The Last Jews in Baghdad: Remembering a Lost Homeland

Appendix A. The Jews of Iraq: A Brief Historical Sketch

Appendix A The jews of iraq: a brief historical sketch Jeremiah,themosttragicoftheIsraeliteprophetsand a witness to the destruction of theTemple and other ominous events, gave this rare piece of advice to the elders, the priests, andthecommonpeoplewhohadbeenexiledandcarriedofftoBabylonia in three deportations—in 733, 731, and 586 BCE: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters . . . multiply there and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29:5–7). The exiled Jews of Babylonia took the prophet’s advice with alacrity and energy; they sought and worked for thewelfare of the place and duly found their own welfare therein.Though elsewhere in the Bible we learn of the Jews of Babylonia sitting ‘‘by the rivers of Babylon’’ and weeping in memoryofJerusalem,theoverwhelmingmajorityofthoseJewscontinued to rebuild their homes and their lives—and worked hard, prospered, and multiplied. Since those far-off days, for close on twenty-eight centuries, a Jewish presence was maintained uninterruptedly in the Land of theTwin Rivers (Mesopotamia), now known as Iraq. In today’s Republic of Iraq, however , only twenty to thirty Jews remain in the capital Baghdad. As their ancestors had done from time immemorial, these Jews keep praying for ‘‘the welfare of the city,’’ as well as saluting the ruler of the day—Saddam Hussein. The Babylonian Exile, which started with the first wave of deportees early in the eighth century BCE, was not the Israelites’ first encounter with that land. In a sense, indeed, the deportations were themselves in the nature of a ‘‘return.’’ For it was from Ur of the Chaldees, in Sumer, that Terah, the father of Abraham the Patriarch, took off with his family 210 the last jews in baghdad and members of his clan. After a long and hard journey, they eventually settled in Jericho in the Land of Canaan—by which time Terah had died and the succession fell to Abraham. ThisemigrationisinvestedintheBiblewiththecharacterofareligious movement, since the Terahites, in leaving Ur, left behind the gods they and their fathers had worshipped. On succession to the clan’s leadership, moreover,Abraham—whounlikehisfatherwasamonotheist—promptly broke with idolatry and turned to the service of the one and only God whom he recognized as the creator of heaven and earth and who, unlike the deities worshipped by other religions of the period, was neither a nature god nor a territorial one. He was essentially an ethical God to whom justice and righteousness were of supreme concern. Forty-seven years after the third, massive deportation, in 539 BCE, Babylonia fell to the Persians, and its conqueror, King Cyrus the Great, promptly issued a royal decree granting permission to the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild theTemple. He also decreed that the sacred vessels of the Temple, originally carried by the Babylonians back with the deportees, should be returned to the Jews. While they were overjoyed and their hopes revived, however, the Jews of Babyloniahesitated,andintheendtheoverwhelmingmajoritydecided to stay, having in the meantime become prosperous and well established in business and farming.The journey to Judea, they found, was long and hazardous, and life there would obviously be rugged and full of hardships . Moreover, the Jews of Judea were poor, and it was necessary to take considerable amounts of money for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple. It was remarkable, these factors notwithstanding, that the caravan which eventually left Babylonia for Jerusalem consisted of 42,360 souls, not counting 7,337 slaves.The returnees took with them all their worldly belongings, as well as the contributions of gold and silver made not only by the Jews who chose to stay behind but also by the king out of his treasury . Though the act of return proved to be extremely difficult and the returnees were soon to become disappointed and exhausted after years of hard work, the modest Temple was duly completed, in 516 BCE, and the Jews in both their habitats rejoiced. With theTemple completed, the Jews of Babylonia were beginning to feel that, unlike themselves who were finding it hard to lead a full Jewish lifeinaforeignland,theirbrethreninJudeawereleadingafullJewishexistence . In the event, however, it was in Babylonia rather than in Jerusalem that the Jewish religion was preserved and codified. Moreover, the work the jews of iraq: a brief historical sketch 211 of restoration ‘‘back home’’ was itself made possible thanks...