• Writing Against Loss:Moroccan Jewish Book Culture in a Time of Disaster
• Yigal S. Nizri (bio)

The walled Mellah (Jewish Quarter) in the Medina of Sefrou was destroyed by water from the seasonal river (Oued) Aggaï on Friday, May 16, 1890, in an overnight flood that killed over ninety people and also caused significant property damage. According to the report of Moïse Nahon, a teacher at the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) school in Fez, the total number of victims was revealed only on the following day: about 50 Jews and 40 Muslims had lost their lives. By Sunday, May 18, Nahon sent an urgent telegram to the AIU president in Paris: "The small town of Sefrou, located twenty kilometers south-east of Fez, was flooded on Sabbath by a sudden overflow of the river that runs through it. A considerable number of houses and shops were carried away." This disaster, he added, "has left most of our unfortunate coreligionists living in Sefrou in utter destitution." According to Nahon:

The river accumulated a massive amount of water, mainly due to snow melting, and carried branches of trees, leaves, rocks, and sand. Soon, all this debris clogged the little opening of the walls of the town. The water amassed behind the fortification walls, and when it reached the top, it destroyed the wall and gushed with overwhelming violence through the unfortunate little town. In Sefrou, where various tributaries of the river surround many homes, houses were swamped from within and without. [End Page 91] Taken by surprise, before these poor inhabitants realized what was happening, they were besieged from all sides by water and rubble. Those who could found refuge immediately in the high terraces. Those whom the swiftness of the flood did not allow enough time to leave their basements, perished miserably. The majority of those who survived remained in profound misery. The water devoured a lot of the supplies of flour, wine, mahia (eau-de-vie), and butter. The Jews of Sefrou are actively involved in the trade of olive oil, and since it was the season of collecting the oil from the presses, they had large quantities of oil in the Mellah. It was all carried away with the flood. The Arabs plundered the stores of Jews that survived the flood. The unfortunate Jews have cried in vain from the roofs of their houses where they took refuge; no one came to stop the looters.¹

This traumatic event in Sefrou led an eyewitness by the name of Raphael Aharon Ben Shimon (1847–1928) to contemplate the unpredictability of history and the fragility of the human condition. Ben Shimon, a rabbinical emissary and a manuscript enthusiast who traveled from Jerusalem to his native Morocco in the late nineteenth century, had been in Sefrou that moonless night. Although their hotel was located in the area that was severely flooded, Ben Shimon and his companions were attending Friday night service at a synagogue located in the upper part of the Mellah at the time and were therefore saved. Ben Shimon later offered an eyewitness testimony to the deadly flood in his introduction to Et Lechol Hefets [A time for every purpose (Alexandria, 1893)], the first printed collection of piyutim (liturgical poetry) by Yaacoub ibn Zur (1673–1752). Several weeks after the flood devastated the Jewish quarter in Sefrou, Yaacoub ibn Zur's descendant, Shlomo ibn Zur, had asked Ben Shimon to write about that day in detail—to commemorate the miracle of their survival of the flood. It was Shlomo ibn Zur who funded the printing of the liturgical book. Thickly described in a first-person account, the flood scene was thus memorialized in a collection of piyutim originally written in a different city (Fez) some 150 years earlier by a different author.

According to Ben Shimon, the small group of men who gathered in the synagogue to pray that evening felt "fear, anxiety, and an awful horror" due to the noise that came out of the roof pipes. "The sound of the rains roared like heaven's thunder," he recalled, pointing out that, "in most of the roofs, pipes have joined together, from one roof-corner to another...

• 对抗损失的写作：灾难时期的摩洛哥犹太书文化
• Yigal S.Nizri（生物）

该围墙Mellah假期（犹太区）在塞夫劳的梅迪纳从季节性河流毁于水（瓦迪）1890年5月16日星期五，阿格盖伊（Aggaï）在通宵的洪水中丧生，造成90多人丧生，并造成了严重的财产损失。根据非斯联盟以色列大学（AIU）学校教师MoïseNahon的报告，仅在第二天才披露了受害者的总数：约50名犹太人和40名穆斯林丧生。在5月18日星期日之前，Nahon向巴黎的AIU主席发送了一封紧急电报：“位于非斯东南20公里处的Sefrou小镇在安息日被一条贯穿其的河水突然淹没。大量的房屋和商店被抢走了。” 他补充说，这场灾难“已经使我们大多数不幸的民族主义者彻底陷入贫困。” 根据Nahon所说：

这条河主要由于积雪融化而积聚了大量的水，并带有树枝，树叶，岩石和沙子。很快，所有这些杂物堵塞了城墙的小洞。防御工事的墙后积聚了水，当水到达山顶时，它毁坏了墙，并在不幸的小镇上爆发了压倒性的暴力行为。在塞夫鲁（Sefrou），河流的各个支流环绕着许多房屋，房屋从内到外都被淹没。[完第91页]令他们惊讶的是，在这些可怜的居民意识到发生了什么事之前，他们被水和瓦砾四面包围。那些可以立即在高高的露台上找到避难所的人。那些洪水泛滥而又没有足够的时间离开地下室的人惨死了。大多数幸存者仍然处于深深的痛苦之中。水吞噬了许多面粉，葡萄酒，mahia（淡香水）和黄油。塞夫鲁（Sefrou）的犹太人积极参与橄榄油的贸易，由于正是从榨油机收集橄榄油的季节，他们在梅拉（Mellah）拥有大量的石油。。洪水把一切都带走了。阿拉伯人掠夺了在洪水中幸存下来的犹太人的商店。不幸的犹太人从避难所的房屋屋顶上徒劳地哭泣；没有人来阻止掠夺者。^1个

塞夫鲁（Sefrou）的这一创伤性事件以拉斐尔·阿哈隆·本·西蒙（Raphael Aharon Ben Shimon，1847-1928年）的名义引起了目击者的思考，以考虑历史的不可预测性和人类状况的脆弱性。本·西蒙（Ben Shimon）是一位犹太信使和手稿爱好者，他于19世纪后期从耶路撒冷旅行到他的故乡摩洛哥，那天晚上没有塞弗鲁。尽管他们的旅馆位于遭受严重洪灾的地区，但本·西蒙和他的同伴当时在位于梅拉上部的一个犹太教堂参加星期五的夜间服务，因此得以保存。本·西蒙（Ben Shimon）后来在介绍埃特·莱科尔·赫菲特斯（Et Lechol Hefets）的过程中见证了这场致命的洪水[每时每刻（亚历山大（Alexandria），1893年）]，这是该书的第一本印刷集。雅库布·本·祖尔（Yaacoub ibn Zur，1673–1752年）所著的piyutim（宗教诗歌）。洪水摧毁了Sefrou的犹太地区后几周，Yaacoub ibn Zur的后裔Shlomo ibn Zur要求本·西蒙（Ben Shimon）详细写出这一天，以纪念他们幸存于洪水中的奇迹。是Shlomo ibn Zur资助了礼拜书的印刷。在第一人称视角中对此进行了详尽的描述，因此，洪水场景被保存在150多年前由另一位作者在另一座城市（Fez）中写成的piyutim集合中。

根据本·西蒙（Ben Shimon）的说法，由于屋顶管发出的噪音，聚集在犹太教堂中祈祷的那小群人感到“恐惧，焦虑和可怕的恐怖”。他回忆说：“大雨的声音像天堂的雷鸣般咆哮，”他指出，“在大多数屋顶中，从一个屋顶角落到另一个屋顶角落，管道都连接在一起了……