THE STORY OF SOLICA HATZADDIKAH

In this article we spell her first name as Solica to correlate with the spelling on her tomb

No matter what the spelling of your Hatchuel name is: from Hatchwell to Hatchuel to Chatwil to Hajwal, the story of Solika HaTzaddikah probably appears in your family lore. The story has reached epic proportions. The tale you were told probably depends on whether it was based on Jewish, Muslim, or Christian sources. Based on her thesis research while at University of Pennsylvania, Sharon Vance recounts in the introductions and first chapter of her book, The Martydom of a Moroccan Jewish Saint, many of the these versions.

The Jews call her Hachuel “Sol HaTzaddikah” (The Righteous Sol). The Arabs call her Lalla Suleika (Holy lady Suleika). There are as many variations to the story of Solica Hatchouel (the spelling on Solica’s gravestone) as there are branches to our family tree, the spelling of our family name, and the spelling of Sol’s name. Different spellings of the name of Solica range from Sol, Solica, Solika, Soulika, Sulika, Suleika to Zoulikha. For the purposes of this story, we will call her Solica.

In the last decade, a number of scholarly works on this topic have begun to appear. These address the folklore aspect of the story, its many variations (see Vance), and the place the story holds as an example of Muslim-Jewish relations in early to mid-19th century Morocco. The tale varies by culture. The Muslim versions are very different from the Jewish versions regarding the narrative of the events leading up to Solica’s arrest and the events that occurred during her imprisonment. The Christian versions stress the role of the European diplomatic corps in trying to save her. There are disagreements as to how her body was treated after death. These tales display the bias of each community toward the “opposing” community.

Many scholars have deemed the story worth studying as a recurring motif in Moroccan culture. Some dwell on the Islamic law at the time and the Jewish communities’ perception, knowledge and/or ignorance of these laws. Newly discovered piyyutim (Rabbinic lyrical poems or hymns) confirm the Jewish view of these events (see Laskier and Lev).

Though many variations of the details of Solica’s story exist, the basic core of the story remains the same. She was a young Jewish woman who refused to give up her religion and, because of that refusal, was put to death. Her legend has taken on a life all its own. Most of what we know of Solica’s story was written four to five years after she was murdered in 1834.

The main version of the story originates with the retelling by a Spaniard who supposedly interviewed her father, brother, and other family members shortly after the event and published a roman a clef, El Martirio de la Joven Hachuel, three years after Solica’s death. This book is lurid in detail, invents conversations, and though it provides a skeleton of events of the story, embellishes considerably. Another important source is by a French Christian traveler called A (or M) Rey who also claims to have interviewed family members, as well as community witnesses. Published in Paris in 1844, his Souvenirs ďun voyage au Maroc describes the stages corresponding to the rules of apostasy as set down in Moroccan law. It challenges the conclusion of the Jewish community that Solica was tried unfairly as a Muslim convert and not as a Jew.

This narrative attempts to merge a number of the accounts of Solica’s life and death.

Solica Hatchouel was born in 1817 and beheaded in 1834 (the Jewish year of 5594). Her family lived in Tangier, a city on Morocco’s northern coast. In most sources, her parents were reportedly Chaim and Simcha Hachuel. She had one older brother and two or three sisters, depending on the account. Solica’s mother was a housewife. Some sources report that her father was a vendor of household utensils, others that he was a merchant by trade. These sources speak of him as a hard worker with integrity and learnedness in the Torah and Talmud. He may have supposedly conducted Talmudic study groups in his home and this influenced Solica in the formation and maintenance of her own belief in Judaism.

All sources report on Solica’s exceptional beauty as well as her wisdom, goodness, piousness, modesty, kind heart (hesed), goodwill, and her “graceful, Jewish charisma.” One article used the hyperbole: “In all of Fez, and some say, even from one end of the Maghreb to the other, there was no beauty to match Zuleika Chatwil.” According to the account of Israel Joseph Benjamin, a Jewish explorer who visited Morocco in the middle of the Nineteenth century, “never had the sun of Africa shone on more perfect beauty” than Hachuel. Benjamin wrote that her Muslim neighbors declared that “It is a sin that such a pearl should be in the possession of the Jews, and it would be a crime to leave them such a jewel.” Another version of Solica’s story said her beauty was so extraordinary and unsurpassed that she greatly appealed to all and sundry, to the point that the most outstanding young men of the city, some of them her relatives, had heated disputes because each wished to claim her as his wife.

