Maimonides in Marseille: Mediating Judeoarab difference in Mediterranean France

In this article, I challenge dominant secular republican approaches to religious difference ( laïcité ) in contemporary France by digitally and physically examining how traditionalist Jewish and Muslim communities in Marseille draw on Maimonides’ medieval, often virtually refracted philosophy, to create alternative modes of intercommunal engagement. These communities resist the privatization of religious identification demanded by laïcité through particularistic practices rooted in shared North African memory, raising questions about how marginalized communities preserve and transmit cultural knowledge across generations via linguistic archives. Through digital and in-person ethnography, I explore two cases: first, the intercultural language group Dalāla, which conducts online Judeoarabic classes teaching the Passover Haggadah in Tunisian North African Arabic (Darija) to intergenerational audiences of Jewish and Muslim participants; and, second, a Jewish–Muslim partnership in Marseille’s northern districts guided by the concepts of hazak (strength, literally an adjective meaning 'strong') and kavod (honour). The pedagogical practices at Dalāla represent a significant form of cultural reclamation, utilizing virtual platforms and digitized visual technologies while transmitting religious languages that challenge French linguistic hierarchies and foster intercommunal learning. These online encounters demonstrate how shared Maghrebi linguistic resources – particularly Darija and Judeoarabic script rendered through digital interfaces – enable new forms of coexistence that transcend both conflict narratives and formal interfaith dialogue. I argue that these digital and embodied practices offer empirical examples of how medieval philosophical traditions can generate contemporary forms of public reason that neither privatize nor universalize religious difference. My analysis concludes by reconceptualizing intercommunal relations in postcolonial France: rather than viewing Jewish–Muslim encounters through the binary lens of conflict or harmony, it is more appropriate to understand them as ongoing processes of translation and meaning-making that draw on transtemporal Mediterranean traditions of reasoned engagement with difference.