We can assume ... that any feature of culture once established will automatically tend to spread to the cultures of other societies, just as it will tend to persist in its own.... The principle is empirical, but so great is the mass of experience, both contemporary and historical on which it is based that it has the force of an axiom.... Roughly, we can assume that culture traits will spread unless there are specific factors to prevent spread....

A. KROEBER

ABSTRACT
The paper examines the factors involved in resistance to hashish use by the traditional Jewish community in Morocco where hashish use was an accepted custom and the factors involved in their selective receptivity to the custom, paradoxically, after emigration to Israel where the environment is not conducive to drug use.

I wish to thank Dr. M. Ritter and J. Teich who allowed me to participate in their group meetings with drug and ex-drug users at the Community Mental Health Center, Jaffa. Special thanks to all the informants.

INTRODUCTION

All modern societies view the use of drugs with much alarm precisely because of their assumed natural potential to spread like an infectious disease. This paper is a case study illustrating resistance to diffusion, due to the existence of specific factors. With changed circumstances, when those specific factors no longer fulfill the same function for the particular society, resistance to diffusion becomes substantially weakened.

In concrete terms, the discussion of resistance to diffusion deals with the rejection of the custom of hashish smoking or eating by the traditional Jewish community in Morocco while it was living in an environment prima facie favorable to its adoption. The second part of the discussion deals with a certain selective readiness to accept the custom by the Jewish community after undergoing a major social upheaval prior to emigration to Israel. Paradoxically, the cultural setting in the new Israeli environment would appear on the surface to be non-conducive to drug-taking.

THE TRADITIONAL ROLE OF HASHISH

The use of intoxicants is proscribed by the Islamic religion in general terms. The Quran makes no special reference to cannabis, or to any other of the drugs known at the time. While there are a number of local differences, the use of cannabis with varying intensity has had a time-honored role in many Muslim countries. This is in contrast to the use of alcohol which, from the religious point of view, became the prime forbidden intoxicant.

While it is difficult to distinguish between legend and fact, due to the lack of accurate documentation, by the 1 1 th century a very special type of imagery was apparently associated with hashish, the Arabic term for cannabis. Through the colorful writings of Marco Polo the story became popularized that the Assassins, a fanatic Muslim religious order located originally in the hills of Persia, gave their disciples hashish to induce wonderful visions of Paradise with gardens, fountains and beautiful maidens. The effect, it was claimed, was to give them the moral strength to kill, to carry out suicidal missions. In this way they could insure their place in Paradise. The etymology of the word "Assassin" is said to come from Hashishin, i.e. hashish-taker. It was transmitted through the Romance languages by the Crusaders who in the 12th century, fearful of this sect, associated their daring killings with the power of the drug.

In the 13th century the physician Ibn-al-Baitar described the intoxicating effect of Cannabis indica which grew in Egypt. There are many reports from that period onwards that hashish was also used in medical preparations. Levy has suggested that the interpretation of the Quranic law on intoxicants might have been more tolerant toward the use of drugs such as opium and hashish because of the paucity of means of relieving pain in the medieval Muslim world (Levy 1957).

The Traditional Role of Hashish among Jews in Muslim Countries

The indigenous Jewish communities which had been living in the Middle East and North Africa since ancient times, came under Muslim rule from the 7th century onwards. Like all Jewish minorities the world over, their life style was influenced by their co-territorialists. With regard to intoxicants, however, the traditional Jewish cultural pattern was always different, if not completely contrary to that of the Muslim population. The first fundamental difference is that the Jewish Law, in contrast to that of Islam, does not forbid the use of intoxicants. There are many references in Biblical and other Jewish sources to the use of alcohol, which is closely associated with religious and family ritual. With regard to "Kanbus," the talmudical term for hemp, it was referred to only because of its particular religious significance, that it was forbidden to weave it together with wool.

Despite the fact that cannabis as a drug must have been known to the ancient Jews, it was apparently not used by them. Herodotus (Historia 4:75) for instance, mentions that the Scythians scattered hemp seeds on heated stones and inhaled the fumes. In broad terms, with regard to intoxicants, the traditional Jewish communities prior and during the Muslim period were characterized by avoidance of hashish smoking and approval of the use of alcohol, provided the latter was taken at the appropriate time and according to socially sanctioned quantities. If Weil is correct in his theory that every society offers its members some external means of altering the state of consciousness, possibly alcohol fulfilled that role for the Jews as hashish did for the Muslims (Weil 1973).

