Ancient Judeo-Moroccan Community Unearthed in Atlas Mountains Synagogue Ruins

During a historical and anthropological research study in a ruined synagogue, Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli, a researcher on modern Morocco who teaches at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, her archaeologist husband Yuval Yekutieli and the Moroccan and French researchers Salima Naji, Mabrouk Saghir, David Goeury and Aomar Boum discovered the remains of a Judeo-Moroccan community that had existed for centuries in a remote town in the Atlas Mountains, on the edge of the Sahara desert, reports Haaretz. The researchers also came across Scriptures and pages from the synagogue’s genizah, a repository for damaged writings and ritual objects, as well as some paper amulets. The small Jewish community of Tamanart lived there from the 16th to the early 19th century.

"The texts of these amulets are based on formulas found in the Book of Raziel, an ancient kabbalistic book," explains Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli. The book contains texts for charms, and had been used by Jewish communities in Morocco. The researchers have transferred the texts to a secure location in Morocco, where they will be studied and analyzed in the coming years. The researchers will use artificial intelligence technology such as that used in recent years to analyze ancient Jewish texts in universities with digital humanities studies. The researchers are now looking for Jews who lived in the region and knew the synagogue and the village in order to be able to reconstruct them.

This discovery is the result of a preliminary investigation into Jewish sites in the region. It involves interviews with residents who remember their Jewish neighbors who left 70 years ago and the collection of archived information.