Today was our “Jewish” Day of the mission. We were to spend the day visiting sites funded by JFNA partner agencies. Click hhttp://gallery.me.com/efine1#100460&bgcolor=black&view=gridere for photos from the day.
First stop was the Maimonides School. A Jewish Day school attended by Jews and Muslims alike. One of the best schools in Morocco, almost all of the high school graduates attend college. Most Jewish graduates leave Morocco to attend school in either France, Canada or the United States. The Moroccan universities teach in Arabic and most Jewish students do not speak fluent Arabic (or at least enough to study) so they attend school in the United States. The students at our table were attending school in Montreal and one was hopeful to attend Georgetown.
After conversations at the day school, we moved on to the Jewish Museum. The museum is the only Jewish museum of Morocco and is part of an effort to preserve the very important Jewish community in the country.
Rafi, whose last name I’m working on, was one of our guides for the week, and has almost single handedly worked to preserve much of the Jewish community. He is a wealth of knowledge about all things Jewish in the country and is simply amazing in his passion.
Lunch was at the Jewish Community Center where we heard from Aïcha Ech Channa, winner of the 2009 Opus Prize. The Opus Prize “is a $1 million faith-based humanitarian award given annually to recognize unsung heroes of any faith tradition, anywhere in the world, solving today’s most persistent social problems.” Ms. Channa is founder and president of Association Solidarite Feminine services in Casablanca, Morocco, to help unmarried women with children gain the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure their own livelihoods. Ms. Channa’s emotional description of the change that one woman made for all unmarried mothers in Morocco was truly awe inspiring.
After lunch was a trip to the old age home of casablanca. The old age home, where Mrs. Toledano volunteers much of her time provides nursing home and housing care for elderly and disabled Jews of Morocco.
There we met Sarah.
Sarah was a beautiful older woman who had been living in the slums of Morocco before she received housing from the Jewish community. Her pride and joy was her turtle. And this was definitely a Jewish turtle:
Our last stop of the day was Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE: Organization for the Rescue of Children). This clinic houses the diabetes clinic that our group had funded for a year.
After some time to change in the hotel, we had a Moroccan feast with the with Casablanca Community.
