The Appeal was signed within the framework of the second edition of the Jewish Africa Conference by Serge Berdugo, Secretary-General of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco, Shaun Zagnoev, President of the South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies ans Magda Haroun, Representative of the Jewish Community of Egypt.
René Trabelsi, former Minister of Tourism of Tunisia, Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Professor Ephraim Isaac, Co-founder of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, El Mehdi Boudra, Founding President of the Mimouna Association and Jason Guberman, Executive Director of the American Sephardi Federation, are also among the signatories of the Appeal.
The main objective of this appeal is to preserve the Jewish-African heritage, taking Morocco as an example. The country has developed, under the leadership of HM King Mohammed VI, a plan for the rehabilitation of Jewish cemeteries in Morocco, El Mehdi Boudra told MAP.
The signatories of the Appeal call for the recognition by individuals, civil society and governments, of the thousand-year-old history of the Jewish people in Africa and stress the need to preserve, rehabilitate and make accessible the Jewish historical sites throughout the continent.
They also call for strengthening the sacred bonds of memory that unite diverse peoples and generations to the African Jewish experience.
A ceremony of “Jewish leadership awards” was held on this occasion to reward personalities who have worked for the preservation of the Jewish-African culture, namely Malcolm Hoenlein, Rene Trabelsi, Shaun Zagnoev, Jorge Pedro Mauricio dos Santos, Minister of Communities in the government of Cape Verde, Zevadia Belaynesh (Ethiopia) and Andrea Barry (Namibia)
The conference, which opened Monday in Rabat, runs until Wednesday at the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca. A total of 51 speakers from 22 countries are expected to attend the event.
The first edition of the conference was held in 2019 in New York. The second edition is held under the theme “Past, Present and Future”.
Source: Agency Morocaine De Presse