{"id":80373,"date":"2021-05-19T10:35:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T08:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/neta-elkayam-maroc-terre-promise\/"},"modified":"2021-05-28T10:47:36","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T08:47:36","slug":"neta-elkayam-morocco-promised-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/neta-elkayam-morocco-promised-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Neta Elkayam: Morocco, promised land"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The singer Neta Elkayam\u2019s career reflects the entire history of the Judeo-Moroccan diaspora that has settled in Israel. Creativity in exile is found here.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In order to understand Neta Elkayam\u2019s life and her Judeo-Moroccan heritage, it is necessary to know that since the end of last year Israel and Morocco have re-established diplomatic relations.  A final diplomatic legacy initialled by Trump on Twitter in December 2020.  Official contact had been broken off and their respective embassies closed for the past two decades.  Rabat and Tel-Aviv have now normalized relations. In exchange, Washington officially recognized Morocco\u2019s sovereignty over Western Sahara. A “deal” obviously condemned by both Hamas and the Polisario Front.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Daughter of an ancient past<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

But in fact Morocco and Israel had not waited for Mike Pompeo in order to re-establish a dialogue and to provide a united front. Their exchanges have been  fruitful. And historical. There were an estimated 250,000 Jews in Morocco in 1946.  Their exodus began in 1948, and continued for almost twenty years.  In 1967 there were only 60,000 to 70,000 remaining in the country, and today no more than 3000, most of them living in Casablanca.  If the diaspora has spread over the years to France, Canada, Spain and the United States, it is mainly in Israel that that most of them have settled. Today, nearly 800,000 Israelis are originally from Morocco, out of a total population of almost nine million inhabitants (source : <\/em>World<\/em><\/a> Bank<\/em>). Exile, music, gastronomic tradition, pilgrimages, twofold culture, communitarian reconfiguration\u2026 These Israelis, born in Morocco or in Israel and with one or two Moroccan parents, strongly maintain their patrimonial heritage. The Israeli artist Neta Elkayman is one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Amazighe from Tinghir, where her grandparents were born, Neta\u2019s mother is from Casablanca. Her parents emigrated to Israel, where she was born in 1980 in Netivot, where the the greatest number of Moroccan Jews reside.  “In fact, I grew up in Israel, but in the heart of Moroccan culture”, <\/em>remembers Neta. “All the inhabitants of Netivot were Jewish Moroccan immigrants who had left the country in the 1950\u2019s. As a result, there were two worlds, the world outside, and the inner one where my grandmothers lived with their memories of Morocco.  Netivot, in the 1980\u2019s and 1990\u2019s, was like living in Morocco. Everyone spoke the Arabic dialect in the streets, ate a Moroccan diet, and celebrated the Maghreb holidays.” <\/em>
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