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Book Review
On Saturday evening, March 17, Yair Dalal, an Israeli performer whose family came from Iraq, performed live with Hamza El Din in the 16th annual Jewish Music Festival, in Berkeley.Following the concert, the Berkeley Richmond JCC, with assistance from Ivri-NASAWI, organized a reception which celebrated Iraqi Jewish cultural history in particular and Sephardi/Mizrahi cultural histry in general.
Two native Iraqis, Daniel Khazzoom and Sadok Masliyah, addresed the audience.
The Jews of Iraq: A Brief by Daniel Khazzoom
Friends:I am honored and I feel privileged to have the opportunity to
address you. I hope you've all enjoyed this eveningís concert. I
hope also that to night was only the beginning, that you will go
beyond and explore more the heritage, culture and the history of
Babylonian Jewry. The history of the Babylonian Jews is really the
history of us all. That is where it all started. That is where we
all came from. That is where much of what we call Jewish
originated, including the institutions we call synagogue, public
prayer, prayer book, Academies and the magnum opus of them allóthe
Talmud. But beyond the historical past, I hope that to nightís
experience will stimulate your interest also in the more recent
life story of this community its recent past in Iraq before the
mass immigration to Israel and its contemporary life, struggle and
remarkable achievements in Israel. It is a unique community. And
it is an amazing story. There is much to tell. But let me share
with you some highlights.
The history of the Jewish community of Iraq goes back two thousand
eight hundred years. It began with two waves of exiles from the
Northern Kingdom of Israel to Assyria in the eighth century BCE.
This was followed a century and a half later by two waves of
exiles from the Kingdom of Judah to Babylonia. They settled near a
canal called Kebar near Babylon, located about fifty miles
southwest of Baghdad. And it was there that they composed the
famous ode ìBy the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, as we
remembered Zionî. And it was there that they sat and coined what
became the national motto for generations to come: If I forget
thee, O Jerusalem, may my right forget its cunning.They established new towns not long after they arrived. One of
those towns was called Tel Aviv. It became the communal and
spiritual center of the elders of the Jewish community, including
the master preacher, the prophet Ezekiel. But this town is
significant not only because of those who resided in it, but also
because of the theme that underlay its name namely, we are down
today, but we are not giving up; a brighter future lies ahead. Tel
Aviv is made up of two words: Tel, which means a mound of ruins --
and that is probably how they saw things when they were led to
Babylon total ruins, having lost their spiritual center, their
families, their homes, their friends, their possessions and their
dignity. The second word is Aviv, meaning the spring season, which
symbolizes revival and rejuvenation. So it is all ruins now, but
it will blossom again, spring is ahead, we will rebound. This
theme, which borders on invincibility, escorted the Babylonian
Jewry throughout its history, including the dark years of
persecution in Iraq that preceded the mass immigration to Israel.
It was also a major driving force behind the remarkable
accomplishments of this community in Israel. Iíll give two
illustrations of that toward the end of my talk.Ninety years ago, on May 21, 1910 the modern city of Tel Aviv in
Israel was officially named after the city of Tel Aviv established
by the Jewish exiles two thousand five hundred years ago in what
is Iraq to day. Perhaps a similar theme was on the minds of the
founders of modern Israel: It was all ruins, wherever you looked.
