For Morocco’s Jews, the festival of Purim, beginning March 13, has contemporary resonance, illustrating the tenuous existence of diaspora Jewish communities throughout history and the world. Last year and this, the Gaza War cast a shadow over the holiday, which is traditionally celebrated with costumes and sweets.

Purim commemorates a close Jewish brush with genocide in ancient Persia. As read from a scroll called a Megillah, it is a tale of palace intrigue, including the wily Jewish courtier Mordecai and his beautiful cousin Esther, destined to be queen and her people’s savior. There is, of course, a villain: Haman, the evil architect of the plot to exterminate Persia’s Jews.

In many ways, the Purim story exemplifies the history of Morocco’s Jews for more than two millennia: an ancient, all-powerful potentate controlling his loyal Jewish subjects’ fate.

Morocco’s Jewish community, once 300,000 strong, now numbers about 3,000, most living in Casablanca. Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel and subsequent conflict involving Gaza, Lebanon and Iran (ancient Persia) have raised questions about the North African kingdom’s vaunted tolerance for its few remaining Jewish citizens.

At the same time, hope and confidence exist among Jews there. As in the original Purim story, today’s Moroccan Jews have friends in high places. A modern Jewish Mordecai, a hero of the Megillah’s palace drama, would be André Azoulay, who is Jewish. He is King Mohammed VI’s senior — some say most influential — advisor. Azoulay, whose office is in the Rabat palace, comes from an old family from the coastal Atlantic city of Essaouira, which was once half Jewish.

A beautiful Queen Esther would be Andre’s stylish daughter Audrey, former minister of culture and........

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