Jewish Tangier, Tetouan and the North: A Traveller’s Guide

The Jewish north was shaped by the expulsions from Iberia. In Tetouan, exiles from Spain formally organised a community in 1530 under Rabbi Haim Bibas. Chefchaouen, founded in 1471, took in Iberian Muslims and Jews soon afterwards, and Larache’s community grew from Spanish exiles later joined by Portuguese crypto-Jews from the Algarve. These families kept a Spanish-based language of their own, Haketia, into the 20th century.

Tetouan became the capital of this world. Around 1807 Sultan Moulay Slimane moved its Jews from their old quarter near the Great Mosque into a new, regularly planned mellah of straight streets, where the 1913 census counted 4,186 Jews. In 1860, during the Hispano-Moroccan War, troops stormed the Jewish quarter and about 400 Jews were killed; sources differ on whether the old or the new quarter was the one sacked. Two years later Tetouan received the first Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Morocco, the start of a network that brought French-language education to Moroccan Jews. The Jewish population peaked at 8,058 in 1940.

Tangier was different. It never had a walled mellah: Jews lived mainly in the lower medina around Rue des Synagogues and Rue Es-Siaghine, close to the Petit Socco. The American Legation, established in 1821, stands just above the old Jewish cemetery, and in 1864 Sir Moses Montefiore obtained a royal decree ordering equal treatment of Jews by Moroccan officials; a copy hangs in the community centre. The city once had well over a dozen synagogues (counts range from 16 to more than 20), and by one estimate its community peaked at around 22,000.

Emigration after the mid-20th century emptied the smaller towns: Asilah, with about 500 Jews in 1940, had no organised community by 1968, and Chefchaouen’s last Jewish family left in 1968. Tangier keeps a small community of a few dozen people, which has led a programme of restoration since 2021.

The Jews of Tetouan, Tangier, Asilah, Larache, Chefchaouen and Ksar el-Kebir spoke Haketia, the western branch of Judeo-Spanish, also spoken in Ceuta and Melilla and carried by migrants to Casablanca and Oran. Its name comes from the Arabic ḥakā, ‘to tell’. Its vocabulary is mostly Spanish, and one count finds about a third of its words are Arabic and nearly a fifth Hebrew, so that ‘shabbat shalom’ comes out as ‘sabbat salom’ and the community is the ‘kehillá’. It was long written in Hebrew letters and is now mostly written in Latin script.

Haketia stayed a spoken language, used at home while children learned Spanish and French at school, including in the Alliance schools. Its decline began around 1860 with the Spanish occupation of Tetouan; from about 30,000 speakers in 1900 it is now estimated at about 1,000. A slow revival is under way through musicians such as Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, with her KHOYA sound archive, and through the dictionaries of José Benoliel (1977) and Alegría Bendayán de Bendelac (1995).

On a northern trip you meet its traces in Spanish epitaphs on the tombstones of Tangier and Asilah and in Tetouan street names such as Sultana Cohen and Isaac Bengualid. If your grandparents spoke Haketia, tell us: a guide who knows the north can make those connections on the ground.

Start in the Tangier Jewish quarter on and around Rue des Synagogues, where the old communal ovens for Sabbath dishes still survive. Down a dead-end alley stands the Moshe Nahon Synagogue, built in the 19th century (one source says 1876) through Moïse Nahon, an educator from a leading Tangier family. Restored in 1994, it is now a museum: the upper women’s gallery displays ketubot (marriage contracts) and embroidery, and the prayer hall keeps its wooden ark and silver lamps. It is still rented for family celebrations. The smaller Rabbi Akiba Synagogue, built in the mid-19th century and rebuilt in 1912, is a community-owned museum of Tangier Jewish life, and the community also lists a Rabbi Mordechai Bengio synagogue among its medina museums.

