New Perspectives on Maghribi Jewish Hagiography

Focusing on praiseworthy Jewish characters, written hagiographies from the Maghrib have provided modern scholars with images of piety, genealogy, and history which enable them to better understand the religious modernity of Maghribi Jews. But what is this literary genre? What were its characteristics over the corse of the past 200 years, and how have they changed over time, with the advent of new printing technologies, and the institutionalizations of state appointed rabbinic system? To what extent hagiography was indeed a form of “local knowledge”? How did hagiography itself change over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, after most of the Jews have left the region? Were its producers aware of Maghribi Muslim similar texts, or of similar shvahim texts in eastern Europe (with the rise of Hasidism)? How does the production of hagiographies of and by Moroccans today affect both notions of “Jewishness” and “Moroccaness"? What is the place of non-textual forms of hagiography, such as visual (images of saints, a very popular form of hagiographic consumption), and musical (Moroccan pop songs about Tzadikim) in the overall discussion of this topic, and so on.