Mazaltob: A Novel

by Blanche Bendahan, Yaëlle Azagury (Translator), Frances Malino (Translator)

The first English translation of a compelling work by a forerunner of modern Sephardi feminist literature.
 
The moving story of a Moroccan woman living in a patriarchal society, Mazaltob depicts the tension between tradition and modernity within a North African Jewish community. Mazaltob, a fourteen-year-old girl, is in love with a boy, Jean, but forced to marry a much older man with business interests in Argentina. He eventually returns to his work, leaving her behind in Tétouan.
 
First published in 1930, the Académie Française recognized Mazaltob with its annual prize, and subsequent readers have treasured the book for its elusive narrative voice, avant-garde blending of genres, and nuanced look at Sephardi Jewish customs. This translation brings the novel for the first time to English readers. Translators Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino retrieve fragments of a rich culture whose written traces, swept aside by the turbulent tides of history, have been largely erased. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author’s original notes.

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, Historical Fiction, Morocco, Africa, Judaism

187 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2024

Reviews

[gideon · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...all have turned Israel’s daughters into stern guardians of a religion that either ignores them or despises them."

Mazaltob does not mince words showing the many ways that women are suffocated and killed (literally and in spirit) in the name of tradition- in this case the Sephardic community of Tetouan, Morocco. The book was intended to be somewhat of an introduction to Sephardic Jewry for its French audience, and was very immersive and detailed in the culture of Tetouan's Jewish community. Despite being a tragedy Mazaltob is depressingly funny at times. The writing did feel a little flat but that may be because of the translation or the time period. There was also some commentary on reconciling the Christian and Jewish faiths which did have me rolling my eyes a little but does make sense in context as explained by Yaelle Azagury's essay at the end. Overall a short but enlightening read.

[Stuart Gavurin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so beautifully written that the third-person narrative feels like poetry. It is short book that gives deep insights into Sephardic Jewish life and tradition in northern Africa. The story is touching and feels personal as you root for the protagonist. It also shows how in the 20th century there was movement to a more secular/deist perspective on religion.

Overall, you'l feel like you learned a lot while being fully engrossed in the plot.

When one reads this book it's important to remember it was written in the 1930s and these kind of coming to age and love stories weren't as common or complex as those in the 2000's.

[David Buzaglo · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is an amazing peek into the life and the debates of Jewish Tetouan in the early 20th century, but I found its constant orientalism and rejection of halachah as purely superstition and prejudice to be hard to swallow as a modern reader.

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised by the pleasure I took in reading a proto-feminist yet quasi-orientalist story, that on the simple level is simply a romance from circa 1890's Morocco set in the Juderia, the Jewish ghetto, of Tetouan. Blanche Bendahan is called the forerunner of modern Sephardic Jewish literature in the French language.

Yet, simple as this book is, it conveys a world of Moroccan Jewish life and customs that I had no knowledge of and had given little thought to. Bendahan captures the tension between the closed traditional life of the ghetto and the emerging attractions of the modernizing world all around it. We observe the ambitious sons of that place migrate to Argentina and elsewhere seeking their fortunes. We feel currents of European ideas and Ashkenazi ways touch the closed life of the ghetto. We feel the tense but largely stable relationship between the Muslim and Jewish community. Mazaltob, our heroine, becomes torn between different worlds, and competing ideas of love, of duty, of service to God, and briefly tastes a world with horizons far broader than the place in which she begins. We feel her heart and her confusion as she feels her way to discovering her own feelings

There are, reportedly, many parallels between the author's life and the life of her protagonist, and the introduction does a good job of drawing these out. By reports, Bendahan became a literary figure of some note in the 1920s and 1930s in France, and died in 1975.

There is an extensive introduction to this story which considers its place in Algerian Jewish and French literature. At times the book seems to offer an orientalist sentimentality that is problematic, and yet in the next moment one experiences those same sentiments not as a problematic romanticization, but as something close to the author's own lived experience hovering between tradition and modernity. It's complicated, and I would leave it to literary scholars and philosophers to decode where a story like this sits and what sins its author commits against ideological correctness. I just thought it was a fun quick read, which for all of its anachronisms and archaisms, and partially because of them too, showed me a world I did not know.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

During the past few decades, scholars and feminists has been recovering work written by Jewish women during the first half of the 20th century. The majority of these books are from the Ashkenazic world, which makes the new edition of the novel “Mazaltob” by Blanche Bendahan, translated and edited by Yaele Azagury and Frances Malino (Brandeis University Press), even more welcome since it offers a view of Sephardic culture. Also included in the book are essays by Azagury and Malino giving background about Bendahan’s life and the culture in which the novel takes place. The work, which was originally published in 1930, was Bendaham’s first novel. Although the author lived most of her life in France, her story takes place in Tetouan, Morocco.
See the rest pf my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mazaltob is a novel about a young woman in an insular Jewish community in Morocco, set in the early 20th century. First published in 1930, it is amazingly ahead of its time, discussing religious convictions, intermarriage, the second class status of women, arranged marriages, and the lives of women who conform to society's "rules" and those who do not. Really nicely written and played out, it would made a brilliant Hollywood movie.

[Lois · Rating 4 out of 5]

An evocative novel that expresses the dilemma of Sephardi women who are placed between modernity and tradition. The descriptions of the traditions of daily life are informative, rich, and nostalgia-invoking. The author clearly indicates the prison of Mazaltob's circumstances and mind that bind her to a world that has mistreated her terribly.

[Vitória · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.