המטבח היהודי של צפון אפריקה 5 רעיונות פשוטים The Jewish Cuisine of North Africa 5 Easy Ideas

המטבח היהודי של צפון אפריקה 5 רעיונות פשוטים

The Jewish Cuisine of North Africa 5 Easy Ideas

Leftover Chicken Recipes: Moroccan Spinach Pie & 5 More Easy Ideas

here are some things that are a constant on our holiday table, and chicken soup is a given. Too hot outside for soup? My gang doesn’t care. They won’t be satisfied until I ladle shimmering broth over a mound of skinny noodles and carrot coins.

But what to do with all of that leftover moist chicken packed away in a container in the back of your refrigerator?

There are plenty of ways to use these flavorful chunks. You’ve simmered slow and low to keep them moist, so don’t let them go to waste! I’m thinking way beyond chicken salad with mayo and celery here.

Most of these recipes are super simple. A few require a bit more effort. If you want to wow your gang with a Moroccan-inspired chicken pie loaded with spinach and flavors from the Middle East, you’ll find that recipe at the end of the post. It requires phyllo dough, but nobody will guess how easy it was to whip up. Plus, it will fill your home with a whole new array of scents beyond brisket and kugel.

First, these ideas:

Fried Rice :

With this easy fried rice recipe, 

you’ll convert your Jewish leftovers into a Chinese main dish in no time. Want to make it super simple? Make brown rice in advance, purchase pre-packaged chopped greens and use frozen peas and corn as suggested here.

Asian Cabbage and Spinach Salad

Lime juice, fresh ginger, peanuts, sesame seeds and soy sauce dress this simple Asian cabbage and spinach salad. Toss leftover chicken into the mix and you’ll have a complete meal that doesn’t resemble chicken soup in the least. Note: this recipe calls for fish sauce.

Chicken Salad with Grains and Pistachios :

This one is not even a recipe, really. It’s just a suggestion to toss leftover chicken over your favorite grain. I like farro, here, as it’s hefty enough to balance chunks of chicken. Before a holiday, I buy a few different fresh herbs to have on hand, even if I’m not sure what I’ll be using them for. Toss the chicken with your favorite homemade vinaigrette, fresh herbs, toasted pistachios or any nut of choice and throw over a platter of cooked grain.

Curry Chicken Soup :

Who said that chicken soup chicken can’t be used in another soup recipe? Use your leftover broth for this one or turn to a good organic brand if your family has already finished every last drop of Jewish penicillin. This Asian-inspired soup is creamy with dairy free coconut milk and loaded with personality thanks to curry powder, onions and garlic and plenty of chopped cabbage. Want it super easy? Use frozen, shelled edamame and pre-sliced cabbage. Toss in cooked chicken just long enough to heat it up.

Sloppy Joes : 

Your kids will love this one. Cider vinegar, tomato sauce, brown sugar and quick reheating transforms leftover chicken into easy Sloppy Chicken Joes. Mound it on a bun and serve with a simple green salad.

Moroccan Inspired Chicken and Spinach Pie :

Savory meat or chicken-filled pies have a long tradition in Moroccan and Middle Eastern cooking. They are often seasoned with chopped parsley, lots of long-simmered onions, cumin and garlic. Phyllo dough is used to enclose fillings in long “cigars” as appetizers or in triangles as neatly folded fried pockets.

For this recipe, I’m simplifying the process by avoiding frying. My good friend and cooking partner, Melissa Roberts, helped me to overcome my fear of phyllo and the quantity of margarine needed to brush each delicate sheet.

Her trick is to use a combination of margarine and olive oil, keep the sheets covered in the plastic wrap they are packaged in, and don’t fret if they tear. By crumpling a few sheets on the top of the pie before baking, nobody will know if they aren’t perfect rectangles.The crumbling adds pretty texture to this fragrant, savory pie, too.

You’ll find Ras el Hanout spice blend in this recipe. It is a Moroccan-inspired blend that generally includes coriander, turmeric, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. It is available in most grocery stores.

