“… then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where He scattered you.” (Deuteronomy 30:3)
At the close of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the feast of Mimouna begins.
This traditional North African Jewish celebration is held the day after Passover and marks the return to eating chametz (leavened foods). In Israel, it has been adopted as something of “a national holiday,” after years of celebration in Israeli circles by Moroccan Jewish and Sephardic Jewish communities.
While the festival is culturally Moroccan, the celebratory sweets, barbecues, picnics, music, and dancing are an inviting context for sharing the North African and Moroccan Jewish holiday with Israelis of all backgrounds, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Traditional treats on Mimouna include mufleta—a honey-dipped Moroccan crepe, traditionally flipped and cooked as an ever-growing stack on the pan.
“After the days of Passover, days of matzah [unleavened bread], the time has come for mufleta,” Netanyahu said at Attorney Meir Dahan’s Mimouna celebration in Yavne.
Traditional treats on Mimouna include nougat, almond crisps, chocolate-dipped orangettes, eggplant jam as a spread, couscous-au-lait (couscous in milk), sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, and mufleta.
Dahan’s Mimouna celebration for 2,000 guests included all ethnic groups and nationalities.
The prime minister expressed thankfulness that the preceding Passover holiday had been peaceful—“quiet, thanks to our soldiers.”
“We’ve had a peaceful and joyful holiday, thanks to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers and the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] who kept us safe, and thanks to the government led by the Likud party,” Netanyahu elaborated.
Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev was also invited to a Mimouna meal hosted by the Sabah family of Ashkelon.
“I’m happy that the Moroccan community has successfully turned Mimouna into a national holiday in which we open our homes and doors to the entire People of Israel,” Regev said in a Hebrew press release. “The abundance and hospitality of this holiday lead to unity and joy among the people of Israel.”
The Prime Minister and his wife, Sara Netanyahu, attend a Mimouna celebration at the home of councilman Meir Dahan.
The Moroccan feast fell on Saturday night this year. Between the end of Shabbat and the 11 p.m. cut-off time before the noise exemption, revelers would have had a mere two hours to mark the close of Passover in exuberant style.
This year, Mimouna and Lag Ba’Omer were ranked with Purim, Israeli Independence Day and Jerusalem Day as being worthy of all-night festivities, being exempted from an 11 p.m. national noise ordinance, according to Lahav Harkov of The Jerusalem Post.
Mimouna’s noise-ordinance exemption was proposed by Israeli Knesset Member Miki Zohar, who stated that “Mimouna is a national holiday for all of Israel, and it is appropriate to celebrate it without limitations.”
According to Zohar, Mimouna is “a holiday of brotherhood and friendship and ingathering of exiles, and I say to all those celebrating: ‘Tarbahu u’tsaadu,’” a traditional Mimouna greeting, which means: “May you prosper and be successful.”
A pair of folk traditions hold the feast’s origins either to the father of Maimonides, Rabbi Maimon ben Yosef, who died on the day after Passover, or to the Hebrew word emunah, which means faith.
The emunah of the Jewish people connects to their redemption from Egypt and also to the coming of the Messiah and the redemption he will bring “during the Hebrew month of Nisan, during which Passover falls,” Middle East News analyst Hana Levi Julian writes.
