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AIU School, Oufrane (Ifrane Anti-Atlas), Morocco

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The Setting of the Site:

In 1952, the AIU’s monthly publication Les Cahiers de l’Alliance featured an article titled “Les Juifs d’Oufrane: la plus vieille communauté du Maroc” (The Jews of Oufrane: the oldest community in Morocco). Beginning with the journey to arrive in this ancient community in the Guelmim-Assif Noun region, the AIU representatives described the drive over 150 km (about 93 miles) of sand and rock, ending in a series of picturesque oases. Contrasting with the drive through miles of undisturbed desert, the visitors arrived in Oufrane to see date palms rustling with birds and hear bird songs and the sound of running water. The mellah, or Jewish quarter, sat at the final and highest of the oases. In 1952, 147 people lived in the community in twenty communal houses made of rammed earth; each dwelling housed two to six families. The visitors noted that the mellah was distinctly Jewish, despite the bustling, multicultural neighboring community. Regardless of the mellah’s apparent cultural isolation, the Jewish and neighboring Muslim and Amazigh communities frequently interacted. According to an interview that aired on Moroccan TV in 2014 with a Muslim resident of Ifrane, during the period of the AIU, Jewish women in the mellah would hand-knit clothes for both Muslims and Jews, Muslim children would pay visits to the homes of Jewish community members who would hand them sweets, Muslim neighbors would greet Jewish residents with “salam alaykum,” and Jews would respond in kind with “shalom aleichem,” both greetings mutually understandable to mean “peace be upon you.” The eventual AIU school was even open to children in the Muslim community.

The local Jews claimed that their newly constructed synagogue sat on the land of a synagogue dating to the time of the First Temple. The town center was free of any shops and confined to a small street. If a community member wanted to visit any shops, they needed to walk one kilometer (around 0.6 miles) to the souk, a marketplace outside of the mellah. Despite the community’s lack of significant external or modern influence, the article notes that the rhythm of life mirrored that of many others around the country. 

Regarding the diminished size and seemingly typical state of the community among other small, southern communities, the local Rabbi Albert Ifergane (Image 6) reminded the AIU representatives, 

One should not judge Oufrane by its current state. Our community is the oldest in Morocco; according to our scholars and saints, Oufrane is the second Jerusalem of the Jewish world. But the number of hardships that we have known, more than the rest of the Jews in Morocco.² 

 The idea of “noble” Jewish origins and a nostalgia for the Holy Land echo throughout Southern communities’ lore. The Jewish community referred to the town as Oufrane, which they once believed to be an ancient Jewish kingdom dating back to the Twelve Tribes of Israel, while Ifrane Anti-Atlas is the accepted geographical city name. The AIU uses both Oufrane and Ifrane interchangeably to refer to this community. Both scholars and locals debate the origin of the name Oufrane–perhaps coming from the Tribe of Ephraim or from the Amazigh word “ifri,” meaning cave or cavern. The significance of the name Ephraim refers to the community’s foundational belief in a legendary migration from the Holy Landy across the African continent led by the Tribe of Ephraim through the Arabian Peninsula, Ethiopia, and the series of oases in Southern Morocco, ending in Oufrane.

The most notable feature of the community is the Cemetery; using cemetery data, one can begin to reconstruct the history of this longstanding community. Rising three hundred meters above the mellah, the cemetery covered 1,500 square meters without walls or any enclosing structure. Small stones marked tomb locations haphazardly, and the AIU representatives noted that most of the cemetery appeared to be in a state of disrepair or oblivion. The most notable areas of the cemetery include the burial sites of two Rabbis, Rabbi Yosef ben Mimum (d. ~5 BCE)³ and Rabbi Heli Haggalili (d. ~1 ^CE)4, and a mass grave of fifty Jewish men and women who were burned alive in the 18th century. A story of Moroccan Jewish piety, fifty men and women were captured in a neighboring souk by the Amazigh chief Bouhalas (Bou Halatza) in 1787 and commanded to abandon their beliefs and accept Allah as the one true God/convert to Islam in exchange for a promise of riches. All refused and were thus condemned to be burned alive. Along with their rabbi, Ichuda ben Naphtali, all the merchants were killed in a fire in the center of Oufrane before having their ashes collected and moved to a mass grave in the cemetery with the inscription “Méarat Hamahpela”. The martyrs’ grave serves as a pilgrimage site on the tenth day of the Jewish month of Elul. 

