Unwitting Zionists: The Jewish Community of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan 0814333664, 9780814333662

Citation preview

Unwitting Zionists

00 Gavish FM.indd 1

10/8/09 1:33 PM

Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology General Editor Dan Ben-Amos University of Pennsylvania Advisory Editors Jane S. Gerber City University of New York Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett New York University Aliza Shenhar University of Haifa Amnon Shiloah Hebrew University Harvey E. Goldberg Hebrew University Samuel G. Armistead University of California, Davis

00 Gavish FM.indd 2

10/8/09 1:33 PM

Unwitting Zionists The Jewish Community of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan

Haya Gavish

wayne state university press detroit

00 Gavish FM.indd 3

10/8/09 1:33 PM

© 2010 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. 14 13 12 11 10

54321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gavish, Haya. [Hayinu Tsiyonim. English] Unwitting Zionists : the Jewish community of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan / Haya Gavish. p. cm. — (Raphael Patai series in Jewish folklore and anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8143-3366-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8143-3689-2 (e-book) 1. Jews—Iraq—Zakhu—History—20th century. 2. Zionism—Iraq—Zakhu—History. 3. Zakhu (Iraq)—Ethnic relations. I. Title. DS135.I712Z353513 2010 305.892’405672—dc22 2009028350

Hayyinu Zionim, was published by the Ben-Zvi Institute of Yad the Hebrew by Yohai Goell. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Werner Weinberg Fund of the Hebrew Union College Press and the Ben-Eli Honig Fund at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for support of this book. Typeset by Maya Rhodes Composed in Adobe Garamond Pro and Walbaum

Contents

Preface vii Abbreviations xi 1. Between Folklore and History 1 2. Zakho, an Island in the River 13 3. Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel 51 4. Rabbinical Emissaries: A Bridge to Eretz Israel 87 5. Aliyah in the Prestate Period: The Historical Context 149 6. The British Mandate Period: Aliyah at All Costs 194 7. Zionism in Zakho: Zionist Cell or Center for Illegal Immigration? 236 8. Social Upheaval and National Emancipation, 1950–51 316 Epilogue 337 Interviewees: Biographies of Members of the Zakho Community 341 Interviewees: Emissaries to the Zionist Underground in Iraq 355 Notes 357 Bibliography 417 Index 431

v

00 Gavish FM.indd 5

10/8/09 1:33 PM

00 Gavish FM.indd 6

10/8/09 1:33 PM

Preface Toward the end of 1948, the family of Abraham Zaqen hired Jewish raftsmen from Zakho to transport sawed trees down to the river and float them to Mosul, where they were to be sold. A heavy snowstorm delayed them up for a few days in one of the villages, and only on the Sabbath did the sun finally break through the clouds. They dearly wanted to warm themselves, but due to the Sabbath refrained from lighting a fire. And so, they began dancing, in traditional Kurdish fashion: the lead dancer sang “tee, tee, tee,” waving a kerchief in his free hand, and all the others replied, “Israel,” referring to the Jews, the People of Israel. That was the tradition among Zakho Jews. Some Kurds also gathered round the enthusiastic dancers, but one of them—a policeman, a soldier, or a drunk—complained to the authorities, accusing the Jews of “Zionism.” The dancers were arrested, brought to Zakho and from there to Mosul, where four of the oldest among them were freed. The other eleven were taken to Baghdad for trial in a military court and sentenced to imprisonment. From that day on, the Jews of Zakho had their own “Prisoners of Zion” (Heb. assirei tziyyon, persons who were persecuted because of their Zionist activity or aspirations). I heard many versions of this story from former Zakho Jews, four of whom were among those imprisoned. Although there was a consensus among all my interviewees about the event itself, for many years they disagreed regarding details and interpretation. Did the raftsmen dance innocently to warm themselves or were they expressing their joy at the establishment of the State of Israel? Did the lead dancer wave a simple kerchief or was it intended to represent the Israeli flag? Was “tee, tee, tee, Israel” merely a traditional phrase, sung when dancing at weddings and other celebrations, referring to the People of Israel throughout its lengthy history? This episode was a traumatic event for the Jews of Zakho. When their community came to an end in 1951, with the mass immigration to Israel, the prisoners remained behind, in jail. They were released only later and came to Israel with the last emigrants from Iraq. This episode is indicative of the duality between Jewish tradition and Zionism among the Jews of Zakho. Such duality in Jewish communities vii

00 Gavish FM.indd 7

10/8/09 1:33 PM

preface

the world over, including those in Islamic countries, has been the subject of much research. It is not my intention to define Zionism, but rather to delineate the Zionist consciousness of Jews in this community, as understood and put forward by those whom I interviewed. Though the community of Zakho, a town in northern Iraqi Kurdistan, was geographically remote and far removed from the influence of the Jewish religious leadership in Iraq, it unswervingly preserved its traditional—that is, religious—character. It generally wrestled with its problems by itself and, as the most important community in the region, was sometimes known as the “Jerusalem of Kurdistan.” Many articles and books have been devoted to the history of Zionism in Iraq and the immigration of Iraqi Jews to Israel, with special emphasis on Baghdad. I have therefore chosen to throw light on what happened in one community in Iraqi Kurdistan on the assumption that the history of a community reflects both its unique features as well as central developments in the surrounding area. Since almost no academic study has been written about local Jewish communities in Kurdistan, one purpose of this volume is to fill that lacuna. Its objective is to examine the changes undergone by the Jewish community of Zakho as a result of its religious affiliation with the Land of Israel, its exposure to Zionist efforts, and its immigration to Israel—from the late Ottoman period until the end of the community when it immigrated en masse to Israel in 1951. The volume is based on my doctoral dissertation submitted to Haifa University in 1999. No such study has been conducted with relation to Zakho. I chose to examine these changes and developments in that community. I found that its remoteness was a deficiency that had some advantages because it preserved, in the twentieth century, traditional social patterns that had not undergone modernization or politicizing. It was therefore not difficult to trace the changes undergone by the community when it became exposed to Zionist activity from the moment it began to open up to external influences and outside information after World War I. I chose to conduct a folkloric-historical study. While my academic approach is historical, the very choice of the Zakho community mandated the sources at my disposal. There is very little written documentation about Zakho; not much is known about the town and little has been written about its Jewish community. This is where the folkloric aspect came to my aid, filling the gap as much as possible. The folktale, in its various genres, is mistakenly considered to be no more than a means of entertainment and diversion. In my study, the folktale serves as part of the oral documentation that reconstructs the individual and collective memory of the community. viii

00 Gavish FM.indd 8

10/8/09 1:33 PM

preface

Whereas most of the sources I used are folkloric, my analysis of them is historical. The written documentation was studied and examined with an eye to what it could contribute to historical knowledge and insight, and served as the basis upon which I relied for the construction of the chronological continuity. Oral documentation supplied me with a rich mine of information, diverse and fascinating, that was grounded in the memory of former Zakho Jews and their children, and on their storytelling ability. In the Hebrew version of this book, I reproduced the stories told by my interviewees in their authentic vernacular language and have tried as much as possible to preserve their spirit and style when translated into English. By means of the oral documentation, I was able to uncover much of the recent history of the community, reconstruct events, reveal certain episodes, trace changes, and verify and countercheck the information provided by the written sources. Without it, much of this would have been lost forever. By means of the two types of sources of information, I believe that I have been able reconstruct a communal reality and lifestyle of which very little had been known. This study is based on primary sources—interviews and archival material—and on secondary published works. Such works related to all aspects of Kurdish and Iraqi Jewry in general, including Zionist underground activities in Iraq and immigration to Israel. I also found published material that added somewhat to the information I gleaned from the stories related by my interviewees about the Zakho Jewish community and its lifestyle. In 1988–89, I conducted an extensive field study during which I interviewed thirty men and women from Zakho of various ages. They included rabbis, secular communal leaders, persons who engaged in various crafts and having different economic status, and persons who emigrated from Zakho at different times. Thus was I able to put together a wide panorama of information and impressions. I have also availed myself of the interviews conducted in 1967 by the Oral History Division of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1993–94, I conducted interviews with an additional twenty-nine persons who had emigrated from Zakho to Israel, and with seven emissaries from Israel to the Zionist underground movement in Iraq that also organized clandestine immigration to Israel. In addition, I was able to consult interviews conducted with former Zakho Jews in 1994 as part of a research seminar on “Life Stories,” in which I participated, conducted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I found historical documents in public archives and private collections. I also found some documents outside of Israel, in the archives of the League ix

00 Gavish FM.indd 9

10/8/09 1:33 PM

preface

of Nations in Geneva and the National Archives in London. This study would have been impossible without the wonderful cooperation of former Zakho Jews. I am grateful to members of the community who accompanied my research with painstaking interest. Above all, my thanks go out to all the interviewees who consented to be interviewed and lent me their cooperation for several years, and to the members of the Zionist underground movement who were active in Zakho and contributed an important stratum to my study. I have provided some biographical details about the interviewees in the text or at the end of the book. My thanks to Prof. Yona Sabar and Prof. Shalom Sabar for their help in translating some Kurdish words and phrases into English, and thanks to Mr. Ariel Sabar for finding the draft map of unknown origin in the Library of Congress. I am grateful to Dr. Don Rush for his valuable comments and to all those who gave me good advice or tendered other help and whom I have not mentioned by name. The Hebrew version of this book was published in 2004 by the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, Jerusalem. I thank the institute for permission to publish a revised English edition. Finally, I am especially grateful to the translator, Mr. Yohai Goell, who produced a text that is faithful to the spirit of the Hebrew volume and has helped me create an improved and updated version for readers in English.

Zakho, 1938. In the forefront: Sa‘adon Bridge on the Khabur River. Courtesy of University College, London, Sir Aurel Stein Collection, 13996. x

00 Gavish FM.indd 10

10/8/09 1:33 PM

Abbreviations

ACSC

Archives of the Committee of the Sephardic Community, Jerusalem

AHA

Archives for the History of the Haganah, Tel Aviv

A-T

Aarne-Thompson (see the Bibliography, under Aarne)

BT

Babylonian Talmud

CID

Criminal Investigative Department

CKCJ

Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem

CZA

Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem

EJ

Encyclopaedia Judaica

GHQ

General Headquarters

G.S.G.S.

Geographic Section, General Staff

IFA

Israel Folklore Archives, Haifa

ISA

Israel State Archives, Jerusalem

JCA

Jewish Colonization Association

JMA

Jerusalem Municipal Archives

JNF

Jewish National Fund

JT

Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud

LA

Labor Archives, Lavon Institute, Tel Aviv

LON

League of Nations Archives, Geneva

OHD

Oral History Division, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

PRO

Public Records Office, London, now known as the National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey

SAS

Sociology-anthropology seminar conducted by Prof. Yoram Bilu, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1994

UK

United Kingdom

YBZA

Yad Ben-Zvi Archives, Jerusalem (now in ISA) xi

00 Gavish FM.indd 11

10/8/09 1:33 PM

00 Gavish FM.indd 12

10/8/09 1:33 PM

Chapter 1

Between Folklore and History

The Jews of Kurdistan, who were believed to be descendants of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, were the object of much empathy. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, second president of the State of Israel, and Prof. Simha Assaf, a prominent Jewish historian, and others called them “those that were lost in the land of Assyria,” “ahim nidahim” (remote brothers), and “nidhei yisrael ” (the remote of Israel).1 Kurdistan’s Jews were isolated from other Jewish communities for many centuries, the earliest mention of them dating from the twelfth century. Zakho’s Jews were probably even more cut off from any tangible connections with the outside world, for they are barely mentioned in travel itineraries, and even such mentions are primarily in the nineteenth century. I began research on Kurdish Jews in 1978 as part of my studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem after being approached by Prof. Dov Noy, who wanted to conduct field research among the Oriental Jewish communities. Noy pointed to the paucity of folktales of these communities as compared with the abundance of similar folkloric materials whose origin was European Jewry. I was especially attracted to members of the Kurdish ethnic group because in Jerusalem, where I lived, I had Kurdish neighbors and friends. They belonged to an ethnic group so different from my own. My first assignment was with former members of the Jewish community of Arbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. This undertaking prepared me above all to meet the first methodological challenge in this type of research: how to find interviewees among an ethnic group so different from that of the interviewer. My curiosity whetted by the first study, I set out on another undertaking: to interview a Kurdish storyteller from Barazan, who was about ninety years old and had been the childhood friend of Kurdish revolutionary leader Mula Mustafa Barazani, and to study the stories he told me. This I did at a gather1

01 Chapters.indd 1

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 1

ing of elderly members of the Kurdish community in Kiryat Malakhi, a town in southern Israel, in preparation for the celebration of the traditional Sehrane festival in 1981.2 It was difficult to persuade him, but he finally acceded to my request. Thus, step by step, I prepared the infrastructure that enabled me to write a master’s thesis in Folklore Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on “Immigration Stories of the Jews of Zakho,” which in turn led to the present study that combines folklore and the documented history of the community of Zakho. Historians and folklorists adopt different approaches toward the documentary materials available for historical research into a community. The historical approach, which stresses the external perspective, is to compare written and oral source materials. The folkloric approach emphasizes the internal perspective of the community as reflected in oral testimonies. The historical-folkloric approach, which I represent, combines the two: the history of a local community is studied and documented using both written and oral sources. The meeting point between folklore and history is oral documentation. Interviewing witnesses to an event is a means that has always served historians who wrote about their own times. The wide or narrow gap that divides or connects (depending on one’s viewpoint) history based on written sources and oral history has given birth to a unique terminology.3 Oral history is not an independent field but rather a supportive tool in the service of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, whose scholars apply oral life stories, memoirs, anecdotes, and conversations in their specific studies. Oral documentation, as a field of its own, appeared on the scene after World War II because of the need felt to deal with contemporary history in real time. Awareness of its importance increased with the invention of the tape recorder, enabling the recording of interviews. The audio or audiovisual results of such sessions provided the testimony with a measure of credibility and authenticity.4 Extensive use of interviews by an historian began with Prof. Allan Nevins, who in 1948 created an oral documentation program at Columbia University in New York.5 His approach was elitist; that is, it focused on interviews with leading personalities who presented a sort of biographical narrative dealing with several fields such as politics, economy, and the arts. Nevins’s approach influenced most oral documentation projects for about two decades, but since then there has been much oral documentation relating to communities, government agencies, and organizations that has become known in the United States as “public history.”6 The credibility of oral traditions and oral documentation is a weighty issue. Some scholars claim that the credibility of written documentation is greater than that of oral sources because the latter tend to change over time; 2

01 Chapters.indd 2

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Between Folklore and History

however, both convey a message from the past to the present. Moreover, the two are not interchangeable—oral traditions and documentation do not save the day when written documentation has failed. Important as they are, they are no substitution for historical reconstruction; they are sources that correct other historical perspectives, just as other perspectives correct them.7 The question of credibility does not bother folklorists who are engaged in collecting oral testimonies and life stories. They claim that oral history always contains at one and the same time truth that is simultaneously practical, factual, and imaginary. Even if an interviewee lies to an interviewer, the falsehood teaches us something about the interviewee’s culture, society, and psychology.8 Folklorists are not tied down to written sources, and therefore factual credibility (i.e., what is true and what is false) does not bother them; they are therefore at some advantage when studying a group about which there is no written documentation. Folklorists and their colleagues, the oral historians, may be contributing to scholarship by collecting information about certain people or a group who would otherwise remain outside the bounds of historical research; in fact, they believe that oral history is the only way to study such populations. This approach is being used by both historians and folklorists in researching local history, though each have their own emphases, viewpoints, and work patterns.9 My research on the Zakho Jewish community is a study of its history. Communal histories written by folklorists generally seek out the internal perspective of the community’s members—how they view their community—and do not avail themselves of written documentation.10 They include in their studies legends and extraordinary stories that are unbelievable, related in the first person, and that the folklorists believe express an internal historical truth. To folklorists, this approach is legitimate. To historians and those engaged in oral history it lacks credibility, because they aspire to write an objective history on the basis of information from memory that is supported by written documentation.11 Members of both schools, folklorists and historians, therefore recommend cooperation between historians and folklorists in researching a communal history. Combination of the two approaches contributes positively to the study of the history of any community. I found it especially vital in research on the Zakho Jewish community because its members were experienced in transmitting oral traditions but had left behind them only very limited archival documentation. When the two research approaches were combined, I found that cross-fertilization was the rule of the day. I took the testimonies of the interviewees at face value, not thinking of the truth but rather of the local history of the group that re3

01 Chapters.indd 3

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 1

ceived and passed on these traditions. In the many stories related by former Zakho Jews there is a hard kernel that does not tell a lie. While I presented the perspective of the interviewees, as an historian I paid attention to variations between versions of the same story and checked to determine whether and how what they related was supported by existing documentation. The historical picture that emerged, therefore, could be likened to a mosaic. Very important data on the history of the Zakho community can be found in archival sources on the Jews of Kurdistan and Iraq. Although my focus was on Zakho, that community was not isolated from its surroundings and from historical events in Iraq, Baghdad, or even Palestine. What emerged from my study, first of Baghdad and then of Zakho, was the great contrast between these two communities, as though they belonged to different countries. I also touched upon the community in Arbil, another Kurdish city that was an important provincial capital and geographically closer to the center of government in Baghdad. Members of the Zakho community and emissaries who visited it referred to the Arbil community, mentioning in what aspects it was similar to and in what aspects it differed from Zakho. At times I found it necessary to refer also to information concerning other Jewish communities, particularly in North Africa.

Recording Personal Memories The oral documentation upon which my study is based is a collection of memory narratives or personal narratives. It also contains a few that are of the life history genre. Some scholars tend to treat the three in a similar manner,12 but above all one should differentiate between memory narrative or personal narrative and life history. The first type, memory narrative, is a short story that focuses on a certain event that the narrator tends to relate time and again on different occasions during his or her lifetime. The life history, on the other hand, is the reconstruction of a longer period in the life of the narrator, so that oral documentation in this case is more like an attempt to create a biography. Some researchers tend to adopt existing terminology, whereas others prefer to create a new term, based on existing ones, that better serves their purpose.13 In my study I chose to create the term personal memory narrative that stems from both memory narrative and personal narrative. I did this because I believe that history is connected to both personal and collective memory, and my study focuses on the study of narratives in their historical context. My efforts were intended to show what was characteristic of the patterns of the Zakho Jews’ collective memory in connection with their emotional 4

01 Chapters.indd 4

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Between Folklore and History

relationship to Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) and to immigration to Israel (hereafter aliyah),14 this on the basis of personal memory narratives, though I did not overlook variations in the individual testimonies. Personal and onetime diversities in testimonies, too, are worthy of recording. The stories I heard were related to me as personal narratives, personal testimony, whether the narrator was an eyewitness to the event—one who experienced certain events—or provided testimony that was only a reaction to events and phenomena, even as hearsay evidence. Most of those I recorded were eyewitness accounts, whereas only a few of them were based on hearsay. These were personal narratives delivered from the viewpoint of the narrator, who accepted responsibility for what he or she told me. The narratives of Zakho’s Jews are also life stories because the events narrated played an important role in the lives of the narrators, especially one historic event with momentous implications for their lives—aliyah. That, and the religious affiliation with Eretz Israel that preceded it, “programmed” the lives of the individuals and the community such that the personal memory narratives were divided into two groups: those relating to life in Zakho and those bearing upon their life in Israel. The persons I interviewed were motivated by a strong desire to document. They sensed the break between past and present and were conscious of what differentiated between them. I was happy to see that many were aware of the moral value involved in preserving the past and wished to give permanent shape to their image of the past through memory narratives. They wanted to preserve the past and the image of the social group to which they belonged because from childhood they had lived in collective social groupings such as extended families, the heder (traditional religious school), and the community, all of which shaped their collective memory. By means of their personal memory narrative they reconstructed the past in the form they wished, and some among them may have wanted to create a new identity for themselves and their community.15 A value system was transferred in the same manner.16 Thus was the personal memory narrative afforded a role for both the individual and the community, and simple persons were able to express themselves, for otherwise they would not have had a forum in which to tell their tale.17 In research interviews such as those I conducted much importance is attached to the narrator-listener or interviewer-interviewee relationship. The narrative is not an objective product; it changes in accordance with its listeners.18 Some experts maintain that narration of the story is more effective when the interviewer and the interviewee have a common ethnic background or something else in common, such as gender, age, profession, and status, or are 5

01 Chapters.indd 5

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 1

closely acquainted.19 Others believe that good, important narratives can be gained if the interviewer adopts the tactic of open interview that enables the interviewees to express themselves freely and without interference, since it is only natural that they want to express themselves in a free-flowing story and only later be asked specific questions.20 That is the method I adopted for all the interviews I conducted; as a result I collected important and significant stories from which I believe my research benefited. It could very well be that in this manner we participated in the creation of an “historical product.”21 In the personal memory narrative, the narrator sets out from some point in the present to describe a past event or experience and ends up returning to the present. This, of course, influences the shaping of the narrative. The listener gives the narrator an opportunity to return to the past and perhaps even to rehabilitate it. Like historians, narrators are in need of some distance in time to consider anew their past experiences in relation to the present. The text of the personal memory narrative combines fact and fiction and the ideal with reality. The drama of real life fuels the stories, which in their turn influence life; in other words, there is a continuum between life and the narrative. But the stories do not objectively reflect real life because the narrators shaped them in accordance with their own objectives and evaluations, which their narrative interprets. Yet, the stories are more than mere artistic fantasies; they are grounded in real life and influence the creation of new experiences.22 In addition to the recommended criteria for evaluating the authenticity and value of the narratives, during the interviews I tried to check the credibility of the narrator as he or she related the story to me as a listener. Whenever there was a great discrepancy between the facts or interpretation of the narrator and what I already knew about the events, I tried to verify this through the narratives of others or written documentation. Quite often, the narrators used me as a sounding board through which they imparted their stories to members of the immediate family, especially children and grandchildren, thus creating an indirect link between themselves and the other listeners.

The Interviewees Though each person interviewed is a world unto his or her own, and despite differences in age, profession, and status, some attributes are characteristic of them all. The first is the quality of the interviewee chosen: I did not choose them randomly but rather, on the basis of the knowledge I had accrued from 6

01 Chapters.indd 6

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Between Folklore and History

the written sources, picked men and women who could contribute stories or information to my research. It was on the basis of those sources that I prepared a questionnaire that helped me choose narrators, but it was not given to them. As the study progressed, changes were incorporated into the questionnaire according to the narratives and information that had already accumulated. The second attribute is that the interviewees were on a list of names I received from a friend that included members of the Zakho communal elite whom it was believed could contribute to my research even if they had not filled key roles in the community. These interviewees also opened the way to interviews with others who were connected to the stories I heard, and thus was created a diverse, yet inclusive, sample of former Zakho Jews. The historical aspect of my study influenced the choice of interviewees. Some had been mentioned in stories collected in the past and were now interviewed a second time to verify facts or to compare and supplement the information in hand. Others were chosen because of their connection to material I had located in archives. Finally, I interviewed emissaries of the Zionist underground movement whose names had come up in some narratives or whose involvement with the Zakho community emerged from the archival material. The interviews created an intimate and friendly atmosphere. There were cases in which wives decided to tell their stories after they heard their husbands’ testimonies delivered in their homes. In contrast to some scholars who believed that a research framework is not conducive to storytelling,23 I found that the amicable atmosphere was conducive to the telling of unexpected and moving stories. As one of the interviewees said, “We lived on stories.” Some maintain that the key problem in oral history lies in the gap between interviewer and interviewee—differences in background, communication patterns, and dress. At least two perspectives are involved in oral history: that of the social climate of the interviewer and that of the social climate of the interviewee.24 One of those whom I interviewed repeatedly maintained that there were talented people back in Zakho who could have been university professors in Israel had they received a proper education; a second emphatically declared that his decision to quit studying in the heder, the synagogue school, is to his detriment to this very day. And then there was the case of the interviewee who delayed opening the session with me for an hour so that I would have to wait for him, even though we had agreed beforehand on the time of the interview. Such behavior, though vary rare, was demonstrated by interviewees who today hold important positions in various fields. This, however, was not detrimental to my research, for al7

01 Chapters.indd 7

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 1

ready in the first meeting the sense of social difference and alienation quickly evaporated, and at times we even created a mutual long-term friendship. It also seems that there was some significance to my being a woman, though I cannot pinpoint any concrete evidence of this. Most of those I interviewed were middle-aged or elderly men who were raised in a patriarchal society ruled by men, one in which there was absolute differentiation between the genders in many areas of daily life. Even if most of them have lived in Israel for many years, their former lifestyle still exerted a great influence. I sensed that, paradoxically, there was even some advantage in my being a woman; in their view I was less of a competitor, less of a threat. For a researcher, being an outsider who is not involved in the internal squabbles of the community under study is an advantage; however, noninvolvement may also prove to be a disadvantage since important details may be missed. My study benefited from my being an outsider. There are very close relationships within the community of former Zakho Jews, perhaps because it is relatively small, with many intracommunal marriage ties; however, there is also no lack of conflict and tension. Thus, there were interviewees who told me that they were prepared to talk to me and tell me their stories, but not tell them to other members of the community. Some who had been interviewed previously by persons of Jewish Kurdish descent frankly informed me that they told me more than they had been willing to reveal to the previous interviewer. And then there were those who agreed to be interviewed by me precisely because I was an outsider, because they wanted an “objective” academic person to preserve and record for posterity their personal biography and communal history. This was never expressed outright but always incidentally, sometimes not even verbally. It is only natural that this was simultaneously advantageous and disadvantageous because it influenced the interviewees’ choice of stories and their content, how they related them, and what details they omitted so as to create a favorable impression upon the interviewer and thus “become part of history” in the most positive manner. This is often the case with research based on oral history. To overcome this drawback I did the utmost to match the stories with written documentation and did not accept what interviewees told me at face value. Moreover, as an outsider I was free of ethnic or “tribal” obligations, unlike an interviewer from within who might be hampered by such obligations. Most of my interviewees were interviewed several times at various times; sometimes I even interviewed additional members of their families. I made an effort to note their manner of speech and body language in addition to the conditions under which the narration was conducted, including such 8

01 Chapters.indd 8

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Between Folklore and History

external aspects as where it took place, the outward appearance of the interviewee, and his or her willingness to be interviewed. It is my impression that former Zakho Jews have undergone a process of “Israelization” that has left its mark upon them in several spheres, and most probably that was the major cause of their willingness to lend me their cooperation. This process was also expressed in the language in which they told their narratives: all of the former Zakho Jews I interviewed spoke in Hebrew, and most of them intertwined idioms and phrases translated from their original language.25 Their acculturation in Israel also influenced the close relationships that developed between the interviewees and myself despite the differences between us. After the ice was broken, the atmosphere was one of conciliation, identification, and involvement with my project. What happened between us was a gradual removal of the barriers between interviewer and interviewee, between someone who came from the academic world to sit at the feet of persons of a different social and cultural status in order to learn from them.

