photo: my parents and me going down the stairs to Rabbi Shlomo Belhenss z”l mausoleum in the High Atlas mountains, August 1959
Hi everyone
Here it is a page of my youth, that I had first published five years ago in my old jewish community website called “Dafina”.There,in that Internet site, we ,old folks , last Jews of Morocco..[after about 2500 years of presence in that part of North Africa]..here , scattered from all around the world ..from Israel to Europe to Asia to Australia and finally America, we write our collective memoirs of yesterday..the stories of our grand-parents, their parents, our own parents and finally of ourselves: the last of the “Jewish Mohicans” in Morocco!
So it is in french, my mother tongue, the one I used as a young little boy to pronounce my first words (my first language had to be Moliere’s), that I will continue later that subject to reflect the cultural spirit of those years!
Anyhow , may be one day I will have the patience to translate most of those articles but in the meantime and knowing perfectly that my children an my wife, all Canadian born and English speaking from Quebec, will certainly understand most of it, besides it will be a very good exercise for their bilingualism, I will carry that topic as I planned it, meaning in French and partly English where I can..
So here it is:
Ourika or the jewel of my childhood.
I was born the 6th day of December 1947 in Rabat, the capital city of then french Morocco, and I first spent two weeks in Ourika , during the month of February 1948.
The place:
The dried clay building of Rabbi Shlomo Belhenss, an emissary from the Old City of Jerusalem that came to that part of the world in the years of the seventeen century a.d.
Why ,in the 17th century, did that great Rabbi , Jewish Palestinian born, decided to settle for good in the middle of the High Atlas mountains? because after collecting funds from all Morocco Jewish communities living in big cities such Rabat, Fes, Tetuan, Mogador, Marrakesh, etc. to help secure the Talmudic Yeshivas located in Tiberias, Safed, Yavne, Jerusalem in old Ottoman Palestine ,he fell in love with the beautiful high mountains of the Atlas rising in the near horizon of Marrakesh.
Rabbi Shlomo Belhenss fell also in love with the scattered Jewish Berbers men, women and children that had been isolated for centuries from main stream Judaism Sepharadic and Ashkenaze. During the 17th century there were no roads, neither trails, so to speak..linking those mountains to cities and towns of the kingdom of Morocco.
My parents told me that , back in the first month of a cold 1948 winter,they really were wondering how I will sustain the freezing temperature and the snow in that kind of primitive building with no running water , no electricity and no heat whatsoever..
And here it was, the miracle provided by the divine soul of that Saint: I had a great time and behaved so well, in all aspects, my dad and my mom were sure that place was a holy place!
Rabbi Shlomo Belhenss zats’al was very famous, in that Berbers world, for performing miracles during his lifetime spent among them. He is buried in that building where all Jews come to pilgrimage ounce or twice a year, or to celebrate a special event such Bar Mitsvah, etc.
Another day I will recalled some of those summers spent in that beautiful place.
Until then ( maybe to-morrow , I will be back..) I ‘ll say good-by for now and see you soon.
Regards to all
elie cohen
photo: 1948, Rabbi Shlomo Belhenss zatsal,two centuries and a half old building and mausoleum
