Mogador — the Essaouira of ancient maps — is one of the youngest communities in Moroccan Judaism: refounded in 1764 on the Atlantic coast of the South, it became within less than a century a vibrant center of rabbinical creation. It is there, in the mellah that the governor assigned to the city's Jews in 1807, to the north of the city, that the Knafo family (כנאפו / כנפו) distinguished itself — one of the foremost rabbinical lineages of the community. At its head stands an exceptional figure, Rabbi Joseph Knafo (1824–1900), whom the Séfarade tradition has ranked among the greatest masters of Moroccan Judaism over the past two centuries.
This Great Book follows the thread of this family from its distant roots — the Jewish martyrs of Ifrane, in southern Morocco, from whom the Knafo claim descent — to its descendants today, writers and scholars in Israel. It focuses above all on Rabbi Joseph: decisor, moralist, educator, and kabbalist, whose printed and manuscript works constitute a rare and substantial body within the Morocco of his time. As much a man of the book as of prayer, he was, according to the tradition preserved by his family, the first in the Maghreb to translate into Judeo-Arabic the tales of the Baal Chem Tov, offering Hasidism to the simple people of his nation.
A distinction will be drawn here, as far as possible, between what History establishes — dates, places, functions, printed works — and what family memory and devotion transmit in the form of narratives. For the Knafo are also a family of guardians: it is their own descendants who rescued the ancestor's manuscripts, republished his books, and assembled, for the centenary of his death, a scholarly anthology in his memory. Their faithfulness is the very thread of this account.
Unlike the great inland communities, Mogador is a new city: refounded in 1764 on the Atlantic coast, it attracted merchants and scholars alike, and its Jewish community took shape through successive waves of settlement from across southern Morocco. It was within this movement that the Knafo put down roots in the city. Family tradition traces their origins to the "burned of Ifrane" (נשרפי אופראן), those Jewish martyrs of Ifrane — or Oufran — whose memory haunts the Memory of southern Judaism. Rabbi Moshe Knafo, father of Rabbi Joseph, was reportedly among the survivors of Ifrane who made their way to Mogador.
This link to the martyrs of Ifrane is no mere genealogical ornament: it has fed the lineage's imagination down to the present day, to the point that a descendant, Asher Knafo, drew from it a novel, Le nourrisson d'Ifrane (התינוק מאופראן, Tel-Aviv, 2000). The precise history of this migration largely escapes us, and the exact date of the family's settlement in Mogador remains unknown; yet the fact of this rooting is certain, for it was in Mogador that Rabbi Joseph was born and lived.
Settled in the mellah — that quarter assigned to the city's Jews by the governor in 1807, to the north of the city — the Knafo soon belonged to the learned elite of a community in full intellectual ferment. The nineteenth century in Mogador was indeed a moment of varied rabbinical creativity, in which legal decisors, poets, and kabbalists lived side by side. The name Knafo, written sometimes כנאפו and sometimes כנפו, would become durably attached in that milieu to study, teaching, and communal leadership, across several generations.
The birth of Rabbi Joseph Knafo is placed in Mogador around 1824; sources differ only slightly on the year, but agree on the place and on the man's renown. Son of Rabbi Moshe, he was sent while still young to study in Marrakech, at the yeshiva of that great city of the South, where he sat at the feet of the learned Rabbi Yaakov Adaoudi; in Mogador, his master was Rabbi Abraham Coriat. From this twofold formation he returned to devote his entire life to study, to teaching in the mellah, and to writing — as a kabbalist faithful to the school of the Ari — Isaac Luria — and his successors.
Rabbi Yehouda Adri, who edited one of his works, placed him among the "perfect sages" (החכם השלם), an expression that Sephardic Judaism reserves for its greatest masters: in his view, Rabbi Joseph merited this title because his mouth and his heart were as one, and because he himself fulfilled all that he taught to others. A man of avowed humility — he called himself "dust" (ואנכי עפר) — he is described by tradition as righteous, ascetic, and holy.
To his role as teacher and halakhic decisor, the community wished to add that of hazan (cantor) of its newly built synagogue. The accounts of his life report that he first demurred, unable to see himself in that role, before yielding to the insistence of the community's notables; and it is told that his very first prayer as cantor left the assembled congregation in wonder at its beauty and its delicacy. The synagogue "of the Qahal" ultimately came to bear his name — "Slat Rabbi Yossef Knafo" — a mark of the imprint he left upon prayer no less than upon learning. He died in Mogador at the close of the year 1900 (Rosh Hodech, 5661); the poem engraved upon his tombstone is attributed, by tradition, to the venerated poet of Mogador, Rabbi David Elkaïm.