Memory, Memory . . . When I interviewed former Zakho Jews, I became aware of the issue of memory—its forms and sources. Memory takes the form of a paradigm that is influenced by the historical and cultural milieu in which a person develops. Moreover, memory is organized along the lines of models or literary forms such as events, activities, and places that play an important role in the autobiographical memory of a person.26 The recollections of my interviewees from Zakho focused on two different paradigms: one relating to life in Kurdistan and the other to their new lives in Israel. One of the preconditions for good memory is a link to traumatic or dramatic events. Such were the events in Iraq and Kurdistan following World War I, and such was the condition of the Jews in Iraq after the establishment of Israel. Aliyah and all the activity connected with migration from one place to another definitely filled this criterion because they became social drama.27 My questions regarding aliyah and the events that preceded and followed it aroused and stimulated the memory of my interviewees. I also availed myself of artifacts because a person is unable to preserve the past in the same way as he or she holds on to objects.28 The idea of using objects generally came from the interviewees themselves, who showed me household artifacts, amulets, and family photographs, generally taken on the eve of aliyah. There were those who showed me an Iraqi identity card that expressly stated that the holder may leave Iraq, but is forbidden to return. Another characteristic of the memory paradigms of former Zakho Jews 9

01 Chapters.indd 9

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 1

A silver pendant woman’s amulet from Zakho, engraved with the eight-letter name of God, comprised of the two forms of the Tetragrammaton. Courtesy of Batya Ben-Aharon.

is what scholars who have engaged in the study of communities call a layered memory. This is a term that expresses the complexity of memory and its subjective and selective basis, because not everything can be remembered. Memory is a combination of the private and public aspects, brings together the past and the present. It blends everyday local matters with universal elements in which the person who is called upon to remember finds a common denominator and therefore bridges the gap between them and reconciles them. All that is layered memory.29 This blend of different levels of memory is also characteristic of the Jews of Zakho, in whose minds there is no conflict among the various elements but rather conciliation among them, except in a few exceptional cases. It may well be that one of the reasons for this is the nature of the community—small and culturally isolated, whose members did not have many opportunities to identify with other social groups. Each individual has remained loyal to his or her spiritual and cultural sources, while in their collective memory a nexus has been created between the life of the individual and parallel public events. The memories of individuals, therefore, include simultaneously both private and social elements relating to the same event. 10

01 Chapters.indd 10

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Between Folklore and History

From the perspective of folklore, memory is not obligated to reconstruct an exact reality or to express factual accuracy; it is enough if it expresses the view from inside the individual or the group. What is most important from the folkloric viewpoint is the literary or narrative ability to impart the memory, with all its complexity, to the listener, and this with consistency and internal logic. Much importance is attached to the orderly development of a sense of the past, present, and future in the life span of an individual in order to create a personal identity.30 However, consistency and internal logic do not have to be too watertight and absolute, because life and history are not organized along absolute lines.31 Of the interviewees from Zakho it may be said that most were talented storytellers, despite the natural personal differences among them. This can be attributed to three major reasons: (a) The topics about which they were interviewed focused on a central event in their lives—aliyah and all that surrounded it—which encouraged and stimulated them to tell their stories. (b) The choice of interviewees was not random but based on their perceived ability to contribute to the research from historical or folkloric aspects. (c) Warm, friendly relations between interviewer and interviewee, once the ice was broken, encouraged the interviewees to tell their stories. I was impressed by the various interviewees’ excellent recall of the facts, even though many years had passed since the event. Instrumental in this was that the first round of persons interviewed was comprised of key figures in the community— rabbis and other leaders—who were centrally involved in communal life and participated in decision making. There were certainly cases of omission of facts and selective presentation of information—of which I became aware when I cross-checked the narratives with written documentation. These, though, did not stem from forgetfulness but from a tendency that is quite common in oral history to relate positive matters and omit negative ones, and to tend toward conformity. That is what led me to compare the reports from one individual with those from others.32 The others interviewed, who in my study represented other strata of former Zakho Jews, also exhibited an excellent memory because they, too, were not chosen at random; they were either connected to narratives related by other interviewees or were chosen because I knew they could make an appreciable contribution to my research. This was very important particularly because, for certain topics, they were my only source of information. Thus, for example, in contrast to an abundance of historical source material on aliyah from Iraq in the 1950s, there is very little comparable material on aliyah from Kurdistan, in general, and Zakho, in particular. Therefore, what my interviewees recalled filled a gap in the historical data. 11

01 Chapters.indd 11

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 1

Most of those whom I interviewed were middle-aged or elderly, although a few were greatly advanced in years. Scholars who dealt with the recollections of such elderly persons have emphasized the tendency to recall information selectively that focuses on the distant past.33 In the interviews I conducted, I found that memory that focused on the past was advantageous and contributed positively to my study from both the historical and the folkloric aspects. On the level of folklore, the majority of the interviewees very much wanted to relate their stories and displayed a good ability to organize their recollections in an orderly narrative so as to present their lives as being significant in relation to the history of the community. On the historical level, concentration on the past led to very positive results in all that related to factual accuracy, and this precisely among the very old interviewees. The eldest of them, ninety-six years old at the time, quoted from memory sections of a document to whose drafting he had been partner about seventy years earlier.

12

01 Chapters.indd 12

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Chapter 2

Zakho, an Island in the River

Jews lived in Zakho for many generations. Knowledge of this community’s way of life in its natural setting is a key to understanding the factors that shaped the spiritual world of Zakho’s Jews. It is also a basic element in any analysis of the changes undergone by the community that influenced its attachment to Eretz Israel. A town in northern Kurdistan, near where the borders of Iraq, Turkey, and Syria converge, Zakho was a rural center and a regional marketplace. It also served as the religious and spiritual center for the Jews dispersed throughout nearby villages. Due to geographic conditions, combined with Ottoman rule, the area remained backward. This was also true of Kurdishpopulated areas in eastern Turkey and northern Syria that are close to Zakho. Even after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the British Mandate over Iraq, a step that sparked modernization, economic development, and advances in education and culture, the marks of progress almost altogether skipped over Kurdistan, especially the area near the northern border. The fact that Zakho’s Jews, like the rest of Kurdish Jewry, lived among Muslim Kurds as a minority within a minority added to the sense of isolation of its Jewish community. Observance of religious practices and tradition was characteristic of the community’s lifestyle. Its members punctually observed religious commandments and customs and throughout the years were careful not to assimilate with non-Jewish society. Religious life focused round the synagogue; festivals and their attendant precepts were strictly observed; all the important rites of passage in a person’s lifetime were performed—those connected with marriage, giving birth, Bar Mitzvah, burial, and mourning; and the rules govern-

13

01 Chapters.indd 13

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

ing kosher food were strictly followed. It was common practice to turn to talismans, folk beliefs, and faith healing. This description should not lead to the conclusion that life in Zakho was ideal. Like any society, there were always problems, tensions, and internal strife, but the local leadership was usually able to settle differences of opinion or keep them under cover so as to preserve social order in the community. There were few changes in the lifestyle of Zakho’s Jews, the social hierarchy and the professions followed by most of them generally remaining unchanged. While all these elements did serve to maintain the communal structure over the centuries, they also created a sense of treading water that would change only as a result of strong external influences: the arrival of rabbinical emissaries from Eretz Israel to collect funds, World War I, contact with Zionist emissaries, and the establishment of and immigration to the State of Israel.

The Zakho Community in the Written Sources In his study of the poetry of the Kurdish Jews, Joseph Rivlin wrote, “No other of the diasporas of Israel has left such a meager imprint on Jewish history as the Kurdish diaspora.”1 This is too authoritative a conclusion, for Rivlin’s study was preceded by other, albeit more general, ones not devoted to a specific community but providing information on various communities in Kurdistan, including that of Zakho. Over the years since Rivlin published his book, it was followed by others.2 The Zakho community has apparently been the subject of more research than any other Kurdish community, probably because of the concentration of former Zakho Jews in Jerusalem, which enabled them to preserve their communal characteristics. The contribution made by Donna Shai’s 1975 doctoral dissertation was primarily to the field of the traditional folk literature of the Jews of Zakho. Her work was based on materials collected in Israel and analysis of the changes incurred under the influence of Israeli culture. Her approach was a sociocultural one par excellence, without any discussion of the historical dimension. Shai’s dissertation did not touch upon the personal memory narrative genre, nor did it refer to the emotional and religious affiliation with and aliyah to Eretz Israel. In addition to this dissertation, other diverse primary and secondary sources can be divided into five groups: (a) Letters dating from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. (b) Descriptions included in travel itineraries of Jews and Christians who visited Zakho from about the beginning of 14

01 Chapters.indd 14

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

the nineteenth century until the 1940s. (c) The research published by Erich Brauer (1948, 1993) and Abraham Ben-Ya‘acov (1961, 1981). (d) Books by members of the community during the second half of the twentieth century. (e) Hithadshut, a periodical published irregularly, beginning in 1973, by the Kurdish community in Israel.

Letters from Kurdistan Jacob Mann and Simha Assaf have published letters that illuminate spiritual and social aspects of life in Kurdish Jewish communities, especially from the sixteenth until the eighteenth centuries. Walter J. Fischel did the same for letters of a later period, the first decades of the twentieth century.3 These letters, as noted, contain important information on the spiritual and social life of Kurdish Jews, their attachment to Eretz Israel and ties with Kurdish Jews in the Holy Land. However, only a few of these letters deal specifically with Zakho, and they contain but scant information.

Travel Literature Depictions of Zakho in the travel literature written by Jews and Christians are generally brief and fragmentary. However, they are an important source because they do provide us with information about the city, particularly during the nineteenth century.4 Of course, one must treat this information carefully, for it is difficult for a passerby to gain a deep and credible understanding of the life patterns one sees fleetingly.5 Yet, when all the information supplied by travelers is collected, it does enable a comparative discussion that adds to our knowledge about Zakho.

Studies by Brauer and Ben-Ya‘acob Although these studies are an important basis for research on Kurdish Jewry, they include little discussion of Zakho. Erich Brauer conducted an ethnological study of Kurdistan, including a historical survey of its Jews.6 In several chapters he does record a few details about the traditions and customs of the Zakho community. The major deficiency of Brauer’s book is that he conducted and completed his study in the late 1930s on the basis of information he collected in Palestine, at a time when the majority of Kurdish Jews were still in Kurdistan. In The Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob described 15

01 Chapters.indd 15

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

the Jewish communities in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. This is an important work because it summarizes the written evidence.7 Among the sources he used were the travel descriptions left by Jewish travelers who visited Zakho in the nineteenth century. Ben-Ya‘acob’s short survey of that city includes information on several aspects of Jewish life there, but this information is short and encyclopedic in nature and does not enable a proper analysis to be conducted.

Books Written by Former Zakho Jews In the introductions to their books, the authors generally write that they are relying on the works of Brauer and Ben-Ya‘acob but are adding details and comments from what they remember personally. These memoirs provide information of various aspects that are over and above descriptions of the city. The anthology published by Yona Sabar documents traditional folklore among Zakho Jews;8 Meir Alfiya’s book on the Kabbalah opens with a lengthy survey of the community of Zakho and its legends and a biography of his father;9 the volume by Mordechai Yona includes a map of Jewish landmarks in Zakho prepared from memory by Meir Zaqen.10

Hithadshut Hithadshut is an organ of the Kurdish Jewish community in Israel.11 The authors have no pretensions to academic research, and the importance of the articles lies in testimony provided by witnesses to the events or secondhand evidence the authors heard from their parents or other former Zakho Jews. On the basis of this survey of the written documentation about Zakho, we can only conclude that it is very poor and has no bearing on the present study, which focuses on folkloric and historical materials that provide the background for the community’s emotional affiliation with Eretz Israel and the aliyah of its members in the twentieth century. In contrast to the aforementioned research, our study is founded on archival documents that have not been used in a suitable context and a large collection of oral testimonies by members of the community or the Zionist underground emissaries whom I interviewed. This information is of special value, more than that gleaned from routine research, because it reconstructs a community that no longer exists and whose members did not set down much in writing. In certain areas, the interviewees were the sole source of information. These testimonies do not 16

01 Chapters.indd 16

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

supplement the written documentation; the opposite is true: the little written documentation supplements the oral testimonies. In chapter 1, I dwelt extensively upon the issue of the reliability and the nature of the interviewees’ memories. Here I should like to emphasize that, in depicting Jewish life in Zakho, my interviewees made every effort to be as realistic as possible, to concentrate on the facts and not be swept away into nostalgic and idealistic memories. Mazliah Kol told me that the interview excited him almost to the point of pain. When I asked him, “Why? Because it is impossible to return to Zakho?” he replied, “No. I have seen more beautiful places.” “Then why?” “Because we didn’t know how to leave it earlier.”12 Mazliah Kol was not alone in not yearning for the past. In an interview conducted in 1987, Meir Zaqen, when referring to the “exodus from Zakho” in 1950, said, What property [i.e., Jewish property and homes] did they [i.e., the Kurds and Iraqis] get? “A plague” is what they got! They got a desolate city whose commerce collapsed after we left. They got our homes? A few years later all of Iraq was in trouble. This happened after we left. They killed the king and killed one another. There was one revolution and then another revolution. There were Barazani’s wars which shook Iraq. I read a newspaper report about how the Kurds gave themselves up to the Iraqi authorities in Zakho. Barazani came to Zakho and handed over his weapons and that of his fighters. That is where he surrendered. About a year and two months ago I was in Turkey. I went to those areas that are near Zakho. The Kurds there, who fled from Zakho, completely forgot their origin. A long time has passed. What am I trying to tell you? That the situation has changed.13

Other interviewees, who managed to secretly visit Kurdistan and Zakho in the past few years, sought their roots there, but not one of them clung nostalgically to their past, to the low level of education they had received, or the economic difficulties and the insecurity that had been their lot. They remembered a small town and found that it had become a big city that had received Kurdish refugees persecuted by the regime of Saddam Hussein. They remembered a Jewish quarter and found that it had been destroyed. This gap between memories of the past and the reality of the present generally caused them great disappointment and strengthened their belief in the good luck that had extricated them at the right time from that city.14 17

01 Chapters.indd 17

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

Zakho: “An Island in the Sea” and a Community of Jews among Lofty Mountains “We were well aware of the existence of large communities of Jews in Kirkuk, Arbil, and Mosul, but only by chance did I learn that Jews lived in the Kurdish villages in the lofty mountains.” So wrote historian Walter Fischel in his impressions of a visit to Kurdistan in 1930.15 The city of Zakho is located in northern Iraq, at the far end of the main road used to administrate the region that leads from Baghdad through the district capital of Mosul to where the borders of Iraq, Turkey, and Syria meet. Zakho is about ten kilometers from the Turkish border and some thirty kilometers from that of Syria. It is located in a valley, on an island in the middle of the Khabur River, a tributary of the Tigris. Northwest of the city, in Turkish territory, the Judi mountains rise to a height of over 2,000 meters, and further north are the mountains of Hakari and Armenia, over 3,000 meters high. In the winter these mountain ranges are covered with snow, which melts in the spring, providing water for the region’s springs and perennial streams.16 The Khabur flows from the east through a twisting gorge and spills into the Zakho Valley until it finally joins the Tigris. The Bēkhēr Ridge and the White Mountain (Jebel Abiad), which rise to a height of 1,200 meters, close off Zakho from the south. The road leading from the city of Mosul and the village of Dohok to Zakho runs through these hills in a mountain pass that is difficult to traverse and easy to block.17 Zakho’s unique geographic conditions in the northern mountainous region of Iraq—that is, its distance from the center of economic, administrative, and religious life in Baghdad and the difficulty of reaching it by land and, in certain seasons, by the river—had a decisive effect on turning Zakho into a small and remote town, even though it did serve as a central marketplace for villages in the north because of its strategic location near the convergence of the three international borders. The impression left by the wild mountain country is reflected in the narratives of Zakho Jews. They often described the “Mountains of Ararat,” this in connection with the tradition concerning Noah’s Ark, which was widespread among Jews and non-Jews alike. They believed that the name of the Judi range was derived from Yehudi (Jew). Salim Gabbay, son of the onetime head of the Jewish community of Zakho, provided the following testimony: The Ararat Mountains were full of animals, full of naturally growing trees. There were dealers in animal skins there. This was also so in my own times. The land was most fertile. . . . All the Jews 18

01 Chapters.indd 18

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Zakho, near the convergence of the Iraqi, Syrian, and Turkish borders. Sofer-Mapping, Jerusalem.

there searched for Noah’s Ark. It is near Zakho. You cross the Khabur River and then the Isel River to the other side, about three or four hours on foot from the Ararat Mountains. . . . The gentile tribes are tribes of good people, they are the Sons of Noah, people who receive visitors, very nice. . . . They light bonfires and make sacrifices and hold great celebrations on this mountain on which Noah’s Ark [came to rest], so Jews came and participated [in them]. They, the Jews, would also hold celebrations with them and so this mountain, part of this mountain, was called Mount Judi—Mount Yehudi. Why? Because in these mountains was a place in which the Jews also conducted celebrations. After World War I, when borders were created there, the Jews ceased doing that, but from our city we could see the flames of bonfires on the Ararat Mountains.18

The mountains of northern Iraq made access to Zakho difficult. Walter Fischel, who visited Kurdistan and Zakho twice, in 1930 and 1936, wrote, “Whoever once saw the lofty mountains and rock clefts in this country, the swiftly flowing rivers and streams, will understand that nature has set a boundary and that man cannot cross it to discover its mysteries.”19 In the late 1930s roads were laid out that improved communications and the sense of security in the area. Zaki Levi described the changed situation: 19

01 Chapters.indd 19

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

The roads were not patrolled, the authorities were absent from the area, gangs ruled it . . . but these cases [i.e., murders] gradually decreased as the region developed. [This was] when transportation was developed, for instance, when police stations were built at several locations [or] when a border police force was established. They called it the “Patrol Police Force.” To the extent that the authorities made their presence increasingly felt in these remote areas, so did these deeds decrease. . . . There were [still] murders on the highways, but all these absolutely ceased from the beginning of the 1940s, because all remote areas were accessible. The first motor vehicle was brought to Zakho in 1939; it belonged to Hazim Bak, who bought a private Chrysler. Immediately after that, even during the last stages of World War II, English vehicles arrived [on the scene]. In other words, the roads were opened and these [highway] robbers disappeared.20

British traveler W. C. F. Wilson, who visited Zakho in 1937, also noted the improvement in road transportation and its contribution to the improvement of the town’s economic situation.21 Emissaries of the Zionist underground were also especially impressed by the mountainous region. It was difficult for them to reach Zakho in the early 1940s because of the sensitivity of the authorities, the security situation in the area during the war, and the need to pass through control checks established in the mountain passes. Shemariah Guttman, one of the first underground emissaries to reach Iraq, who visited Zakho in 1942, related, “[In order for] you to enter Zakho, you exit this maze of the mountains and you enter a place that is more open, and the city of Zakho is in this place, part of it climbing up into the mountains and part of it below, but it is like a place that is entrapped in these mountains. And the mountains of northern Iraq are high mountains.”22 Yitzhak Shweiki, who was the underground’s emissary to Qamishliye in Syria and visited Zakho in 1944, described the journey from Mosul to Zakho: “We were traveling in a small bus and to this place [Zakho] leads a very high chain of mountains and narrow roads, and then you descend into the valley and see something very beautiful.”23 The city’s unique location is also reflected in the memoirs of former Zakho Jews: “Zakho is an island with a sea [i.e., water] all around it, and we were in the middle with all the houses. Everywhere you went in Zakho you returned to the water. It is an island in the sea.”24 With time, the city’s suburbs spread to the river’s bank, and three bridges led to these new sections: the Sa‘adon Bridge in the eastern part of the city; the Stone Bridge in the southern part; 20

01 Chapters.indd 20

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

and the newest of them all, the “Muhammad Agha Bridge” of Haji Agha, in the west. About three kilometers southeast of the city is the Ruah Bridge, constructed of immense stones. No one knows when it was built and by whom. According to one legend it was built by giants; another legend connects its construction to the sacrifice of a young girl named Nemo Delale who was buried alive in the bridge.25 The bridges and their importance for

Zakho, an island in the river. Carte de la frontiere turco-irakienne. Feuille No. 1: Zakho. G.S.G.S., no. 3863, the War Office 1933. Original scale, 1:50,000. Courtesy of the British Library, Map Library, shelfmark 46990.(9).

Location of the Jewish quarter on the island, on a draft map of Zakho, ca. 1950. Original scale 1:2,500. Courtesy of the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 21

01 Chapters.indd 21

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

the routine of daily life in the city were also reflected in the testimonies of Zakho’s Jews.26 Zakho’s unique geographic setting forged a town in which residents knew everyone else and were suspicious of strangers.27 From the testimonies of Zionist emissaries and former Zakho Jews, a Zionist underground cell was not established in the city because of the challenging geographic conditions, which made it difficult to reach it and to leave it clandestinely.28 However, there was one element that made it amenable to outside influences: its location near where the borders of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey converged. This is also what made Zakho an important center for illegal aliyah from Iraq to Palestine. Immigrants were smuggled across the border before World War I and during the British Mandate period in Palestine (1918–48). Emissaries sent from Palestine were assisted by Zakho Jews, and both sides related personal memory narratives of what happened while crossing the border during these obstacle-ridden efforts at aliyah. The most important city in northern Iraq is Mosul, situated south of Zakho by about two hours by car. Many aliyah narratives mentioned Mosul as the first station of legal emigration for Zakho Jews who made the journey to Palestine, prior to 1948, and to Israel, in the 1950s, after its establishment.29 From that city they moved on to Baghdad, which served as their last station in Iraq before immigration to Palestine and Israel.30 Baghdad was the center of government and economic activity and was increasingly Westernized, especially since its capture by the British during World War I. For Zakho’s Jews it was a center to which they turned for instruction in religious matters.31 Jews from Zakho lived in a separate neighborhood in Baghdad. They had come to the capital either for economic or personal reasons, whether to attend a high school or as a place of refuge for a woman who had fled her husband. A similar and comparative development took place in other Islamic countries after they were penetrated by European powers. Discriminatory laws against religious minorities, theoretically annulled during the period of the Ottoman Tanzimat, were now rescinded in practice.32 The Jews in these countries developed a modern educational system and expanded the sphere of their economic activity: they gradually abandoned small businesses, peddling, and workshops in favor of commerce and industry, and developed international contacts. They entered the civil service, joined the white-collar professions, and improved their economic status.33 By way of generalization, one may say that these changes almost did not reach the distant peripheral areas. In remote towns and villages, rule by the central government was 22

01 Chapters.indd 22

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Delale Bridge-Ruah Bridge. Courtesy of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, M57.9.

barely felt, the economy was stagnant, tribal affiliation and tradition continued unchanged, and education remained at a low level.34

The Historical Background Zakho’s Jews: Their Origins and Early Information about Them Obscurity and vagueness are characteristics of the history of the Zakho Jewish community and of Kurdish Jewry in general, because of their isolation from the outside world, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. According to traditions that were widespread among the Jews of Kurdistan, their origin lay in the Ten Tribes of Israel that were exiled from Eretz Israel before the destruction of the First Temple: “In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria. He deported the Israelites to Assyria and settled them in Halah, at the [River] Khabur, at the River Gozan, and in the towns of Media” (2 Kings 16:6). Assyria, apparently, was the district of Mosul, and Khabur is the river that surrounds Zakho, which the Kurds call Khawora.35 We have no certain information on the beginnings of Jewish settlement in Zakho. The Jews claim that the name Zakho is derived from the Hebrew

23

01 Chapters.indd 23

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

word zekhut (right, or privilege, but which can also be translated as “good deeds”) because its residents were generous and did good deeds.36 Interviewees told me of traditions held by the community about its earliest beginnings. Salim Gabbay claimed that the ancient name of Zakho was Hissenike, that it was founded about a millennium ago, and that Jews reached it from the Ararat Mountains and were settled there by the kings of Assyria. He believes that the origin of some of Zakho’s Jews was the Assyrian exiles, while he and his family are descendent from the Babylonian exile.37 Varda Shilo told me that her family, the Dahlika family, was the first to settle in Zakho, and that the meaning of the name is a field or woods, which testifies to the family’s antiquity since it came to an open field. Other interviewees supported this view.38 There is very little written documentation about the Jews of Zakho. The earliest surviving letters, which date from the eighteenth century, describe a condition of economic hardship in the town, which was at least the lot of certain sectors of the population. One letter told of the sale of a six- or sevenyear-old girl by her mother for eight grush (the equivalent of a few pennies) because of economic duress; another related that a resident of Zakho betrothed his wife with a few raisins; a third letter, evidence of the religious hegemony in the town, told about an emissary from Eretz Israel who came to Amadiya, another town about eighty kilometers east of Zakho, and demanded that one of Zakho’s Jews appear before him in the religious court or be excommunicated.39 During the eighteenth century, Zakho was subordinated to Amadiya in religious matters, but in the nineteenth century the tables were turned, and Zakho took precedence.40 Written documentation about Zakho’s Jews is more plentiful in the nineteenth century. The reports are by Jewish and Christian travelers who came to Zakho in search of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. The Christian travelers wanted to learn more about the Nestorians whom they believed to be descendants of the Ten Tribes, together with the Jews; they also intended to carry on missionary activity by establishing Christian schools in the area. The first Jewish traveler to describe Zakho was Rabbi David D‘Beth Hillel, who visited the town in 1827: There are about 600 families of Israelites. The treasurer of the town is an Israelite, and he is the chief of his nation, some are very rich having much cattle. Most of them are weavers, goldsmiths, and other artificers. They have a very ancient and large synagogue, built of large hewn stones situated on the banks of the river. There are many ancient 24

01 Chapters.indd 24

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

manuscripts, which I have examined and find they are not different to ours, except in the form of some of the letters. Their original language is the same which I have mentioned above at Peshkhabur.41 They are ignorant both of the Hebrew language and customs, there are very few Levites; in the whole town, not more than three or four. Their marriage ceremonies and other customs are after the manner mentioned in the ancient histories; therefore, I conceive that they must be some of the lost Ten Tribes. . . . There are Nazarenes [i.e., Christians] who follow the same customs and have the same language. There are about 8,000 Kurdish families, denominated Mohametans, speaking their own language, which is Kurdish. The produce of the town is grain, fruit, cotton, wool, cattle, gum, and gall-nuts, all of which are cheap.42

In the next few years several developments made the area more accessible to travelers. The Mosul district, which included Zakho, was controlled by a local ruler who maintained only very flimsy ties with the center of Ottoman government in Istanbul. After repeated raids by Kurdish tribes, the Ottomans once again enforced their rule in the region under Sultan Mahmud II and tried to convince the wandering tribes to settle down. Despite the unrest that accompanied these efforts, Kurdistan gradually came under Ottoman control. This process was completed in 1834 when a Turkish army routed and took prisoner the Kurdish leader of the city of Rawanduz. The Mosul district was now annexed to Istanbul and ruled directly from the capital. Under the new administration security was enhanced, making travel easier and the area more accessible. Thanks to this improved security, the Euphrates Expedition was sent from England in 1835 to explore the area. William Ainsworth, a member of the expedition, published his travel itinerary, which also included descriptions of the Nestorian Christians. As a result of Ainsworth’s publication, the Royal Geographical Society and the Christian Knowledge Society sent him once again to Kurdistan, and he published impressions from this second visit in 1842.43 An American missionary, Dr. Asahel Grant, traveled to Kurdistan in 1841 to find proof that the Nestorian Christians and the Kurdish Jews were remnants of the lost Ten Tribes. Assuming that the Khabur mentioned in the Bible, one of the places to which the Ten Tribes were exiled, was the River Khabur on which Zakho was located, Grant concluded that Zakho’s Jews were indeed remnants of the Ten Tribes.44 In that same year, following Ainsworth’s second journey, the Christian Knowledge Society sent a clergy25

01 Chapters.indd 25

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

man, George Percy Badger, on a goodwill mission to Kurdistan to establish Christian schools and discover manuscripts. Badger visited Zakho, reporting that he found “a few Chaldeans, twenty Papal Syrian families . . . and seventy houses of Jews: the rest of the inhabitants, amounting to about 2,000 souls, are chiefly Coords.”45 Badger also noted a few more Jewish communities that he encountered during his tour. The Jewish traveler known as Benjamin II visited Zakho in 1848 and left us his description: “Sachu on the Chabur. About 200 Jewish families reside in this town; they support themselves partly by commerce with the neighboring Kurds, and as workmen, weavers of woolen stuffs and such fabrics. They are mostly wealthy, but live in a state of great ignorance.”46 The reports of various travelers in the nineteenth century and letters sent to Eretz Israel are instructive about the changed economic situation of the Jews and the tribulations they suffered in Kurdistan, leading to a decline in the number of Zakho’s Jews. A serious famine hit the area in 1880, causing the death of many inhabitants, including Jews. In 1891 Muslims attacked the Jews, pillaged their homes, and set fire to the synagogue, including the Scrolls of the Law that were kept in it. The Jews complained to the governor of Mosul, but to no avail: Muslim persecutions were even more severe in 1892. Seven Jews were brutally murdered and heavy taxes levied on the community. On 10 April 1892 the Tigris overflowed its banks, swept through the city, and destroyed many houses, including 150 belonging to Jews. These occurrences are described in a letter sent by the Zakho community’s leaders for confirmation and signing by the hakham bashi (chief rabbi) of Baghdad, Rabbi Yitzhak Avraham Shlomo, and the hakham bashi of Aleppo, Rabbi Ezra David Hacohen. Once signed, the letter was entrusted to the itinerant emissary Isaiah Ben-Aharon, who was then traveling through eastern countries, particularly India, to raise money for Zakho’s Jews.47 This was quite irregular for an emissary, who was generally sent to collect money for religious institutions in Eretz Israel. Rabbi Haviv ‘Alwan related that his grandfather, ‘Alwan Ben-Yosef, was among those who signed the letter that was deposited with the emissary.48 Sir Mark Sykes, the scholar and diplomat who served in 1904–6 as the British military attaché in Istanbul, visited Kurdistan and other eastern districts of the Ottoman Empire. In his book, he wrote about the somewhat ambiguous impression left by his encounter with Jewish mule drivers in Zakho. He was impressed by their appearance and that they were merry and obliging. But he also noticed that his Muslim servants were rather reserved about the Jews, a sort of mixture of prejudice and racist reservations, apparently fearing that whoever was impressed by their good nature might fall 26

01 Chapters.indd 26

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

into their snare, “for the oriental Jew has a great ability in putting his victims under an obligation and subsequently pouring regretful, tearful, side-winded abuse on ingrates.”49

Jewish-Muslim Relations Relations between Jews and Muslims in Kurdistan were shaped by the delicate balance of power between the formal sovereign in Mesopotamia and local strongmen who ruled areas in Kurdistan. The central authorities exercised no real control over Kurdistan; in fact, it was the tribal leaders who ruled there. The tribal structure of the Kurds was the outcome of their nomadic lifestyle, one that did not change even when the Kurdish tribes settled down in territories between the Ottoman and Persian empires. Kurdish society was primarily a rural-tribal one, a distinctive feature it maintained even when the processes of urbanization and development of central government began in the nineteenth century. Kurds who resided in the cities continued to maintain a strong relationship with the tribe and its values. Even after Kurdish territories in Iraq were occupied by the British during World War I, the tribal chief—the agha—remained their chief leader and was more easily approached than officials of the central government. The status of the Jews under this system was somewhat like serfs, and there were some who even saw it as a state of slavery;50 in return for their labor, the Jews were afforded patronage and protection. This situation became less severe as Iraqi government presence in the north of the country became increasingly evident during the 1930s, thanks to improved roads and the establishment of police stations.51 Despite this change for the better, even under these conditions the local tribal leaders exerted more influence on the Jews in the area under their control than did the central authorities.52 The status of Kurdish Jews who found themselves between the central government and local strongmen was in general quite similar to that of tribal societies in Yemen and North Africa.53 However, the unique relations in Kurdistan were a result of the confrontation between the Iraqi government and the Kurds. The latter’s nationalist aspirations arose as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated at the end of the nineteenth century, unlike the tribes of Yemen and North Africa, who did not develop similar aspirations. Kurdistan’s Jews were a minority living within Iraq’s Kurdish minority; they sensed this even more in the period between World War I and their aliyah to Israel in the 1950s. The Iraqi government, which considered the Kurds a backward and rebellious element, did everything in its power to 27

01 Chapters.indd 27

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

Zakho notables, 1904. Left to right: Yusuf Agha of Zakho, the bishop of Zakho, and the agha’s secretary. Mark Sykes, Dar-ul-Islam (London: Bickers & Son, 1904), 162.

suppress their struggle for independence. Though this intensified the isolation of Zakho’s Jews, it created a unique relationship between them and their Kurdish neighbors. The Jews of Zakho dressed and looked like Kurdish Muslims, and even bore arms like them.54 However, each side knew its place in society, and the differences in religious and national affiliations were clear. The Muslims respected the religious freedom of Jews and allowed them to practice their customs, so that generally there were good neighborly relations between Muslims and Jews. All this notwithstanding, everyone knew who held the upper hand in the city. Interviewees pointed, on the one hand, to the absolute dependence of Jews upon the goodwill of the Muslims, particularly of the leading families in Zakho, while, on the other hand, they tried to transmit and emphasize an outward state of equality and did all they could to maintain their pride and honor as Jews.55 There is very little written testimony on relations between Jews and Muslims after World War I, during the period of the British Mandate over Iraq. 28

01 Chapters.indd 28

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Mutual respect was the order of the day, and Muslim dignitaries used to visit Jewish homes during the holiday season, though in accordance with the hierarchical status of the families in the community. Zaki Levi related that on the eve of Passover these dignitaries came to his home only after they had been in that of Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community.56 However, a turn for the worse resulted from developments in Palestine. The Zionist movement was gaining strength there, accompanied by growing tension between Arabs and Jews, particularly after the Arab disturbances of 1929 that followed a conflict between Arabs and Jews over the status quo at the Western Wall. Several restrictions were imposed, such as prohibition of Zionist activity, limitations on Jewish tourists, a ban on the teaching of Hebrew in Jewish schools, and prohibition of the receipt of Jewish newspapers in various languages from abroad. Such measures became even more pronounced during the short reign of Rashīd ‘Alī, reaching their height in the pogrom conducted against Jews in Baghdad in 1941. In the years immediately preceding Israel’s independence in 1948, restrictions became even harsher and acts of violence and murder more numerous.57 In contrast to the situation in Iraq, especially Baghdad, relations with the Kurds were very good.58 Only after World War II, when the Zionist underground organizations in Palestine actively opposed the British, did Arab incitement and propaganda reach Zakho, causing some deterioration in Kurdish-Jewish relations. It can be said, however, that on the whole relations remained proper, with the exception of a few attacks by individuals who were suppressed by the Shamdin Agha clan that controlled the city and its environs.59 The head of the clan, Hazim Bak, the mayor of Zakho, Haji Agha, and Abdul Karim Agha stood out in the help they tendered the Jews.60 During Israel’s War of Independence, some deterioration in relations between Jews and Kurds could be sensed. Former Zakho Jews described the tension and fear that was their lot in the wake of denunciations and searches for letters from Israel.61 Outwardly, however, proper relations were maintained even during this tense period. Haya Gabbay related that the bodies of some Iraqi soldiers, killed in Palestine during the War of Independence, were brought to Zakho for burial. Her good friend, a Kurd, refused to speak with her because that girl’s uncle was among those killed in battle: “There was tension during the War of Independence, but there was love from beforehand, much [love]. For that reason the tension was not too severe, but it was there. There was internal tension, but we felt nothing from the outside, because they used to love us and we used to love them.”62 In Meir Zaqen’s testimony, he told of the unique atmosphere and tension in Zakho between Kurds and Jews in 1947–48. This reached such a stage at the time that members of 29

01 Chapters.indd 29

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

Abdul Karim Agha. Courtesy of Mordechai Yona.

his family, upon his initiative, prepared small bombs to protect themselves should Muslims attack Jews in the wake of the incitement against them in the mosques during the Friday prayers. Like Haya Gabbay, Zaqen claimed that, despite this, good relations were maintained—at least outwardly: But what was unique was that [we continued] the normal situation, that despite all that tension between us and those people, who were supposed to be prepared to launch a pogrom against us, we would walk together with them, throwing explosives into the river, catching fish, holding a picnic with them, and grilling the fish together. I want you to understand what a unique atmosphere existed there between Jews and Muslims. An atmosphere that cannot be described as a climate of organized antisemitism, definitely not! It contained a murky wave of tension or hatred, but on the next day we would be conducting commerce together with them, with the Muslims, behind the bridges. 30

01 Chapters.indd 30

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

To illustrate relations between Jews and Kurds in Zakho in the period between the end of World War II and the mass immigration of Iraqi Jewry to Israel in 1950, Meir Zaqen added, During all that period, especially the years after World War II and with the establishment of the State [of Israel], even when there was fear of a pogrom or incidents we would sit in cafes together with Muslims and play backgammon or cards with them, although we were aware that something bad could happen in the city or that there could be a pogrom. And thus we would sit with some of the Muslims who were wont to hinder us, and drink with them, and sometimes even joke with them, without sensing any fear. We would sit opposite each other playing rummy, dominoes, and more.63

This relationship was absolutely unlike relations between Jews and Muslims elsewhere in Iraq, particularly in Baghdad.64 The Muslims in Zakho were proud Kurds who generally supported rebel leader Mula Mustafa Barazani and were opposed to the central government,65 a situation that reduced antagonism toward the Jews. The special help tendered by the Shamdin Agha clan was also in their favor. A document in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem (CZA) was sent in 1947 by an emissary who was active in Iraq. He wrote that Shamdin Agha requested support from the Jews of Palestine against the Arabs, their common enemy, and even proposed extending help to the Zionist emissaries if they should be endangered.66 The best-known narrative in this context is connected with Abdul Karim Agha, who commanded the local police in Zakho. During Israel’s War of Independence, a Palestinian Arab came to Zakho and tried to incite the residents against the Jews because of the incident at Deir Yassin, an Arab village west of Jerusalem that was taken by Jewish forces during the War of Independence in April 1948 with the loss of about two hundred Arab lives, but Abdul Karim chased him out of Zakho.67 Many interviewees from Zakho told of improved relations between Jews and Muslims after the Iraqi government declared on 9 March 1950 that Iraqi Jews would be allowed to immigrate to Israel. The Zakho community moved to Israel in 1950–51 in four groups of immigrants.68 The Kurds were much saddened by the Jews’ departure, sensing that it would be a great loss to Zakho and its economy. The interviewees described the Muslims’ expressions of sorrow, which were at times dramatic. The many aliyah narratives include descriptions of the emotional leave-taking from Muslim friends. The story most often repeated centered round Abdul Karim Agha, who, in his 31

01 Chapters.indd 31

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

capacity as chief of the local police, accompanied the groups of emigrants as far as Mosul on their way to Baghdad. He managed to escort the first three of the four groups; before the fourth set out, Abdul Karim Agha suddenly passed away. There were several conjectures as to what caused his sudden death, but many interpreted it as stemming from sadness at the departure of the Jews.69

Social Aspects of the Community The Jewish Quarter “There, in the Jewish community of Zakho, we all lived together. The Jewish quarter is like an island. Our entire city is an island. But we Jews especially used to live one next to the other.” That is how Haviv Tamar, who was born in Zakho, described the community. If Zakho was an island, its Jewish community was an island within an island.70 The city was divided in two: whereas the island was populated mostly by Jews, in the suburbs outside it lived only Muslims and Christians. Jewish quarters in the cities of Kurdistan developed, as elsewhere, due to the inclination of Jews to live together around their synagogues, making the observance of religious customs and laws easier.71 There were nineteen neighborhoods in the Jewish quarter of Zakho, each named after wealthy families, such as Bē Zaqen Street and Bē Hocha Street. Though the various neighborhoods did not differ one from the other in the level of housing, in each one there were one or two buildings with two stories, which belonged to more well-to-do families, such as Bē Miro or Bē Zaqen. Most Jews in Zakho owned houses that were passed on from generation to generation, but a few poor people lived in rented homes. Jewish homes, like those of the Muslims, were very simple single-story structures built of clay. The alleys were extremely narrow and unpaved, and water and sewage flowed in channels in the streets.72 Former Zakho Jews expressed longing for their hometown in diverse manners. In the absence of photos of the city, two of them aspired to preserve their memories of its layout by creating maps of the island from memory. On his map, Moshe Gabbay marked major landmarks for orientation—Jewish and Muslim public institutions, including a rough depiction of their architectural form—and provided a general delineation of the borders of the Jewish and Muslim quarters on the island. Meir Zaqen provided a much more detailed depiction of the buildings within the Jewish quarter, and one might gain the impression that there was no Muslim quarter on the island. Although neither map overlooks the newer neighborhoods on the mainland, 32

01 Chapters.indd 32

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zakho as drawn from memory by Moshe Gabbay. Courtesy of his greatgranddaughter, Anat Gabbay.

The Jewish quarter in Zakho as drawn by Meir Zaqen. Mordechai Yona: Those Who Perish in the Land of Assyria: The Jews of Kurdistan and Zakho (Jerusalem: the author, 1989), 110–11.

01 Chapters.indd 33

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

it is not easy to compare the two because each is oriented in a different direction. For such a comparison it is advisable to use as a point of reference the Ruah Bridge, easily discernible on both, and the route of the Khabur River for orientation. There are no official statistics regarding population, including Jews, in earlier periods, and one must rely on the unsubstantiated impressions of passing visitors. More exact figures are provided by population censuses conducted since World War I. One such census in northern Iraq was conducted in late 1924 by Count Pál Teleki, a geographer, cartographer, and statesman who had served as prime minister of Hungary in 1920–21.73 Teleki’s mandate from the League of Nations was to study the ethnic composition of the variegated population in the petroleum-rich area along the Turkish-Iraqi border for the Mosul Committee at a time when the Kurds missed the historical opportunity to gain some territory of the Ottoman Empire. The committee was appointed to consider the demographic implications of drawing an artificial borderline between Iraq (under the British Mandate) and Turkey. This was done after the Turks, in 1923, managed to annul an obligation that had been included in the draft of the peace treaty signed with them at Sèvres, France, in 1920, to create an autonomous area in eastern Anatolia and the Mosul District for the Kurds. For three months, Teleki surveyed the villages in that region, including Zakho. He reported to the League of Nations that the population of Zakho included 1,716 Jews, 3,786 Muslim Kurds, and 644 Christians.74 A population census conducted by the Iraqi government in 1930 found that the Zakho subdistrict had a population of 26,834, including 1,417 Jews who spoke neo-Aramaic, most of whom resided in Zakho.75 According to another official census, conducted in 1947, 1,394 Jews lived in that city. Meir Zaqen reported that during the early 1950s, prior to the mass aliyah to Israel, there were 315 Jewish families in Zakho, totaling about 1,800 persons who lived in 240 houses in the Jewish quarter. He reconstructed from memory a list of the families and a map of the quarter in which he located the Jewish homes.76 Every house in the Jewish quarter had a large yard that accounted for about half the size of the property, the other half containing living quarters and a food larder.77 When sons married, they took up residence with their brides in the family dwelling, where the wives carried out some of the household chores under the supervision of the mother. Marriages were arranged by the parents of the bride and groom, girls generally marrying at an age of thirteen to sixteen78 and boys between fifteen and twenty-two. It was customary for the groom’s family to pay mohar (bride price), which included gold jewelry. Marriage to a relative, such as a cousin, was preferred.79 Many times, 34

01 Chapters.indd 34

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Boundaries of the liwas and qadhas of the Mosul vilayet, with estimated population figures of each qadha, 1925 (part of a map). LON, S14, Zakho.

thirty people or more lived in one house, even if it was not large. Sometimes, when the eldest son had a family of his own and the family house and yard were too small to contain all members of the extended family, he would move to another home. In the family house, income and expenditures were shared and the household was run as a unit. Due to its patriarchal structure, the head of the extended family had absolute authority to decide on all matters according to his own inclination,80 and he kept his wife at short rein. A hierarchical ranking according to age was maintained between the brothers. Mazliah Kol claimed that, even if one brother had been one day older than another, the younger one would have to obey him. In practice, there was almost absolute separation between men and women in the home. The women performed all household chores and were responsible for the education of the girls—and up to a certain age of the boys, as well—while the men had to provide for the family. Men and women did not dine together, the men eating first and then the women consuming what was left over. Meir Zaqen related that in his home, while the men ate, the women used to stand and fan them on hot days. According to Zaki Levi, the wife’s status depended on her husband’s love for her. Despite their infe35

01 Chapters.indd 35

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The family of Salih ben Matloub Sa‘ado, 1935. Courtesy of Oded Kirmah.

01 Chapters.indd 36

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

rior standing, there were exceptional cases of women who assumed leadership of the family and left their mark upon it.81 The fact that the extended family lived together and the preference for marriage with next of kin created ties within the family that helped maintain its unity and the traditional-cultural character of the family unit and of the wider community, due to the creation of ties of kinship among families. In due time, all Zakho Jews were related one to another in some way. In Israel, too, former Zakho Jews tended to concentrate in specific neighborhoods in Jerusalem and its vicinity. This, together with ties of kinship, is what enabled them to preserve the customs and culture of their community despite all the changes it underwent as a result of their aliyah to Israel.82 This feeling of togetherness provided them with a sense of security and preserved certain of the community’s characteristics, such as conservatism and difficulty in breaking free of its confining framework.

The Khabur River and Its Influence upon Life in Zakho The river was another element that contributed toward the communal unity of Zakho’s Jews. In addition to its importance for the economy—much greater that what in most cases can be attributed to a riverbank in any city— it was a focal point for the daily social and economic activities of the community that resided along its banks. It served as a sort of front plaza for their homes, playground for the children, meeting place for men or one in which young men and women could make each other’s acquaintance, and a spot for recreation, bathing, and laundering.83 The riverbank there extended for about one and one-half kilometers, from the police station to the Muhammad Agha Bridge. It was between 50 and 200 meters wide, depending on the season. The riverbank itself was level and covered with pebbles and sand. Further up the river, about 100 meters from the Sa‘adon Bridge—an area known as “Shkafta” (the Cave)—was where the women of Zakho used to do their laundry and wash fruit, vegetables, and meat.84 Coffeehouses played an important role in the social life of Zakho’s residents. Not only did spending time in them mean following many customs, they were also the scene of no little tension between Jews and Muslims. Not far from the Sa‘adon Bridge was a cafe, owned by a Muslim named Kaso, that was frequented mostly by Jews. They would sit there and drink tea; during weekdays this was before they went to work, while on the Sabbath they drank it on credit and repaid the owner during the week. In the summer a water channel was dug from “The Cave” area to the courtyard in front of the coffeehouse so that those sitting in it could cool their feet in the water. The 37

01 Chapters.indd 37

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

The bank of the Khabur River. Courtesy of Yona Salman.

importance of this riverbank coffeehouse extended beyond its social significance; it was here in 1950 that Jews first heard, over its radio, the news that was to change their lives dramatically—that the government was allowing Jews to leave Iraq.85 Another section of the river served for storage of and commerce in timber, from where it was floated downriver to Mosul and other cities. The riverbank (khtaya), which was partly paved and partly covered with sand, served as a playground and sports field, a dance floor for weddings, and a promenade where one spent time on the Sabbath and holidays. This was also where a few commercial enterprises were situated, such as a studio owned by an Armenian Christian in which objects made of clay were produced, or an instillation for milling and grinding of seeds.86 The Khawora Khtaya region of the river appeared prominently in the narratives and memories of former Zakho Jews. It was also a source of danger during seasons when it overflowed, as was the case with the great flood of 1892 that caused much damage to life and property.87 The river was also mentioned in stories about illegal crossing of the border with Syria: goods were smuggled from one bank to the other, and people crossed it on their way to Palestine.88 In some of the narratives an opposite influence was noted. So deep was the imprint of the Khabur River upon some who had immigrated to Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel and returned to Zakho 38

01 Chapters.indd 38

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

that they explained their return as being due to the lack of water in Jerusalem when compared with its abundance and proximity in Zakho.89 When the emigrants from Zakho settled down in the Nahlaot neighborhoods in Jerusalem, they named the streets after rivers: Euphrates, Jordan, Yarmūk, Arnon, and Yarqon.

Economic Structure Since the possibility of socioeconomic advancement was limited in Zakho, younger members of the community moved to Baghdad. “For what could there be there [in Zakho]?” is how Zaki Levi explained his move away at the age of seventeen.90 Occupations and sources of livelihood did not change, passing from generation to generation, and there was no possibility that the economic gap between rich and poor would be bridged. The major occupation of about 100 of 300 Jewish families in Zakho was commerce and peddling. The others were craftsmen, tailors, cobblers, and carpenters. The Jews were a majority in a few occupations, while others were common to them and the Kurds. Some Jews earned their living by floating timber down the river as rafts, whereas others engaged in transportation of goods overland on beasts of burden. Mordechai Yona differentiated between three types of Jewish merchants in Zakho.91 The first group consisted of wholesale merchants (tijāre), who accounted for a great volume of commerce and stored their goods in their homes or in stores in the marketplace. They dealt in almost every commodity—cloth, clothes, wood, sheep, wool, grain, dates, nuts, and oak apples. The second group, shopkeepers (dekandāre) in the Jewish marketplace, bought merchandise from the wholesalers and then resold it to

Ephraim and Sabaria Adu Zaqen. Courtesy of Menashe Zaqen. 39

01 Chapters.indd 39

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

residents of Zakho and villagers, who in turn peddled these wares in villages and caravansaries. Finally, there were the itinerant peddlers (gadāre or baqāle) who bought various types of merchandise in the market, such as haberdashery, cloth, and household utensils and traveled on mules from village to village, selling or bartering their wares. These peddlers were often in danger of being robbed or murdered in the valleys and canyons through which they had to pass. Of them it has been said, “The peddlers of Zakho do not die in their homes; they die a natural or a sudden death on the road.”92 These peddlers, despite carrying weapons, were murdered by robbers. That is what led many Jews to aspire to immigrate to Palestine.93 Unlike the lack of security from which peddlers suffered in Kurdistan, the situation of peddlers in other countries, such as Libya, Morocco, and Algeria, was better because Jews there were forbidden to bear arms, and it was customary not to molest unarmed peddlers. Their status was a lowly one, comparable to that of women, and it was considerations of honor and shame that prevented Muslims from attacking them. A folk saying maintained that a secure area was one through which a woman and a Jew could pass safely.94 The economic condition of Zakho’s Jews was generally favorable, even though it was influenced by changing political and security circumstances.95 From the testimonies provided by Zakho Jews, we know that there were a few wealthy families in the community—such as Gabbay, Levi, Zaqen, and Hocha—while most others lived frugally. The Gabbay family was the wealthiest, and Moshe Gabbay and his assets were even mentioned in the report prepared by Pál Teleki. He owned caravansaries in the marketplace, a gas station, and villages that he rented from the British authorities.96 The community came to the help of the poor who could not support themselves.97 Meir Zaqen related that, as a member of a wealthy family, he would distribute to the poor food prepared by his mother. Yet, he added, in general the economic condition of Zakho’s Jews was better than that of their Kurdish neighbors. Young Kurds, for example, would come to the homes of Jews to borrow elegant clothes for the Muslim holidays.98 As noted, due to limited economic opportunities, there were Jews who moved to Mosul and Baghdad. Prior to their immigration to Israel, there were about one hundred families of Zakho Jews living in Baghdad who were small shopkeepers, tailors, and shoemakers, or engaged in other occupations. There were also young girls and older women who were sent from Zakho to Baghdad to serve in the homes of wealthy Baghdad Jews. Varda Shilo was sent at the age of seven to do housework in various homes, and her salary was sent to her parents in Zakho.99 From documentary evidence, as well as the direct testimonies recorded, economic conditions in the community during 40

01 Chapters.indd 40

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Moshe Gabbay. Courtesy of the Organization of Kurdish Jews, Israel.

the period prior to the establishment of Israel was one of the most important factors leading to a decision to immigrate to Palestine.100

The Jewish Market The Jews of Zakho had their own separate market, known as “Shuqed Hozaye” (the Jews’ Market), located near their quarter and comprising part of the town’s general marketplace. The family of Moshe Gabbay owned two caravansaries in the Jewish market. One of them included a row of cloth and clothing shops built round an internal courtyard, whereas the other served primarily as a stable for the mules and horses of dealers in animals. The sec41

01 Chapters.indd 41

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

ond floor of the stable offered sleeping arrangements for villagers who came to Zakho for commercial purposes. Merchants and tradesmen operated side by side in the Jewish market. The merchants would acquire most of their merchandise from the villagers; this included wool, nuts, almonds, oak apples, peanuts, cheese, butter, and other fresh milk products. The tradesmen were tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, small shopkeepers, butchers, and more. There were two Jewish coffeehouses, one owned by Ya‘akov Adi, known as Ako, and the other by Kerem Zaqen. Jews and Muslims used to sit there together, sipping coffee and playing dominoes, cards, or backgammon. All the clientele of the coffeehouses were men; in fact, only men bought in the market. The Jewish market was of a unique character because all the Jewish shops were situated one next to the other. On the eve of Jewish holidays, when the tailors would stay up all night to complete the orders for new clothes, the Jewish character of the market stood out even more.101

Trade in Trees and Transport aboard Rafts Zakho served as a sort of departure port from which rafts carrying timber were floated down the river to Mosul and central Iraq. During dry seasons, when the water was too shallow, the trees were transported by mules. These two manners of shipping trees—overland and on the river—were separate branches of the economy. The Jews developed the trade in timber into an important commercial occupation, most of which was in Jewish hands. In fact, it was the major source of income for several Jewish families.102 Trade in trees included tall white poplars (spindāre) that were cut down and sawed in two, the lower trunk serving as firewood and the central part for production of furniture. The trees were transported on mules from the forests to the riverbank and were stamped with the owner’s insignia. The mule drivers, who specialized in overland transport, were known as kartirji,103 whereas those who floated the trees on the river were called “tarākha” (pl. tarākhe). The latter used to transport the trees in the shape of raftlike vessels of different sizes. The small ones were created by strapping together twenty to forty trees. They were floated down the river by one raftsman and did not carry any cargo. Medium-sized rafts were made of 80 to 120 trees, had a few raftsmen aboard, and carried some light cargo. The largest rafts comprised several dozen trees tied together by young flexible branches and underneath them were several inflated sheepskin bags to stabilize them in the water. Such rafts were used to transport heavy goods; when they reached their destination, the merchandise was unloaded and the trees sold. The sheepskin bags were returned to Zakho to be used again. The Duga and Sa‘do families, as well as 42

01 Chapters.indd 42

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

those of Hayyo Cohen and Haviv Tamar, engaged in transporting trees in the form of rafts, whereas Rahamim Cohen produced sheepskin floats for the larger rafts.104

Other Occupations Jews and Kurds alike raised flocks of sheep and engaged in the wool trade. Another branch of trade was in oak apples, which contain material used to dress and soften animal hides, but was also used to produce colors and ink. Zakho’s merchants sent the oak apples to Mosul, where they were sold to the highest bidder. Meir Zaqen testified that his family engaged in this commerce and that it maintained extensive connections with foreign countries, including the United States. Jews and non-Jews also traded in dried fruits and cereals. Weaving was one of the major occupations in which Jews, both women and men, engaged for a living. For the men this was an additional source of income in the winter, when it was impossible to make their rounds of the villages with merchandise because of the inclement weather. Even rabbis such as Meir Alfiya and ‘Amram Levi engaged in weaving, as did Yitzhak Shaikh, a storyteller in Zakho, and Koto of the Hevrah Kadishah (burial society). Young Jews and Armenians were tailors. Zaki Levi maintained that this occupation developed particularly during the last years of Jewish presence in Zakho, after the appearance on the scene of sewing machines. Their main product in winter was heavy coats, which were vital in the cold climate of northern Kurdistan.105

Customs and Smuggling Goods brought to Zakho were subject to the payment of customs, the rates depending on the quantity and type of merchandise. Proximity to the Turkish and Syrian borders tempted persons to engage in smuggling. Various types of goods found their way illegally into Zakho’s markets, but at times they were intercepted by the customs officers and impounded. Though the smugglers were generally Turks or Kurds, they at times used Jewish middlemen.106 The fact that Zakho was near the border also encouraged the smuggling of Jews into Syria, from where they continued their journey to Palestine. In an interview with Yona Sabar, he said that his father and other Jews were involved in the smuggling of goods from Turkey. Another interviewee, Shabetai Piro, related that until about 1923 there was free transfer of goods between Zakho and Turkey, but that after time this traffic was carried out 43

01 Chapters.indd 43

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

clandestinely.107 Kurds living in Turkey preferred selling their merchandise in Iraq, more specifically in Zakho, where they could buy other goods at a lower price than in their own country. Smuggling was carried out using an agreed-upon sign—change of headgear. Turkish Kurds used to wear a sort of baseball cap. They would go out to tend their flock of sheep near the border, cross the river, remove the cap, and then wind a large bandanna round their head, the headgear of Iraqi Kurds. Police on both sides of the border did not present a serious obstacle: if one of the smugglers was caught, matters could be put aright through bribery. Smuggling across the Syrian border was also facilitated by bribery.

Zakho as a Religious Center In many sources, Zakho is called “Jerusalem of Kurdistan,” and in one of them even “Jerusalem of the Diaspora.”108 According to Rabbi Haviv ‘Alwan, Zakho was called “Jerusalem of Kurdistan” because Jews living in villages at a walking distance of three or four days from the city had to come there to be ordained as a rabbi, a shohet (ritual slaughterer), or a mohel (a person authorized to perform a circumcision). “That is why Zakho was called thus, because people used to turn to it from all over the area,” he said.109 As one example he mentioned Rabbi Shalom Shim‘oni of Dohok, who had studied under his father, Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, and been ordained by him as a rabbi. Brauer noted that Zakho was a center for ritual slaughterers, while Rabbi Shmuel Baruch mentioned that his father, the head of a religious court in Zakho, “would ordain them, and then they received an affidavit as a shohet.” He added that Zakho served as a religious center for the area that included Jezira, Shiranis, Dohok, and Sondur.110 Jewish travelers who visited Zakho during the nineteenth century but did not study the community’s practices too closely were not much impressed by the local rabbis’ knowledge of halakhah (Jewish religious law). Israel Joseph Benjamin noted that “they are mostly wealthy, but live in a state of great ignorance.”111 He told of one Rabbi Eliyahu, who asked for his opinion about permitting the remarriage of a woman whose peddler husband had disappeared in one of the villages, lest she would stray from the narrow path. Benjamin thought that such permission would be contrary to the halakhah and that the woman was considered married as long as there was no clearcut evidence of her husband’s death. Kestelmann, the emissary from Safed who visited Zakho in 1859, wrote, “And in Zakho [they] for the most part are ignoramuses who do not know any prayer at all and even how to read the letters of the alphabet in a siddur [daily prayer book], and they know no 44

01 Chapters.indd 44

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Haviv ‘Alwan. Courtesy of the Organization of Kurdish Jews, Israel.

blessing, and do not pray at all, except for what the precentor recites on their behalf when he prays.”112 Only during the twentieth century did Zakho become the religious and spiritual center for the Jews of Kurdistan, even if many of its Jews were illiterate and only repeated the prayers recited by the cantor in the synagogue. Formerly, Arbil had served as such a center, but lost its standing due to riots there. Zakho also achieved its central status due to an increase in its non-Jewish population, particularly of Christian Armenians who fled Turkey after World War I.113 Other scholars consider Zakho to have succeeded Amadiya as the religious and spiritual center, this from the mid-nineteenth century onward. An episode illustrating the decline of Amadiya is that of one Hakham Eliyahu, who had been ordained a shohet by the rabbis of Amadiya, but sent his son to Zakho to receive ordination from them, as well, because theirs was of greater importance.114 Religious learning in Zakho was for practical purposes; rather than learners whose objective was pure erudi45

01 Chapters.indd 45

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

tion, those who studied did so to fill roles in the community as a shohet, mohel, cantor, or teacher.115 Yona Sabar explained that Zakho was called “Jerusalem of Kurdistan” because religion played a major role in communal life. There were two synagogues in which daily prayers and study of the Torah were conducted, and, to make this easier for some persons, prayers were also held early in the morning for the benefit of tradesmen such as butchers or shopkeepers, who opened their shops early. There were no secular Jews in Zakho, unlike other cities in Iraq such as Baghdad and Mosul. Zakho “exported” rabbis and ritual slaughterers to smaller communities that could not develop religious institutions of their own. For that reasons, Sabar adds, Zakho’s Jews at times poked fun at and looked down upon Jews from other cities. He related that his father, when he encountered a Jew who “counted the omer” in the language of the non-Jewish Kurds, expressed his surprise that Jews count the omer in a language of the gentiles.116 It is somewhat paradoxical that Zakho became a spiritual and religious center even though many of its Jews were illiterate.117 In the heder, boys would study only until the age of thirteen, at times dropping out of school even earlier for economic and social reasons.118 The social ideal among Kurdish Jews was not a scholar, learned in Jewish law, but rather someone who could provide for his family. At times a boy would begin working with his father even before reaching thirteen, the age of Bar Mitzvah, not because of direct economic or social reasons but because working and earning were the accepted object in life.119 Gurji Zaqen noted, from his own personal experience, as well, that a few pupils left the heder after being severely punished by the teacher.120 One reason for leaving school was the enhanced status of a boy after he did so; now he was one of the family’s providers. Girls, for their part, generally did not receive any education. Only very few of them learned how to read and write, and this only if they were the daughters of rabbis or were sent to government schools.121 The level of education in the heder was low. Rabbi Shmuel Baruch testified that, even among those who continued their studies until they were Bar Mitzvah, there were those who later forgot all they had learned, even the form of the Hebrew letters. However, there were those who told of pupils for whom daytime studies in the heder were not enough, so they also enrolled in a government evening school,122 whereas there were others who quit the heder and went to a government school in the mornings.123 Perhaps the paradox between Zakho being considered a spiritual center even though many of its Jews remained illiterate can be explained by the fact that, in comparison with the Jews living in the villages, a relatively 46

01 Chapters.indd 46

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Rabbi Shmuel Baruch. Courtesy of his daughters Ahuva Baruch and Carmela Baruch-Krupnik.

larger number of Zakho’s boys continued their education, primarily a religious one, after becoming Bar Mitzvah. Some of them became cantors, mohalim (circumcisors), or shohatim (ritual slaughterers), thus finding their place within the religious leadership of Zakho and the vicinity. Illiteracy did not detract from the deep religious faith of Zakho’s Jews, for whom the synagogue served simultaneously as a religious and social center.124 They strictly observed the religious commandments, as exemplified by the custom of women to immerse themselves in the river after their menstrual period, even in the coldest weather, because of the lack of a mikveh (ritual bath). Rabbi Shmuel Baruch related that the women used to do so even when the river was frozen over, for otherwise their husbands could not 47

01 Chapters.indd 47

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

cohabitate with them, and Haya Gabbay, in an interview, affirmed this from her own experience.125 In the 1930s, when Muslims began annoying women who bathed in the river, the community built a mikveh in the Great Synagogue. Zaki Levi claimed that this was one of the biggest and most complex operations ever conducted by the local community.126 Other former Zakho Jews testified that even during their service in the Iraqi Army, under very difficult conditions, they did everything in their power to refrain from consuming unkosher food.127 There were two synagogues in the city. One of them could seat 3,000 persons and was called Knishta Rabta (the Great Synagogue) in neo-Aramaic, the language spoken by Zakho’s Jews. The other, smaller, one was known as Knishta Zurta (the Small Synagogue) and also as “Midrash.” Both were situated near the river, one facing the other. Most of Zakho’s Jews prayed in the Great Synagogue, while the smaller one was frequented primarily by the large Zaqen family.128 Zakho’s Jews spoke neo-Aramaic, known as “Targum.” They were generally also fluent in Kurmanji, the Kurdish language spoken by non-Jewish Kurds. Knowledge of Hebrew was limited to the rabbis and religious scholars, while only a few also knew Arabic.129 Yona Sabar maintains that the incorporation of Hebrew words into neo-Aramaic can be put down to Zakho’s Jews being well versed in their prayers.130 Men who did not know how to read included Hebrew words they heard in the synagogue in their spoken language, while women incorporated orally transmitted biblical expressions or motifs, even though they did not frequent the synagogue.131 The deep religiosity of Zakho’s Jews led them to develop a strong emotional attachment to Eretz Israel and particularly to Jerusalem. Religious belief, which for centuries reinforced the conservative nature of Zakho’s Jewish community, was one of the most important motivations (when the proper conditions were created) leading to a central transformation in the life of the community prior to the establishment of Israel: aliyah to Palestine. This unique combination of deep religious belief with Zionism that developed within the Zakho community is reflected in what an anonymous traveler from Palestine wrote after visiting Zakho during World War II, when aliyah had come to an abrupt end. He described his conflicting impressions of the local Jews: Zakho is the Jerusalem of Kurdistan. The number of Jews in Zakho does not exceed 2,500, and they are real Kurdish mountain Jews. The town is about eight kilometers from the Turkish border, and about twenty from the Syrian border. Very many, thousands, of 48

01 Chapters.indd 48

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zahko, an Island in the River

Shiviti (Ps. 17:8), in the shape of the menorah, carved in marble, a remnant of the synagogue of Zakho, October 1992. Photo courtesy of Yona Sabar.

persons from this community immigrated in various ways to the Eretz Israel. Whole families made the journey on foot, concentrating mainly in Jerusalem. In the present generation, this is a community of hakhamim [learned men]. The language they speak today is Kurdish. The language of instruction is Arabic. . . . The community’s Zionism perhaps did not especially focus on practical steps but the memory of Zion and love of Jerusalem are alive here in every heart.132

Meir Zaqen found it necessary to bemoan what the community left behind, and the emptiness that resulted from their leaving points to the community’s former vitality: “How much it hurt them [the Muslim Kurds] when we went 49

01 Chapters.indd 49

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 2

on aliyah. It truly hurt them. I repeat: truly. At first there were persons there who behaved badly. But when they saw how the Jews were leaving, how they were emptying the city, how this wonderful community was leaving [they said to themselves], where are their holidays, their tailors, their shopping, their shoemakers, where are their coffeehouses that we used to fill? Where is all that now?”133

50

01 Chapters.indd 50

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Chapter 3

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

Zakho: “Jerusalem of Kurdistan” Many Zakho Jews, of almost every family, immigrated to Eretz Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. It was religious affinity to the Holy Land that was overwhelmingly decisive in shaping their aliyah consciousness. In those days people clearly distinguished between attachment to Eretz Israel as a religious value and as a Zionist ideal. When Yona Sabar, who was born in Zakho, was asked when he first heard about Eretz Israel, he replied, I cannot say exactly when I heard of it. Of course, all the time we read about Eretz Israel in the prayers and the Bible. It’s a topic that is difficult to separate [from anything else]. It’s just like hearing for the first time about mother and father and perhaps about all kinds of everyday things. Eretz Israel was not so distant that you had to hear about it separately, except perhaps in a political Zionist context. But Eretz Israel as a religious concept, that was always part of our lives. Actually, every Jew—I think—in Kurdistan and perhaps everywhere else, imbibed Eretz Israel together with his mother’s milk. It is not a subject that he began hearing about [at a certain time]. It is difficult for me to truly say when I heard [of it], I mean as a religious concept; as a political concept—that is something else.1

To the Jews of Kurdistan, the term Eretz Israel was an organic part of daily life. One manner in which this was manifested was in the blending of geographic names and other linguistic elements found in Kurdistan and Eretz Israel. Names of some villages in Kurdistan sounded very much like geo51

01 Chapters.indd 51

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

graphic names in Eretz Israel. Examples are Arbil or Aqra, whose names echo Arbel and Ekron in Eretz Israel. The tomb of the prophet Nahum is located in Alqōsh in Kurdistan, and not at the site of biblical Elkosh in Eretz Israel; in Kurdistani Alqōsh, Jews also used to symbolically ascend “Mount Sinai.”2 The proper names Nahum and Yona (Jonah) were quite common among Kurdish Jews because, according to their traditions, these two prophets are buried in Kurdistan. It is common for one linguistic culture to migrate to another geographic area, bearing with it names from the region of its origin.3 It was common in Zakho—and apparently nowhere else—to learn the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in the heder through place-names in Eretz Israel. Certainly the most manifest expression of longing for Eretz Israel and of the blending of names and regions was in the epithet “Jerusalem of Kurdistan” that was applied to Zakho.4 Powerful longing for Eretz Israel focused especially on Jerusalem. Apparently, only during World War II did Jews in Zakho become aware of political Zionism. Salih Hocha defined this in the following manner: “Before Zionism, we did not hear of Zionism. Whoever tells you anything else—that is incorrect. But we kept Eretz Israel in mind, and the most important oath pronounced by the women was ‘Jerusalem.’”5 When women used “Jerusalem” as an oath, it was an expression par excellence of passionate, extroverted love. It may also have been a latent desire to better their condition or a strong aspiration to at least be free to dream. From Na‘ima Shmuel, we heard, “All the time we wanted to come to Eretz Israel and to the warmth of Eretz Israel. We were infatuated with [Heb. serufim ‘al, lit. “inflamed about”] Eretz Israel and would swear by Jerusalem. The sincerest oath was ‘In Jerusalem.’ So if I did something and said ‘In Jerusalem,’ that was it! You had to believe me. We were infatuated with Eretz Israel and would say, ‘If only we would go to Eretz Israel, if only, if only.’” The motif of Eretz Israel as associated with fire (serufim) and warmth was regularly used by the Jews of Zakho as an expression of their fiery love for Eretz Israel and Jerusalem. Other interviewees also used the sensual word heshek (strong desire). Haviv ‘Alwan said, “Heshek for Jerusalem, I tell you, was in the hearts of us all thanks to the Bible, the midrashim (homiletic interpretations of the Bible), and prayers. Every prayer was full of ‘if You bring us back to Jerusalem.’” 6 Passover, especially the seder night, was an annual occasion during which Eretz Israel and Jerusalem were mentioned during the reading of the Haggadah.7 Prior to “Mah nishtanah,” (lit. “What has changed”)8 this scene was enacted: A young boy was sent out of the house with a mazzah (unleavened bread) wrapped in a special cloth tied to his back. When he returned, he would knock his head against the door, and all those seated at the table 52

01 Chapters.indd 52

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

would turn toward him. “May you be blessed with many years,” said the boy, and the man conducting the seder asked him, in Arabic, “From where do you come?” “From Egypt,” replied the boy. “And where do you go?” “To Jerusalem.” “And what are your provisions on your back?” The boy would then recite “Mah nishtanah.”9 Zakho’s Jews even used to extrapolate from the Haggadah to their present condition. Varda Shilo: “The custom [of reciting] ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ in Eretz Israel, was [applicable] throughout the year. We thought, quite simply, that we would really be in Eretz Israel. We never thought that next year we would celebrate the Passover, the seder night there [i.e., in Zakho]. Quite simply, every year we were sure that next year we would be in Eretz Israel, but this did not happen for thousands of years, until we came on aliyah.”10 Passover was also the festival of Spring, and on its eighth day they would go out to celebrate the Sehrane in the blooming fields around Zakho.11 This festival provided them with the opportunity to praise Jerusalem in songs. According to Nehemiah Hocha, “When I was a member of the Zionist movement I composed a few songs in Kurdish. We would sit, like in the Sehrane today. We would form circles around the table and sit and drink arak, wine, and appetizers, and all kinds of such things, and we would sing about Jerusalem: ‘Arise and let us go to Jerusalem.’” In his testimony Hocha combined religious yearning for Jerusalem with modern Zionism, claiming that he was among the few in Zakho who were closely allied with the Zionist movement through its branch in Mosul.12 A few interviewees told me that they had no knowledge of the name Eretz Israel, but only of Jerusalem.13 Shabetai Piro, who came on aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1925, said, “We knew nothing about Eretz Israel, we knew only Jerusalem. [But] what is Jerusalem? That we did not know.”14 Gurji Zaqen, who immigrated to Israel in the 1950s, expressed himself in the same vein of religious affinity to Jerusalem: “The first thing that existed and we knew about [was] Jerusalem. This was something sacred to us. Every Passover we read the Haggadah and said, ‘Next year in Jerusalem’—this year [we are] here, next year in Jerusalem. Not in Eretz Israel, in Jerusalem! We did not know what Eretz Israel was.”15 Yearning for Jerusalem sometimes took on an extreme, unique form. An example is the story told by Salih Hocha about one Ralib, an emissary sent from Jerusalem to collect funds for religious purposes: One man, who today is in an old-age home in Jerusalem and whose name is Ralib, came to us from Eretz Israel. Before that, he had grown up in Zakho. We knew that in his youth he had been a thief, 53

01 Chapters.indd 53

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Purim costumes; the word “Jerusalem” is on the boy’s cap. Courtesy of Oded Kirmah.

01 Chapters.indd 54

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

a criminal, and so forth. He was raised without a mother and without anyone. After a few years—this was in the thirties—he came to us in Zakho bearing a few pamphlets and letters from Hasidic rabbis; he had become an emissary from Eretz Israel. The women, because they were naive and infatuated with Jerusalem, and also the men, went to kiss his hand. All this despite the fact that their mothers well knew what a criminal he was. [I told] this to you as an example.16

There was also a contrary sense that maintained “Zakho is Jerusalem.” Because of difficult economic conditions in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s, visitors from Eretz Israel who had formerly lived in Zakho said that Zakho was Jerusalem. Such claims shocked those who heard them; fortunately these claims were not often repeated and had no influence on the community as a whole.17 The majority of Zakho’s Jews took up residence in Jerusalem before the establishment of Israel, and the immigrants of the 1950s also concentrated in Jerusalem or in a village on the Qastel hill, near Jerusalem.18 The shadarim, the religious emissaries of yeshivot in the four holy cities of Eretz Israel (Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias), contributed much to enhancement of the religious affinity of Zakho’s Jews with Eretz Israel and Jerusalem. Emissaries had reached Kurdistan in earlier periods, and it was thanks to them that ties between Eretz Israel and Jewish communities in Iraq and Kurdistan had never been severed. The Jews of Zakho received the emissaries with much honor: special collection boxes were placed in the synagogues and generous donations were made, while the emissaries, for their part, strengthened the community’s love for Eretz Israel and Jerusalem. True, the shadarim signified religious attachment to the Holy Land, but there were some among them whose efforts unconsciously paved the way to Zionism, encouraging a few families to go on aliyah.19 It was a shadar that taught the local Jews “Hatikvah” (the anthem of the Zionist movement that since 1948 has served as Israel’s national anthem).20 Conversely, there was also the case of Avraham Yair, a rabbinical emissary from Safed, who was strongly antiZionist. Travelers coming from Jerusalem, even if they were not rabbinical emissaries, were received with great honor. One of them was Walter Fischel, who came to Zakho from Jerusalem in 1930 and in 1936.21 There were also people who passed themselves off as visitors from Jerusalem to gain the trust of the locals. One of these was Israel Joseph Benjamin, who claimed he was a Jerusalem rabbi.22 From the foregoing descriptions, it may be concluded that the narra55

01 Chapters.indd 55

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

tives related to the affinity of Zakho’s Jews for Eretz Israel and Jerusalem were grounded in religious ideals, and what stands out in them is a central motif—the combining of areas in Eretz Israel with those in Kurdistan. That motif is also manifested in historical and real figures associated with those places. The stories dealing with some of these figures are founded on religious attachment to the Holy Land, others include Zionist aspects, while still others—consciously or not—combine the two. In this chapter we shall deal with two historical figures, and in the next with the rabbinical emissaries who contributed so much to the religious attachment of Zakho’s Jews to Eretz Israel.

The Prophet Nahum the Elkoshite “We Have a Prophet, and His Name is Nahum the Elkoshite” The forging of the religious attachment of Zakho’s Jews to the Holy Land will be discussed by studying their attitudes toward the biblical prophet Nahum the Elkoshite, this on the assumption that they conceived him as representing their affinity with Eretz Israel. Nahum was one of a number of outstanding figures in Kurdistan, the attitudes to whom influenced the shaping of the religious attachment of the community to the Holy Land. Nahum was, in effect, a substitute for the inaccessible Eretz Israel, and when it was finally attained the prophet was abandoned. Once a year, during the festival of Shavuot, the Jews of Zakho would pilgrimage to the tomb of Nahum in the Christian village of Alqōsh, near Mosul. His grave was also frequented by some Iraqi Jews. Pilgrimage to holy sites is a phenomenon common to many religions, an expression par excellence of popular religion that fills the expectations of simple believers who wish to draw near to God. Pilgrimage is grounded in belief in the unique character of sites marked by sanctity, such as the tombs of holy men or lofty places that are nearer to Heaven.23 Pilgrimage was already widespread in pagan civilizations;24 with the rise of the great religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism—the practice attracted multitudes of believers. Jewish pilgrimage originating in various communities throughout the Jewish world was similar to universal pilgrimage in at least one of its characteristics: it was a journey to a sacred site.25 However, in contrast to other religions in which the religious aspect stood out above all others, Jewish pilgrimage clearly combined religious and nationalistic qualities.26 The basis for Jewish pilgrimage is a mitzvat aseh (positive commandment) 56

01 Chapters.indd 56

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

that obligated every Jew to come to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year.27 Jews pilgrimaged even after the destruction of the Temple; for example, during the Geonic period, some nine hundred years after the destruction, and even later, to commemorate pilgrimage to the Temple when it was still standing.28 Jewish pilgrimage in Eretz Israel and other countries to the tombs of saints on special occasions such as Lag Ba-Omer29 or anniversaries of the holy men’s death was throughout the ages a religious-nationalist ritual that aroused dispute. One issue of contention was whether prostration before the tombs served as an intermediary. In other words, was it not a deviation from direct prayer to God? Moreover, was prostration a commandment or no more than a custom? It was the kabbalistic sages in Eretz Israel, and in a later period Hasidic Jews, who most enthusiastically supported this act.30 Despite that all pilgrimages had much in common, pilgrimage to the tomb of the prophet Nahum in Kurdistan was unique unto itself. Though it drew upon the traditional Jewish veneration of saints, it was also shaped by the nature of pilgrimage to the Temple that bore a religious-national character par excellence and intensified the attachment of Diaspora Jewry to Eretz Israel. The difference was that with the Jews of Kurdistan the religiousnational aspect did not turn toward Eretz Israel but rather inward, to Kurdistan; not to a sacred figure but to the grave of the prophet and to nearby “Mount Sinai.” They came to the latter not expecting to have the Tablets of the Law brought down to them but to climb the mountain, Torah scrolls in hand, perhaps as a substitute for aliyah to Eretz Israel. The pilgrimage of Zakho’s Jews, like that of all Kurdish Jews, was to the Christian village of Alqōsh, where according to tradition the prophet Nahum was buried. His tomb was also sacred to Christians and Muslims.31 The earliest descriptions of Alqōsh in Jewish sources date from the twelfth century: Benjamin of Tudela in 1170 and Petahiah of Regensburg in 1185. David D’Beth Hillel, who visited the site in 1827, found thirty Jewish families there. As for Israel Joseph Benjamin, in 1848 he noted that, though the tomb was in Jewish hands, the village was populated only by Armenians who courteously received the Jewish pilgrims. Moshe Zellem was the person responsible for the tomb, but its keys were kept by a Muslim woman who lived there, kept the “eternal flame” burning, and opened the gate for visitors.32 During the last decades prior to the mass immigration to Israel in the 1950s one Jewish home in Alqōsh belonged to the beadle of the tomb and its courtyard, who was appointed by Ya‘akob Zemah of Mosul, the complex’s gabbay (a lay officer who generally manages the affairs of a synagogue).33 The tomb is located within a large courtyard that also contained a large synagogue. According to various testimonies, the synagogue could hold one 57

01 Chapters.indd 57

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The Tomb of the prophet Nahum at Alqōsh. Courtesy Barbara A. Lakeberg, general director of Concordia, a local Iraqi Kurdistan region nongovernmental organization.

01 Chapters.indd 58

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

thousand people, and its size brought to mind that of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Hanes in Tiberias. The grave of Nahum was inside this large building in a cave whose size was approximately equal to the one in which Rabbi Meir was buried. A small room within the cave is the grave of “Sitt” (Madam) Sarah, believed by some to have been Nahum’s sister and by others one of his relatives.34 The grave of Nahum the Elkoshite is one of seventeen tombs of holy men located throughout Iraq, sixteen of them figures from the biblical, Talmudic, or Geonic periods, who, according to ancient popular traditions, were buried in Iraq. According to Rabbi Haviv ‘Alwan, “Certainly he [Nahum] came from Eretz Israel. He came from there to prophesy in Nineveh. Nineveh is Mosul, and he passed away. He was buried in Alqōsh. Ezra the Scribe, too, was in Eretz Israel and died in Baghdad. . . . For instance, the prophet Jonah ben Amittai, who is buried near Mosul, also came to prophesy.”35 Ben-Ya‘acob writes, “Babylon [Iraq] took second place only to Eretz Israel in the number of its saints. Babylon too attracted foreign pilgrims who came to prostrate themselves at the graves of the saints buried there. These tombs also served as spiritual inspiration for local Jews and from further off. Hazal 36 already said, ‘Anyone buried in Babylon, it is as if he is buried in Eretz Israel.’  ”37 Indeed, there were graves in Iraq of saints other than that of Nahum the Elkoshite, but none were attributed to sainted men of similar significance. Erich Brauer, Joseph Joel Rivlin, and Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob have written about the celebration of Shavuot and the custom of pilgrimage during that festival to the tomb of Nahum the Elkoshite.38 Baghdadi Jews call Shavuot Id al-Ziyāra (the festival of the visit),39 and in the language spoken by Kurdish Jews it was Ziyāra. Shavuot apparently also had some influence on Muslim Kurds, and they called it by various names. In Amadiya it was Ja Zera (or Aida Jahzra, the festival of the golden barley), a corruption of Ziyāra. Kurds in Zakho termed the pilgrimage to the tomb of Nahum “Ida Sayyid Nahum.” On Shavuot, Iraqi Jews used to go to the tombs of the prophet Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifi, Joshua the High Priest in Baghdad, Ezra the Scribe near Basra, Daniel in Kirkuk, and the graves of the prophets Jonah and Obadiah near Mosul. However, the most sacred site, to which most came, was the tomb of the prophet Nahum in Alqōsh.40 Why did the Jews of Zakho, and Kurdish Jews in general, especially prefer to visit the tomb of Nahum on Shavuot? Nothing is known about the life of the prophet Nahum, his personality, or his surroundings.41 According to the Book of Nahum, we know that he prophesied between two dates: the capture of No-Amon in Egypt by the Assyrians (661 BCE) and the destruc59

01 Chapters.indd 59

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

tion of Nineveh by the Babylonians and the Medes (606 BCE) in a period when the Assyrian kingdom was at its peak. There are also many assumptions related to the identification of biblical Elkosh.42 Nahum differed from other prophets. He made only one prophecy: that Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, would be destroyed, signifying the downfall of the entire kingdom. Most prophets conceived their major mission as admonishing the nation for its sins so that it would repent from its wicked behavior, for, if it did not repent, punishment would follow: destruction. They preached that God would not be mollified by sacrifices and offerings but only by the moral and just conduct of His chosen people. There is no hint of such prophecy in the Book of Nahum.43 As an outcome of anguish and bitterness that had accumulated over the generations, Nahum was filled with fierce hatred for the great historic foe of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Nahum’s prophecy takes the form of a joyous song of victory about the downfall of the enemy; instead of admonishing the people, subduing their spirit and disheartening them, he chose to intensify their sense of national unity and raise their spirits. He strengthened among them the belief in God; his was a prophecy of consolation, salvation, and peace: “Behold on the hills the footsteps of a herald announcing good fortune! ‘Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, fulfill your vows. Never again shall scoundrels invade you, they have totally vanished’ ”   (Nahum 2:1). It is therefore not surprising that the Jews of Kurdistan and Zakho, descendants of those exiled by the Assyrians and who lived as a minority within a minority and at times suffered at the hands of their non-Jewish neighbors, identified with the nationalist spirit of Nahum, who prophesied the redemption of his nation and the destruction of the Gentiles. Their social need for an independent national life and the distress of living in the Diaspora led the Jews of Kurdistan, hundreds of years ago, to “transfer” Elkosh—be its true location wherever it may—to the Kurdish hill country not far from Nineveh, the Assyrian city that was destroyed as prophesied by Nahum. It was there that they “situated” his tomb, attributing to it aspects of a holy site. Zakho’s Jews, particularly its Talmudic scholars and rabbis, saw the prophet who came from Eretz Israel to prophesy the doom of Nineveh as a tangible expression of their connection with Eretz Israel, and added a few popular traditions about his sister Sarah, as well, concerning the death and burial of the two in Alqōsh. Rahamim Cohen, who, according to the testimonies of his son Salih Cohen and his pupil Yona Zidkiyahu, taught Hebrew and the Bible in a government school in Zakho,44 related the following in an associative manner: 60

01 Chapters.indd 60

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

We have a prophet, and his name is Nahum the Elkoshite. In the Bible it is written: Nahum Elkoshi, for he is buried near Mosul, in a Christian village called Elkosh [Alqōsh]. . . . People say that these [i.e., the Gentiles] have returned to their old ways [after having repented as a result of Jonah’s prophecy about the destruction of Nineveh], for they are Gentiles. Then came Nahum Elkoshi. [God] sent him there. He leaves Jerusalem, was in Elkosh [Alqōsh], came to Mosul, to Nineveh, prophesied about it, and it was destroyed once again. . . . There are those who say that these Christians killed him. There are those who say that he died and was buried there. So what is found there? There is a building, there is his sarcophagus, like that of King David. We used to go there every year, en masse, [those who resided in] the entire vicinity.45

Even if they believed that there was a connection between the prophet Nahum and Eretz Israel, the Jews of Zakho, who were practical persons, saw him as an abstract being that belonged to the distant past. On the other hand, they did believe that his prophecy about the total defeat of the enemy and his vision of consolation for the People of Israel would be realized in due time. Until that day came, they would be content with visiting his grave as a surrogate for Eretz Israel and as religious and national support for their life in Kurdistan. The religious-national substitute took the form of pilgrimage to the tomb by the Jews of Zakho, together with those of other communities in Kurdistan and Iraq. “It can be said that 70 percent of the Jews of Kurdistan came there,” related Gurji Zaqen. “People would also come from other cities. Jews who were not Kurdish came there, too, but it was specifically a tradition of Kurdish Jews to go there.”46 The annual gathering at the tomb strengthened the national and religious consciousness of all the pilgrims, who considered this grave a “small sanctuary”—a substitute for the Temple in Jerusalem. They fulfilled all three commandments that were to be observed by those who went up to the Temple in ancient times: appearance before the Lord and the offerings made on those occasions (“All your males shall appear before the Lord your God. . . . They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed” [according to Deut. 16:16; Exod. 23:14–17]), celebration (“You shall hold a festival for the Lord” [Deut. 16:15]), and rejoicing (“You shall rejoice in your festival” [Deut. 16:14]). After visiting the tomb, they would continue by ascending “Mount Sinai” as a ritual substitute for the tradition that the Law was received on Shavuot. Mordechai Sa‘do told us about this experience: “Every year on Shavuot we would go to Alqōsh. We would go there from Zakho, and be there three or 61

01 Chapters.indd 61

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

four days before the ziyāra, the pilgrimage on Shavuot . . . and be there on Shavuot. We used to [climb] ‘Mount Sinai.’ There is a mountain there that is called ‘Mount Sinai.’ [And then] from there we would bear the Scroll of the Law with songs, dancing, and joy. We would pray there on Shavuot.”47 In pilgrimage as practiced throughout the world, especially by the three monotheistic religions, it is customary to hold ceremonies at the site of an event in order to reenact episodes of the past dramatically. In contrast, the ceremonies at Nahum’s tomb were conducted at an imaginary site without historical foundation, so the participants had to display a higher level of abstraction and power of imagination. The journey transferred them from the secular to the holy in both place and time, and was an event in which the religious identity of the participants was defined anew.48 The ceremony reenacting the receipt of the Law by Moses and the People of Israel was conducted on Shavuot atop “Mount Sinai,” a hill near the tomb of Nahum. Israel Joseph Benjamin, who was present at this ceremony in 1848, wrote, At break of day morning prayer is recited; after which the men, bearing the Pentateuch before them, go, armed with guns, pistols and daggers, to a mountain in the vicinity, when, in remembrance of the Law, which on this day was announced to them from Mount Sinai, they read in the Thora and recite the Mousaph prayer. With the same warlike procession they descend the mountain. The whole community breaks up at the foot, and in Arabic fantasy, a war performance begins. . . . This war performance is said to be a representation of the great combat, which, according to the belief in those parts, the Jews, at the coming of the Messiah, will have to maintain against those nations, who oppose their entrance into the promised land, and their forming themselves into a free and independent kingdom.49

The “war performance” against the Gentiles while bearing arms—especially swords—was grounded in real conditions: such arms, and particularly swords, were nationalist symbols of the Kurdish opposition to the central government. That is why Jews, too, adopted arms as a symbol of national redemption and incorporated them into the ritual conducted on “Mount Sinai.”50 Playing with swords near that mount iterated a fantasy and an ideal, a substitute for life as a nation that temporarily distanced the thoughts of Kurdish Jews from their subordinate status. The ceremonial “receiving of the Law” during Shavuot on “Mount Sinai” symbolized the beginnings of the national and religious consciousness of the 62

01 Chapters.indd 62

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

Ceremony symbolizing receipt of the Law on “Mount Sinai” near the tomb of the prophet Nahum during the Shavuot festival, 1949. Ezra Laniado, The Jews of Mosul: From Samarian Exile to “Operation Ezra and Nehemiah” (Tirat Hacarmel: Institute for the Study of Mosul Jewry, 1981), 276.

People of Israel. In the shape it took in Kurdistan, the ceremony underwent changes in time, place, and objectives. Unlike the biblical narrative, in Kurdistan the Law was received by each individual who ascended the mount and not just by Moses. For Kurdish Jews, like Egyptian Jews before them, such a ceremony intensified their national identity. The annual pilgrimage provided Jews with some sense of superiority, because Muslims and Christians, too, believed in the sanctity of the prophet Nahum.51 Some of the written sources have described Jewish superiority as taking the form of swordplay and victory over imaginary foes at “Mount Sinai.” In the narratives of former Zakho Jews, relations with the Kurdish neighbors in the town took a practical turn. Rahamim Cohen: “We had an escort of policemen [when we went up to the grave of Nahum]. There were two mounted policemen with us, one at the head of the convoy and the other at the end, keeping watch over us for there might be marauders and robbers.” Zaki Levi told us, “To the credit of the Muslims, [it can be said] that when the community left the city there were no robberies and no housebreakings, absolutely none! For we celebrate the Sehrane [and the ziyāra in Alqōsh] not for one day! There were those who stayed a week or three nights.”52 Even after many years, former Zakho Jews were aware that having the 63

01 Chapters.indd 63

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

security of the pilgrims in Kurdish hands was a singular situation because the nature of relations with their neighbors was contingent upon the rich and influential Kurdish families who firmly controlled Zakho. Even if Jews and Kurds were formally equal before the law, there was a real social gap between them. On the roads leading to and from Zakho, Jews were completely defenseless, and there were many cases of robbery and murder of Jewish peddlers who made the rounds of the villages.53 A somewhat poetic illustration of the extraordinary protection of Zakho’s Jews during the pilgrimage season may be found in an historical, etiologic legend related by Salim Gabbay, the son of the head of the community. In his narrative, he described the “historical background” that led to the police escorting the pilgrims and keeping watch over their homes in the city: At the time when the Jews [of Zakho] used to go to the prophet [Nahum] the Elkoshite about 900 or 1,000 years ago, seventy souls went to the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite. Apparently, in those days there were many poor people, not like in the recent period in which there were also rich persons. So they went there. There was a certain policeman whose name was Zubashi. He said to them, “Every one must give such and such pennies.” They said, “We don’t have any; we are poor people who have come to pray at the grave of the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite.” There was among them there one mentally deranged Jew who was ill and rich. After being cured he was told that he must visit the tombs of the prophets, wherever they may be. So he went to Kirkuk, where are buried Mishael, Hananiah, and Azariah. He went to the grave of Jonah ben Amittai, and then he came to the grave of the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite. When he arrived there, he found the Jews who had come on pilgrimage and this policeman, Zubashi. The Jews were inside the building of Nahum the Elkoshite and the policeman had locked them in, without any possibility of getting out. He said to them, “You will be here, in prison, until you pay the money.” They prayed there and then the door opened and they went outside. Zubashi came and beat them. He said, “Why? How did you open [the door]?” They said to him, “We did not open. We prayed and the door opened.” He said, “Get them back inside.” Once again they prayed, and the door opened. And this man, who was mentally deranged, was present. The governor of Amadiya learned of the event. This was the governor who controlled all these areas. When he heard the story, he issued an order to hang this policeman, Zubashi, and he also issued an 64

01 Chapters.indd 64

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

order throughout all these areas that every Jew who went to the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite would be served by policemen and they would accompany him and that no harm would befall any Jew! Therefore, when we used to go to the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite guards accompanied us to keep watch over us, and in the city of Zakho policemen would stand watch over the Jewish quarters and homes. We used to travel on donkeys, she-asses, and horses. [It was] three days until we reached Alqōsh and not once was there any bad event, nor did anything bad happen to our homes in Zakho.54

More than it preserves an ancient historical past, the narrational organization of this historical legend reflects the community’s sociocultural Weltanschauung.55 This legend belongs to the subgenre of legends about the conflict between Jews and Gentiles.56 It reflects an historical fact—the ages-long exposure of the Jewish minority to hatred and vicious attack. The prototype of this subgenre is the Book of Esther, in which a Jewish community threatened with destruction in a foreign land is saved.57 Such lessons iterated the concealed aspiration of Jews in the Diaspora for salvation and a miraculous event for the nation when real conditions were the exact opposite, or when they were only temporarily saved from persecution. This explains the great importance of the prophet Nahum. According to the legend, he was to abate or cause them to forget their state of national subordination in the Diaspora and even substitute a relationship in which the tables were turned. The Kurds are in the service of the Jews, looking after their welfare and safeguarding their lives and property. This substitute national aspect, in the image of the prophet Nahum, was also symbolically embodied in the collection box that bore his name. It was placed in the synagogue, alongside other charity boxes whose monies were destined for Eretz Israel. But, unlike the others, the funds collected in this box were sent to the gabbay in Mosul, who was responsible for the ceremonies conducted at Alqōsh.58

“Were It Not for This Prophet Nahum . . . My Situation Would Really Have Been Bad” For Zakho’s Jews, the annual pilgrimage to the grave of Nahum the Elkoshite was the apex of a deep religious experience. It strengthened them in body and spirit, temporarily removed them from the routine of life in the city, 65

01 Chapters.indd 65

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

reinforced their spirit, and gave them strength to face the hardships of daily life. The visit to the tomb also presented them with an opportunity for social contact with members of other communities throughout Iraq and Zakho.59 Dozens of legends and personal memory narratives related by former Zakho Jews point to the immense impact of pilgrimage to Alqōsh on those participating in it. The large number of interviewees who mentioned this indicates that the Shavuot pilgrimage, including the hope of being partner to a miracle, played an important role in their lives. People visited the grave of Nahum seeking a remedy for illness, barrenness, or physical impediments that had made them invalids. Many children were named after the prophet. Some interviewees also told of miracles that pilgrims experienced on the journey to the site. Stories centering round the prophet Nahum may be considered as belonging to the genre of sacred narratives at whose foundation lies the sacred legend type that concentrates on miracles performed in connection with a saint or during ceremonies in his or her honor. The sacred legend, a subgenre of the legend genre, is a narrative associated with a specific historical period and a clearly defined geographic location, an event that the listeners or readers believe really happened. The sense of reality and truth that accompany the sacred legend is enhanced by the fact that it is related in the first-person singular, the personal experience of the narrator lending it greater authority and credulity.60 A fundamental concept that is part of rituals of veneration of saints is also basic to religious narratives: belief in the power of the saint who knows the path to God and acts as an intermediary between the believers and their Creator, who will come to their aid by curing illness, alleviating barrenness, and so forth.61 There are magical elements in these stories, related to articles placed on the grave of the holy man, oaths made at the site, or supplications that all those demeaning the honor of the believers be punished. The stories also describe the ziyāra and all its components: preparation for the pilgrimage, the difficult journey, the exaltation that fills the soul, and the equality and fraternity sensed by individuals and members of the community during the ceremonies at the holy site.62 To these elements, the narratives related by Zakho Jews added geographic descriptions of the route to Alqōsh, as well as some elements from their own biographies, history, and culture. All these expressed the consciousness of individuals and the community, and the deep significance of pilgrimage to the tomb in Alqōsh, which also reflected their affinity to Eretz Israel. The stories I heard from my interviewees can be divided into two groups on the basis of their content: stories about miracles performed by the prophet 66

01 Chapters.indd 66

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

Nahum, the primary holy person of Kurdish Jewry, and those that place an emphasis on his association with Eretz Israel. From the perspective of literary form, the stories can once again be classified into two groups: “core” stories, a sort of sacred legend or memorate (a classical memory narrative), both related in the first person and emphasizing the holiness of the saint and his miracles, and personal memory narratives, which are lengthier and contain autobiographical elements and details of landscape and time.63 Haviv ‘Alwan told us a sort of core sacred legend that treats of Nahum’s healing powers, one that was repeated in several later versions: I heard about the prophet Nahum from my father—that he performed miracles and wonders. He is buried in Alqōsh. Whoever was ill would be brought to the prophet Nahum in Alqōsh to be healed. He would go there, to his grave, and be healed. They used to take the sick person and lay him down next to the grave. If he saw him [i.e., Nahum] in a dream, he would be healed. If he did not see him in a dream, he would die. One person to whom this happened [i.e., saw Nahum in a dream] told me this, and he is alive. It happened to himself.64

This concise tale, lacking any real plot, contains motifs found in many sacred legends: belief in the healing power of the saint; bringing the sick person and laying him down near the grave; and the dream in which the saint reveals himself to the ill person and cures him. To convince his hearer of the story’s credibility, Haviv ‘Alwan even added to his story a man to whom this happened.65 Sa‘do Mordechai related a personal experience in the first-person singular, adding a geographic dimension to enhance its “truth”: “I remember that my father-in-law was ill, and we took him there, to Alqōsh, to the grave of the prophet Nahum. He slept there all night until the morning. [The prophet] appeared in his dream and said to him, ‘Go. You will be cured.’ We got up in the morning and took him to Mosul. A doctor came, examined him, and said, ‘He has nothing. In four or five days he will be well.’ And that is how it was. I was with him, I took him.”66 Alqōsh was not far from Mosul, where the “real” physician unwittingly confirmed the power of the prophet Nahum to cure the ill. Rahamim Cohen related a much broader memory narrative containing a similar element of healing. He wove his tale into a description of how people passed hot summer nights: 67

01 Chapters.indd 67

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

I was a youngster, fifteen years of age, during World War I. My mother and father took care of me. In the summer we used to sleep on the roof. During the day it was possible to enter the house, but at night it was very hot, [with] fleas, and it was impossible to live indoors. For three or four months—Sivan, Tammuz, Av, and Elul— we lived on the roofs.67 Our roofs were like an open field. We would sleep there. There were wooden benches around which we used to tie a sort of mosquito netting. So I was on the roof. I could not be left alone. I was on a special bench, but I used to toss and turn because of the heat and out of a mania. My illness was like that of an insane person. So then they pledged me by oath to the prophet Nahum. That evening I fell asleep. For several nights I had not fallen asleep all through the night. At night they would bring me up [to the roof ]. There was an uncle of mine there, and he would carry me up on his back, using a ladder. There were no steps; in the morning he would take me down. That evening I fell asleep. Suddenly I dreamt of the prophet Nahum, a real dream. [In the dream] I hear people saying that in our neighborhood a special convoy with a few families was being organized for a journey. To where? To the prophet Nahum. I was among them, one of them. We traveled there, all this in my dream. We arrived in Alqōsh. They brought me into his room. There is a custom according to which a sick person is brought to him at night in the courtyard and they say to him [the sick person], “Lie here.” They covered me with some sort of blanket, covered my face [and said], “Don’t look, fall asleep!” I said, “OK,” but I was curious. I saw a candle lit on his grave. I see someone coming out of the sarcophagus, he opens it and stands. I see his head, his cheek, his face, all of his features. He has white hair, he has a face like one freckled person, his freckles being very similar [to that person], wears a long galabiyya [Bedouin robe], and has some sort of belt. He takes some bottle, of something, and pours it on us. After this he disappeared, saying, “You are well.” He did something to me and then disappeared into his sarcophagus. I said to myself, “This is a dream.” I see myself sweating, feel some calming down, I really feel good, and I know how I used to be angry, shouting, and hot. Suddenly I am sweating and enjoying this sweat. I wake up my grandfather: “Grandfather! Grandmother!” I said, “I feel good.” “Amen, Amen,” they said. And after that I really was calm at night until the morning. They also fell asleep; they 68

01 Chapters.indd 68

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

were tired because of me. In the morning I awoke, there were beads of sweat upon me. I tried to walk, but had no strength and fell. I wanted to climb down [from the roof ] by myself, but my uncle came, came in time, and took me down. That day and until the evening of the next day, I came through it [i.e., was cured of my illness]. If this prophet Nahum was not real, my situation would have really been bad.68

Rahamim Cohen’s tale combines autobiographical details with social and cultural historical aspects of the Zakho Jewish community. Despite its factual nature, the tale leans heavily on the sacred legend genre that dwells on the supernatural powers of the saint. However, Cohen’s tale has added value because it is one of the few told by Zakho Jews that has a child and his welfare at its core, in contrast to the accepted family hierarchy, which gives the last word to the grown-ups. Here the story focuses on Rahamim the child, who, due to his illness, received the full attention of his family. The young boy, who had heard much from older members of the family about the healing power of the prophet, internalized their stories, dreamt about participating in the pilgrimage to his grave and the rituals practices there—and was cured. The internalization was so strong that he was able, in his own dream, to recreate the dreams of his elders. By this he intensified his self-identification and social belonging to the community. He also continued the ages-long chain of belief in the sanctity of the prophet Nahum. According to his testimony, in real life Rahamim visited the tomb of Nahum only when he was a mature man, after the difficult years of World War I, when he was already a father and his wife was carrying their second child. Obviously, he had gone through a moving experience there, about which he testified many years later: “I don’t know if everyone saw him in a dream, but I dreamt about him [when I was] perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, seventy years ago. I remember the dream to this very day. I related it to many people. These people, too, said, ‘We also saw him in a dream.’ And I told the story to a friend of mine and [others] also told me, ‘We saw this man . . . exactly what you saw in this description, we also saw.’” 69 Another social role played by Nahum, as reflected in stories from Zakho, was redeeming women from a state of barrenness.70 Rabbi Shmuel Baruch told us the following legend: I have a tale about the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite. The beadle in Alqōsh was a Jew. Together with his wife, they were the only Jews in 69

01 Chapters.indd 69

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

Alqōsh, where all [others] were Christians. This was a family from Nineveh—Mosul. He lived there night and day, and would bring [kosher] slaughtered meat from Mosul for himself. He was there permanently. He used to light candles [near the tomb of ] Nahum the Elkoshite. Sometimes he used to see him in his dreams, dressed in green clothing, like the apparel of the prophet Elijah. It is told that barren women, who did not have sons, when they came there used to lie for one night on his grave inside [the building]. They related, “We saw him when he came, holding something in his hand.” He said to them, “Take this.” In their dream they saw, as if they were awake, a tall man with pleasing looks. One of them said, “He said to me, ‘Come take the child; let him suckle milk from you.’  ” That is what she said. That very year the Lord gave her a son. I heard this from one woman who told me [this story].71

Turning to a saint to redeem women from a state of barrenness and give them a child is quite frequent in sacred legends throughout the world. It takes on many aspects, such as a woman’s plea to a holy person to grant her what she has been denied by nature, or a desperate attempt to retain her status in the family. In this supernatural sacred legend there is an asexual association of women with the prophet, who appears in the dreams of barren wives, bringing them the glad tidings that they will bear a son. In the story related by Shmuel Baruch, Nahum dons the clothing of the prophet Elijah, thus symbolically appropriating the abstract asexualism of the figure of Elijah and also the role he filled in many folktales as defender of the weak, particularly of women. In the context of Kurdistan, where young girls were married off at the age of thirteen to fifteen—sometimes against their will—and lived their entire lives in a clearly patriarchal regime, dominated by father and husband, it comes as no surprise that stories such as this were quite common. The annual pilgrimage to the tomb of the prophet Nahum provided the women of Zakho with an opportunity to break away, even if briefly, from their regular lifestyle, in which they were of inferior status. On these occasions they met women and men from their own and other communities, and during this short time experienced at least some sense of equality. A husband could not refuse his wife’s request to accompany him, especially if she had taken an oath to do so, even if she was pregnant. And, indeed, children were born during the pilgrimage.72 The sacred legend related by Shmuel Baruch also contains a real historical figure: the beadle at the grave, who was the only Jew in a Christian village

70

01 Chapters.indd 70

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

and had to bring kosher meat from Mosul, the nearest city with a Jewish community.73 The beadle also appears in other stories told by former Zakho Jews as an intermediary between them and the prophet Nahum.74 Nahum’s connection with women was also marked by his name being given to babies born to formerly barren women after they had visited his grave. One example is a legend related by Nehemiah Hocha, a cantor who also engaged in interpreting amulets and practicing folk medicine: There is a story about a woman who did not have any children, a barren woman. She came to Alqōsh and at night slept near the tomb of the prophet Nahum and said, “I shall not move from here until you come to me in a dream and tell me that I shall have a son, and I will call him Nahum!” And truly, he did come to her in a dream and said to her, “Go home. This year you shall become pregnant and bear a son and call him by my name.” And thus it happened. She gave birth to a son and called him by the name of the prophet Nahum.75

Naming a newborn after a holy man after praying to him and beseeching him is a common motif in sacred legends. That possibly explains why many former Zakho Jews are named Nahum and Jonah. Zaki Levi told us that Nahum the Elkoshite was preferred to the prophet Jonah, buried in Mosul: “Not many went to the tomb of Jonah to release themselves from an oath or because of health problems. But with the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite this was a well-known thing! This belief was very deep.”76 It may be that Nahum was preferred because he had prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, which had happened, whereas the similar prophecy of Jonah did not materialize because Nineveh’s residents repented. Notwithstanding, as Yona Zidkiyahu testified, several of Zakho’s Jews did also frequent the grave of Jonah in Mosul: “My father took me and my mother to Mosul—to Nineveh, to the grave of the prophet Jonah. Before that, I had high fever and was ill. My father brought me next to the cave and I was cured.”77 From the many stories I recorded about the religious and national affinity between the Zakho Jewish community and the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite, there also emerges a motif about associations with the real Eretz Israel. In contrast to other interviewees who described one central emotional experience in their lifetime associated with pilgrimage to the tomb of Nahum, in his memory narrative Rabbi Shmuel Baruch touched upon several periods in his long life: 71

01 Chapters.indd 71

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

I was at the grave of the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite three times. We would get organized with mules of Arabs. Every family used mules. My wife and I used two mules. We would journey all that night and another full day. There were no buses, only mules. The route was very difficult. There were places in which there was a road nearby. There were [also] paths strewn with rocks. At Alqoshi [i.e., at the tomb of the prophet] they used to sing, dance, . . . ziyāra. The last year before we came on aliyah in 1925 we slaughtered an animal there. We would slaughter and distribute meat to all present. An Arab would weigh [a portion] of meat for every person, and to give families some of our slaughtered meat. . . . During the ziyāra at Alqoshi they would sing, dance, and kiss his tomb. Everyone would beseech, would ask that the Lord Blessed Be He fill their request.78

One of the descriptions in Shmuel Baruch’s testimony was a recollection from his youth, in the context of a period in life in which the children of Zakho matured early and were already young adults at an early age. Some of the boys studied in the heder while others began working; as for the girls, they did part of the household chores, helped raise their younger brothers and sisters, or were married off young.79 Just as the journey and visit to Alqōsh provided women with an opportunity to deviate briefly from the accepted social framework, so did children, obliged by the social hierarchy to absolute obedience to their elders and mature behavior, take advantage of similar circumstances. During their brief sojourn at Alqōsh, they would engage in childish amusements. Shmuel Baruch: I remember that when I was a child of six or seven I went with my parents to Alqoshi and took a pillow with me. At Alqoshi we used to tie a rope to a tree and make a swing. After I finished with the swing, Christian children came and stole the pillow from me. I returned to my mother. She said, “Where is the pillow?” “It was stolen from me,” I said. That was the first time I came to Alqoshi. I was a little child who liked to play. The second time I was Bar Mitzvah [i.e., aged thirteen], but as yet did not don tefillin.80 I came with my parents. The third time I came there when I married my wife. The wedding ceremony was on the eve of Passover, and two days before that we went to Alqoshi. . . . That third time I was a shohet [ritual slaughterer; pl. shohatim] and I slaughtered [an animal] there. I said to my wife, “We shall go there to see Alqoshi and the prophet Na72

01 Chapters.indd 72

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

hum. Since I long for Eretz Israel, before we go on aliyah we shall go there for the last time.81

Shmuel Baruch’s tale reflects the important crossroads in his life and that of his family: childhood, passage to maturity, marriage, and his profession as a shohet. The story also informs listeners of the realization of his desire to immigrate to Eretz Israel. During the early stages of Shmuel’s life, turning to the prophet Nahum may have been a slight substitute for his desire to go on aliyah to Eretz Israel, and once he decided to do so, in 1925, he felt the need to visit the holy grave one last time and take his leave of it. This motif—taking leave of the prophet Nahum prior to moving to Eretz Israel—is also included in a personal and detailed memory narrative of Gurji Zaqen, who came to Israel in the 1950s: The journey there [to the grave of the prophet] was most difficult. I was there during the last year before I made aliyah to Israel. I was there in 1950 and we emigrated in 1951. In 1950 there was a record number of visitors to the prophet Nahum. . . . Most of the Jews of Kurdistan, it can be said that 70 percent of the Jews of Kurdistan came there. People would come there from other cities, as well. Jews who were not Kurdish came there, too, but it was specifically a tradition of Kurdish Jews to go there. Like today [going up to the tomb of ] Rabbi Shimon [bar Yohai, at Meiron, near Safed]; this is a Moroccan [Jewish custom], but members of other communities come, as well. We Kurds also go [there]. Then this [visiting the tomb of Nahum] was intended for Kurdish Jews, but Baghdadis, persons from Mosul, all kinds of other Jews would also come there. That last year was a record [year] in visits [to the tomb], in travel, in traffic jams, in everything, and the way proved very difficult. The roads leading to the village were unpaved. They were without asphalt, with nothing [on them]. You go down into the wadi thus [Gurji demonstrates with his hand] and then you have to ascend a sort of twisting road. . . . There were cases in which trucks would load on people—not lorries with benches or minibuses, but simply trucks with canvas coverings. You hold on in this manner, and fifty or sixty people are standing that way. They are all thrown from side to side; [the truck] turns and all are thrown in that direction. And every minute [you hear], “O prophet Nahum! O prophet Nahum! O prophet Nahum!” We arrive safely. All the time people are praying to the prophet Nahum until they reach there.82 73

01 Chapters.indd 73

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

The description of the hardships endured on the last visit to the tomb of Nahum prior to aliyah to Israel reflects a concerted effort on the part of individuals and of the whole community. It may also express sorrow at taking leave of the most important religious-national mainstay of Kurdistan Jewry. “That, apparently, was the objective. People came to take leave of him before going on aliyah to Eretz Israel. That was the intention of the Jews, for [there was to be] mass aliyah. They stayed there many days. Instead of a day or a day and a half, they stayed three or four days, slaughtered sheep, danced, and took with them Torah scrolls to the synagogue and danced holding them.”83 Shmuel Baruch was the only one among my interviewees who drew a direct tie between Nahum the Elkoshite and Eretz Israel, even connecting him to Israel’s War of Independence: When here [in Israel] during the War of Independence, I heard that it [the mass aliyah from Zakho] arrived in the years 1950–52. When they went there [to the grave of Nahum] I was here in the country. They related that the beadle there said, “I did not see him [Nahum] in a dream and the candle there was extinguished. After a few days I saw him [in a dream]. I said to him, ‘Where have you been for so long a time?’ He answered, ‘Don’t you know there is a war in Israel between Jews and Arabs? I went to help the Jews there in Eretz Israel.’”84

Baruch claimed to have been told this legend by emigrants from Zakho during the 1950s, and his reliance on them was meant to lend it credibility. Rabbi Baruch interwove into his story accepted motifs of sacred legends, such as the beadle who acts as an intermediary between the believers and the holy man, the prophet who appears in a dream, and the candle that is extinguished when the prophet does not appear in the dream. However, he added one very singular motif: a link between the prophet, who remained in Kurdistan, and the Jews fighting for survival in Eretz Israel. Thus did the saint fulfill his traditional role of defending those who believed in him, and even adapted himself to the historical change that occurred with the move to Eretz Israel. Perhaps this was an attempt to connect the prophet to Eretz Israel. When they moved to Israel, the Jews of Kurdistan took leave of the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite; they did not bring him with them, nor did they create and foster a new graveside ritual for him in their new country. Why did the Jews of Zakho and Kurdistan not bring to Israel rituals associated with Na74

01 Chapters.indd 74

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

hum in the manner in which, for example, Moroccan Jews transferred rituals associated with their saints?85 This fact may lend support to my fundamental assumption that the prophet Nahum, and the visits to his tomb, served as surrogates for aliyah to Eretz Israel and as religious-national mainstays for Jewish life in Kurdistan. Thus, when a real opportunity to go on aliyah materialized there was no longer need of the substitute. In general, this may also testify to the practical character of Kurdish Jewry—a Jew who came to Israel from Kurdistan understood that he must strike roots in his new home, concentrate on the present, and look forward to the future without longing for the past. Zakho Jews testified that their absorption into Israeli society went well despite the crises that accompanied this process; it may very well be that this, too, contributed to their dissociation from the prophet Nahum. Did religious-national affinity with Eretz Israel, in the form of the prophet Nahum, provide some motivation for aliyah? One is tempted to reply in the positive, for the very preservation of a glowing ember of religious and national sentiments through the means of Nahum was some indication of an innermost hope by Zakho’s Jews for a change for the better. However, for centuries, these Jews did not immigrate to Eretz Israel and Nahum served as an important substitute for Eretz Israel and a mainstay of Jewish life in Kurdistan. Pilgrimage to his tomb helped the members of the community to break away temporarily from their routine social frameworks and to strengthen themselves spiritually and personally as a social group and as Jews.

Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes “O God of Meir, Answer Me!” Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes was another historical figure to whom Zakho Jews were closely attached and who served as one of their mainstays. Like with the prophet Nahum, they turned to him in their daily life and also saw him as being more representative of Eretz Israel since he lived and was buried in Tiberias. Charity boxes bearing his name were very popular in the community and with rabbinical emissaries, who collected large sums through them. Though Rabbi Meir figured in only a few stories told by Zakho Jews, his special importance as a spiritual inspiration for the community and as a source of its affinity with Eretz Israel was conspicuous in them. Though there are written sources referring to Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes and the tomb that bears his name in Tiberias, much information about him is uncertain. The historical figure bearing this name is rather vague; in fact, the 75

01 Chapters.indd 75

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

sources connect this appellation and the tomb to different persons. Scholars believe that the tomb was first attributed to the tanna (an authority quoted in the Mishnah) Meir (second century), a disciple of Rabbi Akiva who lived in Tiberias and used to preach there.86 There are some who added the title Ba‘al Ha-Nes (lit. “miracle worker”) to this tanna because of a legend in the Babylonian Talmud about the abduction of his wife Beruriah’s sister by the Romans, who placed her in a brothel and appointed a guard to watch over her. According to the legend, Rabbi Meir bribed the guard and convinced him to release the prisoner despite fear of the authorities by telling him that he would be saved if he called out “O God of Meir, answer me!”87 When the guard was indeed saved, this phrase became a motif that indicated the tanna’s wondrous powers. It was also inscribed above the tomb that is said to be Rabbi Meir’s in Tiberias. Other historians cast doubt on the identification of the tomb in Tiberias with Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. There was another tomb, in the Galilean village of Gush Halav, that was customarily identified as the burial place of Rabbi Meir Kazin, who apparently led a convoy of three hundred rabbis from France to Eretz Israel at the beginning of the thirteenth century and was known as Ba‘al Ha-Nes. Some assume that the tomb in Tiberias began to be called by that name when the Jewish settlement in Gush Halav dwindled or came to an end.88 How, then, did such a vague historical figure play so a prominent role in the consciousness of Diaspora Jews? The answer probably lies in the combination of popular traditions relating the somewhat cloudy figure of Rabbi Meir Kazin with that of the tanna Rabbi Meir. In the traditions, Meir is an extraordinary, diversified, and complex figure who is difficult to sketch. Perhaps that explains why he has become so deeply embedded in popular consciousness and why this gave birth to the legend about Ba‘al Ha-Nes.89 Rabbi Meir’s biography is unclear and arouses wonder: nowhere is he called by his patronym, we do not know who he was, and even his name is uncertain. He figures prominently in the tannaitic literature and is praised for being sharp-witted and wise. His colleague Yose b. Halafta—also a disciple of Rabbi Akiva—told the men of Sepphoris that he was “a great man, a holy man, a modest man” (JT Mo‘ed Katan 3:5; JT Berakhot 2:7 5b), while Simeon b. Lakish called him “holy mouth” (BT Sanhedrin 23a). Despite this praise, most sages of his generation dissociated themselves from Meir and did not follow his halakhic rulings. There are those who believe that these reservations were linked to his public image and private life.90 It is related that he was forced to flee to Babylon after rescuing his sister-in-law from captivity, but the Talmud states that he fled because of an episode involving 76

01 Chapters.indd 76

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

Tomb of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes, Tiberias, 1918. Courtesy of the Politische Archiv des Auswärtiges-Amt, Politischen Archiv, Nachlass Holzhausen 32.

his wife, Beruriah.91 Beruriah scoffed at what learned men had to say about women—that they were of unstable temperament and frivolous. Rabbi Meir told her that she would see that the rabbis were not mistaken, and commanded one of his pupils to seduce her. The pupil did so, and she condescended. When she learned that this was at her husband’s instigation, she strangled herself and Meir fled in shame. The Babylonian Talmud adds details of other tragedies in Meir’s life: his father-in-law, Hananiah b. Teradyon, was burned at the stake together with his wife because he publicly taught the Law, and his daughter was placed in a brothel. Another tragedy was the death, on a single Sabbath, of Meir’s two sons, an episode that highlighted the spiritual courage and deep religious faith of his wife, Beruriah.92 Rabbi Meir’s death raises questions and wonder, just as his life did. Shulamit Tov records the following tradition: “On his deathbed in Asia, Rabbi Meir said: Say this unto the men of Eretz Israel, here is your messiah. Even more he said to them: Place my bier on the sea shore, for it is written: ‘For He founded it upon the ocean, set it on the nether-streams’” (Ps. 24:2).93 This tradition reflects Meir’s deep love for Eretz Israel: prior to his death he ensured that he would be buried on its shores. However the word meshihakhem (lit. “your messiah”) aroused amazement—how could he call himself a messiah?—but 77

01 Chapters.indd 77

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

the traditional interpretation is that its meaning was “your great rabbi.” Even this moderate interpretation emphasizes Meir’s high opinion of himself. His burial site is unknown. One tradition places it in the city of Hilla in Babylon.94 However, in later generations this was difficult for Jews to accept and, unable to reconcile themselves to the fact that he was buried in a foreign land, they “removed” the site of his grave to Eretz Israel and identified it with the tomb of Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes in Tiberias, even if there was nothing to support this.95 What is characteristic of Rabbi Meir is the complexity of his biography, his self-image, and his deviation from what was customary. His was a tragic life, but at the same time he did great deeds in the realm of the spirit. It may be assumed that these characteristics led to his memory being preserved in popular consciousness for many centuries, for Jews living in the Diaspora were likely to identify with him. He also became a symbol for the Jewish nation: according to some traditions he was a convert to Judaism who rose to a high status in spiritual matters, thus signifying the possibility of ameliorating the subordinate status of individuals and of the Jewish nation in the Diaspora. The two geographic entities associated with his life story—Eretz Israel, in which he lived, and Babylon, to which he fled—might also have become another reason for strong emotional identification with him because they reflected the historical narrative of the nation that fluctuated between the Diaspora and Eretz Israel. Meir was loved by Diaspora Jews. It may be assumed that this was not only out of appreciation of his erudition in matters of the Law but also— perhaps particularly—because people identified with his suffering and realized that he was not perfect and at times acted contrary to accepted religious principles. Love of Rabbi Meir is also prominent in the narratives of Zakho Jews. “Rabbi Meir was a prophet who was much loved by us and from whom one always requested all kinds of things,” said Salim Gabbay.96 This love took the form of preference in all countries of the Diaspora for the charity bearing the name of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes over all others, even that of the Jerusalem community. In Ashkenazi communities, there was only one charity collection, that of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes, whose funds were then divided among the four holy cities in Eretz Israel—Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron, and Tiberias—to mitigate competition between representatives of the four.97 Jerusalem’s rabbis attempted to emulate the Ashkenazim in 1872 when they tried to unite all Sephardic fund-raising into one charity whose monies would be distributed among the four holy cities, but they failed. In countries of the Levant, the Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes charity was separate from those that collected funds for the four holy cities, and its monies 78

01 Chapters.indd 78

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

were earmarked for the Sephardic community of Tiberias alone.98 In those countries, Jewish merchants also customarily insured their merchandise only with officers of the Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes charity. In Abraham Yaari’s collection of documents about emissaries from Eretz Israel in the Diaspora, he quotes from a report of Abraham Elmaleh’s visit to Tripoli in North Africa as an emissary of the Jewish National Fund: “Whoever wants to insure his merchandise against damage, theft, fire, and sinking in the sea cannot find a safer company than the charity of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. . . . Whenever they insured their merchandise in this manner, German submarines did not torpedo their ships during World War I.”99

“Don’t Say O Muhammad! Say O Rabbi Meir!” Jews from Zakho wove into their personal narratives elements of the popular Jewish tradition about Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes but reshaped them according to their own social needs and gave them a local twist. Mazliah Kol, who was among the organizers of the first group of emigrants from Zakho in the 1950s, told us of the connection to Rabbi Meir: There were many stories. These [Nahum the Elkoshite and Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes] were prophets. For example, there was one woman whose son was ill. There were no doctors at that time. During the last period that I was [in Zakho] there was one civilian doctor and one military doctor in the entire city. So, apparently, prior to that there were no doctors, and I think that is also true today. And, in her case, her son’s fever dropped. So how did the fever go down? She beseeched Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. And that was our belief, a great belief. We were [always] somewhere, engaged in work or in the synagogue and praying, and when will that day come when God will rescue us and we should reach Eretz Israel? And this was before we heard of Ben-Gurion and Shertok, and about others and of them all, and before we knew of the State [of Israel] and about Herzog.100 That is how our forefathers behaved. What interested them was how and when, at what time and on what day, would a miracle from Heaven occur that they in some manner would reach Eretz Israel.101

In the absence of physicians, Zakho’s Jews turned to Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes, just as they did to the prophet Nahum, to cure their sick. Mazliah Kol’s narrative was an attempt to create a legend of sorts about a 79

01 Chapters.indd 79

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

miraculous cure performed by Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes for this woman and her sick son, while having recourse to a motif common in universal sacred legends about the ability of saints to provide succor for the ill. The story also reflects the popular Jewish belief in Rabbi Meir’s supernatural powers. The narrator included real elements in his story, such as the number of physicians in Zakho during the last years of his residence there, but supported his story by referring to the synagogue and prayers. In fact, he called upon everything he could to portray Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes as a symbol of religious yearning for Eretz Israel that preceded the connection to the Zionist movement, eased Jewish life in Kurdistan, and was a source of hope for miraculous aliyah to Eretz Israel before practical Zionism made its appearance. When Mazliah Kol mentioned Zionist figures such as Ben-Gurion and Shertok, who figure in later Israeli history and whose names were unknown in Zakho at the time of the events he was narrating, he was unconsciously making a point: naive belief in miraculous intervention was not enough; for aliyah to Eretz Israel it was necessary to break free of existing social frameworks and also adopt Zionist measures. In view of the centuries-long Jewish exile in the Diaspora, Meir Ba‘al HaNes also played a social-national role in the area of Jewish-Muslim relations. That is what emerges from a legend told by Salim Gabbay, the son of the last head of the Zakho community: The prophet closest to us was Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. We would turn to Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes whenever we were in trouble and needed help. I have a story connected with this. There was one family, of one Jew who converted because he had killed a certain Gentile and they wanted to kill him. They said to him, “If you convert and become a Gentile [i.e., a Muslim], we will not judge you and kill you.” And so he converted. He had a pleasant voice when reciting the selihot [penitential prayers] on Yom Kippur but lived as a Gentile and fathered children who grew up to be big boys. One day, one of his horses went astray in the fields and when his children went out to seek it they did not see it. His children shouted in the field, “O Muhammad! O Muhammad!” The man told his children, “Don’t say O Muhammad! Say O Rabbi Meir! . . . I will give half a Majidi [a silver Ottoman coin named after Sultan ‘Abd al-Majid] for Rabbi Meir, to his charity, if I find the horse.” And then they saw the horse behind the mountain. And then he came to my late father, who was the treasurer of the charities for the four holy cities, Hebron, Tiberias, Safed, and Jerusalem. He said to him [i.e., the 80

01 Chapters.indd 80

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

father], “Mister treasurer, [here are] ten Majidi for Rabbi Meir [i.e., the charity for Tiberias].” He [the father] said, “What happened?” He [the man] said, “My stupid children called out ‘O Muhammad! O Muhammad!’ in order to find the horse, and there is no [horse]. And I told them, ‘Cry out O Rabbi Meir’ and they said ‘Rabbi Meir’ and found the horse.” Rabbi Meir was a prophet who was much loved by us and from whom one always requested all kinds of things.102

In this legend, which has additional versions,103 Rabbi Meir appears against the backdrop of tense ethnic and religious relations between Muslims and Jews. Conversion to Islam, though not widespread, was generally due to fear of severe punishment or blood vengeance, and it could potentially undermine the existence as a national entity of the Jewish community that in any case was in a state of inferiority to, and dependence upon, the Muslims.104 In view of these real elements in the story, Rabbi Meir is called upon to wield supernatural power105 to help those who turn to him by crying, “God of Meir, answer me!” This story was related so as to fill a social, cultural, and national need106 and reflects the aspiration of Zakho’s Jews to preserve their identity. This is even more so in this narrative when a Jew is forced to convert to Islam but keeps the “Jewish flame” alive deep in his heart—an example of the adage “A Jew, even if he sins, remains a Jew”—and even passed this heritage on to his sons. The image of Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes, whether in its supernatural form or its practical embodiment in the charity that bore his name, helped Zakho’s Jews to bear their religious and ethnic identification proudly, serving as a substitute of sorts for the religious and national independence they were prevented from achieving at the time. Only one of the stories centered round the close connection between Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes and religious attachment to Eretz Israel and identification with modern Zionism. Hananiah Mordechai told us about his uncle, Ilya Hetteh, who helped the Zionist underground in Iraq smuggle illegal emigrants across the border from Zakho to Syria on their way to Eretz Israel: He [Ilya Hetteh] was a great and enthusiastic Zionist whose heart was especially filled with the love for Jerusalem that he imbibed [at the breast] of mother Hetteh, our grandmother. She was responsible for the charity of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. There was such a charity, and she would take . . . something like a cup to collect money 81

01 Chapters.indd 81

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

and once or twice a year would go from house to house in Zakho. People would say, “Grandmother Hetteh is coming,” and give to her. Whoever had no money would give a little wheat, a little flour, a little sugar, some wool, clothing—anything that person had he would give to grandmother Hetteh. And she would collect all these things and disburse them to orphans, widows, to a young couple about to marry who was in need of mutual help. For the needy, those in distress, there was only one address [i.e., a person to turn to]: they would come to grandmother Hetteh, and she would go to [where she kept] the charity of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes and disburse according to the needs of that person. And sometimes there were some coins in that charity. She would hide them in the mattress, the pillow, or some other place unknown to anyone. . . . There were no banks, of course. That was grandmother Hetteh . . . , and she always dreamt of Jerusalem.107

Grandmother Hetteh did not live to immigrate to Eretz Israel and was buried in Zakho, but her children and grandchildren were more fortunate and reached it. Ilya Hetteh was one of the only two people in Zakho involved in Zionist underground activity. This story also has a personal twist: Hananiah, orphaned at an early age, was raised in the home of his uncle and joined in his efforts. One motive for his story was to create for himself an honorable family lineage, one ingrained with religious affinity to Eretz Israel combined with Zionist activity. The grandmother in his story serves as the founder of the religious-Zionist dynasty, and due to her endeavors she was honored in her family in a manner that was generally not the lot of women in Zakho. This may be a social phenomenon pointing to the honor that women can earn even in a patriarchal society when their actions indicate religious devotion combined with affinity to Eretz Israel. Rabbi Meir, by means of the charity that bears his name, connects with the grandmother’s dreams of Jerusalem. What the story indicates is that as her involvement with the charitable project increased, so did her yearning for Jerusalem, which also inspired the following generations. Hananiah’s story raises two problems of historical truth: responsibility for the charitable fund and its objectives. Whereas we were told by others that Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community, was responsible for all Eretz Israel charities, in this story responsibility for the charity of Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes lay with grandmother Hetteh. This does not necessarily point to a contradiction, because there were those who maintained that responsibility for the charities did not rest with one person and that others helped Moshe Gabbay 82

01 Chapters.indd 82

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

Ilya Hetteh. Courtesy of Mordechai Yona.

collect donations.108 As for the charity’s objectives, grandmother Hetteh used the donations to help the needy in her own community, in opposition to historical sources that emphatically maintained that the funds collected by this charity in the countries of the Levant were earmarked for the Sephardic community of Tiberias alone. The use made by grandmother Hetteh of the donations brings to mind issues that were the subject of rabbinical discourse. The historical sources indicate that communal leaders themselves decided how to use such funds. The result was that leading sages and rabbis issued an interdiction related to the funds of the Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes charity: “It is absolutely forbidden to change [the objective] of these monies for any charitable purpose in the world except to dispatch them for the poor in Eretz Israel.”109 It could be that grandmother Hetteh deviated from what was customary, but this also occurred in other communities. The following personal memory narrative, in which Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes helped bring to actual fruition aspirations for aliyah to Eretz Israel, combines a true story with a supernatural element of deep belief. Esther ‘Alwan, the 83

01 Chapters.indd 83

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

wife of Rabbi Haviv ‘Alwan, intervened during my interview with her husband. Greatly moved, she wanted to tell us about how Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes wondrously came to the aid of a female relative of hers and the relative’s husband who made the journey to Eretz Israel from Qamishliye in Syria and arrived safely with their baby daughter. Several Zakho Jews had close family ties with the community in Qamishliye, which, just like their own, was under Ottoman rule until World War I.110 This is her story: A female member of my family in Syria came [to Eretz Israel] with a two-week-old baby. They wanted to come on aliyah to Eretz Israel. While she was still pregnant she could not walk. Those who [were to] guide them said, “She is pregnant. We don’t want to take her; she will have to walk at night because during the daytime there are guards everywhere.” Meanwhile she gave birth and after two weeks her husband said, “No more! I cannot restrain myself. We are going to Eretz Israel!” They walked along the paths [leading to Eretz Israel] and the [baby] girl cried. Then those who were bringing them across [the border; i.e., were illegally smuggling them into Eretz Israel from Syria because the British Mandate authorities in Palestine limited immigration] said, “We will leave the girl here. We will bury her.” She [the baby] cried all the time. She [the mother] pressed her to her breast and said, “The moment I arrive safely, I will go to the tomb of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes [in Tiberias] and will be there in his room.” She [the mother] related, “I breast-fed her and cried, and I said to him [i.e., her husband], ‘Isn’t it a shame? I wore myself out during the night and you are going to kill her?’ [And then] she said, “We arrived safely, thank God. Now that girl is married and has a child of her own.”111

This was the only narrative related about actual aliyah in which Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes appears. The story presents a basic pattern common to many aliyah stories: the interviewees describe the obstacles on the way and how they overcame them successfully. To amplify the dramatic effect of the narrative, the pattern generally includes opposites: life and death, husband and wife, immigrants and smugglers, Eretz Israel and the Diaspora, faith and confidence in successful aliyah versus doubt and a sense of failure, a woman giving birth and an infant child for whom death lurks. Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes appears in his traditional role as savior at a time of distress. However, as is customary in folk literature, his role changes according to the times and contemporary social needs.112 The mother’s confidence and 84

01 Chapters.indd 84

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel

belief in him and her vow to visit his grave with her infant daughter, which is characteristic of sacred legends,113 were enough for her to call out the name of Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes to save the little girl from death. In stories such as this last one, the image of the woman is primary, and the message they disseminate is that it is advisable to listen to her. The feminine aspect of the story is reinforced when we remember that Esther ‘Alwan interrupted my interview with her husband in order to tell it, thus displaying covert competition with him. It is quite possible, then, that while the straightforward text of the narrative is a story of aliyah and of saving a life, its hidden message points to the possibility that the true story is about feminine strength and leadership. Esther ‘Alwan’s tale was influenced by beliefs of the traditional society she came from and for which she was a mouthpiece: the strength of the woman in the story stemmed from her belief in Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. However, unlike the Talmudic aggadah—which forms the basis for this belief—in which he rescues his sister-in-law from slavery in a brothel, Esther’s story reveals the modern dimension of feminine power: the woman in the narrative took steps to rescue her daughter. Unlike accepted practice in patriarchal societies, she vigorously and successfully opposed the intentions of her husband and the other men and saved her daughter by virtue of her obstinate stand. Esther ‘Alwan’s story is indicative of a society in a state of transition from traditional to modern patterns and from one country to another, as well as of changes in family structure. Her story, too, combines traditional supernatural elements with real facts. The basis of the narrative lies in the obstacles encountered by immigrants to Eretz Israel and the perils they faced should they be discovered, the smugglers betray them, or the baby cry. This personal memory narrative, which also includes legendary components, has a happy end. Furthermore, it voices the traditional belief in the powers of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes while simultaneously disseminating the Zionist message that one must continue despite the difficulties encountered. To lend veracity to her story, Esther told me that she had heard it from relatives at the wedding of the girl who was the baby in the tale. The stories about Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes also enable us to reach some conclusions as to what they do not reveal. Just like the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite, Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes served as a mainstay for Jews in Kurdistan, enabling them to live in their own closed world and as a religious and national proxy for Eretz Israel. But even if Rabbi Meir symbolized a stronger affiliation with Eretz Israel than did Nahum, he was not the cause of a breakthrough and change in the patterns of communal life that would have been manifested in a real wave of emigration. 85

01 Chapters.indd 85

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 3

After the mass immigration of Kurdish Jewry to Israel, a new reality pushed aside the figures who were former mainstays of their life and provided hope for rescue. Once in Israel, they did not turn pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes in Tiberias into a tradition. Like Jews in other communities, their faith in Rabbi Meir gave them strength to face difficulties while in the Diaspora and enhanced their yearning for Eretz Israel, but when he no longer filled a spiritual or existential necessity, they no longer had any need of a proxy for Eretz Israel.

86

01 Chapters.indd 86

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Chapter 4

Rabbinical Emissaries A Bridge to Eretz Israel

The first breaches in the Zakho community’s closed little world and its communal organization were visits by shadarim (rabbinical emissaries) from Eretz Israel during the period of transition from Ottoman rule to the British Mandate over Iraq. The term shadar (singular of shadarim), a contraction from sheluha de-rabbanan (emissary of the rabbis), was first applied in the seventeenth century to persons sent to collect donations for a specific community or religious institution. The primary appellation of such a person sent from Eretz Israel was shaliah (emissary), and in the Levant he was also at times called hakham (sage, learned in the Law), whereas in North Africa it was customary to add shadar to the latter and call him hakham shadar or shaliah kadosh (holy emissary).1 Travelers and shadarim from Eretz Israel began visiting Kurdistan from the middle of the eighteenth century, the shadarim among them becoming the most important link between the local communities and Eretz Israel. Despite the lengthy and difficult journey, the number of such visits increased during the nineteenth century and continued into the first decades of the next one.2 Whereas the prophet Nahum and Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes were abstract figures who symbolized Kurdish Jewry’s unachieved yearning for Eretz Israel, the shadarim were flesh-and-blood persons who brought with them a touch of the Holy Land. Their presence deepened attachment to Eretz Israel and caused many of Zakho’s Jews to set out on aliyah, especially after World War I, even if this was not the intention of the emissaries. Contact with the shadarim and their important spiritual influence on the community call for examination of several issues: the classical form of this institution and its unique features in Kurdistan; the influence of World War

87

01 Chapters.indd 87

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

I upon the Zakho community in Mesopotamia; how the collective memory of Zakho’s Jews reflects the change undergone by the community during the period of transition from Ottoman rule to the British Mandates in Iraq and Palestine; and the modified methods employed by shadarim in the new reality of the postwar period, especially their encounter with representatives of the Zionist establishment. Fund-raising missions from Eretz Israel to the Diaspora have been conducted, in one form or another, since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and to this very day.3 Abraham Yaari maintained that the emissaries’ role had a dual function: taking and giving. They generally had three major objectives: collection of donations for those in Eretz Israel who dispatched them, efforts on their own behalf, and assistance for the communities they visited during a time of need. An emissary bore a writ of recommendation from the institution that sent him. When preaching or lecturing he would praise Eretz Israel—particularly the city from which he came—and speak highly of charity in general. He would make use of books praising Eretz Israel and its holy sites, prayers, drawings of the tombs of holy saints, and soil and souvenirs from the Holy Land, as well as stories and poems about Eretz Israel and its sages. Contributions were not voluntary and were collected by means of a special tax, not by individual soliciting. Shadarim maintained a record book in which they recorded information about the community, the sums they collected, and signatures of the communal leaders. Despite the difficulties they faced during their itinerant journey, the emissaries also endeavored to collect funds on their own behalf, at times establishing a special fund for themselves or their yeshivah in Eretz Israel. The giving aspect of their mission was dependent upon the personal and spiritual qualities of the emissary. They bore books written by the sages of the Holy Land, authored and disseminated works of their own describing Eretz Israel, and brought with them printed prayers and piyyutim (religious poems), talismans, and cures. In all these they enriched the religious life of Diaspora Jews. These good works were a means by which the emissary intended to succeed in his mission: collection of funds while instilling love of Eretz Israel in the hearts of his hearers so as to increase their donations. Though they were not dispatched with the objective of encouraging aliyah, emissaries who wholeheartedly fulfilled their mission deepened love of and religious affinity to Eretz Israel. They provided advice for individuals or groups of immigrants, and at times even guided and accompanied the travelers on their way to the Holy Land. 88

01 Chapters.indd 88

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

Emissaries considered the giving function to be an important part of their mission. The communities, for their part, expected that the shadar would guide them in ethical behavior and customs, and he was called upon—as an outsider—to resolve various issues. He intervened in matters of the communities through which he passed, sometimes at the demand of the local leadership and at other times against its will. He laid down halakhic decisions in complicated cases, sometimes having to decide between two opposed rulings. Emissaries enhanced the authority of the local leadership in the eyes of the community, enacted new takkanot (ordinances, regulations), and stood behind existing ones or revoked others that they deemed unworthy. A shadar would reprove his listeners, disseminate religious books, ordinate rabbis and ritual slaughterers—or annul their ordination when he believed them to be unworthy of the office—lecture on new interpretations of the Law by Eretz Israel sages, and teach the customs of the Holy Land while revoking local ones that he considered harmful. In remote communities, the emissary would instruct people in the Law and teach them to do good deeds. All this he did not based on his knowledge of the halakhah or his wisdom, for at times the local rabbis were better versed in the Torah than himself, but by virtue of his authority that stemmed from the sacredness of Eretz Israel. Not every Jew was an appropriate candidate for such a mission. The emissary was first and foremost expected to be erudite in halakhah and a paragon representative of the real Eretz Israel and its religious and lofty aspects, manifested in the Torah and positive personal attributes. Preferably, he should be of respected lineage, his features should arouse respect, and he should have a pleasant voice and the ability to preach and conduct a conversation. But these were not enough. He also had to be courageous, healthy, ready for surprises, easily adaptable to changing situations, worldly, quick to pick up foreign languages, and sociable—all traits that characterized authentic travelers. The shadar’s arrival was an outstanding event for the community. Legendary tales were told about the emissaries and their power to perform miracles, and upon their arrival they were received with much honor. If an emissary died during his journey, poems and laments were composed in his memory, and some emissaries were even considered holy men whose grave sites were visited. It should be noted, however, that such missions also presented opportunities for imposters who managed to collect donations by deceit. Such cases, of course, aroused suspicion in the communities and were damaging to true shadarim and their status.

89

01 Chapters.indd 89

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

“Kurdistan . . . Was Never a Place of Money” The emissaries who came to Kurdistan from Eretz Israel were on the whole ordinary shadarim but also had several unique characteristics. During the nineteenth century, Sephardic and Ashkenazi emissaries traveled to Kurdistan from the Holy Land. Some of them did not come to collect funds but rather to search for traces of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel.4 Most shadarim simply passed through Kurdistan on their way to Persia and India or on the return trip to Eretz Israel, through Kurdistan, even though it was “abundant in food and drink, was never a place of money.”5 Personal security was not characteristic of Kurdistan. We read in the sources that deputy shadarim, operating on behalf of emissaries from Eretz Israel, refrained from visiting the interior of the country because of the difficult terrain and fear of highway robbers. Most shadarim traveled along the valleys up to Arbil and to the foothills in the vicinity of Zakho. Only few penetrated the interior, some reaching Amadiya from where they sent deputies from among the local Jews further into the interior of the country to collect donations. Jews in remote villages would beseech the emissaries to visit them, as well, because of their message of consolation and encouragement. Emissaries from Eretz Israel generally tried to placate these remote communities, using illness or the difficulties of the journey as an excuse for not visiting them. In some instances, the shadar replied forcefully to a community that demanded his presence. One such case is that of an emissary from Hebron, Rabbi Hayyim Abraham Israel Ze’evi, who was in Amadiya in 1800, from where he sent an angry message to the community of Nerwa. He demanded that they send their “contribution” to Amadiya and threatened them with a ceremony of excommunication at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and the Cave of the Makhpelah in Hebron should they not forward the money.6 As in all Diaspora communities in the East, shadarim from the Holy Land were received in Kurdistan with much honor and respect and were treated as pious men, but in Kurdistan this reached the level of true adoration.7 Such a reception was an indication of the deep yearning of Kurdish Jews for Eretz Israel. Because of this state of mind, and because of the respect with which shadarim were received, European Jewish travelers would at times pass themselves off as emissaries from Eretz Israel, particularly from Jerusalem, thus easing their contacts with Jews in Kurdistan. Shadarim generated much economic activity. They generally stayed at the home of one of the community’s notables, who considered this a great honor.8 In many places, the bed, board, and other expenses of the emissar90

01 Chapters.indd 90

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

ies were paid out of the community’s hospitality fund (quppat arīkha).9 In addition, shekalim—set sums of money—were annually and regularly contributed to Eretz Israel, and nedavot (sing. nedavah, alms) were contributed by individuals, each according to his own inclination, for the shadar himself. The emissaries also used to sell to Jews in Kurdistan a deed of sale for “a grave of four cubits in Eretz Israel.” Even though it was more expensive than one in Kurdistan, almost every Jew bought one. Upon his death, the writ would be placed in the hand of the deceased and buried with him.10 Like emissaries to other Diaspora countries, those who came from Eretz Israel to communities in Kurdistan that were remote from larger Jewish centers taught halakhic rules and tried to change what they considered mistaken practices, particularly relating to kosher food, ritual slaughtering, and marital relationships.11 When local rabbis were unable to come to a halakhic decision, the shadar had the final word, and he also adjudicated disputes that could not be settled within the community. Emissaries also came to the aid of Kurdish communities in times of distress, such as persecutions or natural disasters.12 Shadarim faced real danger when traveling the roads of Kurdistan. Some were robbed, whereas others were murdered, died of illness, or passed away out of sheer exhaustion. According to Abraham Yaari, during the nineteenth century 85 of 850 emissaries from Eretz Israel to countries in the Levant, including Kurdistan, died during their missions, some of them not even receiving a proper Jewish burial.13 Unlike in North Africa, in Kurdistan deceased emissaries did not become saints, special tombstones or mounds of stones were not erected on their graves, and their names were soon forgotten.14 Though written works mention shadarim dispatched to Kurdistan, there are no names of emissaries who arrived in Zakho during the twentieth century, except for one letter sent from Zakho to Amadiya. In this letter, which bears no date, addressee, or name of sender, representatives of the Zakho community inform their counterparts in Amadiya that Moshe Ya‘akov Frankel, an Ashkenazi Jew, had come to them in the name of the Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem and had received a generous donation. The Amadiyans were requested to send their contribution to Zakho so as to spare the shadar the difficult journey to their town.15

World War I in Iraq and Its Influence on the Zakho Community World War I was a turning point in the transition from Ottoman rule, during which the Zakho community more or less lived in isolation, and its 91

01 Chapters.indd 91

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

exposure to the outside world came with the conquest of Iraq by British forces and encounters with shadarim who arrived after the war. The war was a period of severe crisis for the population of Mesopotamia in general and its Jews in particular.16 As Iraq was cut off from Europe, it was impossible to import goods, which resulted in very high prices. British occupation of southern Iraq began in 1914, but Baghdad was not captured until 1917, and the British reached the northern regions of the country in 1918. Many men in the Baghdad Jewish community were conscripted into the Turkish army, and property of the well-to-do was confiscated. Jews, Muslims, and Christians were accused of desertion and hung or were tortured to death to extort money from them, whereas others were exiled from the city. Residents of Baghdad and northern Iraq, including Jews, tried to reach Basra in the south, which was already under British control, after hearing of prosperous conditions there. Despite the suffering caused by the war, the Arabs received the British occupation with mixed feelings because it was now their lot to live under the rule of Christian infidels occupying Muslim territory. Most of the Jews openly expressed their joy; Baghdad’s Jews celebrated the date of British entry into the city, the fifteenth of the month of Adar, as a second Purim festival.17 In testimonies of former Zakho Jews, the war period was described as one of suffering and great harm to the community and its leadership. Recurring elements they referred to were hunger, desertion from the Turkish army, and flight to Kurdish villages where Jews sought refuge until the danger would pass. This is what Shabetai Piro related: During the Turkish period, they took my father to serve in the army in 1916 [or] 1917. After that, he sent us a letter from Haifa [telling us] that he was in the Mediterranean [area] and that we must pay a badl ransom. . . [W]e had to pay the ransom in gold. My late mother and my grandmother traveled from Zakho to Mosul. There [in Mosul] were rafts on the river, so they walked for three days until they reached Mosul. And, indeed, we sold all our property until we paid the badl as a ransom for father so that they would release him. Two months later father was home. He was at home for a month or two when the Turks came again and wanted to take him. Then he fled to the hills.

