Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

You're So Pretty You Don't Look Moroccan, Henriette Dahan Kalev

henriette dahan kalev

"You are so pretty--you don't look Moroccan." I grew up hearing this sentence from the time my parents brought me from Morocco in 1949 to the immigrant camp Sha'ar Aliyah and to the Ma'abara [transit camp] Pardes Chana. I heard it from the white uniformed nurse, who came to our tent in the immigrant camp to tell my mother how she should raise me, my sister, and my baby brother, who was born in that tent. This nurse spoke of "raising children" as if it was something Zionists invented. The tall silver-haired Yekke [German Jew] kindergarten teacher also used this …