Rabbi Joseph Knafo is first and foremost a man of the book. He began publishing relatively late, around the age of forty-three, yet his printed work forms a considerable body of writing for a Moroccan rabbi of his time. In the absence of a Hebrew printing press in Morocco, he had virtually all of his books published in Livorno, at the renowned printing house of Eliyahou Benamozegh, with the assistance of the bookseller Yitzhak — known as Yaïch — Halevi. These works appeared in succession: Zevah Pessah (1875), his most substantial volume at some four hundred and twenty pages, devoted to the month of Nissan; Ot Brit Kodesh (1885), on circumcision and the keeping of the covenant; Hassadim Tovim (1888); Shomer Shabbat (1891); Minhat Erev (1896), on the Minha prayer; and finally, in that same year of 1899, Tov Ro'i, a commentary on tractate Avot, and Yefe Einayim.
One singular feature strikes the observer: almost all of these books appeared without haskamot, those rabbinical approbations that custom placed at the head of scholarly works. This austerity, unusual for the time, accords with the author's humility — he did not seek the endorsement of established authorities. He did, however, obtain five approbations from rabbis of Mogador for another work, Me'at Tsri — though that one remained in manuscript.
Rabbi Joseph theorized this fervor for the printed word: in Ot Brit Kodesh, he argues that printing sacred books constitutes an even higher mitsva than writing a Torah scroll, for a printed book multiplies itself and instructs multitudes. A portion of his work nonetheless remained in manuscript — the vast Torah commentary Kol Zimra, the glosses Badei ha-Aron on the Meguilot and on the work of Hayyim Vital, the trilogy Me'at Mayim / Me'at Tsri / Me'at Devach — and six works are known to us only by their titles, cited in the Malkhei Rabbanan of Rabbi Yossef ben Naïm.
A Kabbalist rooted in the Lurianic school, Rabbi Joseph Knafo did not reserve this knowledge for initiates alone. His most original gesture — and doubtless his most enduring — was to make mysticism and piety accessible to the ordinary people of his community. He was, as far as is known, the first in the Maghreb to translate into Judeo-Arabic, the spoken tongue of the people, the tales and praises of the Baal Chem Tov, the founder of Eastern European Hasidism. These tales form the heart of Hassadim Tovim (1888), a book in three parts — Hasdei Hachem, novellae on the Torah; Hasdei Avot, the stories of the Baal Chem Tov in dialectal Arabic; Hasdei David, on King David and the Binding of Isaac.
Through this work as a transmitter, he offered Hasidism "to the masses of the house of Israel," in the phrase his descendants would preserve — to women and men who did not read learned Hebrew. The same intention runs through his Shomer Shabbat (1891), at once a book of laws and a collection of prayers for Shabbat, from the eve through the close, in which numerous passages are rendered in Maghrebi Arabic; and through his Minhat Erev on the Minha prayer, likewise punctuated with passages in Arabic.
There is in this a demanding and generous conception of transmission: the Torah and Kabbalah are worthwhile, in Rabbi Joseph's eyes, only if they genuinely reach the people. Writing in turn in Hebrew for the learned and in Judeo-Arabic for the unlettered, he embodies the figure of the Moroccan master who refuses to separate the heights of doctrine from concrete care for the faithful — a trait that accounts for the enduring popularity of a work such as Ot Brit Kodesh, reprinted by photographic reproduction as far as Brooklyn in 1993.
Beyond erudition, it is a genuine educational and moral project that Rabbi Joseph Knafo's work carries forward, and that the scholarly studies gathered around him have brought to light. In the introduction to Yefe Einayim, he sets forth three cardinal values, interdependent: the study of Torah for its own sake (lishma), charity and benevolence (gemilout hassadim), and humility. This last is by no means the least: it is presented as the prerequisite of all authentic study, without which knowledge corrupts itself into pride.
His thought places at the summit not solitary study, but the teaching of Torah to others. The master, in his view, becomes a "flowing spring" who, far from being depleted by giving, himself learns the most from his students — an echo of the call of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkaï, whom he cites, urging sages to go out toward their community rather than withdrawing into study. The connection between study and charity he develops further still in Zevah Pessah.
This ideal, Rabbi Joseph lived first and foremost. A man who called himself "dust" (ואנכי עפר), he gave his master-book of ethics the title Zakh veNaki — "Pure and Clean" — a collection of twenty-seven chapters (ז"ך equaling twenty-seven in gematria) treating the festivals, the refinement of character traits, and upright conduct, and closing with a final "pure chapter" (פרק זך). Academic posterity has taken the full measure of this work: Dr. Ariel Knafo analyzed its "world of values," Rabbi Haïm ben Naïm its conception of Torah study, Dr. Shlomo Elkayim its rabbinic language — readings that together make this master of Mogador a thinker of education in his own right.
