Museum of Moroccan Judaism

The museum opened in 1997 in a building that had been a Jewish orphanage, and it is generally described as the only museum dedicated to Jewish history and culture anywhere in the Arab world. Morocco had the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world - something in the order of a quarter of a million people in the mid-twentieth century, present continuously for around two thousand years and reinforced by the expulsions from Iberia - and almost all of them left between the 1940s and 1970s, leaving a few thousand. The collection covers that: synagogue interiors reassembled room by room, Torah scrolls and silver, embroidered costume from different cities, jewellery, domestic objects, photographs, and material on the regional differences between communities. It is modest in scale and unhurried, run with care, and it exists because the state and the community both wanted it to.

What you actually see

• The only such museum in the Arab world - opened in 1997 in a former orphanage.
• Reassembled synagogue rooms - interiors rebuilt inside the museum.
• Regional costume and silver - the differences between city and mountain communities.
• A community that left - a quarter of a million people reduced to a few thousand.

When to go

October to April. An hour or two. Closed Saturdays and Jewish holidays.

Honest expectations

It is in a suburb and needs a taxi. Closed on Saturdays and holidays. It is small and the display is modest. Entry is charged and photography is restricted.

Nearby

Central Casablanca is north-east; the Habous quarter is north.