Le Réveil du Maroc was a French-language newspaper in Tangier that appeared for the first time on July 14, 1883, its founder, Abraham Lévy-Cohen, Abraham, having chosen that symbolic date, Bastille Day, as a tribute to France. Nothing on the masthead referred to the newspaper as Jewish, but its founder’s concerns, as well as its content, clearly point to a publication defending Jewish interests in Morocco.

     Lévy Cohen was born in Tangier in 1844 to a family originally from Essaouira (Mogador). A businessman and a lawyer, he was also a freemason, a member of the Tangier r…