Hashish Use in Morocco

There are many differences to be found among the three main Islamic areas with regard to the interpretation and practice of the religious laws by the Muslim community. As the Jews and Muslims lived together for centuries in a symbiotic type of relationship, many differences were also to be found between the respective Jewish communities. The Moroccan Jewish community has been singled out for the purpose of the discussion in this paper for two main reasons. First, due to their long history in North Africa they have for centuries known about and thus have been exposed to the custom of hashish smoking. Second, they constitute today the largest single group in Israel which migrated from the Muslim world (approx. 300,000 in 1973). The Egyptian community will be referred to so as to highlight, through comparative data, the significance of those factors which work against the diffusion of the custom of hashish use.

In North Africa, the mixed Arab-Berber Empire of Morocco developed historically along lines peculiarly its own. There, the explicit prohibition of the use of intoxicants in the Quran was more severely interpreted and observed than in Egypt: even the smoking of tobacco was frowned upon by the extreme orthodoxy. However, in spite of the disapproval of the small group of "the Learned of the Faith," hashish, or kif as it is known locally, was grown in the southern mountain region and its use was regarded as an accepted custom particularly among the less educated and poorer classes.

As a rule, the kif was smoked in a pipe made of a long, hollow piece of wood to which was attached a clay container for the chopped cannabis leaf. This pipe was passed round and each participating member of the group awaited his turn for the puff. Kif was also cooked with a syrup or in the form of jam and was sometimes made into a paste or eaten as a small cake.

From various reports and also from a recent analysis of kif grown in the Atlas mountains, the intoxicating quality is relatively weak compared with the Lebanon-grown hashish used in Egypt. Among the upper classes its use was sanctioned for medical purposes, sometimes mixed with opium. There are also hints in the literature that in the late 19th century,,in the town of Fez, for instance, wives and concubines of the rich obtained hashish from their servants and smoked it secretly in their quarters. It was always officially illegal, but in fact, apparently, tolerated by the authorities, as long as it was institutionalized as lower class male behavior. It is relevant to point out that Morocco for centuries was an extremely poor country with a very small wealthy elite.

In Morocco, the entire drug scene was considerably more constricted and much less elaborate in erotic imagery as compared with that of Egypt. They did not have the "wit" i.e. the "hashish," the regular heavy smoker who kept the company entertained by jokes, puns and clever sayings. This does not mean, however, that the use of hashish in Morocco was free from sexual overtones. They were inclined to be a little more covert, compared with the open ribaldry about male potency heard in Egypt, particularly among the lower classes. In Morocco the emphasis was on "kef," namely elation. Hashish was regarded as having relaxing and un-inhibitory powers: the individual was not really responsible for his actions while under the influence of hashish. He might talk or behave foolishly but he would feel happy and possibly sexually stimulated. It was thought that a female under the influence of hashish would have complete sexual abandonment; the association of loss of control particularly with regard to women was a major threatening feature to the Jewish community, as will be seen later.

The Moroccan Jewish Reaction to Hashish

There was full consensus among Moroccan Jewish informants in Israel that hashish smoking or eating was not an accepted or practiced custom within their community. It was never part of their social tradition. This information was confirmed by Israeli and other Jewish representatives: doctors and educators who worked among them prior to their emigration to Israel. When the question was put to Moroccan informants as to the reason for their rejection of the custom, they all answered "it was not Jewish behavior." The answer was reminiscent of the traditional attitude of Eastern European Jews toward drunkenness, which was regarded as Gentile behavior. When pressed for further elaboration the answer was invariably that Jews conducted their community life separate from that of the Muslim community. There were numerous contacts but they were always on a formal level — economic, legal, etc., but never social. In their eyes, hashish smoking would have brought the Jews into the Muslim social network, a situation which they viewed as threatening. At no time was the, drug, per se, presented as a danger because of its particular chemical properties. Its rejection was always discussed within the framework of Jewish-Muslim relations in Morocco.

THE PLACE OF THE TRADITIONAL JEWISH COMMUNITY IN MOROCCO

The history of the Jews in Morocco is a history of a minority group which struggled with unusual tenacity, suffering severe hardship to maintain its identity. From time to time they enjoyed an attitude of tolerance toward them depending on the degree of benevolence of the particular ruler. It was in these periods that there was usually a burst of cultural and economic activity. Chouraqui sums up the history in a sentence: The Jews who retained their own identity arrived with the victory of the first conquerors the Phoenicians, and left twenty-five centuries later, after the defeat of the last (the French) to return to their starting point in the Holy Land of Israel. But it was the Arab-Berber regime which ruled Morocco from the 7th to the beginning of the 20th century which left a permanent mark on the Jewish community. As in all Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the Jewish communities were accorded the Dhimmi status (Quran 929) which formalized their inferior position, with the addition, however, of certain rights of protection from the Sultan. The interpretation of this law differed according to the country and period but the principle remained that the Jews were a separate and inferior community. In Morocco, for example, they were forced to wear distinctive clothes, had to pay special taxes, could not give evidence against a Muslim, etc. At the same time, throughout the centuries of either suffering or precarious quiet, the position of the Jews in the Muslim countries as opposed to that in medieval Christian Europe was basically more sound because they were legally recognized as the "People of the Book." This attitude reinforced the worthiness of their own identity and helped them retain their link with the Holy Land which was more on a mystic plane than an actuality. Due to their minority position, and not necessarily because they were Jews, they became the natural victims during inter-tribal and inter-dynastic warfare which characterized North Africa.

Kroeber (1948) has described the development of defensive behavior such as the blocking of diffusions when societies find themselves in a weaker position or inferior status vis-à-vis a more aggressive culture. He cites as examples China, Tibet, Korea and Japan that tried for two or three hundred years to shut out all occidental contacts. In the same way, the Jews in Morocco became fanatic about the preservation of their identity. A single conversion of a Jew to Islam was considered a calamity of enormous proportion and, in fact, happened only rarely. The smoking of kif was thus regarded as a dangerous blurring of borders between the Jewish and Muslim communities. Again, in view of the association of sensuality with kif, the drug took on an additional quality of danger, namely the weakening of sex control. The Islamic culture includes many puritanical elements but, in contrast to Jewish and Protestant tradition, sexual behavior is notably free from puritanism.

THE SOCIAL UPHEAVAL AMONG JEWS UNDER FRENCH RULE (1912-1948)

With the social upheaval following the French occupation of Morocco in 1912, a stream of Jewish migration began flowing, from the small towns particularly, to crowded Casablanca, where there was no formal Jewish ghetto with the characteristic high walls. Among the many consequences of this large-scale mobility, kinship ties weakened, social control lessened, and in some instances poverty became even worse. By the 1940's more and more Jewish girls began working outside the home and thus contact was possible with Muslim males. During this period there were a few cases of marriages between Jewish females and male Muslims, but in particular it was the period of the growth of Jewish prostitution. One of the cultural explanations for this was that the girls were lured into a situation where it was possible to place hashish in their food or drink without their knowledge and in their drugged condition they were seduced or abducted.

During this period of rapid social change, the Moroccan Jewish community in an active and organized manner, sought to prevent prostitution. If it did occur, however, they devised all sorts of means to try and bring back the deviant girl to the community. However, the hardships imposed by the Vichy government during World War II and the subsequent arrival of the Allied troops was a further encouragement for prostitution. Prostitution was like a recurring nightmare within the culture reminding them of their struggle to maintain their proud ethnic identity throughout the ages. There is a famous folk tale about a Jewish girl who sacrificed her life rather than accept concubinage in a Muslim harem. It should be pointed out that prostitution was legalized in Morocco only provided it fell under the control and jurisdiction of the authorities. In Casablanca, for instance, there was a separate reserve set aside for prostitutes whose freedom of movement was strictly controlled.

As to those Jewish males who began to use kif openly in this period, they were regarded as outsiders or deviants who brought shame on the community. Usually they attempted to keep it secret and would smoke the hashish rolled in a cigarette because it was less obvious and was not Arab in style.

To sum up, the rejection of hashish smoking had the function of strengthening the positive Jewish identity and internal solidarity vis-à-vis the Muslim majority. The Jewish community was capable of resisting its use because its inclusion with its specific symbolism would have clashed with the Jewish ethos. When traditionalism weakened under the influence of the French, there were indications of change.

ISRAELI SETTING: POST-EMIGRATION PERIOD

Moroccan Jewry disillusioned by French rule and buoyed up with the hope of freedom and a better economic life in the newly established State of Israel, began to pour into the country particularly during the years 1948-1951. In Israel, at the time of the advent of the State, hashish smoking was non-existent among veteran settlers of European origin. It existed to a small degree among urban Arab workers. There was also a hard core group from Turkey, Iran, and Salonika, who brought with them the habit of opium smoking and an even smaller group of addicts from Europe, morphinists in the main.

