The Berdugo Family

Meknes is not a city like any other in the history of Morocco. Under the reign of Sultan Moulay Ismaïl (1672–1727), it was elevated to the rank of capital, endowed with palaces, ramparts and stables famous throughout the Mediterranean East. The Jewish community that developed there — and which had preceded Alaouite glory — enjoyed a particular position: present in the circuits of trade between the Moroccan interior and Atlantic ports, it also provided sultans with intermediaries, merchants, sometimes interpreters before foreign representatives. The mellah of Meknes, a quarter at once enclosed and vibrant, concentrated synagogues, rabbinical courts, talmudic schools and artisanal workshops. It was in this dense soil that the Berdugo family took root and that its own vocation — not commerce, but the study and service of the Law — crystallized.

Family memory connects the Berdugo to the vast movement of megorashim, those Jews driven from the Iberian peninsula after the expulsion edicts of 1492 in Castile and Aragon, then Portuguese forced conversions of 1497. The Hispanic etymology of the name reinforces this tradition: a Romance patronym, borne by families who, after crossing the strait, found refuge in cities of the Moroccan interior. It is plausible that the family's ancestors first settled in Fez, the pre-eminent center of megorashim, before establishing themselves durably in Meknes. This Sephardic origin is not a mere genealogical ornament. It inscribes the lineage in the great fruitful tension of Moroccan Judaism, between toshavim, the indigenous peoples of ancient rite, and megorashim, bearers of Castilian usages and great Spanish legal compilations. Scholars of Sephardic and Moroccan onomastics, such as Abraham I. Laredo in his reference work, have catalogued and classified these patronyms according to their origin, diffusion and dialectal forms [Laredo, Les Noms des Juifs du Maroc, 1978]. The name Berdugo finds its place among the families whose establishment in Meknes became, over time, almost synonymous with the city itself.

A document preserved in part in family traditions and taken up in genealogical studies attests to an old parchment evidencing the descent of the Berdugo from Bustenaï Gaon, himself issuing from the lineage of David through Zeroubbabel ben Chaltiel. Whatever the exact historical value of this attestation, it tells something essential about the consciousness the family had of itself: that of a royal lineage transformed into a priestly lineage of learning, whose nobility was not of blood but of study. From this founding period onwards emerges what was to become the cardinal virtue of the lineage — talmud Torah, study as the supreme form of worship, that ancient conviction of Israel according to which learning Torah is equivalent to all other commandments combined.

Before the Berdugo lineage reached its apex, an earlier figure deserves to be mentioned: Rabbi Judah ben Joseph Berdugo (c. 1689–1744), a talented teacher and member of the rabbinical court of Meknès from 1731 until his death. His work Mayim Amoukim — the "Deep Waters" — had considerable resonance far beyond his death, prompting commentaries from Rabbi Lasri of Algiers, from Raphaël Moshé Elbaz of Sefrou, and from the rabbis of Meknès themselves, notably Yaacov and Yossef Berdugo. The work, which remained in manuscript for more than a century and a half, was printed only in 1910, then reissued in Bnei Brak in 1975 by a descendant, Rabbi Yehoudah Berdugo, with commentaries from the Chief Rabbi of Tiberias. The fact that the introduction to this late edition does not hesitate to compare Judah to Maimonides is certainly hyperbolic praise, but it reveals the intensity of filial piety and the respect that tradition attached to the family's first scholars.

It was in this soil that Rabbi Mordekhaï Berdugo (c. 1715–1762) grew up, father of Rabbi Raphaël and immediate precursor of the great dynasty. Nicknamed ha-Marbitz, "he who spreads" the teaching of Torah, Mordekhaï was dayan of Meknès and author of halakhic works, of which Mishne la-Melekh attests to his mastery of the great juridical compilations. According to transmitted traditions, it was he who formed Rabbi Raphaël in the absolute rigor of the text and in the strictness of judgment. The chain of transmission—Judah, Mordekhaï, Raphaël—traces a continuity across three generations, where each link forged the next in the dual conviction that knowledge is received in order to be transmitted, and that the judge is worth only by the integrity of his decision.

Another Mordekhaï Berdugo, contemporary but distinct, sat on the rabbinical court of Meknès alongside Rabbi Haïm Toledano and Rabbi Yaacov Berdugo in the early nineteenth century, a sign of the name's deep anchorage in the city's judicial institutions. This superposition of figures bearing the same given names from one generation to the next—Mordekhaï, Yaacov, Yehoshua, Raphaël—is itself a practice of transmission: naming the son after the grandfather is to inscribe continuity in the very flesh of the family calendar.

