Total population | |
---|---|
1,180,000 | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Israel | 1,000,000 |
France | ~150,000 |
Canada | ~27,000 |
Spain | ~11,600 |
Venezuela | ~6,000 |
Brazil | 6,000 |
Morocco | 2,500 |
Gibraltar | 700 |
United Kingdom | 567 |
Argentina | 500 |
Languages | |
Arabic, Berber, Hebrew, French, Haketia, Spanish. | |
Religion | |
Judaism | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Mizrahi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Ashkenazi Jews |
Moroccan Jews (Arabic: اليهود المغاربة al-Yehud al-Magharibah, Hebrew: יהודים מרוקאים Yehudim Maroka'im) are the Jews who live or lived in the area of North Africa known as Morocco. The first Jews migrated to this area after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem and settled among the Berbers. They were later met by a second wave of migration from the Iberian peninsula in the period immediately preceding and following the 1492 Alhambra Decree, when the Jews were expelled from kingdoms of Spain, and soon afterwards, from Portugal as well. This second immigration wave deeply modified Moroccan jewry, who largely embraced the Andalusian Sephardic liturgy, making the Moroccan Jews switch to a mostly Sephardic identity.
At its peak in the 1940s, Morocco's Jewish population exceeded 250,000, but following Operation Yachin this number has been reduced to approximately 5,000. The vast majority of Moroccan Jews now live in Israel, where they constitute the second-largest Jewish community (approximatively 1 million). Other communities are found in France, Canada, Spain, the United States and South America, mainly in Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina.