On Thursday, March 5th at 6:00 p.m., The Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies (JIMES) at Washington University in St. Louis will host the annual Cherrick Lecture, presented by Aomar Boum (UCLA) and Daniel Schroeter (University of Minnesota) in Hurst Lounge.

Following the fall of France in 1940, the French colonial governments of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco became a part of the collaborationist Vichy regime.  The over 400,000 thousand Jews living in these countries—the region with the largest concentration of Jews in the Islamic world—were subjected to anti-Jewish legislation modeled on the Nazi Nuremberg race laws, and thousands of Jews were interned in forced labor camps.  In the French protectorate of Morocco, Mohammed V, the figurehead ruler of Morocco exercised his religious authority to object to the anti-Semitic laws against his Jewish subjects. Although powerless to prevent the anti-Jewish laws from being enacted, Mohammed V’s defiance of the French authorities lessened the severity of the persecution of the Jews, and as the story goes, protected his Jewish subjects from the Holocaust.  The story of Mohammed V’s courageous stance to protect the Jews became a symbol of Moroccan sovereignty and the unwavering commitment to the Jews as loyal citizens of independent Morocco. Most Moroccan Jews left Morocco in the 1950s and 1960s, but the story of Mohammed V saving Jews during the Holocaust became a source of pride and attachment to Morocco among the hundreds of thousands of Jews of Moroccan descent in the countries they lived, especially in Israel where the largest diaspora of Moroccan Jews now resides.  For the Moroccan monarchy, the story is central to promoting Morocco’s foreign policy objectives, legitimizing its role as a mediator in Arab/Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiations, from the 1970s to the Abraham Accords in 2020. In contrast to the conflict that continues to divide Muslims and Jews, the symbol of the good Muslim king protecting his Jewish subjects during the Holocaust offers a counternarrative of co-existence, tolerance, and the politics of hope.

This event is free and open to the public. A live stream link will be available for those unable to attend. Link to come. Reception begins at 5:30pm with lecture to follow at 6:00pm. 

The Adam Cherrick Lecture Fund in Jewish Studies at Washington University was established in 1988 by Jordan and Lorraine Cherrick of St. Louis, MO in memory of their son. Its purpose is to advance Jewish studies at Washington University. Since its inception, the fund has benefited both the university community and St. Louis at large by bringing world renowned scholars to speak on campus.