But rebirth lay not far ahead.The period that saw the end of the Second Jewish Commonwealth saw
also the beginning of a new and a glorious era in the history of
Babylonian Jewry. For close to a thousand years the Babylonian
Jewish community was the Jewish worldís spiritual center, the only
center, at a time when Jewish institutions and Jewish learning had
all but collapsed in Judea.But what characterized this community more than anything else were
its institutions of learning. The famous Academies of Nehardea,
Sura and Pumbeditha were the Harvard and the Yale of the Jewish
world. These academies were headed by leaders who, as a group,
were remarkable for their erudition and originality. They were
also bold and civic minded.A major innovation introduced by the Babylonian Academies were the
months of Assembly, called Yarhei Kallah. Twice every year, once
in the month of Adar (before the Passover) and another time in the
month of Elul (before Rosh Hashanah), lectures were given every
day at one of the Babylonian academies from early morning until
the evening. During those two months, the Academies burst with
people. They came from all over the world to learn and to update
themselves on the new responsa and the Talmudic deliberations in
those academies during the preceding five months. It is said that
the crowds were so great that there were not enough rooms to hold
them. Many slept in the open air. They slept in the fields and on
rooftops, and they drank thirstily from the lectures of the heads
of the Academies. At the end of these Yarhei Kallah they returned
to their own countries, cities and villages inspired and
rededicated to Jewish living. Those Yarhei Kallah continued
unchanged in Babylonia for centuries.In gratitude to these academies, congregations that follow the
Ashkenazi rite recited during the services and they still recite,
to this day, a passage on Saturday morning known as ìYekoom Purkan
Min Shemayaî (May deliverance arise from Heaven). This passage
includes a prayer for the welfare and well-being of the students
of the Babylonian academies, their teachers, and the Head of
Babylonian community. This prayer was never dropped from the
Ashkenazi prayer book even after the destruction of the Babylonian
academies.We were in dire straits in the early fifties when we were poised
to leave for Israel. The Iraqi authorities froze, more accurately
confiscated all of our assets, except for our clothing and other
minor personal belongings. Many sold the meager personal
belongings they were allowed to keep in order to pay for their
airfare to Israel. Usually immigrants from other countries to
Israel were brought in at the expense of the Jewish Agency. The
Babylonian community never received and never asked for help from
the Jewish Agency to defray the cost of our immigration to Israel.
We paid our own way. Somehow there was a deep-seated feeling that
the community had a responsibility to help the rest of the Jewish
World and not the other way around. It was unthinkable that the
community should become a burden on the Jewish worldís
institutions.Finally it is interesting to look at two examples of how the
Babylonian community in Israel responded to adversity, keeping in
mind the theme of invincibility to which I alluded earlier.The first is high school education. In Israel high school
education was not free. Since the Babylonian Jews were stripped of
their assets before they left Iraq, many were unable to round up
the required tuition fees. The Babylonian Jews did not run begging
the ìall powerfulî government. Instead they took matters into
their own hands. In a characteristic manner, several former high
school teachers and administrators from among the Babylonian
immigrants in Israel got together and opened a free high school in
Ramat Gan. It was taught and administered totally by volunteers
from among the Babylonian immigrants. It was overseen by a
committee of educators, including my high school chemistry
teacher, the late Dr. Ezra Nissim, himself a graduate of the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The school took in every
child who applied for admission, regardless of his or his parentsí
country of origin. All that was required to gain admission was for
the parents to tell the schoolís principal that they could not pay
the tuition fees. No forms had to be filled out; no paperwork was
required; no bureaucracy. The school had one of the highest
student retention rates in the country. Many of its graduates,
who probably would have never attended high school otherwise, went
on to college.The second example, with which I will close, is the Babylonian
Jewry Heritage Center. When you visit Israel, I would like you to
travel to Or Yehuda, a town near Tel Aviv, and pay a visit to the
Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center. This is a combination of a
research institution, a museum and a conference center. And it has
a history: When we left Iraq, we were not allowed to take any
documents or records with us. Our homes and assets were
confiscated. Additionally we left behind our historical sites and
religious shrines. All at once, we were stripped of all of our
points of reference. We no longer had a historical anchor. There
was just a big vacuum. The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, which
is the only institution of its kind in Israel, was the community's
response to this vacuum. It was initiated with the help of a
donation by a Babylonian family in San Francisco, and it is
supported primarily by private donations. It is staffed by
volunteers from the Babylonian community. As a research center,
its goal is to research and document the heritage of the
Babylonian Jewry and to fill the gap created by the loss of our
ancestral records in Iraq. It sponsors graduate studentsí
dissertations and research work by faculty members at universities
in Israel. The Center holds conferences regularly. During the last
four years, the Center held two international conferences.
Scholars attended from all over the world - Jews and non-Jews -
all engaged in research work on one topic or another connected
with Babylonian Jewry. I was privileged to address both
conferences. . The Center publishes two journals, in Hebrew and in
English. It has published numerous books on Babylonian Jewry
during the last one and a half decades. Thanks to the Centerís
work much of the lost records on the history, culture, education
and social organizations of Babylonian Jewry has been
reconstituted and is now accessible from readily available
publications. Currently, the Center is in the process of expanding
its building to accommodate the increasing demand for its
facilities by the school system in Israel. The Centerís greatest
enthusiast from the day when it was only a concept on paper up to
this day is Israelís current Prime Minister. It is a wonderful
place to visit. But above all, it is a heart-warming testament to
what a community who refused to surrender to adversity was able to
accomplish.
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