The congregational loss of the ancient synagogue in the town of Ifrane d'Anti-Atlas (Oufrane) in southern Morocco

Abandoned places of worship are always the result of rupture. But what remains in the ruins? The sacred rituals inscribed in the walls, the echoes of prayers once whispered, the remnants of belonging—do they ever truly leave? My visit to the abandoned synagogue in the village of Ofran was a shocking and deeply moving experience. How did it come to be that this place no longer serves as a congregation?

The synagogue's construction date remains debated - estimates range from the 1620s to 1,800 years ago. Built in traditional Berber Jewish, walnut-like shape, and wall benches with small windows and candle slots, plus a raised platform where services were led under a thatch skylight.

Everything felt rushed. I yearned for a moment alone, but we were all standing together in the middle of this sacred space. I felt a tension within me—between the vulnerability that brought tears to my throat and the presence of the local guardians around me.

I quickly set up the 360 camera, measuring and recording every detail of the synagogue: the walls, the ceiling, the light, and as much details as I could. Then, in a moment of stillness, I began placing candles in the holes and prayed the Kaddish ceremony.

For me, and for many members of the Jewish diaspora, a synagogue is not just a place of prayer. It is a place of gathering, a space to be and feel Jewish, to hold and to be held. To find a synagogue in an abandoned ancestral village was profoundly grounding. Performing the Kaddish ritual there was an unparalleled experience—a communion with what was lost and what remains.

Since I came back from visiting the cemeteries and the shrines, they keep haunting me. When I returned, I became new again, in the sense that my life or the perception of myself in the world has changed. It changed my code, my inner structure because I’ve been touched on an ancestral visceral level. And since I have returned, they didn’t leave me, a kind of indelible presence that distress and embrace me at once. Since then, I feel more resilient in my resistance, but more fragile. , even if it’s in little creative acts of resistance, or political that is fueled exactly from that unknown wound that opened after this pilgrimage journey. resisting erasure as an artistic act is transmitted through mediation; between past and present, physical and virtual, inside and outside, the living and the dead.