Zouj: Dynamic Jewish-Muslim Interaction in Popular Maghribi Comedic Performance Culture since the 1920s

2026-07-22

DJMI will provide the first systematic study into the dynamics of Muslim-Jewish interactions in popular comedic performance culture from the 1920s in the Maghrib and France, until the present day. The project’s hook is the word Zouj because of its shared meaning in Arabic and Hebrew: a couple, or two. While there is recognition that such ‘Mediterranean culture’ existed, there has been all too little analysis of how it functioned in the past, what its current state is, and what the implications of such change are. In its venture to explore the dynamics of these dialogical interactions through popular culture, DJMI will begin by investigating the satirical sketches of early popular comedic theatrical production in Morocco and Algeria as the crucible for the North African performing arts scene to come. These sketches were sui generis and cross-genre, adapting elements of local halqa—circle-based qu’ranic recitation—commedia del’arte-style street theatre, local musics, and the telling of folk tales and everyday-vignettes in local Arabic in the public square. DJMI traces the dynamics of Jewish-Muslim interactions through the production and texts of these sketches to Maghribi chaâbi (popular) music, and on to stand-up comedy in the present day connecting to a renewal of interest in Muslim-Jewish interactions among new generations across northern Africa in reception to a recent wave of literature, film, and music that seeks to depict or reimagine these interactions and relations. DJMI thus connects the historical to the anthropological proto-nostalgia of this reception to focus on the debates and interconnections that this renewal of interest produces and where this emanates from. These perspectives and their historical basis are of the uttermost importance in light of the perceived increasingly sectarian divisions between Muslims and Jews across the globe, both rhetorically and geographically, including the particularly dramatic situation in Israel-Palestine

United Kingdom (UK)

2026-02-15