ALLEGATIONS OF CONVERSION TO ISLAM

According to Romero’s version, Solica and her mother constantly argued, typical of a teenager and her mother. Simcha was very critical of Solica and of her housekeeping skills. One day, Solica fled and took refuge in the house of a friend and neighbor who advised the young girl to change her religion and thus be free of the yoke placed on her by her ruthless mother. The neighbor assured Solica that her best chance for happiness was to contract a marriage with a Muslim boy of her own age. When she refused, the neighbor falsely claimed that she had converted Hatchuel to Islam.

Another account relates that a boy from one of the wealthiest neighboring Muslim families espied Solica and desired to marry her. (“I will have nothing to live for, father, if I don’t marry Solica”.) Solica’s family knew that in order for the marriage to a Muslim to occur, the young woman would have to abandon her faith. The young man’s father threatened that Solica’s family would suffer bitterly if they did not allow her to convert to Islam and to marry his son. Overcome with fear, the family instructed Solica to hide at the home of a close friend. She was surrendered to authorities either by the neighbor girlfriend who felt betrayed for some reason or by the neighborhood young man who fancied himself in love with her.

Yet another version relates that her perilous beauty caught the unwanted attention of the Pasha, the highest authority in Tangiers. These versions claim that the Pasha was enchanted by her and promised her silk and gold if she converted. When she refused, he demanded that she be taken away from her family and forcibly converted to Islam so that he could legally marry her.

ARREST AND TRIAL

Either way, the authorities were convinced that Solica had converted to Islam and that she then recanted her conversion. Supposedly, when they came to her home to arrest her, the soldiers could not find her and instead arrested her mother. Upon hearing this, Solica surrendered to the authorities who brought her before a kadi (judge responsible for sharia law) where she was accused by the rich neighbor of having converted to Islam and then wanting to recant her decision and return to Judaism. Under Islamic Law, this act of apostasy was punishable by death. She was ordered to declare her return to Islam or be executed.

Others say that the judge threatened her if she did not convert back: “How dare you convert to our faith, and then abandon it? I will load you with chains…I will have you torn piece-meal by wild beasts, you shall not see the light of day, you shall perish of hunger, and experience the rigor of my vengeance and indignation, in having provoked the anger of the Prophet”. To which Solica responded: “I will patiently bear the weight of your chains; I will give my limbs to be torn piece-meal by wild beasts; I will renounce forever the light of day: I will perish of hunger: and when all the evils of life are accumulated on me by your orders, I will smile at your indignation, and the anger of your Prophet: since neither he, nor you have been able to overcome a weak female! It is clear that Heaven is not auspicious to making proselytes your faith”

Solica remained resolute maintaining, “Never, never did I leave my faith. I never became a Muslim, and I never, ever will! A Jewess I was born and a Jewess I wish to die.” They placed her in a dank, dark dungeon with chains around her hands and feet and an iron collar around her neck. Her parents appealed to the Spanish Vice Counsel, Don Jose Rico, for intervention, but his efforts were to no avail.

In this version, Solica’s story had become very public and was no longer just the story of a defiant young woman, but a cause celebre. It is at this point that the Pasha was given the facts and that Solica was before him. Solica denied any intention of leaving the faith of her ancestors. Convinced that she would not recant, the Pasha notified the Sultan in Fez of what was happening and requested instructions as to how to proceed. In the meantime, Solica remained in prison. It is written that messengers from the wealthy Muslim families in Tangiers came to the prison to sway her heart. They promised her riches, wealth, prosperity – all the goods in the world, but it was all in vain. Even then, though isolated in a dreadful cell, Solica refused to listen and would not give in .