Chief Rabbi of Morocco: Everything We Have Due to JDC

Rabbi Monsonego's family dates back 500 years in Morocco, originally from Fez. He has worked with JDC for 50 years. Rabbi Monsonego heads the Ozar Hatorah School in Casablanca, the last of a network of schools that date to 1947. At its peak, the network represented some 25 schools educating 8,000 students (during the time when there were 300,000 Jews living in Morocco). Now there is one school, Neve Shalom, serving 135 students, including both primary and secondary levels. Many of the Neve Shalom School students do their homework at school because their parents are uneducated or they have poor conditions at home.

Historically, all Sephardic communities in Europe have benefited from graduates of the Moroccan Ozar Hatorah network, many of whom went on to be religious functionaries. Typically when students graduate high school, they are ready to become teachers and/or to begin rabbinical training. Most graduates go to university either in Jerusalem or at Yeshiva University, all having a very strong level of Jewish and secular knowledge. This year the entering kindergarten class represents only fifteen students. In Casablanca, births and deaths tend to balance each other out. The diminishing community numbers derive from graduating student departures to other countries.

Rabbi Monsonego expressed his "gratitude to JDC because everything we have observed here is as a result of Joint's presence in Morocco for the past fifty years. All of the community achievements in social, educational and medical matters would not have been possible, and Jewish life in Morocco would not be as rich, without the JDC. You certainly would not see thousands of student graduates who have gone all over the world to enrich Jewish life."