I have always been curious about my maternal family history. My grandparents and aunt and uncle emigrated to Canada in 1959 from Tangiers, Morocco due to anti-Semitism. They were part of the exodus of Jews from Arab countries. My mother was born in Toronto, Canada.
In July 2011, my husband Eli and I travelled to Spain for two-week vacation. We went on a roadtrip from Barcelona down the coast to Algeciras, Spain. We decided to take a short trip to the north of Morocco and see what we could discover about my grandparents and their hometown, Tangiers. We were especially curious to see if there were any Jewish records or archives that registered the marriage of my grandparents, Aaron and Vida Benzaquen.
My grandmother passed away two days after my wedding (May 26, 2010), and my grandfather a month following (July 1, 2010). When going through their belongings, my mother came across a copy of my grandparents' Ketubah (Jewish marriage certificate) that she had not seen before. It listed my grandparents’ first names as Aaron and Kvida, not Vida, as we had always known her as. No one was familiar with the name Kvida, and we were curious if that was her real name, a nickname or maybe a handwritten error. I thought looking at any archives might provide an answer.
We spent four days in Tangiers and took a day trip to Larache/Asilah. In Tangiers, we contacted the Rabbi of Tangiers, Rabbi Torgeman, who met us at the main synagogue, on Bd. Pasteur. The Rabbi had not heard of the name Kvida on the Ketubah and thought that it was perhaps a nickname. I asked if he had Jewish marriage records that I could look at. He said that the record books were stored off-site, but then went into his office and pulled out a large dusty old book in bad shape that had the label "Nisuin 1" (Marriages 1) on it.
Eli and the Rabbi flipped through the Nisuin 1 book and found the marriage entry for my grandparents. It reads "Aaron Benzaquen ben Moshe" and the date is 1946. My grandmothers' name is recorded as Kvida, so the mystery remained. We later learned from Rabbi Amram Assayag, former Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Toronto and member of the Beit Din in Toronto, that Kvida is a common name in the Middle East that stems from the name “Yocheved” and the Kaf (the “K”) is sometimes dropped.
Following that visit in 2011 and discovering the synagogue registry book, I made many inquiries to determine if there were other registry books in Tangiers and learned that there indeed were. I planned a trip for Eli and I to return to Tangiers and digitalize whatever Jewish records were there so that people worldwide could access a database and see the entries for their family members. The books are an important resource and an amazing look back at Jewish life in city that had a vibrant Jewish community at one point.
We returned to Tangiers in August 2012 to begin the project. We coordinated with several members of the Jewish community to get access to the books. The books were all in bad shape, dusty, water-damaged, and some had dead bugs between the pages. We photographed every page of every book, over 5000 photographs, over the course of one long, hot week.
We took photographs of the following registries/documents: