Moroccan festival follows Passover celebrations

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This article was published 08/04/2023 (1277 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At the end of Passover, as Ashkenazi Jews, or Jews of Central and Eastern European descent, begin putting away their kosher-for-Passover dishes and unwinding from the eight-day spring holiday, Jews of North African descent begin celebrating one more festival.

That festival is known as Mimouna.

“Mimouna is a post-Passover Moroccan tradition,” explains Rena Secter Elbaze, the engagement and education director at Winnipeg’s Congregation Shaarey Zedek. “It was created by Maimonides’ father, Rabbi Maimoun, as a way of celebrating Jewish-Arab relations.”

Maimonides was a renowned and revered Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar in the Middle Ages. His father, Rabbi Maimoun ben Joseph, was a writer, Torah commentator and judge.

“There was a beautiful co-operation in the way Mimouna used to take place in Morocco,” Secter Elbaze continues. “Because Jewish families did not have any chametz in their homes, the Arab neighbours would bring them over chametz food so that they could celebrate the end of Passover.”

Chametz refers to bread and other food products with leavening agents that Jews are forbidden to consume during the Passover holiday. In 2023, that holiday began on the evening of April 5.

“The Arab neighbours would bring them whatever they needed to celebrate,” adds Secter Elbaze, whose husband is from Morocco. “Then they would go from house to house and every family would serve the traditional foods.”

Those traditional foods typically included a fried bread dough called mufasa, dairy couscous served with buttermilk, a variety of preserved fruits and vegetables, and tea with mint.

Secter Elbaze is hoping to have some of those traditional dishes on hand when Winnipeg Jewish community members get together to celebrate Mimouna at the Asper Jewish Community Campus late in the evening of April 13, the last day of Passover. The event, which will also feature traditional Moroccan dancing, singing, clothing and henna, is being sponsored by eight local community agencies, including the Shaarey Zedek.

The get-together will mark just the third time Winnipeg Jewish organizations have put together a community-wide celebration for Mimouna. In the past, North African Jewish families that mark the holiday usually did so privately with smaller gatherings in their homes.

While the majority of Winnipeg’s approximately 13,000-strong Jewish community is of Ashkenazi origin, the city also has long been home to a smattering of Sephardic Jewish families, primarily from Morocco. Sephardic Jews are those who originated in the Iberian Peninsula. When Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, many landed in Morocco, joining and ultimately outnumbering the small Jewish community that had existed there for centuries.

Secter-Elbaze anticipates that many of Winnipeg’s Sephardic families will attend the April Mimouna event, where they will be joined by other curious members of the local Jewish community eager to learn more about Mimouna and Sephardic traditions. Those wishing to attend must register in advance through the Shaarey Zedek.

“We haven’t done this event for a very long time and are kind of in the experimental stage right now,” Secter Elbaze says. “But if this goes well, we would like to expand it and use it as an opportunity to reach out and build bridges with other communities as well.”

Considering the origins of the festival back in Morocco, and the key role Arab neighbours played in the celebration, it does seem Mimouna would be the ideal event for networking and building bridges.

swchisvin@gmail.com

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