Ingredients

2 Tbsp pine nuts, lightly toasted in dry pan
5 Tbsp olive oil, divided
2 medium onions, finely chopped
½ teaspoon salt or more to taste
½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp Ras el Hanout spice blend
2 cups cooked chicken, light and dark meat combined, chopped
3 Tbsp silan (date honey)
3 tsp lemon juice
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, cooked for 5 minutes, thawed and very well drained.
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 Tbsp unsalted margarine, melted
12 sheets phyllo dough, thawed
⅛ tsp cinnamon (optional)
Equipment
one 9-inch deep dish pie plate (1.5 inches deep)
pastry brush, large mixing bowl
large non-stick pan

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a dry, large, non-stick pan, lightly toast pine nuts until golden and set aside.

Heat 2 Tbsp oil in same pan. Add chopped onions, salt and pepper to pan and cook until onions are golden, about 10 minutes.

Add chopped garlic and Ras el Hanout. Cook 3-4 minutes, but don’t brown the garlic.

Add chicken to pan and stir.

Add silan and lemon juice, stir and taste. It should be pleasantly sweet with a tart tinge. Adjust to taste.

Remove pan from heat and cool the mixture 10-15 minutes on the counter.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the chicken mixture and spinach. Add eggs and pine nuts and combine.

In a small bowl, mix remaining 3 Tbsp of olive oil with melted margarine.

Prepare the pie plate by brushing bottom and sides with olive oil/margarine mixture.

Line pie plate with 8 sheets of phyllo dough, first brushing each sheet with oil/margarine mixture. Stack them in the pan in an overlapping circle and allow edges to hang over the pan.

Spoon chicken/spinach mixture onto layered phyllo dough and fold edges of phyllo over the filling. (It will not cover the filling.)

Brush remaining 4 sheets of dough with oil/margarine mix and crumple each one. Place onto exposed area of filling. Dab crumbled dough and edges with any remaining oil/margarine.

Sprinkle with powdered cinnamon.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until top is golden.

Allow pie to cool for 10-15 minutes before slicing.

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The Little-known Cuisine of Spain's Moroccan Jews

המטבח הלא מוכר של יהודי מרוקו הספרדים

Jews of Spanish descent from northern Morocco still adhere to their gastronomic heritage, faithfully preserving a tremendous affection for sweets – including dishes most think of as savory.

the couscous into a ceramic bowl festooned with an ornamental pattern of castle turrets and flowers. Her husband’s family brought this nearly 200-year-old antique bowl with them when they made aliyah in the early 1960s from Tetouan, Morocco. Around the white grains she arranges, like a string of pearls, chickpeas that have been cooked in a delicate chicken stock without herbs and spices. Then comes the crowning glory – pumpkin, onions, dried plums and almonds that were coated in sugar to absorb their liquid overnight and then cooked in their own syrup. The result, a spectacular feast for the eye and the palate, recalls grand dishes from medieval Spanish and Arabic cookbooks. The white mountain is topped with a wreath of caramelized onions, darkened plums, sugared almonds and a pale red pumpkin marmalade that almost seems to sparkle.

The couscous of the Jews of Tetouan, the main Jewish community in Spanish Morocco, is called couscous con hambriya – from the Arabic hamra (“red”). The Jews of northern Morocco, the area that from 1912 was under Spanish control, are not the only ones who make sweet couscous. Other versions can be found in the cuisines of communities from southern Morocco. But for the Jews of northern Morocco – who came from Tetouan, Tangier, Chaouen and other cities in the area next to the Strait of Gibraltar – couscous is always a sweet dish. “When I came to Israel and saw people were eating savory couscous I almost fainted,”

The name of the dish derives from Haketia, an ancient and nearly extinct language. “Haketia is a special regional Spanish-Jewish dialect that’s a mixture of Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic,” says Dr. Nina Pinto-Abecasis, Rachel’s daughter, who has dedicated herself to preserving the language and researching the daily life of the Jewish communities from Spanish Morocco. “No one can say for sure when this language – which is only spoken and not written – was the main language of the Jews of northern Morocco, but scholars believe it first came into being in Spain prior to the expulsion in the 15th century, and developed further in northern Morocco upon the encounter between the Jews who had lived there from ancient times, the Jews who arrived after the expulsion, and the local population.

“In my parents’ generation, it was considered a low-class language that wasn’t respectable to speak. It can still be found in slang expressions and in certain casual terms for people and things, and I’m trying to trace its remnants and the places where it is still in use. One place where it still takes hold is in culinary terms, in the names of dishes that are still popular among people of the community.”

A dessert paradise

                         

In Israel, Jewish-Spanish-Moroccan culture is not very well known. The immigrants from the Jewish communities of Spanish Morocco were automatically labeled as an inseparable part of the Moroccan aliyah in general, even though back in Morocco they adhered to the Spanish culture and adopted a different lifestyle from the type that was characteristic of the culture of Jews in southern Morocco. In Morocco, the northern Jews were considered insular, and even today – whether because of old customs or the lack of cultural understanding they experienced in Israel – first and second-generation members of the community mostly prefer to stick to their own circle.

“To this day,” says Nina, “all my parents’ friends are people who came from Tetouan and surrounding cities. They call their WhatsApp group “The Tetouans” and the common perception about Jews from this community is that they are very modest and not extroverted at all. For example, when it comes to eating, the Jews from the north adopted the Spanish custom of going out to eat with friends and didn’t have a strong custom of hosting people at home, as is the norm in the south. Southern Moroccan Jews have a folk saying that basically says the northern Jews don’t show a guest proper hospitality at a meal, they just put a candy in his mouth to sweeten the taste. This is emblematic of the difference in hospitality customs, but it also says something about Tetouan cuisine, in which sweetness is very dominant.”

“We suffer from a split personality between Morocco and Spain,” announces Rachel as she continues cooking. After the sweet couscous, which was originally reserved for holidays and special occasions, she makes naranja, a wonderful salad of celery and oranges; ensalada cocha, a cooked pepper salad; and pescado en charmila, a marinated fish very similar to the more familiar southern Moroccan version. Then it’s time for the huevos al nido (“Eggs in the Nest”). All the names are poetic and picturesque, and set the mouth watering even before the finished version appears on the plate.

Speaking of modesty, the lovely, good-natured cook who is hosting us laughingly commands the photographer: “Absolutely no pictures of me!” Rachel goes on to explain: “Every morning I put on makeup, get dressed nicely and feel like the elegant young lady that I am, and then I look in the mirror and can’t comprehend who this older woman is that I see. My brother lives in Venezuela. There’s a large community there that still preserves the Tetouan language and culture, and when we talk on Skype I only let him see the tip of my earlobe, which he knows better than my face at this point. I don’t want my picture taken.”

She shows us how to make pastelitos de patata, meat patties that are coated with mashed potatoes and then fried. We talk about gazpacho and the traditional paella, both common dishes in Tetouan Jewish cuisine. And then at last we arrive at this cuisine’s vast array of desserts.

“This paradise is hard to describe,” says Pinto, recalling the desserts of her childhood. When her family left Tetouan, the city had a population of 80,000 (8,000 Jews, 20,000 Christians and the rest Muslims). At the Alliance school they attended (the first Alliance school opened in Tetouan in 1860), she and her classmates learned to speak Spanish, French, Arabic, Hebrew and English – and she is still fluent in all of them. “All the cakes and desserts were based either on lemon crème, almond crème or vanilla crème. They weren’t heavy desserts based on butter and cream, but light and delicate desserts. Every Saturday night we would go to one of the pastry shops in town and bring home the most incredible desserts.”

The famous Spanish flan is part of the community’s dessert heritage, as is the tocino del cielo (literally “heavenly bacon” – named for the splendid amber-orange color of the custard). This sweet flan, based on egg yolks and sugar syrup (in the traditional Spanish flan, milk is used), originated in the monasteries of the wine-producing regions of southern Spain as a solution for what to do with the egg yolks (the whites were used to filter the wine). We are also served a coconut flan; merenguitos – merengue clouds; and a wonderful crescent-shaped almond tart that recalls the famous almond cake of Spain’s Galician Jews (not necessarily from the southern Jewish-Moroccan heritage). “The cuisine, like the language, is a mixture of worlds. It would be wonderful if the whole world spoke Haketia,” says Nina, who taught a course last year at Bar-Ilan University’s Salti Center for Ladino Studies and dreams of writing a cookbook about Tetouan cuisine. “It’s a blend of cultures – Jewish, Christian, Arab, Muslim, European and North African – that merge to create a unique harmony.”

