Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

As in other parts of the Arab-Muslim world, the creation of the State of Israel, the first Arab-Israeli War (1948), and the military confrontation that broke after the nationalization of the Suez Canal (1956) had a tremendous impact on relations between Jews and Muslims in Morocco and precipitated a mass emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel. Al-Wifāq (Ar. agreement, entente), founded in 1956, was an organization that sought to counter this trend by convincing the country’s Jews that they could play an active part in building the “new Morocco” and wo…

Wills are legal documents that dictate how a person’s assets will be distributed after his or her death. Although rabbinic law prescribes a strict order of kin succession derived primarily from the Bible (Numbers 27:8-11), the earliest rabbinic legal texts also permit individuals to use two basic types of will to transmit their property to both relatives and non-relatives in other ways. The first is a deathbed will that can be changed or voided if the testator recovers (alternately termed deyatiqi, from the Greek diathēkē; and, in Hebrew, mattenat shekhiv me-raʿ); the other is an irr…

see Food and Drink - Wine and Alcoholic Beverages Norman A. Stillman