There’s No Home Like Place: Homogenizing Nostalgia Among Moroccan Jews in Venezuela

Abstract In the final third of the twentieth century the interpersonal ties between Moroccan Jewish migrants and their homeland significantly diminished due to migration patterns that effectively ended Jewish community life in Morocco. This shift led to the creation of Moroccan Jewish diaspora organizations, which fostered new community networks that became “melting pots” for the reconstructed memories of Morocco among migrants in their new places of residence. This study focuses on first-generation Jewish-Moroccan immigrants to Venezuela from 1970 to 2000. It builds on the idea that nostalgia—a selective process of remembering or creating a “place of memory” ( lieu de mémoire )—played a crucial role in shaping a highly contextualized memory of their Moroccan homeland, culminating in homogenized, collective narratives of Moroccan Jewish history. The research also explores the complex social and cultural mechanisms that contributed to the homogenization of space and time in nostalgic recollections. By juxtaposing dominant narratives of reattachment to Morocco with those of Jewish disengagement from Arab-Muslim lands, the study highlights the role of nostalgia in shaping the temporal and spatial frames of displacement narratives within immigrant communities. It highlights the importance of understanding the formation of collective memory among first-generation immigrants, particularly minority groups undergoing mass relocation, and advocates for a more nuanced approach to these communities’ stories about the places they left behind.