Following years of French control focused on Northern Morocco and the major city centers, France’s military pushed for the “pacification” of Southern Morocco by the early 1930s. These regions of the country were traditionally outside government control and managed by local tribal leaders. French military control reached Oufrane’s region in 1929, ushering in a potential sense of peace and security for Jewish inhabitants who had previously been reliant upon tribal protection when traveling the countryside.⁵ The establishment of French control broadened access to information about the world beyond these remote communities, leading to greater recognition of opportunities throughout Morocco and elsewhere. Like many other mellahs in the South, increased attraction and accessibility of larger cities lured many community members away. 

The draw of internal migration to large cities combined with the draw of emigrating to Israel caused a steady decline in this small community’s population. Two community members had already left for Israel in 1952.

The AIU visitors in 1952 noted that Oufrane’s mellah suffered numerous destructions, likely earthquakes, over the centuries, with the most recent in 1903. Natural disasters would have disproportionately impacted structures constructed with traditional materials like rammed earth or adobe, as they lack a reinforcing internal structure.⁶ Despite Morocco’s seismic activity concentrated in the North due to its proximity to a tectonic plate boundary, destructive earthquakes in the Atlas Mountain belt were also common.⁷ Any damage that the mellah sustained would have been repaired by the community, as seen by the visitors in the newly reconstructed synagogue and houses. This cycle of destruction and reconstruction, along with the community’s vigilant dedication to its maintenance, “explained that the past has left practically no trace” on the present.⁸ 

 As of 2021, the mellah is considered to be abandoned, and the synagogue has received restoration work through the Foundation for Jewish-Moroccan Cultural Heritage.⁹

Alliance Israélite Universelle Historical Background : 

Founded in 1860 in Paris, the Alliance Israéltie Universelle served as a leading international Jewish organization looking to imbue Jews in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa with values of the French Revolution –la liberté et l’égalité.¹⁰ As expressed in their manifesto, Appel de 1860, the organization’s aims were: "to work everywhere for the emancipation and moral progress of the Jews; to offer effective assistance to Jews suffering from antisemitism; and to encourage all publications calculated to promote this aim." ¹¹ 

AIU’s involvement in the education of Moroccan Jewry stemmed from France’s larger civilizing mission (mission civilisatrice). Jonathan Wyrtzen, historian of Colonial Morocco, discussing the negotiation of Morocco’s “Jewish question,” states that the French invasion in Algeria in the 1830s sparked increased interest in the “emancipation” and “moral progress” of Jews living in North Africa.¹² The first AIU schools opened in the 1870s and 1880s in major cities across Morocco. In the early twentieth century, following the establishment of France’s protectorate in 1912, Moroccan Jewry faced a tenuous legal situation. While the majority of Algeria’s Jewish population had been granted French citizenship under the Crémieux Decree in 1870, Morocco’s Jewish inhabitants had not received similar legal protections. Rejecting pleas from AIU’s president Narcisse Leven, the French Resident-General of Morocco Hubert Lyautey denied placing Moroccan Jews under the jurisdiction of French courts. In 1918, following years of back-and-forth restructuring by the French colonial administration, Sultan Moulay Yusef ben Hassan (r. 1912-1927) signed a reform written by the French colonial government placing Jewish communities under the joint jurisdiction of rabbinic and Moroccan courts.^{13 14 15}  

Despite disagreements with the French over Moroccan Jews’ legal status, the AIU network spread significantly under the protectorate with the encouragement of the French administration. In 1924, the AIU made several concessions to the French; as part of these concessions, the French administration would occupy a supervisory role in the AIU. This guaranteed the continuation of AIU activities in Morocco and solidified its collaboration with the colonial regime.¹⁶ The AIU remained largely reliant on French subsidies between the end of World War I and the conclusion of World War II.¹⁷ After 1945, The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) began covering AIU expenses, reducing AIU reliance on French government funding.¹⁸

