Mimouna

Mimouna—a celebration of the end of Passover with a cookie exchange!

Everyone is invited to bring 1-2 dozen cookies to share, and a container to take home a variety of cookies brought by other participants.

Learn about Mimouna here

And what is Mimouna here

Extended details below

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Program

Mimouna comes from the Arabic word for wealth, literally meaning protected by God. It’s a holiday meant to thank God for the many blessings given over the past year, and to once again make our crops plentiful. Others associate the holiday with belief — specifically, believing that we will all be in Israel one day, and disappointment that another Passover has come and gone where we didn’t celebrate in Jerusalem.

It is celebrated the day after Passover ends and has been celebrated in Morocco since the 16th century.  Many Sephardic families do not visit each others’ homes during Passover and Mimouna allows a time to celebrate as a larger community.

What happens at a Mimouna Celebration?

There are three themes for all the food served during this holiday; fertility, prosperity and success.  Most of the foods are sweet including the most well known dish for this holiday, moufleta.  A moufleta is a mix between  a crepe, and msemmen.

“On this table you will not find typical Moroccan cuisine. It is laden neither with meat dishes nor an assortment of salads. Instead, it is laid out with items, each of which is symbolic in some way: a live fish swimming in a bowl of water, five green fava beans wrapped in dough, five dates, five gold bracelets in a pastry bowl, dough pitted with five deep fingerprints, five silver coins, five pieces of gold or silver jewelry, a palm-shaped amulet, sweetmeats, milk and butter, white flour, yeast, honey, a variety of jams, a lump of sugar, stalks of wheat, plants, fig leaves, wildflowers and greens. All are symbols of bounty, fertility, luck, blessings and joy. The traditional holiday greeting fits right in: “Tarbakhu u-tsa’adu” – meaning, “May you have success and good luck.” from “Lady Luck” Haaretz

(Source: https://marocmama.com/mimouna-a-moroccan-passover-celebration/)

Mimouna is the joyous Moroccan celebration of springtime, friends, family and good fortune. Marking the end of Passover and the beginning of the agricultural season, the doors of people’s homes are thrown wide open and everyone is greeted with the Judeo-Arabic blessing “Tirbah u’tissad,” may you prosper and succeed.

The mimouna table overflows with sweet treats like orange jam, eggplant jam, marzipan, meringues and, of course, the famous moufleta, crepes served with butter and honey. In Morocco, the flour used in moufletas was brought to Jewish homes by their Muslim neighbors after sundown, proof of the level of friendship and cooperation that existed between the two faiths.

Talismans of luck, fertility and prosperity also adorn the table. A live goldfish in a glass bowl. A green tree branch. Five gold coins in a bowl of flour, and five fava beans arranged on a pastry.

The exact origins of the name and holiday remain conjecture — does it mark the anniversary of the death of Maimon ben Yosef, the father of Maimonides; or does the name come from the Hebrew word “emunah” (faith); or is it derived from the Arabic word “ma’amoun” (wealth)? Regardless, mimouna has become a widely celebrated and wildly popular event on the Jewish calendar in Israel and all over the world. (source: https://sephardicspicegirls.com/recipes-for-mimouna-the-moroccan-celebration-of-spring/)

Still others connect Mimouna with the word emunah (“belief”), claiming it celebrates belief in Israel’s redemption. Along the same lines, there is also support (said to be traced to Maimonides’ explanation) for the word being an Arabic adaptation of the phrase Ani ma’amin (I believe), the classic expression of faith in the coming of the messiah (ana for ani, placed after the verb ma’amin, as is common in Arabic, yielding ma’amin ana, which became maimouna in the local Judeo dialect). It may have been a greeting exchanged to bolster one another’s disappointment that Passover had come and gone without the long-anticipated return to Jerusalem. (source:  https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/maimouna-a-post-passover-celebration/)

Special Mimouna Greeting

“Tarbakhu utsa’adu” or “may you have success and good luck” is a common greeting shared among people. There’s also a song that includes the phrases “Lala Mimouna” and “mbarka masuda” in the lyrics.

A Sweet Meeting on Mimouna Night – A really lovely kids book for children with a Mimouna story. (Carla’s note: maybe we could buy one of these and read it for the kids?)

Recipes

• Moufleta
• Adornments for moufleta: honey, fig jam, date jam, orange flower jam, nutella (suggestions for people who would rather purchase than bake)
• Moroccan Mint Tea – no celebration in Morocco happens without a LOT of mint tea!
• Stuffed Medjool Dates – An easy snack or dessert that you can prepare in advance and add to your table.
• No Bake Coconut Mimouna Cookies – Whip up these vegan coconut cookies for your Mimouna table. Not only are they easy to make but taste delicious and can be made in advance.
• White Nougat (Zaban B’luz) – A delicious treat eaten year-round but especially for holiday celebrations.
• sfenj is the older, Maghrebi (Northwest African) cousin of the sufganiyah, or donut, as many know it. The two actually share the same root in Hebrew, meaning a spongy dough, but their similarities don’t run much deeper than that. Both the consistency of the two doughs, as well as the end results in the presentation of the two donuts, are quite different.