Piro went on to relate that the Kurdish villagers hid his father, but the other family members in Zakho were imprisoned by the Turks to force them to reveal the father’s whereabouts. When the Turks saw that they would obtain no 92

01 Chapters.indd 92

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

information from the family, they were released. Piro, who was then twelve or thirteen years old, also described the severe famine: I remained in Zakho at my grandmother’s. The situation was terrible. There was a lack of food, people were starving. So my father [who was hiding in a Kurdish village] used to send my grandmother a can of food and we lived off that. My aunt was also with us. In the end, we did not have enough [food], grandmother could not care for me, so my father brought her [grandmother] to him. . . . I actually remember such a situation when there was no food. People in Zakho used to look at a piece of bread; people were starving. My late father brought the entire family to him there [i.e., the Kurdish village]—my uncle, my aunt, and so forth, anyone who was related to him. We collected them to ensure that, God forbid, no tragedy should happen to them. . . . The food situation was very bad there during Turkish times.18

The British entered Zakho on 23 November 1918,19 but the Piro family remained in the Kurdish village for three more years because of difficult economic conditions in the city. The testimonies of other former Zakho Jews are informative regarding the condition of the Jewish community.20 The families of communal leaders also suffered, the city’s municipal administration did not function, and local Kurdish notables exploited the Turkish forces to gain advantages for themselves. That is what emerges from the testimony of Salim Gabbay about his father Moshe Gabbay, who owned much property and was conscripted into the Turkish army even though he was exempt from military service by virtue of being the community’s treasurer. Moshe was conscripted because his grandfather refused to submit to pressure applied by Muhammad Agha, governor of Zakho, to sell or give him a vineyard that he very much desired. Only after additional heavy pressure did the governor gain the vineyard, and Moshe Gabbay was discharged.21 A counterweight of sorts to this harsh description was the unusual testimony of Zaki Levi, who showed me a photo of his father as a high-ranking officer in the Turkish army. Even if he perhaps exaggerated, there is no reason to doubt the kernel of truth in his story: My father, of blessed memory, was called Yosef Shaul Levi. He was born in Zakho in 1888 and passed away here [in Israel] in 1984. He served in the Turkish army in World War I and reached the honor93

01 Chapters.indd 93

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

ary rank of colonel. He was responsible for all the supplies of the Turkish army in the Middle East, from Constantinople-Istanbul to Cairo. In those difficult wartime days, when there was hunger and poverty and many died of starvation, he exploited his being a member of the armed forces and his access to grain storehouses in order to tender much aid in the form of food to Zakho’s Jews. This is well known. Even today, the descendants of the elderly people who have since passed away know this, and from time to time tell about it. After the English occupied Iraq, they tried to force him to cooperate with the English. He refused, and even after a period of pressure they were unsuccessful. And so they let him be, and he returned to engage in commerce, just like my grandfather.22

British army camps were established near Zakho. This was at the time when the British took control of the Mosul District, contrary to what was stipulated in the Sèvres Treaty of 1920, which allotted an autonomous region to the Kurds in eastern Anatolia and the Mosul District. The British maintained that Zakho and Amadiya were of strategic importance because of their proximity to the Turkish frontier.23 Zakho Jews told us that the British force was comprised of English officers and Indian soldiers and employed local residents, even women and children, to build roads, even if “they broke stones but did not pave any road. They created piles and piles of stones along the roads.”24 “This was not forced labor, but a good source of livelihood,” we were told. The British displayed kindheartedness and even paid small children “one rupee a day to break stones for the road.” Jews in Zakho encountered Jews serving with the British forces, and there was one Jewish officer “whom we called Saheb . . . who on the Passover came to pray in the synagogue and donated fifty rupees.”25 Despite the slight amelioration of their difficult economic situation, Zakho’s Jews and other residents in northern Kurdistan did not enjoy stable security as long as the border between Iraq and Turkey had not been delineated. Making allowance for the local population, and in consideration of the topography that dictated where the roads were located in the proposed border area, there were several proposals to have the frontier run through Zakho.26 Once the border had been set in the Brussels Treaty of 1924, it was ratified by the Mosul Committee appointed by the League of Nations, and the committee was headed by Count Pál Teleki.27 But calm did not return to the frontier, and many vicious incidents occurred there during 1925, once

94

01 Chapters.indd 94

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

again undermining security in the area. Christians living in Turkish villages near the Iraqi border who declared before the Mosul Committee that they wished to be part of Iraq were cruelly attacked by the Turkish army. Many of them were forced to flee their villages, not a few of them finding refuge in Zakho. From many letters written by refugees who fled to Zakho that were forwarded to the League of Nations by church authorities in the region we learn of cases of massacre, rape, abduction, robbery, arrest, and exile perpetrated by Turkish soldiers in these villages.28 For its part, the Turkish foreign ministry filed a complaint with the League of Nations in Geneva on 23 June 1925 about the arrest of persons in the Mosul area who had presented proTurkish statements to the Mosul Committee.29 Tension in the area increased when the Royal Air Force bombed villages in the vicinity of Zakho, Amadiya, and Shiranis-Islam to punish pro-Turkish rebels.30 Once the area achieved stability, there were significant changes for Iraqi Jews—most of whom lived in the two big cities of Baghdad and Basra—in political status, economics, education, and health. On the other hand, there were only few changes in the situation of Kurdish Jews, who lived in cities and small towns far removed from the center of government.31 The effects of World War I were felt in Zakho for many years and only gradually did life there undergo a change.

The Encounter of Zakho Jewry with Shadarim during the Interim Period There were no newspapers in Zakho. With the change of rulers, the city’s traditional Jewish society, which prior to the war lacked any real knowledge of world affairs, now opened up to the world and came in contact with foreigners, including the English, Jews, and rabbinical emissaries. Interviewees from Zakho provided much information about these first contacts.32 These were encounters of Jews, who enthusiastically sought contact with Eretz Israel and Jerusalem, with shadarim bearing news of the Holy Land and who, for their part, intended to return to Eretz Israel with some success in raising funds. Shadarut (a collective term for the efforts of shadarim) was quite customary as a means of raising money to support religious institutions in Eretz Israel. However, it also had added value as a way of transmitting information about the Jewish community in Eretz Israel and maintaining connections with communities in the Diaspora. Recently, shadarut has been the subject of a sociopolitical study that aims to link it to postcolonialist theories in the framework of a discussion of the status of Jews from Arab lands who now 95

01 Chapters.indd 95

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

live in Israel. The study by Yehouda Shenhav focuses primarily on the Zionist emissaries who reached Iraq during the 1940s and were able to carry on their activity thanks to the infrastructure laid by the religious emissaries who preceded them.33 Shenhav makes three basic assumptions. The first is that it was the Zionist emissaries who stirred Iraqi Jews to greater religiosity because they did not consider religion among those Jews to be natural or authentic enough to encourage Zionist activity and aliyah. The second assumption is that no problems arose in relations between the religious emissaries and the local communities, whereas the third is that there was a natural transition from collecting funds for religious purposes to fund-raising for Zionist organizations in the modern period.34 Apart from the opposition that such an interpretation met in Israel,35 it is precisely these assumptions that point all the more clearly to the difference between Kurdish and Iraqi Jewry. The assumptions are erroneous in relation to the Jews of Zakho and Kurdistan, whose religiosity was authentic, so there was no need to encourage them to be religious; furthermore, it was unnecessary to persuade them to go on aliyah to Eretz Israel. It was the religious shadarim—albeit unconsciously—who encouraged Kurdish Jews to immigrate to Palestine after World War I, even before the arrival of Zionist emissaries. As for Shenhav’s other two assumptions, tension and personal conflicts definitely existed between the religious emissaries and the Jewish communities in Kurdistan, and the transition of the collection of funds from religious to Zionist emissaries was not as simple as it is made out to be; rather, the opposite was the case and it was marked by much tension. In fact, for quite some time fund-raising by both groups went on simultaneously, accompanied by fierce conflicts between them. In the collective memory of Zakho Jewry, there is an obvious difference between shadarim who came to the city during the Ottoman period and those who arrived after the war. Simultaneously with the warm welcome awarded the first postwar emissaries, for the first time there is also some criticism of them, most certainly arising from the personalities of the shadarim, on the one hand, and the winds of change that left their mark on the community after its exposure to the outside world, on the other. The news brought by the shadarim of the great changes in Eretz Israel following the British occupation of Palestine had far-reaching results. New possibilities, as well as prospects that the gates of Eretz Israel would be opened to immigrants, encouraged many to emigrate there. Shadarim who reached Zakho during the British Mandate period had to contend with a changed situation that included the early efforts by the Zionist movement in Iraq. Rabbinical emissaries and Zionist representatives competed vigorously for 96

01 Chapters.indd 96

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

the hearts and pockets of Jews, and each shadar had to act to the best of his ability.36 From the testimony of former Zakho Jews, we know that between the turn of the twentieth century and World War I the shadarim who reached that city were Yosef Hayyim Shrem, Hayyim Bajayo, and Moshe ‘Amar, whereas after the war came Ya‘akov Lubaton, Abba Yair, Avraham Na‘im, and Haghib ‘Amar.37 The interviewees also referred to other emissaries but did not mention the date of their arrival and at times even without giving their full name, such as Nathan the Physician, mentioned by Shmuel Baruch; one Eliyahu and his son from Tiberias, reported by Haya Gabbay;38 a shadar from the Yemen whose name Salim Gabbay did not remember; and one Ya‘akov Katzutz from Eretz Israel, mentioned by Gabbay without mention of when he arrived: “I was young, but I know that my grandfather had a list of emissaries from Eretz Israel. [It noted] the date of arrival of each one. I remember that there was an emissary by the name of Turjeman in this list . . . and this list remained there [in Kurdistan].”39 Visits to Zakho by shadarim came to a halt during the war and were renewed when it ended. “When the English captured Iraq, the shadarim began coming. From the end of World War I, when I was sixteen, the roads were opened.”40 During the 1930s, however, the number of such visits gradually decreased and came to a complete stop when anti-Jewish feelings became more widespread throughout Iraq. The following discussion of individual shadarim in Zakho deals only with those for whom documentation of any substance has been located: Hayyim Bajayo, Yosef Hayyim Shrem, Ya‘akov Lubaton and Abba Yair, Avraham Na‘im, and Yisrael Turjeman. Each section focuses on the shadarim’s activities, attitude toward money, and relations with members of the community, and on the renewed encounter with them after mass immigration to Israel. Analysis of what the shadarim did in Kurdistan is not the focus of this section; what interests us most is how their visit to Zakho influenced the local community and its way of life.

Hayyim Bajayo: “We Are Saved Thanks to Him and Thanks to ‘Avot Olam’” According to my interviewees, Hayyim Bajayo, who visited Zakho in 1912– 13, was the second shadar to come there during the period of Ottoman rule.41 He paid only one visit to Zakho, which accounts for the paucity of written and oral documentation about him.42 Even if most of his activity there remains in the dark, the collective memory of Zakho’s Jews indicates 97

01 Chapters.indd 97

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

that his personality and qualities left a positive impression upon them. He maintained a harmonic relationship with the community—one that continued later when they immigrated to Eretz Israel. This felicitous relationship stemmed from his personality but also reflected the spirit of the times when Zakho was still isolated, without any real connection to the outside world. Rabbi Hayyim Bajayo (1875–1962) was born in Hebron to an old and much respected family whose origin was in Portugal, from where it moved to Algiers and later reached Hebron about four centuries ago. Together with the Francos and the Hassons, the Bajayos were considered one of the oldest and most important families in Hebron. From its ranks came many rabbis; heads of communities, yeshivot, and societies; shadarim; and pious men whose tombs it was customary to visit.43 The family’s social and economic status among Hebron’s Jews was firmly established. It controlled two of the three traditional hazakot (offices) in the Hebron community: beadle of the synagogue and responsibility for ritual slaughtering. In filling the third office, allocation of monies, it rotated with other leading families. The Avraham Avinu (Patriarch Abraham) Synagogue in Hebron was under the patronage of the Bajayos, whose rabbis often provided approbations for books, certified affidavits given to rabbinical emissaries, and whose signatures appear on land acquisition documents.44 Hayyim Bajayo studied in the yeshivot of Hebron while simultaneously gaining sufficient knowledge of the Arabic language and Arab customs.45 During his youth, he engaged in commerce, also serving as an itinerant veterinarian when he made the rounds of villages to sell his products and treated sick camels and goats by methods he learnt from the Bedouins. He was a congenial, easygoing person who surprised everyone with his skill in arithmetic and phenomenal knowledge of the history of the Jewish families in Hebron. He was ordained a rabbi at the age of forty and formally appointed rabbi of Hebron during the Arab riots of 1929, the last to hold this position. He did much for Hebron Jews who fled to Jerusalem, leading them for more than thirty years until his death at the age of eighty-seven. There is little information about his missions as a shadar. We have no details of how and why he was dispatched and when they were conducted. On his activity as an emissary, we have only one family story. From the little we know, after Hayyim Bajayo quit his commercial activity and—together with his cousin Yosef Bajayo—drew close to the rabbis of Hebron, the two of them were commissioned to set out on a fund-raising mission for the Avot Olam Yeshivah. Yosef was sent to North Africa and Hayyim to countries in the Levant: Persia, Iraq, India, and China.46 Yosef passed away in North 98

01 Chapters.indd 98

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

Rabbi Hayyim Bajayo. Courtesy of his grandson, Hayyim Ha’negbi.

Africa, whereas Hayyim experienced many adventures, one of which has become legendary. That legend tells of a miracle that Hayyim Bajayo and his companions experienced when they were robbed in Kurdistan. He related to his interviewer, David Avisar, “I was especially sorry about the pouch that carried my tallith [prayer shawl] and tefillin [phylacteries] and my accounts book, which I used to hide in the pouch for safety” that had been stolen. Sad and

99

01 Chapters.indd 99

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

downcast, they continued on their obstacle-ridden path while reciting “God of Abraham, answer us! . . . Knight of Jacob, answer us!” After several hours on foot, to their utmost surprise they came upon the animals they had been riding, with all their equipment and baggage, including the funds and the pouch with the tallith and tefillin. When they reached their destination, the entire community came out to meet them, congratulated them on the great miracle, and declared that day to be one of feasting and rejoicing. From then on, travelers planned their journey to coincide with the date on which Rabbi Bajayo set out, because they maintained that “We are saved thanks to him and to ‘Avot Olam.’ ”47 This legend, quite popular among Zakho’s Jews, has another version that is nearer to the genre of a personal memory narrative with a singular touch. A report about it in a local Jerusalem paper was attributed to journalist A. L. Elhanani, who heard it from Rabbi Bajayo.48 However, the author of the article was unaware of the folkloric characteristics and changing versions of folktales. He therefore derisively called the change that occurred in the passage from a personal memory narrative to a legend “cooking up a Hebron legend for children.” This, Avituv believed, was characteristic of the Bajayo family, “to whom this process of turning harsh real situations into folkloriccolored legends was not foreign.” This story and its versions are the only written evidence of Hayyim Bajayo’s mission to Kurdistan as a shadar. It does not inform us where or when he was in Kurdistan, but obviously it was the robbery on the road that dominated the story and transformed it into a legend. The creation of another, even more legendary, version reflects a tendency on the part of Bajayo to self-aggrandizement, for the Lord answered his prayer. It was also indicative of an effort to strengthen belief in the supernatural powers of the charitable endowment for the Avot Olam Yeshivah in Hebron; it is not at all surprising that the story echoes the prayer “O God of Meir answer me” attributed to the charity that collected funds for Tiberias. In oral testimony, Rabbi Shmuel Baruch told us the following about Hayyim Bajayo in Zakho: “He was a shadar in Zakho before my aliyah [in 1925], in my father’s time. He and my father were friends; he was a shadar on behalf of Hebron. . . . Rabbi Hayyim Bajayo was in Zakho when I was about fourteen–fifteen years old. I knew him. He was the deputy of Rabbi Franco in Hebron, was a preacher, an orator. People would pay him respect, the emissary of the Avot Olam Yeshivah in Hebron.”49 Information about Bajayo in the testimonies only indirectly adds what we need to know about his personality and activity, perhaps because he was there only once, at a time 100

01 Chapters.indd 100

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

when my interviewees were too young to make his acquaintance, or because they came to know him only in Israel after their aliyah. Rahamim Cohen, Shmuel Baruch’s close friend, said, “There was also one Hayyim Bajayo. He, too, came as an emissary to our city. This was prior to 1914. I knew him. He was alive here, too; he was living when I came to Eretz Israel in 1924.”50 Salim Gabbay, the son of Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community, remembered Bajayo: “Yes, yes, he was our guest. My late father knew him well and was a friend of his. He had a sister, Hattun Bajayo—no, that was his wife.” When asked if anything special had happened to the shadar, Gabbay replied, “I can tell you that my late father treated him with great respect here. I think that when he [my father] visited Eretz Israel, while serving in the Turkish army, he also visited him. My father told me that the name of Bajayo’s wife was Hattun—Hattun Bajayo.”51 The interviewee related by association to the name of the shadar’s wife, a seemingly minor point, and at first was not even sure whether she was Bajayo’s sister or wife. But this detail, appearing twice in his testimony, indicates that the name was fixed in his memory, perhaps because his father had mentioned her or because Salim wished to impress upon us just how much he knew of an emissary about whom there is such scant information. Perhaps Salim emphasized this name because it was also the first name of his own wife. His testimony is indicative of the good relations between the shadar and the head of the community, even after Bajayo returned to Eretz Israel. We also learn indirectly of the conscription of Jewish men from Zakho into the Turkish armed forces in World War I and about the head of the community who visited Bajayo in Eretz Israel during his military service there. What comes out clearly in the narratives by Haviv ‘Alwan and Rahamim Cohen are the good neighborly relations between the two of them and the shadar when they all lived in close proximity to one another in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehudah Quarter. The following is ‘Alwan’s story: Before I lived in this quarter [Ohel Shlomo] near Mahaneh Yehudah, I used to live in the Zikhron Yosef Quarter. I moved to this quarter in Mahaneh Yehudah about thirty years ago. In Zikhron Yosef, I was the ritual slaughter for the quarter and for everyone. On the night before Yom Kippur, I would stand all night in the street with a lamp and table and slaughter throughout the night. I came here [to Ohel Shlomo] and stopped ritual slaughtering, but in the event that someone wanted a chicken and did not find a slaughterer,

101

01 Chapters.indd 101

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

I would slaughter for him. Next door to us, just down the street, lived a hakham, Rabbi Bajayo, a refugee from Hebron. Then there was no fence between us and his house. Today there is a fence of trees. That very Hakham Bajayo was at one time a shadar. . . . On several occasions, emissaries were dispatched to us from Hebron to raise funds for the Avot Olam Yeshivah. My father would take care of him and all the emissaries from Eretz Israel. He would make the rounds with him, collect the money for him. When I came here [to Eretz Israel] I saw him. Meanwhile, my father passed away. [One day] I was to slaughter a chicken for persons in the quarter. They told me, “Slaughter a chicken for us.” I slaughtered [it] near my doorway, and the chicken fluttered jerkily near the home of Hakham Bajayo. His wife came out and yelled at me, “Why do you slaughter here?” Perhaps she was right, but her husband told her, “Be quiet!” and silenced her. He told her, “Never speak like that to this man. His father would make the rounds with me, would help me collect money. No matter what he does, don’t talk to him [like that].” [Until then] I did not know that my father used to help him.

When Haviv finished his story and I asked him how he now knew about this, he replied, “It was he, Hakham Bajayo, who told me this. My father’s merits stood me in good stead here—that no one ever spoke ill of me or against what I did, and anything I did was fine.”52 This memory narrative, told in the first-person singular, contains outstanding autobiographical and biographical details. Even if he related the story in order to tell us about the shadar, its purpose was to point to the selfidentity of the narrator as a religious ministrant—a ritual slaughterer—to whose credit stood the merits of his father, the beloved Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, who helped Bajayo just as he came to the aid of all the emissaries who reached Zakho. What we learn about Hayyim Bajayo from this story is that he was a neighbor of Haviv ‘Alwan and a refugee from Hebron after the Arab riots. The portrayal of Bajayo’s personality is associated with a singular trait that is characteristic of the best of personal memory narratives. It is personalized in the shadar who admonishes his wife to consent to any act of Haviv ‘Alwan, even if it is unpleasant, because of the help that his father, Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, had tendered him in Zakho. That was how the emissary expressed his gratefulness to the rabbi, even if the rabbi’s son committed an improper act. The unusual degree of gratitude evinced by Hayyim Bajayo reflects the dependence of the shadar on the goodwill of communal leaders, especially 102

01 Chapters.indd 102

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

during his first mission to a community. It also positively reflects upon the personality of the emissary, who was grateful to those who helped him fulfill his mission. A shadar’s efforts did not always end with such a show of gratitude toward an individual; at times, it was reflected in a collective expression of thanks, as in the case of emissary Yosef Hayyim Shrem. On other occasions, there was a touch of ingratitude on the part of the shadar, who, upon his return to Eretz Israel, disavowed those who had helped him in Zakho, as was the case with Ya‘akov Lubaton.53 The literary construction of the story, which stressed the lifestyle in the Mahaneh Yehudah neighborhoods in Jerusalem and that the narrator was a ritual slaughterer, was intended to lend it an aura of authenticity. ‘Alwan’s mannerisms when relating the story were meant to illustrate its content and lend his narrative authenticity as he gestured with his hands, laughed lightly, and employed intonations to emphasize the humor in the dialogue between Bajayo and his wife. The aura of authenticity was also supported by extraliterary facts; for instance, the information that the street in which the narrated event occurred is named after his father, Shabetai ‘Alwan, and its street sign bears basic biographical information about him. The last narrative we heard about the shadar Hayyim Bajayo was related to us by Rahamim Cohen: Hakham Bajayo was a pleasant person. He was an emissary of Hebron. This Haviv ‘Alwani has a wife whose name is Esther. He lives in their quarter, Ohel Shlomo. . . . He [‘Alwan] lived there and so did he [the shadar Hayyim Bajayo] in the same quarter. He [Bajayo] used to sit in the store, grinding flour for mazzot [unleaved bread eaten during Passover] in Mahaneh Yehudah. He lived a long life. So [one day] he saw this wife of Haviv ‘Alwan and said to her, “Listen Esther, aren’t you a member of the such-and-such family?”—a certain family that he knows from Zakho. Its name is Iygardena [or perhaps Gardena]. So she said to him, “Yes, how did you know?” He said, “I know the Gardena family of Zakho.” He recognized her and discerned that she looked like a certain woman, a grandmother of that family. . . . Then she replied, “You’re right.” He was a great hakham. His son is still alive, but Bajayo died long ago, twenty or more years ago.54

The structure of this narrative, related in the third person, suits its content. Its intention is to put the “other” in the forefront, not the narrator himself. Cohen called Bajayo a “great hakham,” and this is indeed a story about the 103

01 Chapters.indd 103

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

fact that Haviv ‘Alwan and Hayyim Bajayo were neighbors in one of the Mahaneh Yehudah neighborhoods. It informs us that Bajayo made a living by grinding wheat in his store, and that he lived for many years. The shadar’s connection with Zakho is indicated through a third, and rather surprising, figure—Esther, who was born in Eretz Israel to parents who had emigrated from Zakho and had no prior connections with Bajayo.55 The emissary had an exceptional faculty for recognition, since he had made only one visit to Zakho and it may be assumed that he was in much closer company with the men who helped him, yet he clearly remembered the grandmother he mentioned. What emerges from the little information about Hayyim Bajayo is the figure of a shadar who executed his mission in the spirit of the Ottoman period, without exerting any influence upon the Zakho community and with no intention of causing any change in its lifestyle. Yet, despite his one-time visit to that city, Bajayo made a unique impression on former Zakho Jews, who maintained a harmonious relationship with him, one marked by good faith and mutual respect.

Yosef Hayyim Shrem: “I Would Be Lying in Repose” The shadar Yosef Hayyim Shrem came to Zakho on several occasions during the Ottoman period and, unlike Hayyim Bajayo, even returned during the British Mandate period following World War I. The image of Shrem that arises from our various sources is a positive one, embodying the best traits of the classic shadar who is esteemed by the local community and whose feet are firmly planted in the milieu of the Ottoman period. Shrem, however, who was also an emissary during the regime change in Iraq, also faced a new reality: he and the Zakho community had to meet the changed conditions and new elements that appeared on the scene after the war. Unlike Bajayo, Shrem’s efforts have been the subject of considerable documentation.56 Furthermore, he was fortunate to have Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob write his biography. This was at the initiative of Shrem’s family, which placed the archival material it possessed and reminiscences of family members at the author’s disposal.57 During my research, I came across additional documents related to his shadarut in archives.58 As for oral testimony, the very little available is vital and relevant to our study. Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem (1851–1949), born in Aleppo, Syria, was brought to Eretz Israel at the age of two and resided in the Beit Yosef (Abu Tor) Quarter in Jerusalem. He was educated in the Doresh Zion School and several yeshivot, and at the age of fourteen had already donned rabbini104

01 Chapters.indd 104

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem. Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob, The Traveling Envoy (Jerusalem: Nuriel Shrem, 1982), 24.

cal robes and considered himself a rabbi. He taught for some time in the Sephardic Talmud Torah in the Old City of Jerusalem, but also engaged in handicrafts for a living. In 1882, at the age of thirty-one, he agreed to set out on a fund-raising mission to the Diaspora on behalf of Eretz Israel. From that time on, he was renowned as one of the most qualified, successful, and veteran shadarim of the Sephardic community. According to the sources consulted, he had all the traits of a successful emissary: he had imposing features and was wise in the ways of the world, good-natured, and an excellent preacher. His personality and bearing made a great impression. Shrem was fluent in six languages: Hebrew, Arabic, Kurdish-Aramaic, Spanish, Georgian, and Yiddish, and spoke some English and French. Everywhere he went, he was received with much honor and respect, and when those who had sent him—the Committee of the Sephardic Com105

01 Chapters.indd 105

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

munity of Jerusalem—tried to obstruct his efforts and damage his reputation, his hosts immediately came to his defense and support. Blessed with a pleasant voice, he at times served as cantor in the synagogue during special prayer services conducted in honor of a personage or a unique event. He also conducted marital rites at weddings of notable families, preached to the public, and delivered funeral orations for important deceased.59 Shrem’s first mission, in 1882, was to Istanbul. From then until 1934, for fifty-two years, he traveled to many countries on behalf of various institutions: the Committee of the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem, the synagogue of the Nahalat Shiv‘ah Quarter, the Beit-El Synagogue of the kabbalistic Jews in Jerusalem, and the Orthodox communities of Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed. He was a regular shadar, a permanent emissary who returned to communities at set times to collect donations, in contrast to a shadar who came on a one-time visit to raise funds not included in the sum given to the regular shadar.60 Ben-Ya‘acob found that Shrem visited Iraq from 1890 until 1934. On some of these missions, he came to Kurdistan on behalf of the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem: in 1902, 1912–15, 1927, and 1930–33. Shrem, who was in Iraq when World War I broke out, was cut off from Eretz Israel and his family for ten years.61 He described his hardships in a report written in 1915–16: Alas and alack the world is destroyed . . . and the villages I visited until now are in great distress. . . . The roads are ruined and there is a great cry [of distress from] women, men, children, and [babies] still suckling at the breast. . . . Somehow I stayed in Kirkuk until the end of [the month of ] Av 5675 [August 1915] and from there we traveled with self-sacrifice through the villages and reached Babylon [Iraq] with the servant. There too we sat and wept [Ps. 137:1] for years. And may God have mercy upon His nation.62

Testimonies by former Zakho Jews support the information about Rabbi Shrem being stuck in Iraq during the war. They told us that he visited them on several occasions during the Ottoman period, and once again when the war ended, before he returned to his home in Eretz Israel. Rahamim Cohen: “After World War I, he [Shrem] came once more to our city. He had not as yet returned to Jerusalem. He came from Baghdad, came to visit in our city.”63

106

01 Chapters.indd 106

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

“It Is His Custom to Do Good, Not to Obstruct, and He Never Touched Zionist Money” The important turning point in Shrem’s mission to Iraq came after World War I—a change that was also evident in the traditional patterns of such missions. After the war, various groups and persons were active in Baghdad, including the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim (the biblical name of Mesopotamia), representatives of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in Iraq, and many emissaries from various religious institutions.64 The penetration of these new elements into an area previously reserved for the rabbinical emissaries naturally caused tension and confrontation as they competed for the same financial resources. Shrem, too, was the victim of these machinations by elements who wished to strew obstacles in his path. He, who had come as an emissary of religious institutions, was accused of collecting funds on behalf of “the Zionists” and of using them for purposes other than those in whose name he had been dispatched to Iraq. Someone writing under the pseudonym Mekomi (lit. “local person”) published these accusations in the Jerusalem Hebrew daily Do’ar Hayom in a letter sent from Baghdad in 1921.65 In an exchange of letters about this episode, rabbis in Iraq expressed their full confidence in Shrem and lent him their support in his continued efforts. Moshe Hayyim David, the leading rabbi in Iraq at the time, sent the following message to Do’ar Hayom: An article against the excellent famous rabbi and shadar . . . Yosef Hayyim Shrem was published in issue no. 224 of Do’ar Hayom, of 17 Sivan 5681 [23 June 1921], in which he was accused of being a supporter of the shekel [a membership fee in the Zionist Organization], that he was caught collecting funds in the vicinity for the Zionists. All these things have no roots and no branches [i.e., they are completely unfounded] because in all of Babylon [Iraq] it is well known to them that he is adorned with the title shadar of the community of Jerusalem and he has no need to relate to the name Zionist or to any other project. It is enough for him that he is an emissary of the Sephardic rabbis and sages of the holy city of Jerusalem. . . . And all living around here know that there is a Zionist society in Babylon, that is, Baghdad, and if they donate to it [their donation] will not be given to anyone else. And it is not true that the said Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem, Heaven forbid, intends to extend his hand to what does not belong to him. And it is his custom to do good, not to obstruct, and he never touched Zionist money,

107

01 Chapters.indd 107

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

and all that the person who signed his name “Mekomi” wrote about this—is false.66

Additional rabbis came to the defense of Shrem in this affair.67 From the reply by the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim, also published in that same issue of Do’ar Hayom, it seemed to be completely indifferent to the accusations leveled against Shrem: Baghdad, 23 Ellul 5681 [26 Sept. 1921] Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem, a shadar on behalf of the Sephardic community [of Jerusalem] asked the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim to issue a statement about what was written about him in issue no. 224 of your newspaper. After some deliberation, the Society announces that for its part it does not refer to these things and does not take them into account at all.

