Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

Born in Tetouan, Morocco, in 1881, Messody Coriat came from a prominent although impoverished family. After completing her studies at the local Alliance Israélite Universelle school, she left for Paris and the École Biscoffsheim, a vocational and normal school to which the Alliance sent many of its future teachers. Upon graduation Messody returned to Morocco, where her first assignment was to establish a school for girls in Marrakesh. She remained as director of this school until 1904, and provided the Alliance with reports vividly describing the women of the mellah (Ar. mallāḥ;Jewish…

Sadia Lévy was born in Sidi bel Abbès, Algeria, to a Jewish family of the acculturated bourgeoisie on 6 September 1875. Two generations earlier the family was in Tetuan, but subsequently settled in Gibraltar. It was in the town of his birth that the young Sadia began his studies at the secondary school, and he continued them with brilliant results at the lycée of Oran. At the age of eighteen he left Algeria for Paris in order to attend the École Libre des Sciences politiques, but it was in fact …

see Halevy, Samuel SaadiNorman A. Stillman

Samuel Daniel Lévy was born in Tetouan on December 4, 1874, and attended the Alliance Israélite Universelle school there. In 1889 he was chosen by the school’s director Abraham Ribbi, to attend the École Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO) in Paris. Following his graduation in 1893, he was appointed as schoolmaster in Tunis. Later he moved to Sousse (Tunisia) and Tangier. After his promotion to director of the Alliance school in Casablanca (1900–1902), where he opened a new institution for young girls, he took a post in Argentina as director and later inspector of the Jewish…

Simon Lévy (1934–2011) was born in Fez into a family steeped in the traditional  Jewish culture of northern Morocco. He began to work for Moroccan independence in his late teens, and in 1954 joined the Moroccan Workers’ Union, the National Moroccan Student Union, and the Moroccan Communist Party. During the student uprising in 1965 he was abducted and tortured for eight days.Lévy remained with the Communist Party when Abraham Serfaty’s far-left faction split off during the ongoing political crisis of the 1960s. In the years that followed, as the party wen…

Solly Lévy (b. 1939), born in Morocco and now a resident of Canada,  is an author, playwright, actor, singer, and educator especially known for his work in the endangered minority Jewish language Haketía (Moroccan Judeo-Spanish).Solly Lévy was born in Tangier, Morocco, on November 1, 1939. He immigrated to Montreal, Canada, in 1968, with his wife, Madeleine Gavison Lévy, and their children Claire and Eddy, both also born in Tangier. Lévy holds an undergraduate degree in Hispanic Studies from l’Université de Bordeaux and a master…

1. LexicographyThe Mishna has an abundance of lexicographical material. There are lexicographical elements in definitions such as Ezehu leqeṭ? Ha-nosher bishʿat ha-qeṣira (What are considered gleanings? Whatever drops down at the moment of reaping; Peʾah 4:10); Ezehu pereṭ? Ha-nosher bishʿat ha-beṣira (What is considered a grape? Whatever drops at the moment of vintage; ibid. 7:3); and Ezehu zeroaʿ? Min ha-pereq shel arkubba ʿad kaf shel yad . . . ukhnegdo baregel-shoq (What is a forearm? From the knee-joint to the palm of hand . . . and its counterpart in the leg…

Raymond Leyris, who was known professionally as Cheikh Raymond, was born in Algeria on July 27, 1912 to a French Catholic mother and a Jewish father from Batna. After his father perished in World War I, he was adopted by a humble Jewish family from Constantine. Early on he began to frequent the fondouks (caravansaries) favored as gathering places by enthusiasts of malouf (Ar. mālūf), the Andalusian musical tradition of Constantine, and there he learned its more popular derivative genres. His mentors were two of the great masters of malouf of the previous generation, Abdelkrim Bestandji…