Opposite Dar Niaba, near the Petit Socco, the 1890 Assayag synagogue was abandoned for about sixty years before the Ministry of Culture funded its restoration (about 2 million dirhams). It reopened on 19 August 2022 as Beit Yehuda, a museum of the Jewish memory of northern Morocco with three exhibition rooms and objects the community had saved. In 2022 the community also launched a research and archives centre on northern Moroccan Judaism. Nearby, the Lorin Foundation, a museum of photographs and newspapers of 20th-century Tangier, has occupied the former Ez Hayyim (‘Escalerita’) synagogue since 1994; its last service was held on Yom Kippur 1982. Some sources call this building the Mordechai Bengio synagogue, so it is not certain whether the Lorin Foundation and the community’s Bengio museum are one building or two; we confirm on the ground. None of these museums publishes regular hours, so visits are arranged through the community or a guide.

Tangier’s one working synagogue is Shaar Raphael, at 27 Boulevard Pasteur in the new town, a villa completed in 1919 and turned into a synagogue in the early 1950s after its owner’s death. Ten to twenty people attend on Shabbat under Rabbi Jacob Tordjman, and visitors should contact the community beforehand; security applies.

Just outside the medina walls, below the American Legation and facing the port, the Old Jewish Cemetery on Rue du Portugal was founded at the end of the 18th century, and some stones may be older. It holds about a thousand graves with Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese and French inscriptions, including flat Sephardic slabs, and the tomb of Rabbi Mordechai Bengio, chief rabbi of Tangier from 1853 until his death in 1917. Its inscriptions have been digitised so families can search by name. Entry has been free with donations welcome. Most 20th-century burials are in the second cemetery, opened in 1935 on the Route de Rabat, which is visited by arrangement with the community. The Legation itself, now a museum, has shown an exhibit of Sephardic wedding costume. Its wartime US chargé d’affaires, J. Rives Childs, was thanked in 1945 for helping secure Tangier visas for Hungarian Jewish families, though his exact role is still debated.

Asilah, about 45 minutes down the Atlantic coast from Tangier, shows what a small northern community left behind. The Kahal Synagogue, built in 1824 on the main commercial street (Rue du Commerce), had decayed badly before an eight-month restoration led by the Tangier community with regional support; it reopened in September 2022 with photographs and ketubot on display. Nearby, a ritual bath of 1866 combined with a bathhouse and oven, the Mikvé-Hammam-Farran D-Lihoud, was restored at the same time, with two immersion basins below and two vaulted rooms above. A small walled cemetery on the seaside edge of town, with Hebrew and Spanish epitaphs, was restored with the community’s help. In February 2025 all three were added to Morocco’s national heritage list. There are no published hours; we arrange access with the synagogue visit.

The Tetouan Mellah lies inside the medina just south of the Feddan, the main square (Place Hassan II, formerly Plaza de España). Its straight streets still carry Jewish-era names, Isaac Bengualid, Sultana Cohen and Prado among them, and you can spot the recesses for mezuzot (doorpost scrolls) in old doorframes. At its height the quarter had sixteen synagogues; the others were sold or converted after the community left, and La Pintada and Crudo are now private houses.

The Isaac Ben Walid Synagogue is the only one still preserved as a synagogue. Named after Rabbi Isaac Bengualid, the city’s revered judge, whose study room is upstairs, it also housed a rabbinical court, a library, a matzah oven and a mikveh. It has had no regular services since 1968. It was restored in 2001 with funding from the Spanish development agency AECID and the Junta de Andalucía, together with the municipality, the Foundation for Moroccan Jewish Cultural Heritage and the Bengualid family, who own it. A community member was opening it for visitors in 2019, and day-trip operators from Spain still include it in 2025–26, but we arrange the visit ahead.

