History register · custodian, not owner
Published in the journal GÉNÉALO-J no. 135 (Autumn 2018), edited by the Cercle de Généalogie Juive, this article by David Encaoua, an economist and professor emeritus at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, reconstructs the intellectual and spiritual itinerary of four major figures of the Encaoua lineage (variants: Al-Naqua, Alnakaoua, Ankaoua, Ankawa, Enkaoua, N'Kaoua). The author, himself a descendant of this Hispano-Algerian-Moroccan lineage, forges the operative notion of "conveyor of Jewish thought" to designate persons who, at once, structured their community, produced works of philosophy or rabbinic law of enduring import, and created cultural bridges between Christian lands and lands of Islam. Four figures, separated by more than six centuries, are brought together around a common thread: the transmission of a Castilian heritage combining Talmudic rigor and openness to modernity. The lineage takes root in Toledo in the 13th century, where Yéhouda and Shmuel Al-Naqua, notables attached to the court of Alphonse IX, were wrongly accused of a theft and executed around 1200 — their innocence was recognized only three days after their hanging. A century and a half later emerges the first great figure: Israël ben Yossef Al-Naqua (?-Toledo 1391), chief rabbi of Castile, author of the Menorat ha-Maor (The Candelabrum of Light), a work of ethics in nineteen chapters preceded by acrostic poems, whose original manuscript is held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. He perished, burned alive, in June 1391 in the anti-Jewish massacres of Toledo, clutching a Sefer Torah. His son Ephraïm ben Israël Al-Naqua (Toledo 1359 – Tlemcen 1442), the "Rab of Tlemcen," left Spain after his father's death and, after passing through Marrakech and Honein, founded in Tlemcen the Jewish community that would lastingly mark Algeria until 1962. A philosopher, physician, and poet, he defends in his principal work Chaar Kevod Hachem (The Portico to the Glory of the Name) the rationalist theses of Maïmonide against Nahmanide and maintains that biblical thought and rational thought are inseparable. Official physician to the sultan — whom he cured, according to tradition — a thaumaturge who arrived in Tlemcen mounted on a lion bridled by a serpent, he established a synagogue, a Talmudic academy, and obtained for the Jews the right to leave the enclave of Agadir to settle intra-muros. Buried in 1442, his tomb remained until 2005 a place of Jewish and Muslim pilgrimage; a mausoleum was re-inaugurated in 2013 in Tlemcen, an homage paid notably by François Hollande during his visit in 2012. Three centuries later, Abraham Ankawa (Salé 1810 – Oran 1890), nicknamed "Ha-Gaone," embodies the itinerant conveyor of the Mediterranean shores in the 19th century. A scholar, shohet, and dayan, he traveled between Salé, Oran, Mascara, Tlemcen, Livorno (where he settled in 1838 then 1858 to publish there), Jerusalem, and Gibraltar. His major work, Kerem Hemer (An Admirable Vineyard), published in Livorno in 1869–1871 in two volumes, gathers the taqqanot (communal ordinances) of the Castilian judges settled in Morocco after 1492 and contains the Sefer ha-Takkanot of the rabbis of Castile published in Fez in 1494. The historian Jessica Marglin (2014) sees in him a pioneer of a "transnational and transhistorical" approach to Jewish law: drawing on the halakhic principle dina de-malkhuta dina, Ankawa often made French civil law prevail over rabbinic law in matters of personal status, convinced that adaptation to the laws of the host country conditioned the endurance of Jewish law. His positions earned him the enmity of Rabbi Moshé Sebaoun of Oran and a forced resignation from Mascara in 1878. The fourth figure, Raphaël Encaoua (Salé 1848 – Salé 1935), called the "Angel Raphaël" or REM (Raphaël son of Mordekhaï), became in May 1918 the first president of the High Rabbinic Tribunal of Morocco instituted by the dahir of Resident General Lyautey. Decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1929 by Lucien Saint, author notably of Karné Rem (Jerusalem 1910), Paamoni Zahab (Jerusalem 1912), Toafot Rem (Casablanca 1930) and Hadad Vé-Téma, he unified the rabbinic jurisprudence of the Moroccan communities under the protectorate. His funeral in August 1935 was, according to Le Journal du Maroc, the largest spontaneous demonstration of Moroccan Judaism; he was mourned as the Ner Hamaarav (Light of Morocco). Beyond biography, the article offers a rigorous onomastics of the surname (Al-Naqua → Ankaoua/Encaoua), discusses the etymological hypotheses (Hebrew "hope in God," Arabic "purity," or a Berber name according to Maurice Eisenbeth 1936), and draws on a rich critical apparatus: Jewish Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Judaica, Alexander Beider, Abraham Laredo, Moïse Schwab, Colette Sirat, Paul Fenton, Simon Schwarzfuchs, Valérie Assan, Kenneth Brown, Jessica Marglin. By restoring these four lives linked by the Castilian heritage, David Encaoua articulates family memory and collective history, and argues that the Sephardic component of Judaism should not be reduced to its folkloric aspects but recognized in its major philosophical, legal, and ethical contributions.
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