Judaism
Morocco was a destination for the Jewish diaspora after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire. A second wave of Sephardic Jews arrived in the country following the Alhambra Decree of 1492 which expelled all Jews from nearby Spain. The Jews, as well as the Christians, had legal autonomy relating to their own faith in cases when both parties were of the same religion.
After the creation of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948, the population of Moroccan Jews decreased significantly due to emigration. Moroccan Jews also migrated to other countries, such as the linguistically-similar France and Quebec, Canada. A total of 486,000 Israelis are of Moroccan origin, while the World Factbook estimates that only around 6,000 Jews remain in Morocco. Most of them are elderly, with the largest population in Casablanca and the remainder thinly dispersed around the country.
Read more about this topic: Religion In Morocco
Famous quotes containing the word judaism:
“Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)