The lineage culminates in a figure whose influence extended beyond Morocco's borders: Rabbi Raphaël Berdugo, born in Meknes in 1747 and died in the same city in 1821, son of Rabbi Mordekhaï ha-Marbitz. A halakhist of the first order, spiritual leader of his community, he was one of the greatest decisors that Moroccan Judaism has produced. His peers regarded him as an orator of natural authority, and he did not shrink from conflict with the notables when justice demanded it — a character trait that makes him not a sage withdrawn into his books, but a man engaged in the reality of his community. Tradition bestowed upon him the enigmatic epithet of Mashiah Safer — which may be understood as "the anointed scribe" or "the potential Messiah" — a distinction that speaks volumes about the extraordinary prestige he enjoyed during his lifetime and the quasi-eschatological aura attached to his name after his death.

Rabbi Raphaël's oeuvre embraces the great genres of rabbinic literature. His commentary on the Pentateuch Mei Menuhot ("The Waters of Rest") offers a reading that is both philologically rigorous and spiritually nourished of the five books of Moses. His collections of responsa, gathered under the title Torat Raphael, constitute a primary source for understanding the juridical, economic and moral life of the community of Meknes at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: marriage contracts, commercial disputes, questions of succession, cases of conscience linked to contact with non-Jewish authorities — nothing touching upon real life escaped his pen. The very discipline of responsa, which the historian Haym Soloveitchik has shown constitutes a historical source of first importance for restoring the social life of Jewish communities, finds in Rabbi Raphaël one of its Maghrebi masters [Soloveitchik, Responsa as a Historical Source, 1990].

It is here that the virtue of the lineage becomes fully visible. Rabbi Raphaël was not merely a scholar; he was a judge, a dayan, and his authority was exercised in the service of justice — tsedek — and equity between the parties. The Moroccan conception of the great rabbinate, as studied by historians of Jewish institutions in Morocco, made the decisor the guardian of both divine Law and the cohesion of the group [Kenbib, The Grand Rabbinate in Morocco, 1994]. In embodying this function with a rigor and humility that remained proverbial, Rabbi Raphaël extends the highest virtue of the sage of Israel: to put immense erudition at the service, not of his own glory, but of the common good and the fear of Heaven. The memory of his tomb in Meknes, surrounded by particular veneration, remains to this day the site of an annual pilgrimage — the hilloula — which attracts the faithful from throughout the world, including from Israel, thereby perpetuating the living bond between the Moroccan diaspora and its saints of Meknes. In 2021, on the occasion of the two-hundredth anniversary of his death, an official ceremony brought together in Meknes the governor of the prefecture and Serge Berdugo, secretary general of the Council of Israeli Communities of Morocco, while a simultaneous colloquium was held in the halls of the Presidency in Israel in the presence of President Isaac Herzog and the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Shlomo Amar — a sign that Rabbi Raphaël's influence has not diminished two centuries after his death.

Rabbi Raphael was not an isolated star. Around him gravitated a constellation of close associates whose simultaneous activity made the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century the true golden age of the family in Meknes.

Rabbi Yekutiel Berdugo (1736–1801), the eldest of the generation, was rabbi and judge in the same city. Sources present him as an author of essays in various domains of Torah, versatile and curious, animated by a pedagogical concern betrayed by the variety of his subjects. If his work is less monumental than that of his brother Raphael, his presence within the rabbinical court testifies to the density of Berdugo presence in communal institutions: several members of the same family sat simultaneously or successively in the same positions, creating rare institutional continuity.

Rabbi Petahia Berdugo (1764–1820), some dozen years younger than Raphael, was himself a dayan of Meknes. His dual legacy consists of a collection of responsa entitled Nofet Tsoufim — "The Flowing Honey," a title borrowed from Psalm 19 — and a biblical commentary, Pittuhei Hotam. These titles alone sketch a temperament: the image of honey refers to the sweetness of Torah's speech, and the "engraved seal" of Pittuhei Hotam evokes the permanence of the imprint that sacred text leaves on the soul. Petahia died in 1820, a year before his brother Raphael, thus closing a generation of extraordinary scholarly density. That two brothers, born less than twenty years apart, both produced responsa and biblical commentaries says something about the atmosphere of the paternal home: study was not an option there, but the very air breathed.

