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Le Réveil du Maroc was a French-language newspaper in Tangier that appeared for the first time on July 14, 1883, its founder, Abraham Lévy-Cohen, Abraham, having chosen that symbolic date, Bastille Day, as a tribute to France. Nothing on the masthead referred to the newspaper as Jewish, but its founder’s concerns, as well as its content, clearly point to a publication defending Jewish interests in Morocco.     Lévy Cohen was born in Tangier in 1844 to a family originally from Essaouira (Mogador). A businessman and a lawyer, he was also a freemason, a member o…

Haïm Benchimol (1834–1915) was born into a family of Moroccan Jewish dragomen and businessmen who worked actively with the French legation in Tangier. Thanks to a clause in the 1880 Madrid Convention, the legation granted him and his family hereditary French protection for “services rendered.”As a broker-interpreter for the French legation and a well-known Freemason, Benchimol was elected head of the Jewish junta (governing committee) of Tangier) in 1890, and also become president of the regional committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. At the end …

Germain Ayache (1915–1990) was born into a Jewish family in Berkane, in northeastern Morocco near the Algerian border. His family had French citizenship, obtained under the Crémieux Decree after his grandfather spent time in Algeria on business at the end of the nineteenth century. Educated in Berkane, Oujda, Rabat, and Bordeaux, Ayache earned his university teaching qualification ( agrégation) in literature and was assigned to teach in Casablanca at the Lycée Lyautey (renamed Mohammed V after independence). In 1936, he joined the Communist Party and was active in recruiting …