In 2020, an abandoned mud-brick synagogue in Morocco’s Sahara desert, deep in the Atlas Mountains, was rediscovered by Israeli and Moroccan researchers. Thieves had already looted the former house of prayer, scattering the sacred Jewish texts that had been buried in the geniza, a repository for old or unusable holy texts, and leaving the structure in a state of disrepair. To salvage what remained and study the site further, the researchers began obtaining permits to start an archaeological dig at the synagogue. In December 2020, Israel and Morocco normalized relations as part of the Abraham Accords, allowing Israeli researchers to formalize academic relationships and pursue joint research projects with their Moroccan counterparts.
Dr. Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli, a historian at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and BGU archaeologist Professor Yuval Yekutieli, along with a number of Moroccan experts, uncovered the geniza. Ouaknine-Yekutieli has faced several challenges in Israel in terms of gaining scholarly recognition for research into the history of Jews from Mizrahi backgrounds. Ouaknine-Yekutieli has worked with Dr. Salima Naji, an award-winning Moroccan social anthropologist and architect, to investigate the network of oases and how Jews became one of many minorities living in these small villages.
The researchers uncovered genizas in synagogues in the villages of Akka and Tamanart, whose buildings were in use for hundreds of years and abandoned in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the vast majority of Moroccan Jews moved to Israel. ANU – The Museum of the Jewish People is hosting a series of lectures about Moroccan Jewry, and the Yekutielis will deliver the first lecture, delving into some of the traditions of charms they discovered in the genizas.
One of the challenges with archaeological excavations in southern Morocco is that all of the buildings were made from mud, making them difficult to unearth and susceptible to destruction from the elements afterward. It requires a painstaking process of slow excavation and immediate conservation by using local artisans and materials to rebuild the buildings in the same manner.
When the researchers arrived, many texts were scattered on the floor of the two synagogues, a testament to antiquities thieves who had already searched the buildings for valuables. Before they could obtain permits to return and begin the excavation, torrential rain and floods swept through the area. However, when the researchers returned to the site with the permits just after the rains, they were thrilled to discover that most of the papers were safely buried inside the mud walls or floors of the synagogue. The moisture from the rain had actually helped preserve them.
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