ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Why did many Jews leave Morocco after 1956, and where did they go?
El Mehdi Boudra is a Muslim from Casablanca, where the majority of Moroccan Jews live. He became interested in the history and culture of his Jewish neighbors at an early age and in 2007 this led him to found the Mimouna Association, a Moroccan NGO that aims to advance Muslim-Jewish dialogue, and he has since held the position of its president.
Boudra is associated with and serves on the boards of many civic and educational organizations in Morocco and the United States such as the American Sephardi Federation and the Jewish Africa Conference. He is also a member of the Moroccan Jewish communities in the Americas research unit under the Moroccan Jewish Studies Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East program, visiting research scholar at Yeshiva University, and in 2011 he organized the first Holocaust conference in the Arab world.
In 2018, Boudra was among the Algemeiner Journal’s ‘J100’ list of the top one hundred individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life.
Boudra is currently a PhD candidate at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, and this year he was one of the recipients of the American Sephardi Federation’s prestigious Broome & Allen Fellowships.
In this program he is speaking with us about Jewish history in Morocco, and next week he will tell us about the Mimouna Association.