This simultaneity is not a phenomenon peculiar to the Berdugo alone, but in them it reaches uncommon intensity. The progressive constitution of a hereditary rabbinical elite, articulated to the mutations of Maghrebi societies, has been the subject of scholarly analyses that illuminate both neighboring Algeria and Morocco [Charvit, Élite rabbinique d'Algérie et modernisation, 2003]. The Berdugo occupy, in this landscape, an eminent place: few families can line up so many uninterrupted generations of judges and authors within the same city.

The following generation does not betray the heritage, but broadens its intellectual scope, moving from pure halakhic commentary to more varied forms of erudition.

Rabbi Yaacov Berdugo (1783–1843) was chief of the beth-din of Meknès, dayan and poet. His main work, Kol Yaakov — "The Voice of Yaacov" — associates in its very title two registers: the voice of the biblical patriarch and that of the scholar who symbolically succeeds him. Liturgical poet as much as jurist, Yaacov embodies the alliance between legal rigor and spiritual sensitivity that characterizes the great figures of Moroccan Judaism. Tradition also attributes to him a particular veneration after his death: the synagogue of Meknès that bore the name of Rabbi Raphaël was for a time dedicated to him, a sign that his memory imposed itself durably in local piety. A late document, drafted by a descendant, attests that Yaacov was considered the Ner Hama'arav, "The Light of the West," an honorific title reserved for the luminaries of Judaism in North Africa.

Rabbi Joseph Berdugo (1802–1854) represents, for his part, a remarkable inflection in the vocation of the lineage. Dayan of Meknès like his predecessors, he nevertheless directed a considerable part of his scholarly energy toward Hebrew philology, producing a lexicon of Hebrew grammatical roots and their derivatives, known by the title Ketonet Yosef — "Joseph's Coat." This three-volume work, whose publication was completed only between 1922 and 1943 posthumously, testifies to a curiosity about the language itself that exceeds pure religious law. To study the roots of biblical Hebrew is to question the grammar of the revealed text, that is, to take seriously the conviction that every letter carries meaning. In this, Joseph extends in his own way the tradition of medieval grammarians, of Judah Hayyuj and David Kimhi, who made the science of the Hebrew language the indispensable prerequisite for any faithful interpretation. It is an intellectual virtue properly Jewish: respect for the letter as a path to the spirit.

Joseph also connects, according to traditions, to the Davidic lineage that the old parchment mentioned above intended to document — an attestation of which he was one of the guarantors. This care for genealogical memory, this refusal to let the past dissolve, also belongs to transmission: zakhor, "remember," is one of the most repeated commandments of the Torah.

Rabbi Salomon Berdugo, known as Chlomo (1854–1906), chief rabbi of Meknes, dayan, decisioner and poet, was the last great master of the lineage before the twentieth century came to radically transform the institutional framework of Moroccan Judaism. Son of Rabbi Daniel Berdugo, he received the rabbinical charge of the community in 1897, at a time when Morocco was already experiencing increasing pressure from European powers and when traditional Jewish institutions found themselves confronted with unprecedented questions. His work comprises Em le-Mesorot, devoted to textual traditions and halakhic transmission, as well as a collection known by the title Die Hashev, which testifies to the breadth of his juridical production.

Poet as much as jurist, Salomon belongs to that generation of Moroccan rabbis who cultivated piyyut — Hebrew liturgical poetry — as a natural complement to study: the beauty of sung text is there conceived as a different path of access to the same truth as Talmudic demonstration. In the mellah of Meknes, the boundary between scholar and poet was never hermetic, and it is one of the distinctive features of this Moroccan Jewish culture to have kept together these two registers that other traditions separated.

Salomon died in 1906, four years before the unofficial and then official establishment of the French protectorate (1912), without having seen the upheaval that it would bring about in the life of Jewish communities. The care he had devoted to masoret — the transmission of texts and traditions — took on a retrospectively prophetic significance: it was precisely this work of transmission that the following century would put to the test.

Rabbi Yehoshua Berdugo (1878–1953) represents the encounter between the centuries-old tradition of his lineage and the upheavals of the twentieth century. Av beth-din of Meknes, president of the High Rabbinical Court of Morocco, he was, in the most institutional sense of the term, the Chief Rabbi of Morocco in the decades that surrounded the Second World War. It was he who founded the first synagogue of the New Mellah of Meknes, around 1928 — a founding gesture that speaks at once to the continuity of a communal vocation and the necessity of adapting to new urbanization. Building a synagogue in a renovated mellah is to affirm that the community intends to endure, even as the walls of the old quarter fade away.