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The Jewish Cuisine of North Africa המטבח היהודי של צפון אפריקה

Shabbat Recipe: Dafina, Slow-Cooked Moroccan Stew

Dafina is an iconic slow-cooked Moroccan stew served especially on Shabbat. It has a long history and no two are the same. For centuries, Jewish women around the world have prepared some kind of similar dish each week, usually prepping the ingredients Friday to be served for lunch the next day. Although recent generations have immigrated around the globe to different countries, the tradition of this classic dish has prevailed and is close to each family’s heart.

There is no right or wrong way to make this, and recipes vary from city to city and from family to family. Every Jewish house is distinguished by their dafina and what is included in it. There is even a legend that noble rabbis can sense the peace and holiness of the house from the smell of the dafina. The most commonly found ingredients are potatoes, sweet potato, chicken, meat, rice, barley, chickpeas and of course, a famous golden brown egg. A lot of recipes call for each item to be placed in individual cooking bags. Everyone adds their personal touch and favorite spices to it; some of the most commonly used spices include paprika, cinnamon, cumin, honey, dates and garlic. I even have a family member who throws in a whole peach, pit and all.

Like the mothers and grandmothers who come before me, I have adapted the recipe handed down to me to my own family’s taste and cook the rice separately. It may not look like much but there are few things that warm the soul quite like a hot dafina on a cold winter day, and I invite you to add your own family’s take on this beloved dish.

Moroccan Dafina

Ingredients

2 lbs flanken meat, on the bone (flanken is short ribs cut across the bones)
4 pieces of chicken, on the bone
12 large red potatoes, peeled
2 cans of chickpeas, rinsed
4 eggs (in the shell)
4 pitted dates
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp of honey
1 tsp cinnamon
3-4 garlic cloves
2 Tbsp of olive oil

Directions

Arrange the chickpeas on the bottom of the crockpot. Add the potatoes around the interior walls of the crockpot. Place the meat, chicken, eggs and pitted dates in the center.

Add all of the spices and mix very well but gently as to keep each ingredient in it’s place. Pour in enough water to cover everything. The top of the water should hit around 1/4″ above the ingredients.

Set the crockpot at a medium temperature and set to cook for 24 hours. Sephardic tradition is to not add any water, even boiling, to the crockpot on Shabbat.

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Historic Jewish quarter of Marrakesh sees revival

הרובע היהודי ההיסטורי של מרקש רואה תחייה

MARRAKESH, Morocco (AFP) — The once teeming Jewish area of Moroccan tourist gem Marrakesh is seeing its fortunes revived as visitors including many from Israel flock to experience its unique culture and history.

“You’re now entering the last synagogue in the mellah,” the walled Jewish quarter in the heart of the ochre city, Isaac Ohayon says as he enthusiastically guides tourists in the courtyard of the Lazama synagogue.

“Many visitors come from Israel — you wouldn’t believe the demand!” adds the jovial 63-year-old hardware shop owner.

This place of worship and study was built originally in 1492 during the Inquisition when the Jews were driven out of Spain.

Known as the “synagogue of the exiles,” it hosted generations of young Berbers who converted to Judaism and were sent from villages in the region to learn the Torah, before finally being deserted in the 1960s.

In classrooms now transformed into a museum, fading color photographs tell the story of a now-dispersed community, with many having left for France, North America and especially Israel.

The caption on one sepia shot of an old man sitting by a pile of trunks says it all, “They are travelling towards a dream they have prayed for for more than 2,000 years.”

Rebecca is now in her fifties and grew up in Paris, but she has “great nostalgia” for Morocco and returns as often as she can.

“The Jewish Agency began recruiting the poorest in the 1950s and then everyone left after independence (from France), at the time of King Hassan II’s policy of Arabization,” she says.

The Jewish Agency of Israel is a semi-official organization that oversees immigration to the country.

‘The last young Jew’

Before the wave of departures, Morocco hosted North Africa’s largest Jewish community, estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000 people.

There are fewer than 3,000 left, according to unofficial figures.

Marrakesh at the foot of the Atlas mountain range was home to more than 50,000 Jews, according to a 1947 census.

Now, 70 years later, around 100 are thought to remain, many of them extremely elderly.

Jewish-owned homes inside the mellah were sold to Muslim families of modest means, and the walls of the district were eroded by time.

“Sometimes we can’t get even 10 men together for prayers,” says one woman worshiper at the old synagogue, preferring to remain anonymous.

But at celebrations marking the end of the festival of Sukkot, which commemorates the Jewish journey through the Sinai after their exodus from Egypt, and the Simchat Torah holiday, the place is buzzing with song, dance and traditional dishes.

The worshiper says she has “never seen so many people” there.

Jacob Assayag, 26, proudly calls himself “the last young Jew in Marrakesh.”

“Since the quarter was restored, there have been more and more tourists,” says the restaurateur and singer.

A restoration project begun just over two years ago has already seen €17.5 million ($20.5 million) spent.

Ferblantiers Square, a large pedestrian area near the spice souk lined with benches and palm trees where tourist buses gather, also benefited from the revamp.

Twenty years ago, the quarter was renamed “Salaam (‘peace’ in Arabic),” but this year saw its original “El Mellah” name restored on the orders of King Mohamed VI “to preserve its historic memory” and develop tourism.

A sensitive topic

The streets with their ochre facades once more bear their names on plaques in Hebrew — the synagogue, for example, is on Talmud Torah Street.

There is much to see inside the mellah.

Camera-toting tourists snap vigorously at shopfronts and the carved wooden doorways of houses in the quarter.

“Many people come every year from Israel for the (Jewish) holidays, and this year has seen even more, maybe 50,000,” says Israeli tourist guide David, leading a group from Tel Aviv via Malaga in Spain on an eight-day trip.

Jacob Assayag, 26, proudly calls himself “the last young Jew in Marrakesh.”

“Since the quarter was restored, there have been more and more tourists,” says the restaurateur and singer.

A restoration project begun just over two years ago has already seen €17.5 million ($20.5 million) spent.

Ferblantiers Square, a large pedestrian area near the spice souk lined with benches and palm trees where tourist buses gather, also benefited from the revamp.

Twenty years ago, the quarter was renamed “Salaam (‘peace’ in Arabic),” but this year saw its original “El Mellah” name restored on the orders of King Mohamed VI “to preserve its historic memory” and develop tourism.

A sensitive topic

The streets with their ochre facades once more bear their names on plaques in Hebrew — the synagogue, for example, is on Talmud Torah Street.

There is much to see inside the mellah.

Camera-toting tourists snap vigorously at shopfronts and the carved wooden doorways of houses in the quarter.

“Many people come every year from Israel for the (Jewish) holidays, and this year has seen even more, maybe 50,000,” says Israeli tourist guide David, leading a group from Tel Aviv via Malaga in Spain on an eight-day trip.

“I feel at home in Morocco because I was born here,” adds the 56-year-old from the coastal city of Ashdod.

His parents left Marrakesh in the 1960s, when David was just four years old, “because they were Zionists.”

Ohayon says visitors from the Jewish state are often bowled over by Marrakesh.

“Moroccan Jews can’t forget their homeland and Israelis who come here for the first time find the spirit of tolerance here almost unbelievable when they themselves live under constant tension,” he says.

Officially, Morocco has neither diplomatic nor economic ties with Israel, as this is a sensitive topic. Just two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state.

But in reality, there are few obstacles to both business and tourism.

Moroccan media reports say commercial exchanges between the two countries this year have amounted to more than four million dollars a month.

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THE JEWISH CEMETERY בית הקברות היהוד

Located in the southeast of the medina, the Jewish cemetery is a mystical place at the edge of the mellah. Under the right lighting conditions, its surreal atmosphere clearly contrasts the rest of Marrakech.

The Jewish cemetery is located at the border of the mellah in the southeastern medina. The cemetery and the Synagogue are important evidence how Jewish life manifested itself in Marrakech. Visitors enter the surprisingly vast area through a wide metal gate. Hundreds of graves of adults and children are spread across the cemetery. But first, you are welcomed by the cemetery guard, who pays close attention that male visitors are covering their heads. If you’re not carrying around a hat or baseball cap, the guard will provide you with a kippah.

