certificate, or a nickname of sorts. I thought looking at any archives might shed some light on this question.

We spent four days in Tangiers and took one day trip to Larache/Asilah. We contacted the Rabbi of Tangiers, Rabbi Torgeman, who met us at the main synagogue, on Rue de la Libertie. I asked the Rabbi if he had heard of the name Kvida on the Ketubah. He said he didn't know and perhaps it was a nickname. I asked if he had Jewish marriage records that I could look at. He said that the books were stored off-site, but then went into his office and pulled out a large Harry Potter-like book that had the label "Nisuin 1" (Marriages 1) on it.

Marriage Record Book

Eli and the Rabbi flipped through the book and found the marriage entry for my grandparents. It reads "Aaron Benzaquen ben Moshe" and the date is 1946. My grandmothers' name (not pictured) is recorded as Kvida. So the mystery remains...

Since discovering that entry and the existence of the synagogue registry books, I have wanted to go back to Morocco and digitalize whatever records they have so that people worldwide can access a database and see the entries for their family members. The books are an important resource and an amazing look back at Jewish life in city that had a vibrant Jewish community at one point. This blog will document my journey to make that a reality.