Jews in Marrakech celebrate Yom Kippur

(10 Oct 2019) LEAD IN
Jews in Marrakech have been celebrating their holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.
Morocco has a small Jewish community of around only 2,000 people.

STORY-LINE
The Synagogue of Marrakech is alive with prayer.
Moroccan Jews, from here and abroad, have come to celebrate the holiest day of their year, Yom Kippur.
Also known as the Day of Atonement, or Great Forgiveness, it comes shortly after Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year.
Yom Kippur is 25 hours of fasting and intensive prayer, which this year ran from the evening of 8 October.
"We made many mistakes in our lives, there are mistakes we did not intentionally make, sometimes we did not follow Allah's way, but on this day we ask forgiveness from Allah to forgive us," says Jacky Kadoch, President of the Jewish Community in Marrakech.
Jews began their fasting around 6 p.m. on 8 October, after a special feast to get them through the next 25 hours.
"We have several feasts, each feast has its own date and prayer, we celebrate all the feasts whether the number of Jews is many or few, the number does not affect our celebrations," says Isaac Dahan, a Jewish jeweller from Marrakech.
After the feasting, men go directly to the synagogue to pray and read the Torah, staying for at least three or four hours.
They do the same thing the next day, starting early in the morning and usually staying all day.
Some, but not all women, also attend the synagogue, praying in a separate room to the men.
"Our master of the world asks us to make amends for our mistakes, we dedicate that day to our book (the Torah) and prayers, and the evening of Kippur," explains Nicole Lancry, a Jewish Moroccan who lives in France.
Today's prayers at the Synagogue of Marrakech are also attended by some non Jews.
The Wali of Marrakech and other members of the Moroccan authorities have come to show their respect for the minority Jewish community.
There were once hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Morocco, but most have now left.
"I hope they return to Morocco, we encourage them to do so. Morocco is a unique country in terms of coexistence between religions, this is what everyone knows," says Hakim Daniel, a Jew from Marrakech.
The long day of fasting ends at 8 p.m. and is marked with the blowing of a ram's horn called the Shofar.
There are also many dishes of food waiting to break the fast, usually eaten in a hut called a sukkah.
There are only around 2,000 Jews in Morocco, around 200 are in Marrakech and 1,200 in Casablanca.

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