Taste the characteristic surreal atmosphere of the jewish cementery

Only then are you allowed to enter the actual cemetery and, if interested, you can get a tour by the cemetery guard across the area that seems a little savaged and untended at a first glance. But it is through these traces of transience that the surreal, slightly gloomy but still not depressing atmosphere of the place is created.

Today there are only about 120 Moroccan Jews living in Marrakech. Jewish communal life is not as vital as it once used to be and has to struggle with a considerable loss of its members. In addition to that, the integration of European Jews, who nowadays make up the majority of Jews living in Marrakech, has been slow – it is supposed that both communities are not very well connected with one another. But at least here on the cemetery the coexistence seems to be peaceful and a variety of traditions and rites of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are performed side by side.

Unlike most other attractions, the Jewish cemetery is not very crowded by tourists. So depending on the time of day and cloudiness, you can experience the characteristic surreal atmosphere of this place without being disturbed. The light is most impressive in the late afternoon, under a slightly overcast sky. Before you leave the cemetery, the guard will remind you to wash your hands, to restore ritual purity.

The Jewish cemetery in a nutshell

The Jewish cemetery is located in the southeastern medina at the border of the mellah. It is about a 15-minute walk from the Djemaa el Fna. You can choose to go through the Zitoun Lakdim to the Place des Ferblantiers, and from there through the mellah, heading east. Another option is to follow the Zitoun el Jdid to the Bahia Palace, moving around the mellah. You should calculate about 45 minutes for the visit of the cemetery.

Location: Google Maps

Opening hours:

• The Jewish cemetery is open daily, except Saturdays
• Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Fridays: to 4 p.m.)

Entrance fee:

Entrance is free, though a small donation to the cemetery guard is expected (about 10-20 DH per person are appropriate)

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In Morocco, Exploring Remnants of Jewish History

במרוקו, חקר שרידי ההיסטוריה היהודית

Inside the mellah, wares echo those once sold by its former inhabitants.

CreditCredit

Boy 1: “What are those two guys doing walking around here?”

Boy 2: “It’s obvious. They’re looking for the Jews.”

This exchange was translated from Arabic by Youness Abeddour, a guide and documentarian who agreed to share with me his knowledge of the mellah, the walled Jewish quarter, of Fez. Boy 2, though, was mistaken. Although as many as 240,000 Jews lived in Morocco as recently as the 1940s, only around 3,000 remain in the country today. Youness and I had not come to look for the Jews; we had come to look for the traces they left behind.

These traces, whether in buildings or objects, or less tangibly in music and stories and memory, were ubiquitous if sometimes elusive in the mellahs of Fez and, as I discovered later, Marrakesh. Some were easily found, others less so; but running like an electrical charge through this rich but disappearing heritage was a palpable sense of urgency about what will happen in the coming years to Morocco’s Jewish legacy.It was a sparkling morning last fall as I approached the mellah, a 20-minute walk from Fez’s medina, with its vivid theater of hucksterism, artisanship and transport-by-mule. The mellah felt downright slumberous by comparison — and comparison is in a way the point, since geography is so central to this dramatic story of a place and its people: Until I stood at the gate to the mellah, I did not quite grasp the significance of the Sultan’s decision to relocate the Jews within waving distance of his own back door.

Synagogue Lazama in the Marrakesh mellah.

Credit

                                                                                       

The year was 1438, and this move marked a momentous shift in Moroccan Jewish life. Oral tradition places the Jews in Morocco since just after the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C. Under Arab rule the climate was for long periods (but not without exception) characterized by a general spirit of tolerance, first formulated in the seventh century, when Jews became known as dhimmi, or “protected persons.” They were free to practice their religion, but they were also required to pay a special poll tax, and they were barred from certain occupations. At times they were allowed to live in the city; at others not. Long stretches of tranquillity were interrupted by sporadic outbreaks of violence.

It was after one particularly extreme attack that the Sultan moved the city’s Jews to a walled neighborhood near his palace on what had once been a salt marsh, or mellah. Mellahs soon appeared in Marrakesh, Rabat, Salé and elsewhere. But whereas European ghettos were established out of a punitive impulse, the Moroccan mellah was — ostensibly — intended to safeguard.