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Morocco experienced a mass exodus of Jews to Israel, North America, and France. Undeterred, the AIU continued to open new schools through the 1950s, although dwindling population numbers in the hinterland led to a decreased need for AIU presence. After gaining independence from France in 1956, migration paused following new laws banning Jewish emigration to Israel.^{19 20}  In the 1960s, newly independent Morocco integrated any remaining AIU schools into its national school system while allowing the AIU to continue overseeing the schools under the name, “Ittihad-Maroc.”²¹ After the lifting of the emigration ban in 1963, over 100,000 Moroccan Jews made Aliyah to Israel.²²

The Jewish population in Morocco has significantly declined from 265,000 in 1948 to 2,100 in 2019.²³ 

Oufrane and the AIU’s Southern Moroccan Expansion : 

The schools of southern Morocco were opened as an initiative by Elias Harrus, Director of the AIU’s École Professionnelle Agricole, the Professional Agricultural School in Marrakesh, and representative of AIU activities in the Atlas Mountains and southern Morocco.²⁴ The set of schools in Southern Morocco aimed to combat high illiteracy rates in rural populations. 

Elias Harrus, born in Beni Mellal in the Middle Atlas Mountains, attended AIU primary and secondary school in Morocco before studying at the AIU training school, École Normale Israélite Orientale, in Paris to train as a teacher. A leading figure in the Southern expansion, Harrus’ upbringing and prior experience as director of the AIU school in Demnat, a town 64 miles east of Marrakesh, afforded him with a personal understanding of local religious sensibilities and customs.²⁵ Before opening any school, Harrus worked closely with the community, local rabbis, and elders to determine their needs. To conduct enrollment for the schools, Harrus would take a census of all of the children in the community before organizing pupils by age and sex, potentially leaving open seats to accommodate those in neighboring settlements.²⁶ Most school buildings in the South were rented from community members to keep operating costs low. 

The school in Oufrane opened in 1952, serving a community of 150 people.²⁷ Other small regional schools that opened in the same year include Oulad Berhil, Aït Taguella, and Illigh. Each of these communities had a population of around 200 inhabitants; thus, opening individual schools in each city could address the entire community's primary educational needs. If students desired to continue their education, they moved to larger cities–Casablanca or Marrakesh. Oufrane was the last of the schools to open in 1952, bringing the total number of AIU schools in Morocco to 78 out of 128 worldwide–representing the vast majority of the AIU school network.²⁸ The exact number of students is unknown at the opening, but after a brief closure for the 1957 academic year, the school had 23 students upon re-opening in 1958.²⁹

 In 1955, the school in Oufrane was considered for an AIU promotional film documenting the breadth of the AIU school system and the founding of a school in the Atlas Mountains. This film appears to act as a synecdoche for the entire southern school project–using an exemplary, fictitious school in the rural mountains to represent the process of the entire AIU southern expansion and the goals of bringing education to the most rural areas of the country. However, upon the filmmaker’s scouting visit to Oufrane, the school was eventually passed over due to the village’s composition during his visit. The filmmaker notes that the majority of adults would leave the mellah during the day to work in the neighboring town; because of this, he only saw elderly community members and children, which would make for an incomplete backdrop.³⁰

The monthly press bulletin, Les Cahiers de l’Alliance, reported on the progress of AIU missions worldwide. In 1953, alongside updates on each school one year after opening, the AIU briefly explained its decision to push for establishing schools in low-density, rural Southern Moroccan communities. The Cahiers emphasized that access to secular education was extremely limited in the region, noting that boys sometimes received a modest religious education and girls received no education at all. The AIU highlighted the importance of Amazigh culture in these southern and mountainous regions. Jews lived among Amazigh and Arab tribal communities, often constituting up to one-third, or sometimes even the majority, of the population.³¹ In 1948, approximately twenty thousand Jews lived in the Atlas Mountains region.³² The AIU emphasized its desire to meet the needs of these small, dispersed Jewish communities, which usually constituted three hundred individuals or less. 

