Essaouira (Morocco) (AFP)

"Salam Lekoulam, Shalom Alaykoum": this motto weaving Arabic and Hebrew to greet the visitor sums up the spirit of the House of Memory of Essaouira, dedicated to the long "serene coexistence" of the Jewish and Muslim communities in this city in southern Morocco.

You have to get lost in the maze of the blue and white city posted on the edge of the Atlantic to find this house in the former home of a family of traders, prosperous enough to endow it with a small synagogue decorated with woodwork and carved furniture imported from Great Britain.

Nestled in a narrow alleyway in the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter of Essaouira, the newly opened building "bears witness to a period when Islam and Judaism had exceptional closeness, closeness and intimacy", says André Azoulay, adviser of King Mohammed VI, at the origin of the "Bayt Dakira" memorial project, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture.

"We said to ourselves: we are going to make our heritage speak and protect what has been the art of living together," explains this network man himself from the Jewish community of Essaouira.

His daughter Audrey Azoulay, director general of Unesco, traveled on Wednesday for an official visit of the monarch, in the presence of other personalities such as the Franco-Canadian-Moroccan humorist Gad ElMaleh.

- "Old stones" -

The House brings together objects donated by local families and allows you to discover extraordinary destinies of Jews from Essaouira. Like that of Leslie Belisha (1893-1957), in turn British Minister of Finance, Transport and War. We owe him the "belisha beacons", these beacons in the shape of globes mounted on black and white poles, which we still find around London's pedestrian crossings.

Another source of pride, the "first elected Jew in the history of the United States", David Yulee Levy (1810-86) comes from a family of the former "Mogador" who left for the United States at the beginning of the 19th century. century.

Sign of a singular story, a panel lists the royal Jewish advisers from Essaouira. The name of André Azoulay appears at the bottom, with the date of his arrival at the Palace at the call of Hassan II, father of the current king, in 1991.

The exhibition presents old photographs, archive films, musical recordings, traditional costumes and religious objects. Upstairs, a research center is to house residences for researchers and work on the history between Islam and Judaism.

At the time of Sultan Mohamed III, who transformed the small port into a diplomatic and commercial center in the 18th century, the former Portuguese colony "was the only city in the land of Islam with a majority Jewish population", recalls the royal adviser 78 years old.

"It was not a posture: centuries of exchange and meetings have testified with force of an exhilarating, dense, substantial Judeo-Muslim relationship," says the former banker, a journalist by training. His goal is to make the history of his city "a symbol of the art of the possible" to "resist amnesia, regression and archaism".

Essaouira once housed 37 synagogues, most of which fell into disrepair. That of "Bayt Dakira" has been completely renovated.

- "Field diplomacy" -

During the French protectorate (1912-1956), the city fell into oblivion, before being gradually reborn from the early 1990s to become a flagship tourist and cultural destination.

With the association "Essaouira-Mogador" which he chairs, André Azoulay has reshaped his stronghold by doing "field diplomacy", while maintaining the link with the large Moroccan Jewish community scattered throughout the world.

Present in Morocco since Antiquity, the Jewish community has grown over the centuries, with in particular the arrival of those whom the Catholic kings had expelled from Spain from 1492.

At the end of the 1940s, Moroccan Jews were around 250,000, or around 10% of the population. But many left after the founding of Israel in 1948 and the community now numbers around 3,000 people, the largest in North Africa.

Essaouira is not the only memorial place dedicated to the Judeo-Moroccan heritage, which King Mohammed VI often highlights, with various programs to rehabilitate cemeteries, synagogues and Jewish historic districts.

Casablanca has housed since 1997 a museum of "Moroccan Judaism", the only one of its kind in the Arab world. In Fez, the spiritual capital, a museum dedicated to Jewish memory is under construction.

If the kingdom has no official relationship with Israel, thousands of Jews of Moroccan origin come each year - including from the Hebrew State - to find the land of their ancestors, celebrate religious holidays or make pilgrimages as the "hiloula" - a tribute to Rabbi Haim Pinto, a native of Essaouira.

© 2020 AFP