Today the mellah in Fez still feels distinct from the city’s other precincts. The buildings are multistoried, since the limited acreage developed vertically to accommodate a growing population. They are also pierced with windows and fitted with festive balconies, while in the medina most turn a blank facade to the street, in support of the Muslim policy of keeping women concealed.

“Muslims used to come to the mellah to party,” Youness said as we made our way along its market street. “They could drink alcohol and look at unveiled women. Sometimes,” he added with a raised eyebrow, “more than just look.”

Not, presumably, at our first stop, the Danan Synagogue. Named for a rabbinical family that goes back 50 generations, the 17th-century synagogue underwent a major restoration in 1998 under the guidance of Simon Levy, a historian. Congregants at the Danan were megorashim, Jews expelled from Spain, and had a different language, liturgy and place of worship from the toshabim, the Jews who had lived in Morocco before their arrival.

Nothing like a little intramural rivalry to spur synagogue building. Coming along so soon after the establishment of the mellah, the 1492 exodus had an enriching — but for the toshabim also disconcerting — effect on Moroccan life. Sephardic Jews worked as scholars, writers, printers and artisans whose metalwork transformed the local culture. At the Danan there is ample evidence of their abiding flair in the intricate zellij tile work and dashing green carved wooden trim on the bema, the raised platform from which the Torah was read; downstairs a mikvah, or ritual bath, and communal oven attest to the multiple uses the building was once put to.

I found it very moving to stand with Youness in this empty synagogue and afterward in the nearby Slat Al Fassiyine, an equally exquisite 17th-century synagogue named and created for the residents of Fez, rather than the newcomers. Separate synagogues for rivalrous Jews, built close to the same time and within a few blocks of each other? How poignant, even pointless, all this seems now, with nearly everyone gone.

The recent history of Slat Al Fassiyine — a carpet workshop and boxing gym until its meticulous restoration in 2010 and 2011 — in a way encapsulates the tricky present moment in Morocco’s relationship with its Jewish heritage. For if Jews trickled into Morocco during the ancient period and poured in after the Spanish Inquisition, they poured out of the country in a series of hiccupping waves in the middle of the 20th century (the founding of Israel, the end of the French protectorate, the Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars) that cumulatively convinced the vast majority of Moroccan Jews that their beloved country, which sided with its Arab cousins in times of conflict, fell on the unsafe side of unpredictable.A dramatic change in such a brief span of time raises many questions. How is so much shared history to be told when so few people are on hand to tell it? How should the abandoned and decaying yet significant urban fabric be preserved, and by whom?I felt the complexity of these dilemmas everywhere I went in Fez. I felt them in the comments of the boys in the mellah streets. I felt them in the Jewish cemetery, whose graves, only recently fully cataloged, spread over a large sloping plot where notable rabbis are set off in a separate section and prolific offerings (including olives and fruit) are left for Sol Hachuel, a Jewish female saint whom both Jews and Muslims venerate for her defiance of forced conversion, one of several examples of such shared worship that is specific to Morocco.And I felt it especially in the most particular museum created by Edmond Gabbay in the former school that adjoins the cemetery in Fez. Stepping into Mr. Gabbay’s museum was like entering a three-dimensional story by Jorge Luis Borges. One of the remaining Jews of Fez (under 100, all living in the new city), Mr. Gabbay, 81, has made it his mission to collect and display the goods and chattels the Jews left behind: the passports and report cards; the eye charts; the baskets spilling over with prayer shawls; the stuffed animals; the hats and clothes; the mixing bowls and soccer balls; and the books (“Jane Eyre” next to Simone Signoret next to Maimonides, who lived and wrote in Fez in the 12th century). Why had Mr. Gabbay scooped it all up and laid it all out as a kind of profuse if dizzyingly inverse flea market? “Because it shows that we were here,” he said. “And one day people will forget.”He was not the only person I met who was preoccupied with the vanished Moroccan Jews.In Casablanca I visited the Moroccan Jewish Museum, the only Jewish museum in any Arab country, where the more conventional display of Jewish-Berber costumes and jewelry, scores of hands of Fatima pendants, and an entire goldsmith’s workshop from the mellah of Fez express new expectations of inclusion laid out in the preamble to Morocco’s 2011 constitution. Drafted after events of the Arab Spring, it specifically acknowledges the “Hebraic” contributions to the country’s “diverse, indivisible national identity.”

Afterward I had lunch with Vanessa Paloma, a singer, scholar and oral historian whose inspiring work has turned her into a kind of one-woman roving museum of her own. For 20 years Ms. Paloma has been committed to preserving everything associated with Moroccan Jewish music: songs (which she performs), recordings (which she archives), sheet music and photographs (which she collects) and, most recently, oral histories (which she takes herself). “Right now in Morocco it feels like there’s a limb that is missing,” she said. “Young people realize there is something in their culture that they don’t have easy access to. Old people long for what is gone.”

In Marrakesh, my next stop, I found that parts of its mellah were undergoing the early stages of gentrification that are likely to have a very mixed effect on this storied place. Scaffolding covered the gate associated with a famous miracle that took place when a band of tribesmen approached the neighborhood intent on pillaging, and a man called Murdukhai ben Attar, who was the Jewish community’s representative to the Muslim authorities, prayed for divine intervention. A barrier of flames leapt up, and the attackers retreated. The gate was forever after painted blue, and for centuries passers-by would kiss its sides, which were believed to mark the beginning of a sacred and protected space. (Murdukhai ben Attar is another shared saint buried in the nearby Jewish cemetery.)

I found the vivid blue paint intact only on the inside of the arch, which gives way to a bustling street of spice, fabric and passementerie vendors whose wares echo those once sold by the neighborhood’s Jewish inhabitants. While a handful of shops just outside the gate still have Jewish owners, only three Jewish families reside in the mellah itself, one of them virtually in the Synagogue Lazama.

Katherine Roumani, an English anthropologist, lives with her daughter in the 16th-century riad (an inward-turning building wrapped around a courtyard garden) that contains the last functioning synagogue in the mellah, which once sustained 30 in all. She is a liaison and guide to the synagogue, whose name derives from Al Azma, a reference to “those who ran away” from Spain. Restored about 10 years ago, it is now decked out in buoyant blue and white tiles, with curtains, cushions and accouterments to match.

Ms. Roumani and I visited the nearby square where the Nobel-winning writer Elias Canetti wrote in “The Voices of Marrakesh” that he “found exhibited the same density and warmth of life as I feel in myself.” A half-century later it felt less dense with life than overlooked, with two lone old men sitting over tarot cards and a family of cats sunning themselves on the bricks.As we left the square, Ms. Roumani withdrew an enormous key from her pocket. “I have an unusual treat for you,” she said.I followed her to the abandoned Synagogue Fassin and together we opened the padlock on its front door. Inside, a layer of dust covered the red-leather benches. The Torah was still in place, protected in a handsome wooden ark; nearby a calendar, dated 1982, dangled from a nail. The stillness was ineffably beautiful and infinitely sad.

My last hours in the mellah were spent with Viviane Cohen, an architect who has chosen to return from France to her country of origin to see what she can do to save the physical traces of its Jewish past. Together we investigated the Riad du Rabin, a deluxe hotel that trades in its history as the one-time home of a bearded rabbi whose photograph rather improbably overlooks a swanky new sitting room. Around the corner we also visited L’Art de Vivre Oriental, a fashionable clothing shop in a Jewish family’s former home that is now a resplendently restored riad. (“Très chic,” Ms. Cohen said. “But not remotely Jewish.”)Far more representative of the buildings in the neighborhood was the house of the Corcos family. It once belonged to a man whom Emily Gottreich, author of “The Mellah of Marrakesh,” described in a phone call as “the sheikh of the Jews, a major player in the old mellah”; by the time Ms. Gottreich began her research in the 1990s, the gracious and ample building had become a home for the aged. Now that nearly all the Jews of the Marrakesh mellah have died or moved away, the Corcos house is so far along in decay that Ms. Cohen and her builder recently stabilized the sagging second-floor balcony of the old kosher abattoir that backs onto the property with a series of raw logs.

That image summarized for me the tender juncture at which these neighborhoods find themselves. They are often untouched, and untouched means intact, but time, cruel time, has begun to have its way. Shoring up is a beginning. The question now is what comes next.

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