Laughter, Music and Joy: The New Center for Arts and Culture Celebrates Mimouna

by Daniel E Levenson, ALM

May 6, 2011

I have to admit that until recently I had never heard of the Jewish holiday of Mimouna, but this year, when I heard that the New Center for Arts and Culture (NACA) was planning a Mimouna celebration, I decided I needed to go and see for myself what this holiday is about. In short, here’s what I  discovered: Mimouna is a holiday which is celebrated by Morrocan Jews to mark the end of Passover. But it is also more than that, and what makes it so interesting to me is that not only does there appear not to be any parallel kinds of observances among other Jewish communities, but because it is a holiday designed to be shared with Muslim friends and neighbors. I think this makes for an interesting and very beautiful symmetry- when we come to the end of one holiday celebrating our freedom from enslavement at the hands of one culture (Passover and Egyptian bondage) Moroccan Jews make a point of ending with another kind of holiday, one which celebrates Jewish freedom and the ability to live at peace with one’s neighbors of another faith and culture.

This is the second year that the NCACA has held a Mimouna event, and I had heard two things from people who attended last year, first that it was very crowded, and second, that it was a lot of fun. Fortunately, this year the New Center for Arts and Culture, and their partnering organizations, decided to hold the event in a more spacious venue at Harvard University, and from what I could tell, people seemed to be having a lot of fun this year as well. Anyone who knows me knows that one of my least favorite places to be is in a giant crowded room in which no one can move, hear each other or meet new people, and the format that the organizers used this year–a large open area in the middle with space for both performers to perform and attendees to mingle, with separate activities and speakers going on in adjoining rooms, was a winning strategy in my book.

A few days after the event I sat down with Lynn Krasker, Director of PRISM, the young adult section of the NCAC, to ask her how they had decided that the holiday of Mimouna would be a good occasion around which to build an event. “It is PRISM’s attempt to engage the Sephardic community,” she noted, adding that while there are many options for Ashkenazic cultural engagement in Boston, there are much fewer opportunities to highlight different aspects of Sephardi Jewish culture. She said that the staff and lay leaders who planned this year’s Mimouna celebration were already looking ahead to next year, evaluating what worked best and thinking of new elements to add. One thing which will not change, she told me, is the interactive nature of the event, which was a hit with attendees both this year and last. Speaking for myself, as well, I thought this was an important part of what made the event enjoyable – in one room there was an opportunity to make paper “Hamza” hands, a decorative object common to both Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, while in another a female Muslim stand-up comic performed and in yet another attendees were able to get intricate (and temporary) Henna tattoos, all the while people danced to the sounds of a variety of musical acts in the main area.

As I moved around from one room to the next, seeing friends from across the Boston Jewish community as well as Muslim friends from the American Islamic Congress (a co-sponsor of the event) I couldn’t help but think that from what I now know of Mimouna, that the organizers had indeed achieved the overall goal of the holiday. All around me Jews and Muslims (and no doubt some Christians as well) from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions were talking, laughing and dancing together. Given how much time I spend writing about conflicts, both within the Jewish world and in the Middle East, it can be easy to forget sometimes that Jews and Judaism have been an integral part of life in the Middle East and North Africa for Millennia, and that aside from conflict there have also been important instances of cooperation and dialogue. Mimouna is clearly one holiday designed to keep these channels of communication open, and the NCAC and their partners should be applauded for helping to spread this tradition. In this way, they are doing more than just reaching out to the Sephardi community (an important and noble goal in and of itself) but to all Jews and Muslims in Boston.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson/The New Vilna Review 2011.