Paul Dahan started the Centre for Jewish Moroccan Heritage in Brussels in 2005. It began with an exhibition on Jewish Art and Tradition and a big exhibition in 2007 and 2008 on Freud in Morocco about vision and identity. Many Moroccan people have no idea about their identity so he wanted to exhibit photographs, jewellery and artifacts from Jewish moroccan history. He realised that when people have no idea of their history, they have no idea of their pastand where they come from with its memories and traditions.

He never displays objects just for their own beauty, he wants the observer to ask questions about himself. It centres around the question of identity. His own collection was built on this search for identity. He left Morocco when he was twenty and lived in different countries . Then he realised that all the time he was searching for his past. So he returned to Morocco and has been collecting items of Jewish Moroccan art and history now for thirty years.The Jews of Morocco played a major role in Morocco's history and he has the largest library on the Jewish Morocco heritage in the world with more than 10,000 books from the sixteenth century to the 1960's and 70's. There are 30,000 manuscripts and 50 documents which are on audioviasual links.There is a collection of 7,000 photographs. The library has has thousands of works by writers, travellers, rabbis and many manuscripts reflecting diffrent aspects of jewish life, culture, history ,religion, literature,folklore and music in Morocco as well as legal and talmudic documents in hebrew and jewish arabic script in Morocco. Documents and correspondence is also displayed in french,english andf spanish. There are many magazines printed in Morocco from the nineteenth and twentieth century as well as an extensive collection of jewish stamps used in Morocco.

The Centre is a museum with three levels, the first is the library, then photographs and the music of Morocco. At the top of the building is a flat which is used by students coming from many countries including England, Israel, the USA and elsewhere .

His collecting began as a hobby and gradually took over his life. He was a psycho analyst and decided to use his experience to examine the whole question of the Jewish Moroccan heritage. At the moment he is working on a major exhibition in October on Morocco and Europe and how, from the sixteenth century till now the diaspora, which began with the expulsion from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella continues to evolve. The Jewish experience evolved throughout Europe and then the French Protectorate in Morocco.This is covered in the collection by pictures, photographs and manuscripts.It is interesting to reflect today whether we can understand the true Jewish and Muslim and European identities because they are so mixed. There have been so many influences on us.

The Jewish presence in Morocco goes back for centuries indeed there were Jewish Berber tribes. Before the sixteenth century the Jews were in Morocco before the Arabs. They lived with the Berbers
and there was a great deal of intermarriage between the communities. Then came the Arab invasion followed by the exodus from Spain. Many of these migrants went to Fez and Rabat and Tangier and Tetouan.

The Jews were and still are master craftsmen, so all the jewelery and craftworks. Though the Jews were more involved in silver and gold which was forbidden to Muslims because of its association with usury. The same thing happend in most Arab Muslim countries.

The Jewish population of Morocco before 1956 was almost half a million and is now about 5,000. Most left for Europe, America and Israel. The Jewish presence was especially strong in Fez. The Jews lived in the Medina under the Sultan's protection. Most of the Jewish Moroccan elite settled in Fez.

Essaouira or Mogador was the biggest port in Morocco and all the trade passed through this location. It has very strong Jewish Moroccan commercial routes. Even until recently the Jews of Essouria spoke a special kind of lingua franca including English words and whereas French or Spanish was used elsewhere, for a longtime Essaouria used English, reflecting the strong trading links with Manchester and Liverpool and London.

The CCJMH website www.judaisme-marocain.org contains a special section on Essaouira. They have 4,000 documents concerning the commercial transactions of the time in the port, such as tobacco, sugar and cotton. It was mainly the jews who were the commercial middlemen between Morocco and the world in terms of trade and imports. In the middle of the eighteenth century jews from Essaouira went to live in London selling items such as spices on the streets. Centuries later descendants like Hoare Belisha who was a government minister who introduced the Belisha beacons and zebra crossings on the roads in England was a jew from Essaouira. The jewish population from Essaouira were important traders with Europe. All the consuls from Europe were origionally Jewish because of this trade connection.

The Jewish population frequently enjoyed the protection of the sultan because of their role in trade and finance and they always remember that Moammed V refused to agree to the French Vichy authority's request to arrest and deport Morocco's jewish population. The jews have never forgotten this and there are a number of streets in Israel named after him.