Born in Tetouan in 1898, Messody Lévy spent her youth in Tripoli, Libya where her parents, Claire Benchimol Lévy and Maïr Lévy, were the directors of the local Alliance Israélite Universelle schools. When Claire died in childbirth in 1905, Messody’s aunt, Alégrina Benchimol, married her brother-in-law, and together they raised his four children. After graduating from the local Alliance school in Tripoli—she was, her aunt wrote to the AIU in Paris, the most brilliant student she had ever taught—Messody left for Paris to train as an Alliance teacher. She returned to Morocco in 1916 and…