INNOVATION AND ACTIVISM

Elmehdi Boudra

Founder and president, Association Mimouna

In 2007, a group of Muslim students in Morocco decided that the ancient heritage of the North African nation's Jewish community needed preserving and promoting. They formed the Association Mimouna – named after the traditional Moroccan Jewish celebration of the end of Passover – not just to celebrate the Jewish contribution to Morocco, but to combat conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and other expressions of contemporary antisemitism. Mimouna President Elmehdi Boudra – Association Mimouna's original founder – is a graduate of Brandeis University. Boudra previously worked for the Moroccan foreign ministry and for the Moroccan Jewish Museum in Casablanca. (Photo: Facebook.)