The greatness of the Knafo family also lies in this: the charge and the memory were passed from father to son. Rabbi David Knafo, son of Rabbi Joseph, was in turn rabbi of Mogador and president of its rabbinical court (Av Beit Din): he issued approbations and signed the ketoubot, designating himself "David Knafo, son of my lord my father the rav yki"n." For it was David who forged, for his father, the acronym surname יכי"ן — yki"n — by which posterity knows him. He himself readily signed « ד"ך בן ז"ך »: David Knafo, whose acronym also evokes the humble and the lowly, son of the "pure" — an allusion to his father and to his book Zakh veNaki.
After the death of Rabbi Joseph, David succeeded him as hazan of the "du Qahal" synagogue; then came the grandson, Rabbi Shlomo-Haï Knafo, appointed cantor in 1937, who held the charge until his departure for Casablanca in 1952, on the road to the Land of Israel, where he died in 1996. Three generations of the same family would thus have carried the voice of the same synagogue.
This synagogue itself, "Slat l'Qahal," is at the heart of a beautiful account transmitted by Rabbi Shlomo-Haï in the name of his father. Tradition holds that it was built entirely by the community: money was collected mainly at funerals, to the cry of "charity saves from death" (צדקה תציל ממות); then, when the funds were exhausted, each member of the congregation came to work at the construction in his own trade, so that no non-Jewish hand took part — hence, it is said, its name of "synagogue of the Qahal," the synagogue of the community. The architect Pinkerfeld, who visited it in 1954, dated it for his part to the beginning of the twentieth century.
The history of the Knafo does not end with the generation of Mogador: it continues in Israel, where the descendants have made themselves vigilant guardians of their heritage. Their first concern was to save the manuscripts of their ancestor. Zakh veNaki, whose manuscript had once been sent to Warsaw to be printed — a project aborted at the death of the bookseller Yitzhak Halevi — was recovered and brought back to the family, then printed in 1987 in Jerusalem by the grandson Rabbi Shlomo-Haï, in an edition established by Rabbi Yehouda Adri: this was the first book by Rabbi Joseph to appear in the Land of Israel. Other writings followed: Me'at Mayim was edited by the Orot ha-Maghreb institute of Prof. Rabbi Moshé Amar, and the association "Ot Brit Kodesh", active in Jerusalem and Ashdod, republished several works — including a luxury edition of Minhat Erev (1996), dedicated to the memory of Shlomo-Haï, who passed away that year.
For the centenary of Rabbi Joseph's death, his descendants assembled a scholarly anthology, "yki"n" (around 2002), of which Asher Knafo — great-great-grandson of the master, writer and editor — was the guiding force; he even included an imaginary dialogue with his ancestor. Around him contributed Dr. Ariel Knafo, Elichai Knafo, David Knafo and others, blending the family's voice with that of researchers.
This memorial vein irrigates the entire family: Asher Knafo devoted a novel to the martyrs of Ifrane, Le nourrisson d'Ifrane (2000), and Isaac D. Knafo wrote Le Mémorial de Mogador (Jerusalem, 1993). From Rabbi Moshe, survivor of Ifrane, to these writers of today, the same faithfulness connects the generations: to preserve the trace, to publish the manuscript, to speak the name.
From Ifrane to Mogador, then from Mogador to Jerusalem, the Knafo family traces one of the most beautiful trajectories in Moroccan Judaism: that of a lineage which made study, writing, and transmission its vocation across more than a century. At its center, Rabbi Joseph Knafo — yki"n — remains a singular figure: a decisor and Lurianic kabbalist, but also a bridge-builder who translated Hasidism into Judeo-Arabic for simple folk, an educator who placed humility at the threshold of all knowledge, a man of the book who held the printing of sacred texts to be a mitsva. Around him, a son who served as Av Beit Din, a grandson who was a cantor, great-grandchildren who became writers and scholars: one same voice, long carried by the same synagogue, then by the presses and by books.
This Great Book has endeavored to distinguish, at every step, what History establishes — dates, places, functions, works — from what family memory transmits with devotion: those narratives of saintliness passed down from generation to generation. Both together compose the face of a family. And one must measure what is owed here to the Knafo themselves: without the care of Rabbi Shlomo-Haï, who had Zakh veNaki printed in Jerusalem in 1987, without the work of Asher Knafo and the centenary anthology, without the association Ot Brit Kodesh, an entire portion of this œuvre would have remained silent within manuscripts. Among the Knafo, filial piety became erudition, and remembrance became edition.
It owes the substance of its material to the serialized monograph published on moreshet-morocco.com, the digital library of Elie Pilo, to whom our recognition and gratitude go for having preserved and made accessible the history of the Knafo of Mogador — and, through it, a part of the living Memory of Sephardic and North African Judaism.
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