Between the years 1948-1970 more than 600,000 immigrants came from the Muslim world. The large majority of these immigrants continued to avoid the use of hashish in the new country and there is evidence that many mild opium users, particularly from Persia, dropped the habit. However, among the large masses of these immigrants, there was a segment which did not find a place for itself either socially or economically in the mainstream of modern Israeli life. This group included a number of single young persons who left their parents in their early teens seeking a better life in Israel. Many of them came from poverty-stricken homes in overcrowded Casablanca where social control had already weakened. Drifting into the slum areas, lonely and feeling rejected, these Moroccans made contact with others from the Middle East who found themselves in the same position. They met those who were either delinquents or who felt less strongly on the issue of hashish than they did.

Some Egyptian Jews, for example, who had lived in close and ha-rmonious contact with the Muslim working class, had adopted hashish smoking, prior to immigration to Israel. In the early days of the State there were many instances where they passed the pipe around at weddings and at circumcision parties, reminiscent of the custom in Egypt where hashish smoking was part of an ordinary social occasion, with plenty of sweetmeats, fruit and laughter. On the whole, however, until the Six Day War in 1967, hashish smoking was on a very limited scale, almost completely identified with unskilled or socially marginal groups among Eastern Jews and the urban Muslim population.

ISRAEL -- POST SIX DAY WAR

The Six Day War brought in its wake a number of unexpected consequences. Israel became a haven for the hippie population of the United States and Europe and they formed a bridge for the local population when they made easy contact with the urban Arabs of East Jerusalem. Down south, in the desert town of Beersheba, delinquent groups, mainly linked to prostitution, obtained supplies from the Bedouins who traditionally transported hashish in their caravans across the Sinai. The active drug scene in the United States, particularly among students, gave impetus to the curiosity about drugs of the Israeli-born population of European origin and added prestige by its use to the poorer sections of the population.

This led to increased use of the drug in general and spread to small groups in high-schools and universities. It also became incorporated into bohemian artists' circles. The reaction of the majority of Israelis, particularly those from Europe, was one of horror. There were many panic reactions arising from the fear that a nation with the self-image of physical strength and high motivation could become morally weakened by the drug and thus militarily vulnerable. However, for the majority of those using it, the avoidance of hashish no longer fulfilled the function of maintaining Jewish identity — on the contrary, it brought together those who felt either alienated or on the periphery of the society. The artists' society and the small group of middle-class students who smoked hashish adopted the same symbols as found in the United States. They referred to the use of "hash" as a necessary anti-establishment measure or as a self-realization mechanism.

At the present time, 1973, there is clearly a decline in middle-class usage and a loss of interest in the drug among the student population. The zeal of the authorities in clamping down legally on the use of hashish might, however, be a contributory cause for the apparent increased use of opium and pills, notably among marginal and delinquent groups. To the small extent that performers and those of higher educational background are hashish users they will be in contact with the marginal uneducated group only for the purpose of obtaining the drug which they use mainly on party occasions.

In summary, Moroccans or their Israeli-born children who smoke hashish are most likely to belong to the unskilled, living on welfare or if young, to be school drop-outs. Wives object to the drug because they resent the money spent on it and attribute their husbands' irregular work habits to the effect of the drug. As for the actual users, they tend to see themselves as victims of circumstances due to their cultural maladjustment in the new country. They claim they use drugs, whatever kind, to counteract their feeling of failure in not having been given respected standing in the dynamic work-oriented Israeli society.

Contrary to the pattern in traditional Jewish society in a Muslim world, the use of hashish in Israel has been a socially unifying force for alienated adults and youth from the various Eastern ethnic groups together with those urban Muslims who traditionally have been exposed to the drug. Few of those from the Middle East believe that hashish is harmful as a drug; they feel that hashish use indicates their lack of success in life and their lack of finding better means of social amusement or enjoyment. This is contrary to the beliefs held by Western Jews, particularly the older generation who feel that hashish affects the mind and the moral fibre of the person.

The amount of hashish smoking has increased among the Moroccans since emigration to Israel. My main thesis is that the need to be differentiated from the Muslim population in a Jewish state became irrelevant. In addition they could now associate hashish with the modern Western world. In the new setting, its use apparently served as a certain type of communication shared by the delinquents and non-prestige "outsiders" in Israel, and is considered as a helpful means of fighting mental depression arising out of lack of self-esteem.

REFERENCES

CHOURAQUI, A.
1968 Between East and West: history of the Jews of North Africa. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.

HERODOTUS
Historia 4:75.

KROEBER, A.
1948 Anthropology: race, language, culture, psychology, prehistory. New York: Harcourt, Brace & CO.

LEVY, R.
1957 The social structure of Islam. Cambridge University Press.

WEIL, A.
1973 The natural mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.