The period that Yehoshua traversed was among the most difficult in contemporary Jewish history. The French protectorate, then the years of the Vichy regime and the partial application of antisemitic laws in Morocco between 1940 and 1942, placed Jewish communities in a position of institutional fragility without precedent. That the High Rabbinical Court maintained its authority and its functions through these tumultuous years testifies as much to the resilience of institutions as to the personality of those who led them. Yehoshua died in 1953, three years before Morocco's independence, without having witnessed the great waves of emigration that would empty the mellahs of their population.

The virtue that appears here is that of continuity in adversity — the conviction that communal institutions are not a luxury of peaceful times, but the skeleton that allows the collective body to traverse crises. In the history of Judaism, this capacity to maintain the structures of law and study even under the greatest pressure is one of the most tenacious forms of fidelity to the Covenant. Yehoshua Berdugo was, in Meknes and in Morocco, one of its last great embodiments.

The twentieth century upended the world in which the lineage had been born and had flourished. The establishment of the French protectorate in 1912, followed by Morocco's independence in 1956 and the great waves of emigration toward Israel, France, and Canada, gradually emptied the mellahs of their population. Like so many Moroccan Jewish families, the Berdugo dispersed: today bearers of the name are found in Jerusalem, in Paris, in Montreal, still in Casablanca. The rabbinical lineage of Meknès branched out, carrying with it books, manuscripts, and above all the Memory of the masters.

This dispersion did not erase the prestige of the name. In the land of Israel, Moroccan liturgical and halakhic traditions experienced a vigorous renaissance, and the remembrance of the great decisors of Meknès — Rabbi Raphaël foremost among them — is cultivated there with fervor. Post-migratory Moroccan Judaism, far from dissolving, made fidelity to its sages a pillar of its identity, a phenomenon documented by studies on pilgrimages and devotion to the tombs of the righteous, now extended beyond Morocco [Ben-Ami, Hagiography and Cultural Diversity in Morocco, 1984].

A contemporary descendant illustrates in his own way the persistence of commitment to collective life: Serge Berdugo (born November 26, 1937), lawyer and Moroccan politician, who served as Morocco's Minister of Tourism between 1993 and 1995, is also secretary general of the Council of the Israelite Communities of Morocco and president of the Israelite Community of Casablanca. It is not the same type of engagement as that of the dayanim of Meknès, but the form has changed where the substance endures: to place oneself in service of the community, to represent the Jews of Morocco before the authorities, to maintain intercommunal dialogue. It was he who, in 2021, attended in Meknès the laying of the commemorative Mappa on the tomb of Rabbi Raphaël, two centuries after his death — a gesture that symbolically closes the great parenthesis opened by exile.

The written work of the lineage, long dispersed among manuscripts and rare editions, is beginning to be the object of rediscovery and digitization efforts. The Ketonet Yosef of Joseph Berdugo, completed posthumously in the mid-twentieth century; the Mayim Amoukim of Judah, reissued in Bnei Brak; the responsa of Raphaël, still consulted today by Moroccan rabbis settled in Jerusalem, in Lyon or in Montreal: so many milestones of an intellectual presence that did not allow itself to be engulfed by exile. Thus the ultimate virtue of the lineage reveals itself retrospectively: that of faithful transmission, masoret, this passing from hand to hand which, in Judaism, serves as vital continuity.

Rabbi Judah ben Joseph Berdugo (c. 1689–1744) — Teacher and member of the rabbinical court of Meknès from 1731 until his premature death. His work Mayim Amoukim ("Deep Waters"), which remained in manuscript for more than a century and a half before being printed in 1910 and reissued in Bnei Brak in 1975, prompted commentaries from rabbis of Algiers, Sefrou and Meknès. It represents the documented beginning of a learned tradition that would flourish over several generations.

Rabbi Mordekhaï Berdugo (c. 1715–1762) — Known by the epithet ha-Marbitz, "the disseminator of Torah," he was dayan of Meknès and author of halakhic works of which Mishne la-Melekh attests mastery of the great legal compilations. Father of Rabbi Raphaël, he played the role of first mentor to the most illustrious generation of the lineage. His influence over his sons Raphaël and Yekutiel remained proverbial in the tradition of Meknès.

Rabbi Yekutiel Berdugo (1736–1801) — Rabbi and judge of Meknès, elder of the generation that includes Raphaël. Author of essays in various domains of Torah, he testifies to the intellectual versatility of the family at a time when the yeshiva of Meknès was at the height of its influence. His presence within the rabbinical court alongside his brothers illustrates the institutional density that the Berdugo family imparted to the legal life of their city.

