ABOUT THIS BOOK

A first-ever English translation of a compelling work by a forerunner of modern Sephardi feminist literature.

Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan’s nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author’s original notes.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Blanche Bendahan (1893–1975) was born in Algeria to a Jewish family of Moroccan descent and moved to France shortly after she was born. She was a writer of poetry as well as fiction. Mazaltob, which won an award from the Académie Française, was her first novel. Yaëlle Azagury is a writer, literary scholar, and critic. She was a lecturer in French and Francophone studies at Barnard College and a lecturer in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is a native of Tangier, Morocco. Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History Emerita at Wellesley College. In 2012 she was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of Education.

REVIEWS

“A fascinating portrait of a young Moroccan Sephardi woman as she navigates the ever-shifting ground between tradition and modernity, East and West, self and other, obligation and desire. Stylistically bold, culturally rich, by turns comic and wrenching, this polyphonic novel is both historically important and, in its new translation, a gift for our current times.”

— Elizabeth Graver, author of Kantika

“English-language readers will rejoice at this translation of Bendahan’s coming-of-age story, set in northern Morocco at the turn of the century and following the dreams and travails of a Jewish young woman who chafes at the constraints that society places upon her. This marvelous annotated translation restores to us the forgotten words of an award-winning Jewish woman writer—and introduces us to a young, female Jewish protagonist whose sexual and spiritual desires are evocative and timely. With artful, informed introductory words by Azagury and Malino, Mazaltob is a crucial compliment and counterpoint to Albert Memmi’s The Pillar of Salt: it is what students of French, North African, and Jewish culture have been thirsting for.”

— Abrevaya Stein, professor of history and Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

“Bendahan’s masterpiece—a stunning exploration of Jewishness, feminism, and modernity in Morocco—deserves to be read far and wide. Malino’s excellent biographical introduction and Azagury’s fascinating literary analysis beautifully frame their translation. A delight and a triumph!”

— Jessica M. Marglin, professor of religion, law, and history and Ruth Ziegler Chair in Jewish Studies, University of Southern California

“A beautiful, poetic novel, Mazaltob offers rich description of the lives of Jewish women in early twentieth-century Tetouan, while also reflecting upon the early twentieth-century French intellectual milieu of its author, Bendahan. The fluid translation makes the work of this important but long-overlooked Sephardic writer a pleasure to read in English.”

— Deborah Starr, professor of modern Arabic and Hebrew literature and film, Cornell University

“This is a poignant coming-of-age novel which explores themes of feminism, decolonization, diaspora, orientalism and the struggle between modernity and tradition. The text is rich and lush in its descriptions of North African Jewish life and customs; it’s also slippery in its point of view, meandering between narrators and voices in a way reminiscent of fellow modernist feminist writer Virginia Woolf.”

— Hey Alma

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
by Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino
Acknowledgements
Introduction
by Frances Malino
A Note on the Translation
Map of the North of Africa and the Mediterranean (1910)
Mazaltob
by Blanche Bendahan
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Mazaltob and the Rise of the Modern Sephardi Novel
by Yaëlle Azagury
Endnotes
Further Reading