On the slopes of Jebel Dersa, beside the Ceuta road, the Jewish Cemetery of Tetouan is one of the largest and oldest in Morocco, about 15 hectares, probably in use since soon after 1492; estimates range from about 10,000 graves to far more. Its oldest section, the ‘Cementerio de Castilla’, has rare anthropomorphic tombstones of the first Iberian exiles, while the newer terraces hold heavy marble family tombs. The whitewashed grave of Rabbi Isaac Ben Walid (born 1777 by most accounts, died 1870), author of the responsa Vayomer Yitzhak and known as ‘Baba Señor’, draws pilgrims for his hilloula on 9 Adar, when many spend the night at the tomb. In 2023 the community re-identified the graves of three earlier sages, Jacob Ben Malca, Hasday Almosnino and Jacob Marrache. In 2022 a visitor found the gate padlocked, with a phone number posted and access through the guard’s house along the wall; most 20th-century graves have been restored, but the old section is steep and overgrown, so wear sturdy shoes.

In Chefchaouen, a Haketia-speaking community lived from the town’s early years until the mid-20th century; about 200 people were recorded in 1918. The Chefchaouen Mellah first stood outside the walls by the river and was later moved inside the medina; before 1936 it had at least three synagogues, none of which survives as a visitable building. The town’s famous blue paint is often credited to its Jews, but its origin is disputed and other explanations range from mosquitoes to a tourism decree in the 1970s. On the road towards Ouezzane, the small Jewish cemetery has rough limestone blocks and anthropomorphic stones, some carved with faces; it is now fenced as a small park, and a visitor in March 2026 found the carvings fading fast.

According to one local history, Larache had the largest Sephardic community in northern Morocco after Tetouan and Tangier; its last Jews left around 2010. The Old Jewish Cemetery of Larache, closed in 1930, was cleared and restored in 2013–14 by volunteers led by Carlos Amselem under Serge Berdugo, uncovering ‘Castilla’-type stones and recording 93 identifiable graves, including that of Rebbi Moshe Benchluch. A 2022 visitor found it neglected again, with a local caretaker holding the keys to both cemeteries, so we arrange access ahead.

In Ksar el-Kebir, a mausoleum in the town centre is venerated by Jews as the tomb of Rabbi Yehuda Jabali, a miracle-worker said to have died around 1780, and by Muslims as Sidi Bel-Abbas. There is no recent visitor evidence, so we confirm access through the community before including it.

Tangier’s Jewish community, the Communauté Israélite de Tanger, numbers a few dozen people but remains the key contact for the whole north: it owns or manages most of the synagogues and cemeteries described here. Tetouan has only a handful of Jews, who, according to a local history site, still meet at the Centro Recreativo Israelita, the community club in the Spanish-built Ensanche.

Kosher food is very limited. The Jewish club in Tangier, Le Cercle de Tanger (listed under Rabbi Jacob Torjmane, and very probably the same place as ‘Chez Rica’), serves meals to groups by advance arrangement; group itineraries for February 2027 schedule a lunch at ‘Chez Rica, Jewish cercle’. Ask for supervision details in writing. Asilah, Tetouan, Chefchaouen and Larache have no kosher options, so we arrange certified catering and packed meals for those days. At Passover, two programmes run on the Tamuda Bay coast near Tetouan: Sarah Tours at the Banyan Tree Tamouda Bay and Marina Smir hotels, and White & Blue at the St. Regis La Bahia Blanca (21–29 April 2027). These are holiday-only packages. See our kosher travel guide for details.

Tangier is a little over two hours from Casablanca on the high-speed train, which stops at Rabat, and has its own airport and ferries from southern Spain. Allow a full day for Tangier and a half-day for Asilah, then a day for Tetouan with an overnight in Chefchaouen, about an hour and a half beyond. Larache and Ksar el-Kebir fit on the way south towards Rabat, and Ouezzane, with the shrine of Rabbi Amram Ben Diwan, lies on the road from Chefchaouen to Fes.

Synagogue museums and cemeteries are rarely open to sightseers on Saturdays, so plan Shabbat accordingly. If you wish to attend the Ben Walid hilloula, plan around 9 Adar, usually in February or March. See our sample Jewish heritage tour for a full route.