Rabbi Raphaël Berdugo (1747–1821) — Son of Rabbi Mordekhaï ha-Marbitz, born and died in Meknès. Surnamed Mashiah Safer, he is the most celebrated figure of the lineage. Dayan of natural authority and uncompromising rigor, he left a commentary on the Pentateuch, Mei Menuhot, and a collection of responsa, Torat Raphael, still consulted today by decisors of Moroccan Judaism. His hilloula in Meknès draws each year the faithful from Israel, France and Canada.

Rabbi Petahia Berdugo (1764–1820) — Brother of Raphaël and dayan of Meknès, died a year before him. His collection of responsa Nofet Tsoufim ("The flowing honey") and his biblical commentary Pittuhei Hotam ("The engraved seal") depict the portrait of a mind attentive to the gentleness of the text as much as to the rigor of law. The near simultaneity of his death and that of Raphaël closes a generation of exceptional scholarly density.

Rabbi Yaacov Berdugo (1783–1843) — Head of the beth-din of Meknès, dayan and liturgical poet, author of Kol Yaakov ("The voice of Yaacov"). Tradition attributes to him the title of Ner Hama'arav, "The torch of the West." After his death, a synagogue in Meknès was placed under his name. Commentator on Mayim Amoukim of Judah Berdugo, he thus ensured continuity between earlier and later generations.

Rabbi Joseph Berdugo (1802–1854) — Dayan of Meknès and Hebrew philologist. His Ketonet Yosef ("The coat of Joseph"), a lexicon of Hebrew grammatical roots in three volumes, was published posthumously between 1922 and 1943. This singular philological work within a family of jurists testifies to a relationship with the Hebrew language as an object of study in itself — fidelity to the letter that precedes and conditions understanding of the spirit.

Rabbi Salomon Berdugo (Chlomo Berdugo) (1854–1906) — Chief Rabbi of Meknès from 1897, son of Rabbi Daniel Berdugo. Decisor and liturgical poet, author of Em le-Mesorot and Die Hashev. His dual vocation as jurist and poet illustrates the cultural unity of Moroccan Judaism, where piyyut and halakha nourished the same soil. He died in 1906, on the eve of the upheavals that the protectorate would bring.

Rabbi Yehoshua Berdugo (1878–1953) — Born in Meknès, av beth-din and Chief Rabbi of Morocco, president of the High Rabbinical Court. He founded the first synagogue of the New Mellah of Meknès around 1928. At the head of Moroccan rabbinical institutions during the years of the French protectorate and the Vichy period, he ensured the continuity of halakhic authority in particularly difficult circumstances. He died in 1953, three years before Morocco's independence.

Serge Berdugo (born November 26, 1937) — Moroccan lawyer and politician, Minister of Tourism of Morocco between 1993 and 1995, secretary general of the Council of Moroccan Jewish Communities and president of the Jewish Community of Casablanca. A descendant of the lineage, he embodies the transformation of communal vocation into civic and political engagement in contemporary Morocco. In 2021, he represented the community in Meknès at the commemoration of the bicentenary of the death of Rabbi Raphaël Berdugo.

At the end of this journey, it appears that the lineage Berdugo will have, among all the virtues of Judaism, best expressed that of knowledge of the Law placed at the service of justice and community — the talmud Torah become magistracy, erudition made benevolence. Generation after generation, and for nearly three centuries in Meknès, the Berdugo did not seek power or wealth, but the peaceful authority of the upright judge and the humble master. Judah opened the way with his "Deep Waters"; Mordekhaï deepened it by spreading teaching; Raphaël, Petahia and Yekutiel made it a river; Yaacov and Joseph widened its bed toward poetry and grammar; Salomon preserved its course before the storm; Yehoshua kept it standing during the darkest years. At each generation, the fire was not merely transmitted — it was rekindled.

This continuity connects a singular destiny — that of a family from the Moroccan imperial city — to the collective memory of Israel entire. For what the Berdugo carried, this fire of study that is transmitted and displaced without ever being extinguished, is what Israel carried through all its exiles. The virtue of masoret, faithful transmission, is perhaps the most silent and most tenacious of all: it requires neither brilliant bravery nor dramatic sacrifice, but the daily decision, repeated from father to son, to reopen the book and begin again. The Spanish sprout, planted in the soil of Meknès, transplanted to the four corners of the diaspora — Jerusalem, Paris, Montreal, Casablanca — continues to green again. And as long as a Berdugo opens a book to seek law and justice, the promise contained in the name will be renewed.