Moroccan Jews are Maghrebi Jews, who live or lived in the area of North Africa now known as Morocco. Jews first migrated to this area after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and a second wave migrated from the Iberian peninsula in the period immediately preceding and following the 1492 Alhambra Decree, when the Jews were expelled from kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.
At its peak in the 1940s, Morocco's Jewish population exceeded 250,000. Today, approximately 5,000 Jews remain in Morocco, while in Israel they constitute the second-largest Jewish community, after the Russian Jews. Moroccan Jews and their descendants can now be found primarily in Israel, France, Canada, Spain, and Venezuela.
Read more about Moroccan Jews: History, Communities Today, Culture, Religious Observance, Notable Moroccan Jews
Famous quotes containing the word jews:
“No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)