The Stained Glass Synagogue

The windows glow like Chagall. The building was designed by Algerian Jews who had fled to Casablanca. They called it Beth-El — the House of God.

In 1948, Morocco had 275,000 Jews. Today, about 2,000 remain. Most live in Casablanca, where thirty synagogues still stand. Temple Beth-El is the largest, seating five hundred, its walls of white and gilded plaster rising beneath stained glass that throws colored light across the sanctuary.

The mellah of Casablanca is young by Moroccan standards — barely a century old. Jews had been in Morocco for two thousand years before anyone thought to build a Jewish quarter here. The first mellah was in Fez, established in 1438. The word means 'salt' — possibly because Jews were assigned to salt the heads of executed criminals, possibly because the quarters were built on salted, infertile land.

Beth-El wasn't built in the mellah. It was built in the new city, the ville nouvelle, by immigrants from Algeria who brought their own traditions. They refurbished the temple in 1997. The giant chandeliers. The colored windows. The architecture that seems to reach for something beyond the ordinary.

Around the corner, in the old medina, stands the Ettedgui Synagogue — partially destroyed by Allied bombing in 1942, rebuilt in the 1980s, reopened by King Mohammed VI himself as part of a project to preserve Morocco's Jewish heritage. The 2011 constitution gave Jewish history special status as part of Moroccan identity. Not as outsiders. As Moroccans.

The last Jewish day school in Morocco is in Casablanca. It's called Neve Shalom. Ninety percent of the students are now Muslim. They learn Hebrew alongside Arabic. They study the Bible alongside the Quran. The principal says the shared values matter more than the differences.

Once a year, Casablancan Jews gather for the hiloula — the pilgrimage festival — at the tomb of the Jewish saint Eliahou. The community is aging. The young have mostly left for Israel, for France, for Canada. But the synagogues remain. The Torah scrolls rest in their arks. And in Temple Beth-El, the light still pours through the windows, blue and gold and red, illuminating the space where a community that has been here for three thousand years continues to pray.