The Cahiers suggest that the push for formal education in Southern Morocco would eventually cause schooling rates (the percentage of the youth population receiving an elementary education) to surpass those of larger communities with established AIU involvement.³³ The educational system designed across the South would put students on a six-year track, ending with a French primary school certificate.³⁴ Harrus clearly addressed the entire community’s needs when developing these schools–by ensuring that all children were accounted for in the census or by making room for additional students from neighboring towns without a school. To illustrate how the AIU would make schools meet community needs, in Akka, the number of students exceeded the capacity of the five-room house-turned-school, so Harrus set up the courtyard as an additional classroom with a table, blackboard, and twelve benches.³⁵ 

If this Southern initiative proved successful, a secondary goal was to continue this expansion into the Atlas Mountains northeast of Marrakesh, emphasizing to readers that there remained “around ten thousand souls” and around fifty inaccessible douars, or tent villages.³⁶ However, in the same post-war period, the AIU expressed concern for the longevity of the southern school project because of migration from rural towns to cities. This concern did not deter Harrus’s southern project, despite limited financial support from these impoverished communities and mass migration picking up as many of these schools opened. The AIU framed the continued schooling effort for students who remained in Southern Morocco in the 1950s as an essential step in preparing for emigration. 

In 1953 and 1960, the AIU remarked that gender was a significant barrier to accessing education in the region. The February 1, 1960 publication of Les Cahiers de l’Alliance described the AIU’s role in ameliorating the social situation of young girls in the South through access to education: 

The girl did not count in Moroccan Jewish society; one would rid oneself of girls at the age of ten to twelve, and even eight, by marrying her off before she could give her opinion. She did not even receive the meager religious education reserved for young boys. Once married, the girl remained cloistered at home and, in reality, became the privileged servant of her husband. The action of the Alliance remains instrumental in the fight against early marriage. First, attending school gave the girls meaning and structure to their lives, then the education conferred a certain sense of dignity upon them. The Alliance used its moral influence with the Rabbis to ensure they did not bless such marriages. They even intervened with the administration of the protectorate. Now, the number of early marriages is almost insignificant.³⁷ 

Mirroring French revolutionary ideals, the AIU perceived early girls' education as an essential step in both female emancipation and the formation of capable mothers ready to raise the next generation.³⁸ Girls' education often involved instruction on cooking, cleaning, making clothes, and keeping house with a focus on “moral education and manual tasks.”³⁹ Despite the gender challenge expressed by the AIU, the publication confirmed their previous claim in 1953 that the schooling rate in many of these smaller southern communities indeed surpassed large community rates.⁴⁰  

It is believed that the school in Oufrane may have closed in 1958 following the entire community’s emigration to Israel.⁴¹ If the school did not close in 1958, it would have closed alongside most southern hinterland schools in the early 1960s due to depopulation. At the peak of AIU activity in 1956, eighty-three schools with 33,100 pupils were operating in Morocco–more than the rest of the AIU network combined.⁴² In 1968, the number of remaining Ittihad-Maroc schools was 31, with 8,054 students.⁴³ 

Archival Materials :

Additional photos of the school and students can be found on Visiting Jewish Morocco’s website and the AIU’s online archive at the following links: 

School building in ruins

Ils seront des hommes, AIU promotional film featuring a teacher from Oufrane

Editions of the Cahiers de l’Alliance specifically discussing Oufrane, including the article referenced, can also be found on the AIU’s online archive at the links below: 

 May 1, 1952 - “Les Juifs d’Oufrane: La plus vieille communauté du Maroc”

June 1, 1953

November 1, 1958

February 1, 1960

Episodes discussing Oufrane / Ifrane Anti-Atlas from the Moroccan travel channel Amouddou TV:

Covering contemporary Ifrane Anti-Atlas, including the naming of the city

Touring the abandoned mellah

Contributions by Julia Burgin (jeburgin@utexas.edu) 

Oufrane, Morocco

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