“Today's Morocco is a prime example of what a great peaceful coexistence and international cooperation can be with an Arab country.”

Eli Gabay, an Israeli-born lawyer and current president of the oldest continuously active synagogue in the United States, comes from a distinguished family of Jewish leaders who have fostered Jewish communities across Morocco, Israel, and the U.S. Now residing in Philadelphia, Eli and his mother, Rachel, share their deeply personal story of migration from Morocco to Israel, reflecting on the resilience of their family and the significance of preserving Jewish traditions.

The Gabay family's commitment to justice and heritage is deeply rooted. Eli, in his legal career, worked with Israel’s Ministry of Justice, where he notably helped prosecute John Ivan Demjanjuk, a Cleveland auto worker accused of being the notorious Nazi death camp guard, "Ivan the Terrible."

Jessica Marglin, Professor of Religion, Law, and History at the University of Southern California, offers expert insights into the Jewish exodus from Morocco. She explores the enduring relationship between Morocco's Jewish community and the monarchy, and how this connection sets Morocco apart from its neighboring countries.

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Show notes:

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Song credits: 

Pond5: 

• “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837

• “Suspense Middle East” Publisher: Victor Romanov, Composer: Victor Romanov; Item ID: 196056047

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Episode Transcript:

ELI GABAY: Standing in court and saying ‘on behalf of the State of Israel’ were the proudest words of my life. It was very meaningful to serve as a prosecutor. It was very meaningful to serve in the IDF. 

These were highlights in my life, because they represented my core identity: as a Jew, as a Sephardic Jew, as an Israeli Sephardic Jew. These are the tenets of my life.

MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century.

Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations.

As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations – despite hardship, hostility, and hatred–then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland.

I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East. 

The world has ignored these voices. We will not. This is The Forgotten Exodus. 

Today's episode: leaving Morocco.

MANYA: There are three places Eli Gabay calls home: Philadelphia, the city where he has raised his children; Morocco, the land where his parents Rachel and Amram were born and his ancestors lived for generations; and Israel, his birthplace and original ancestral homeland. Eli has been on a quest to honor all those identities since he left Israel at the age of 12.

ELI: On my father's side, they were all rabbis. On my mother's side, they were all businesspeople who headed synagogues. And so, my grandfather had a synagogue, and my other grandfather had a synagogue. When they transplanted to Israel, they reopened these synagogues in the transition camp in Be'er Sheva. Both families had a synagogue of their own.

MANYA: For the past five years, Eli has served as president of his synagogue--the historic Congregation Mikveh Israel, America’s oldest continuous synagogue, founded in Philadelphia in 1740.

Descended from a long line of rabbis going back generations, Eli is a litigation attorney, the managing partner of a law firm, a former prosecutor, and, though it might seem odd, the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Nicaragua in Philadelphia.

But the professional role that has brought him the most acclaim was his time in the 1980s, working for Israel’s Ministry of Justice, decades after the Holocaust, still trying to hold its perpetrators accountable.

CLIP - ‘THE DEVIL NEXT DOOR’ TRAILER: Charges were filed today against John Demjanjuk, the 66-year-old Ukrainian native, who’s accused of being a Nazi death camp guard named Ivan the Terrible. The crimes he was accused of…

MANYA: We’ll tell you more about that later. But first, we take you to the Jerusalem Israeli Gift Shop in northeast Philadelphia, a little slice of Israel on the corner of Castor Avenue and Chandler Street.

[shofar sounds]

Every day, amid the menorahs and shofars, frames and mezuzahs, Eli’s 84-year-old mother Rachel Gabay, the family matriarch and owner of thisJudaica shop, is transported back to the place where she grew up: Israel.

ELI: My father was a teacher all his life, and my mother [shofar sounds] runs a Jewish Judaica store that sells shofars, you can hear in the background.

RACHEL: It's my baby. The store here became my baby.

CUSTOMER: You’re not going to remember this, but you sold us our ketubah 24 years ago.

RACHEL: Yeah. How are you, dear?

ELI: Nice.

CUSTOMER: We’re shopping for someone else’s wedding now.

RACHEL: Oh, very nice… For who?

CUSTOMER: A friend of ours, Moshe, who is getting married and we wanted to get him a mezuzah.

MANYA: For Rachel, Israel represents the safety, security, and future her parents sought for her when in 1947 they placed her on a boat to sail away from Morocco. By then, Casablanca had become a difficult place to be Jewish. Israel offered a place to belong. And for that, she will always be grateful.

RACHEL: To be a Jew, to be very good…

ELI: Proud.

RACHEL: Proud. I have a country, and I am somebody.

ELI: My father's family comes from the High Atlas Mountains, from a small village called Aslim.The family arrived in that area sometime in 1780 or so.

There were certain events that went on in Morocco that caused Jews from the periphery and from smaller cities to move to Casablanca. Both my parents were born in Morocco in Casablanca. Both families arrived in Casablanca in the early 30s, mid 30s.

MANYA: Today, the port city of Casablanca is home to several synagogues and about 2,000 Jews, the largest community of Morocco. The Museum of Moroccan Judaism in suburban Casablanca, the first museum on Judaism in the Arab world, stands as a symbol of the lasting Jewish legacy in Morocco. Indeed, there’s been a Jewish presence in what is considered modern-day Morocco for some 2,000 years, dating back to the early days of the establishment of Roman control. 

Morocco was home to thousands of Jews, many of whom lived in special quarters called “Mellah,” or Jewish ghetto. Mellahs were common in cities across Morocco.

JESSICA: Morocco was one of the few places in the Islamic world where there emerged the tradition of a distinctive Jewish quarter that had its own walls and was closed with its own gates.

MANYA: Jessica Marglin is a professor of religion, law, and history at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on the history of Jews and Muslims in North Africa and the Mediterranean.

JESSICA: There's a bit of a debate. Were these quarters there to control Jews and force them to all live in one spot and was it a sort of form of basically repression? Or was it a way to protect them? The first mellah, the one in Fez is right next to the palace. And so there was a sense that the Jews would be closer to the Sultan or the Sultan's representative, and thus more easily protectable.

It could be interpreted as a bad thing. And some Jews did see it as an unfair restriction. But I would say that most Jews didn't question the idea that Jews would live together. And that was sort of seen as natural and desirable. And there was a certain kind of autonomous jurisdiction to the mellah, too. 

Because Jews had their own courts. They had their own butchers. They had their own ovens. Butchers and ovens would have been kosher. They could sell wine in the mellah. They could do all these things that were particular to them. And that's where all the synagogues were. And that's where the Jewish cemetery was, right? It was really like a little Jewish city, sort of within the city.

MANYA: Unlike other parts of the Middle East and North Africa where pogroms and expulsions, especially after the creation of the state of Israel, caused hundreds of thousands o