This letter could be seen as putting an end to the affair and as evidence of Shrem’s innocence after he had been maliciously drawn against his will into an imbroglio with the Zionists.68 But the episode was not forgotten. It came to the fore again in 1925, during a sharp conflict between the JNF and the Zionist Organization, on the one hand, and the rabbis of Hebron, on the other. The latter leveled severe charges against the Baghdad Zionists, first and foremost among them Aharon Sasson, known as “Hamoreh”—the teacher69—accusing them of misleading Jews in the synagogues by placing there collection boxes bearing the traditional names of yeshivot and communities in the four holy cities in order to use the funds for their own purposes.70 In response to the accusations of the Hebron rabbis, on 24 February 1925 the Central Bureau of the JNF wrote to the Committee of the World Union of Sephardic Jews regarding the denouncements voiced by the rabbis against the JNF and strongly requested that it prevent further attacks of this kind. They demanded that “the rabbis’ attitude toward the JNF be at least like our attitude toward the charitable institutions.” They stressed that “it should not be forgotten that our silence by itself could have caused them [i.e., the rabbis] much greater harm than their attack against the National Fund.”71 To make their meaning clear and create greater pressure, the JNF officials appended copies of letters of complaint sent from Iraq by supporters of Zionism who severely criticized the activities of shadarim in Iraq. Among them was an unsigned letter, dated 18 Av 5683 (31 July 1923), addressed to the Zionist Executive in Eretz Israel that once more repeated the sharp ac108

01 Chapters.indd 108

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

cusations against Rabbi Shrem. Because of its importance, we shall quote it in full: The hakham Rabbi Yosef Shrem of Jerusalem was here two years ago. He stayed with us for some time and then traveled to Persia, going as far as Hamdan. As far as we know, he raised substantial sums using the name of the Zionists. When the [Zionist] society in Baghdad learned of this, it wrote to Do’ar Hayom in order to denounce him for his indecent acts.72 Later, this hakham, by wily stratagems, got an affidavit from various rabbis to the effect that he did not raise money using the name of the Zionists. We ask you, where are the funds that the hakham Yosef Shrem collected in Persia, to what purpose were they collected, and who benefited from them? Secondly, where were those rabbis, who now oppose Zionism, when they heard that funds were being collected for the benefit of the Zionists? It turns out that only because of their opposition to Zionism did they give false evidence. Many people gave [Shrem] their homes and property as an endowment for Eretz Israel, and only later, when the hakham Yosef Shrem sensed that the wickedness of his heart had gone too far, did he set down in writing what he collected for the Sephardim and for himself. With amazement and astonishment [we ask], who is the director in your office who knows nothing of this, and how does he spend his time if such a thing escaped his attention? We have also written to the [Jewish] National Fund.73

The Central Bureau of the JNF, which used this letter as a weapon in its conflict with the Hebron rabbis, added its own reply in order to emphatically demonstrate its own moderation to the Sephardic community. In a letter, dated 24 Tishri 5684 (4 October 1923), to the Baghdad Zionist Society, the Central Bureau in effect returned the ball to that society: We are absolutely unable to prevent emissaries of various charitable institutions in Jerusalem from going to your city to collect monies, and we are unable to investigate [i.e., to verify] whether they were dispatched by those institutions, or whether what they do is of their own accord or not. And it is none of our business to interfere with them in any way. But if they speak ill of the Zionist ideal and its leaders, or of the Jewish National Fund or of Keren Hayessod [another Zionist fund], the Zionists of your city should reprove them 109

01 Chapters.indd 109

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

for their lies and defend the honor of Zionism against them. We suggest that in such matters you turn to the Zionist Organization in Baghdad, which already has some experience in such as this, and it will no doubt strive to solve the conflicts in the best possible manner.

The written documentation does not enable us to judge whether Rabbi Shrem was innocent or guilty of the charges leveled against him. However, in his oral testimony, Salim Gabbay refers to the contradiction between rabbinical emissaries and Zionist envoys, while stressing the religious and traditional aspect of the shadar and his not being guilty of Zionism. Gabbay constructed his story as a short core narrative that developed out of a series of questions and answers:74 Q: I know that shadarim reached you. Yosef Shrem came to Zakho. Do you remember him? A: Yes, I remember him. He was an emissary, [he] came. He used to pray. He had a nice voice. I remember him. He was an emissary, not an emissary of the [Jewish] Agency, but an emissary of [charity] funds. Yes he was in our place. Q: He came to you on several occasions, so I heard. Is that true? A: Yes, three times. Q: Perhaps you know more details about him? Did something special connected with him happen? A: No. He was a decent man, and handsome, a man of standing. The public loved him very much. One time even the governor told my father, “You have a delightful guest; I want you to bring him to me.” He [my father] took [Shrem] to him. He received him well. He, Shrem, had a majestic appearance. They did not think that he was a spy, only that he came to collect donations for the poor. They [the authorities] do not consider that being a spy.75

From this story, we learn of Shrem’s presence as a shadar in Zakho, his pleasant voice and impressive appearance, his personal traits such as being “a man of standing” and “a decent man,” and that he was “an emissary of [charity] funds.” All these single him out as a rabbinical emissary, not one on behalf of the Zionists (i.e., the Jewish Agency). His positive image was enhanced because of the good impression he made on the Muslim governor, who hosted

110

01 Chapters.indd 110

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

him at his own initiative and did not consider him a menacing stranger; that is, he was not suspected of being a Zionist spy. This episode is important because it illuminates the new situation in Iraq after World War I. As noted, the shadarim now had to compete with the many emissaries from Eretz Israel who came to collect contributions for their institutions, and also with Zionist activity, which was given a new impetus. From what we can learn about the Shrem affair, the situation grew more intense with the passing years. Those involved were the institutions that dispatched the shadarim, rabbis from Eretz Israel and Iraq, and adherents of Zionism in Iraq. It is quite certain that he was not guilty of Zionism; that is why rabbis in Iraq supported Shrem in his controversy with the Zionists. While the Zionist Society in Baghdad came out openly on his side in his conflict with the Committee of the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem, it still kept the letters critical of Shrem in its files to be used, if necessary. There is little documentation of Shrem’s activity in Zakho. In a writ of shadarut he was issued in 1912, Zakho is explicitly mentioned for the first time.76 The next evidence is the record book of his mission, “Balance of Income for the Sephardic Community in the Holy City of Jerusalem” for 1929. The record book includes details of donations he received in Iraq and Kurdistan. Communal leaders and individuals who made private donations added their signatures next to the sums recorded. On one page of the record book are the sums raised in Zakho, totaling 622 rupees, accompanied by signatures of the communal leaders.77 When compared with contributions from other communities in Kurdistan, that of Zakho was relatively large, reflecting both that community’s religious affiliation with Eretz Israel and the personal success of Shrem.78 From the oral testimonies, we learned that Shrem was also the recipient of generous donations from the community of Arbil, and he coined an aphorism that combined the names Arbil and Zakho. It was a homily on the passage in Job 3:13: “For now I would be lying in repose, asleep and at rest.” The relative passage is “yashanti az,” with the latter word comprising the two Hebrew letters aleph and zayin, which are also the first letters of Arbil and Zakho. The generosity of those communities gave him “repose.” This was corroborated in the testimonies of Nehemiah Hocha and ‘Amram Levi.79 Whereas Shrem found “repose” in Arbil and Zakho, this was not to be his lot when back in Eretz Israel, where confidence in him was undermined. Zakho is mentioned twice in harsh and painful correspondence between Yosef Hayyim Shrem and his son, Yom Tov, and the Committee of the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem as the result of a confrontation between 111

01 Chapters.indd 111

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

them that erupted late in 1928. When in Baghdad a few months after he had set out from Jerusalem, Shrem received a letter from the committee in which he was asked to forward the sums he had collected and to inform them when he intended to return home. Deeply offended by the letter, Shrem saw it as an expression of a lack of confidence in him. He replied in a lengthy letter dated 8 Teveth 5689 (21 December 1928). Heartbroken, Shrem detailed his efforts as a shadar since his first mission in 1882 and described the many difficulties and much suffering he had experienced, noting, “I am in your hands.”80 In the letter, he details his lengthy involvement in raising funds, how at times other shadarim preceded him and forced him to wait until the charity boxes were filled again, the dangers and suffering that were part of these long missions, and that even after his return to Eretz Israel he finds no repose because he is being persecuted and other persons covet his achievements. About his own condition and that of his family he wrote, “I am surrounded by several souls, all of them poor.” Despite this letter, members of the Committee of the Sephardic Community stepped up their public attack against Shrem. In its “Statement” published in Do’ar Hayom on 21 May 1930 and addressed to the heads of communities in Syria, Aram Naharaim, India, and China, the committee states that Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem had gone abroad a few years ago and it knows nothing of his whereabouts and of the donations he collected for the poor of Jerusalem. Therefore, it warns the communities not to give him any donations and asks them to inform the committee as to his whereabouts. The emissary’s son, Yom Tov Shrem, replied to this insulting statement in a letter to the committee that was published in Do’ar Hayom the next day, 22 May. Among the other arguments he raised, Yom Tov pointed to the 1929 Arab riots in Palestine, which also had a detrimental influence on Iraq and proved a great obstacle to his father’s efforts. As but one example, he mentioned the community of Zakho: It has also happened, due to our many iniquities [a figure of speech—H.G.], that the disturbances in our holy land and the agitations have had such a bad influence on all of Aram Naharaim [i.e., Mesopotamia] and its vicinity, so much so that my father had to hide and disguise himself in different clothing so that he would not be recognized in the streets by the masses of Arabs there as an emissary from the Holy Land. And, as you well know, our brethren in the city of Zakho published a strong warning [to this effect] some time ago in Do’ar Hayom,81 and this [situation] is what forced him recently to leave Aram Naharaim altogether.82 112

01 Chapters.indd 112

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

Zakho was also mentioned in “An Open Letter to the Committee of the Sephardim” that Shrem made public about two month later (Do’ar Hayom, 25 July 1930), in which he angrily retaliated against what had been written about him. It was later reprinted as a broadsheet under the title “Open and Wretched Deceit” and circulated publicly. The letter goes into great detail regarding the activity of Shrem as an emissary in countries of the Levant and the slanderous accusations and acts of discrimination against him by those who sent him on his mission. He enumerated all the sums that he had sent to the arrogant committee in Jerusalem from donations made in India, Syria, and Iraq, including specific mention of Zakho: “From the city of Zakho I sent 30 Ottoman Liras.” The dispute between Shrem and the Committee of the Sephardic Community ended in compromise and a shetar pitturim (a bill of release, freeing the emissary from every liability imposed upon him by his senders) he received on 8 August 1932. This document stated that he had traveled to “the countries of Arabistan, Kurdistan, Iraq and so forth and has now returned and handed over to us the account books: accounts of income received from the alms and donations he collected from our brethren in those countries for our community, and the accounts of expenses he incurred during these missions. . . . All outstanding accounts between us until this day have been settled.”83 Only a few months later, at the beginning of 1933, Shrem was once again asked to set out on a fund-raising mission for the Committee of the Sephardic Community to the cities of “Syria and its environs, the cities of Babylon, Aram Naharaim, Iraq and their surroundings, [and the] cities of India and Indochina.”84 He was especially charged with settlement of a dispute that had arisen between the Committee of the Babylonian (i.e., Iraqi) Community in Jerusalem and the Committee of the Sephardic Community, the outcome of which was that funds were no longer forthcoming from Baghdad to the Sephardic Community, but only to the former committee.85 Two documents from this mission testify to Shrem’s being in Zakho. The first is a letter written in 1932 by the hakham bashi of Zakho, Rabbi Ya‘akov Nahum Babbika,86 to the Committee of the Sephardic Community. Written in the first-person plural, the letter certifies that Shrem was in Zakho, that “he gave us joy more than all the money in the world,” and that “in the matter of the charities, alms, and shekels for which you said we were responsible, thank God they are in place, kept until Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem arrived, may the Lord have mercy [upon us]. Peace upon you.”87 A second instance testifying to Shrem’s presence in Zakho is a letter, dated 10 July 1933, sent by the secretary of the Committee of the Sephardic 113

01 Chapters.indd 113

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

Community of Jerusalem to Rabbi Ya‘akov Elia (i.e., Ya‘akov Nahum Babbika) and Moshe Gabbay in Zakho: It has been some time since an emissary of our community has come to visit your holy camp [i.e., community] in order to collect the monies of the charities, shekels, and vows for the upkeep of the thousands of poor and indigent among the residents of Jerusalem . . . and now we have begged our honorable friend . . . Rabbi Yosef Haim Shrem . . . who only barely acceded to our request to set out on the difficult journey to carry out this difficult task. And therefore we ask you to please hand over to him all the monies of the charities, donations, shekels, and so forth.88

True, this letter contradicts the previous one noting that Shrem had been in Zakho a bit earlier, in 1932, and had collected the monies. It may be that this was a form letter to inform communities in Iraq of the impending arrival of shadarim, to which names were added in the opening salutation so as to give it a more personal touch. There is no evidence confirming that Shrem did indeed visit Zakho again in 1933. The letter notes that only with difficulty did the committee persuade Shrem to set out once again on a journey to collect funds. That sentence may have been a stratagem to encourage more generous donations; on the other hand, it may truly reflect the difficulty involved in persuading him to undertake another mission at the age of eighty-two. Based on this scant documentation, we can say that Shrem visited Zakho three or four times: in 1929 (according to the financial accounts in his record book), in 1930 (based on the donations of 30 Ottoman Liras), in 1932 (the letter from Ya‘akov Nahum), and perhaps once again in 1933 (according to the letter of 10 July). From the oral testimonies of former Zakho Jews, Shrem visited Zakho at least three times before and after World War I, but they could not provide the dates.89 If we combine the written and oral evidence, it seems that during his missions Shrem wanted to reach Zakho, visiting it gave him much satisfaction, and indeed he did so on several occasions during the first three decades of the twentieth century.

“He Used to Speak Our Language” The shadar Ya‘akov Hayyim Shrem holds a central position in the collective memory of Zakho Jewry. Rahamim Cohen: Truly, Shrem was a pleasant person. Our entire community used to receive him with much honor, like a member of the family. He 114

01 Chapters.indd 114

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

used to dress [in ceremonial garb] and praise our city that honors a hakham, honors him. When a shadar came to us, a distinguished man, he used to come to the home of the gabbay and then the entire community would come there. They sat with him, heard Torah from his lips, and would show him respect. They would arrange a feast—drink arak, bring mazza [i.e., appetizers], grilled meat, kebab [grilled minced meat], etc. As for Shrem, he was very much accepted. . . . After World War I, he came once more to our city, He had not as yet returned to Jerusalem. He came from Baghdad. . . . At that time, he had a problem, some kind of sore that healed only with difficulty. We gave him some more [donations]. When I came to Eretz Israel in 1934, he was alive. I visited him in his quarter, in Mahaneh Yehudah, . . . I saw him. He used to speak our language, in our dialect. He had learnt it. He visited us many times and was always welcome.90

Other testimonies too, such as those of Salim Gabbay and Shmuel Baruch, support Rahamim Cohen’s description of Shrem as a pleasant person who was much welcomed by the community and respectfully received, and that warm relations with him continued after my interviewees immigrated to Eretz Israel and took up residence in the Mahaneh Yehudah Quarter in Jerusalem.91 Rahamim Cohen added an interesting fact supporting the written information we have about Shrem’s capabilities: he knew Kurdish, and even spoke “in our dialect.” That may explain why the community in Zakho considered him “a member of the family.” Shrem was highly admired, and his repeated visits seem to have reinforced the positive impression he left on the community. Thus, Shrem may have unconsciously encouraged a greater affinity of Zakho’s Jews for Eretz Israel and their aliyah to that land. This can be understood between the lines of Rabbi Shmuel Baruch’s narrative: Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem came to Zakho three times. He came from Jerusalem. The first time I was young and did not make his acquaintance. The second time I was a young boy. He came once more to collect money for the kollel,92 the Sephardic yeshivot, and the Committee of the Sephardim here in Jerusalem. They used to send emissaries from here. Hebron, too, sent emissaries, as did Tiberias. Shrem came to us. He had a nice, pleasant voice. After I was married, he came a third time. He said, “I was asleep and at rest”; that is a verse from the Psalms.93 Alef Zayin [are two letters standing for] 115

01 Chapters.indd 115

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

Arbil-Zakho: “These are two places that much respect me, I have much pleasure from them,” [he said]. He had a sense of humor. During the third time [i.e., visit] he was old and limping. I said to him, “Esteemed rabbi, brave as a lion, and now what happened?” He said to me, “Old age—my feet are on level ground.”94 . . . After I came to Jerusalem I went to his home. He passed away after I was taught ritual slaughtering.95

There is more to this short memory narrative than meets the eye, both overtly and covertly. On the overt level is a combination of historical fact and autobiographical details as they appear to the mind of the narrator. Shmuel Baruch also lends support to other motifs that appeared in the narratives of other interviewees. However, he added that Shrem had a sense of humor, a trait that was certainly favorable for his mission and helpful in relations with members of the community. From the story, it seems that the narrator too was blessed with this trait, and the impression gained is that they enjoyed a good mutual relationship. In addition, Baruch added some autobiographical details that are associated with his meetings with Shrem. Though his narrative does not include any truly dramatic element, it is constructed around a covert confrontation between two generations—that of the elderly shadar whose health was impaired and the youthful and dynamic Shmuel Baruch, who in time would become one of the leaders of the Zakho community in Jerusalem and was actively involved especially in encouraging the immigration of Kurdish Jews to Eretz Israel and their absorption.96 Baruch’s narrative is constructed on the principle of the contrast between the two protagonists while creating a sense of equality and reconciliation between them. He associated Shrem’s three visits to Zakho with three important periods in his own life: childhood, youth, and marriage. From this, we learn of a lengthy acquaintance with Shrem, and it is logical to assume that the emissary influenced the younger man. The periods in life are presented in obverse biological order: the declining physical strength of the shadar is contrasted to the increasing physical and spiritual powers of Baruch. The fourth period in the life of the narrator, in which he immigrated to Eretz Israel and became a ritual slaughterer, is also contrasted with that of Shrem, whose demise is mentioned laconically. As noted, this polarity created a sense of a clash of generations in which the energetic young man replaced the tired old man. And, indeed, the process of Shrem’s influence on and tutorship of Baruch was completed with the latter’s aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1925, a few years after he last met the shadar on Kurdish soil.

116

01 Chapters.indd 116

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

There was an honorable balance in the dialogue between Shmuel Baruch and the shadar Yosef Hayyim Shrem because both had an excellent command of the Hebrew sources. Shmuel Baruch, himself a rabbi and descended from a long line of rabbis,97 could treat Shrem as an equal in this sphere and with a sense of spiritual affinity, and in this he is a quasi continuator of the shadar. The intergenerational transfer of authority was completed in 1927, when Shmuel Baruch, together with his brother-in-law, returned to Zakho as emissaries charged with bringing the tidings of Eretz Israel to communities in Kurdistan and collecting donations for the establishment of a Committee of Kurdish Jews in Jerusalem.98

Ya‘akov Lubaton: “We Yearned for Such a Shadar to Come and Teach Us Torah” According to Shmuel Baruch, “All roads were closed during World War I. After the English conquest, shadarim once again came to us. The first to come then was Lubaton.”99 Ya‘akov Lubaton arrived in Zakho from Eretz Israel in 1922. Unlike Shrem, who was in Iraq during the war years and had visited Zakho before and after World War I, Lubaton set out on his mission after momentous changes in Eretz Israel.100 Lubaton’s mission was influenced by the new postwar conditions. Like other rabbinical emissaries who initially followed the pattern of the classic shadarim, Lubaton had to contend with the Zionist movement that began its activity in Iraq after the war. Apparently, he was the most “Zionist” of all the emissaries. Changes undergone by the Zakho community also influenced his efforts: after surviving the period of Ottoman rule and the harsh war years, the community now opened up to the outer world, in part thanks to the shadarim themselves. However, it should be noted that relations between Lubaton and the Jews of Zakho were complex and had their pitfalls. The Lubatons appear in the list of Sephardic families living in Tiberias since the nineteenth century, but Ya‘akov Lubaton is not recorded among the shadarim from that city.101 Written records about him are limited to a few documents placed at my disposal by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Sol Lubaton. The most important among them is the writ, issued in 1921, appointing him a shadar on behalf of the General Committee of the Sephardic Jews in Tiberias. Zakho was mentioned there among the communities that he was to visit. The other documents include a letter of recommendation from the general committee requesting that donations be given to the bearer, his certificate as a shohet, and a document from 1945 confirming that he had 117

01 Chapters.indd 117

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Writ of recommendation of the shadar (religious emissary) Ya‘akov Lubaton. Courtesy of Sol Lubaton.

01 Chapters.indd 118

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

bought a cemetery plot for his wife Ma‘atuka. Rabbi Shmuel Baruch gave me his own certificate as a shohet that Lubaton had issued him when he came to Zakho in 1922. In comparison with the few documents, important in their own right even if not containing significant information about his activity as a shadar, Lubaton figures frequently in the interviews I conducted with former members of the Zakho community and with their descendants who had not known him personally. His image left its mark on the oral tradition of Zakho Jews.102 I was fortunately able to add another layer of information about him when I traced and interviewed Lubaton’s daughter, Zohara Levi, who provided important family and personal insights about her father.103 Ya‘akov Lubaton was born in Tiberias in 1874 and passed away in 1954. His actual family name was Lebaton, but his writ of appointment as a shadar bears the name Lubaton and that is what he was called by the interviewees. He was an emissary of the yeshivah of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. At the age of fifty, he ceased being a shadar and served in Tiberias as shohet, teacher, and mohel. His connection with the yeshivah of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes continued unabated throughout his life, and he used to go there every day. His first visit to Zakho, as mentioned, was in 1922. According to the information supplied by my interviewees, he apparently went to that city on three occasions.104 The complex relationship between Lubaton and the Jews of Zakho was apparently influenced by the spirit of the times. In the absence of written documentation, this relationship can be examined from three perspectives: (a) narratives by interviewees who were former residents of Zakho, (b) stories about anonymous emissaries that were attributed to Lubaton, and (c) the narrative by his daughter, Zohara. The oral tradition relating to Lubaton, which shaped his image, maintains that people in Zakho were overjoyed at his coming and offered him a warm welcome befitting the first emissary to reach the city after the war. He was not only the first, but also came in the name of the yeshivah in Tiberias that bore the name of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al HaNes, who, as we have seen, was held in high esteem by Kurdish Jews. However, it turns out that relations between this shadar and the community were not of one cloth; in fact, they reflect a spectrum of feelings from declarations of esteem and respect to sharp criticism, whether overt or covert. From the narratives, we learn that criticism of Lubaton was aroused by his extending his stay in Zakho to two months, all this time enjoying the honor and generous hospitality bestowed upon him, whereas other shadarim used to remain in the city for up to two weeks at most. Furthermore, like other emissaries, Lubaton instructed ritual slaughterers during his stay, but, 119

01 Chapters.indd 119

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

unlike them, he demanded and received a large sum for his efforts—this at a time when the community was in difficult straits due to the war and the immediate postwar period. Regretfully, former Zakho Jews were also much hurt by Lubaton, who ignored them when they met again in Eretz Israel. Rahamim Cohen, who claims to have accompanied Lubaton in Zakho and helped him raise funds, had several stories to tell about him. In the first three, he presented the shadar in the most positive manner: When I was young, a little later came Hakham Lubaton from Tiberias. Hakham Lubaton came to our city more or less before the Passover. He told us [that] he came by wagon from Aleppo, from Damascus, and on the way Arabs tried to kill him. He cried out,

Ya‘akov Lubaton and his wife, Ma‘atukah. Courtesy of Sol Lubaton. 120

01 Chapters.indd 120

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

“Lord, save me!” We yearned for such a shadar to come and teach us Torah, so he stayed a long time: [from] Passover he remained with us until the fourteenth of Iyyar [when] we light a bonfire in honor of Rabbi Meir. He arranged the celebration there: candles, figs, Rabbi Shim‘on, Rabbi Akiva.105

Cohen’s positive attitude also came through clearly in two other stories that resulted from my questions. I asked Rahamim if Lubaton remained in Zakho to collect more contributions or because he especially enjoyed the way he was hosted and treated during his stay. He replied,

121

01 Chapters.indd 121

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

He felt good. People would show him respect. Every day he ate good meals. In his home [in Tiberias], there was not such food, and [in Zakho] all would honor him, take him out to the vineyards and the fields. I brought him to my home. We all showed him respect. Once we took him—we put him on a mule—to where a river flows. We sat by the river, in the springtime, after Passover. Nice grass, nice water, we held a party there—like in a hall, some fifty or sixty people with him. We brought him [there] at a late hour. That night we remained, we made merry, [and then] brought him to the house [in which he stayed]. So how could he not feel good?

Rahamim told another story, as well: “Once we went, we—me and my friend Hakham Rahamim Uziel, [and] Hakham Shmuel Baruch, who was a client of mine—three or four people, we took [Lubaton] to a vineyard. There were vineyards belonging to Arabs. They knew us and respected us. We went there, slaughtered a chicken, grilled it over a fire, drank arak, ate, and made merry. He enjoyed this.”106 In the first story, the narrator, then a young host, told about Lubaton’s dangerous journey by wagon from Syria, risking his life for the Jews of Zakho, who “yearned for such a shadar to come and teach us Torah.” In addition, Lubaton was actively involved in preparing the joyful celebration in honor of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. In other words, the important emissary from Eretz Israel, representing the yeshivah in Tiberias named for Meir Ba‘al HaNes, was also a most important religious mentor. Thus, his lengthy sojourn in Zakho was interpreted as responding to the needs of the community. The other two short narratives also inform us of the respect and esteem with which the hosts received their guest and teach us something about social life in Zakho—how people spent their free time under local conditions in the springtime—this in contrast to what is customary in Israel (celebrating in a hall, for example). The stories also describe peaceful and honorable relations between Jews and Arabs, in whose vineyards the picnic was held. Here, however, the interview took a turn. Apparently, Rahamim Cohen’s self-confidence increased as it progressed, and his favorable view of the shadar became more reserved and increasingly critical in each of the additional interviews with him that I conducted. His replies to my questions turned into a lengthy personal memory narrative about Lubaton’s involvement with the shohatim in Zakho and the imparting of the religious rulings governing ritual slaughtering:

122

01 Chapters.indd 122

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

Q: I want to return to the subject of the emissaries, the shadarim. I heard about the shadar Ya‘akov Lubaton, who tested the ritual slaughterers in Zakho and certified them. Do you remember that? A: Ah, yes, I forgot to tell you about that. I should have told you. By the way, there was a pious hakham, Yitzhak Cohen [a highly esteemed religious figure in Zakho]. He used to eat meat slaughtered by shohatim. He had [his own] shohatim. Then he [Yitzhak Cohen] came to this hakham, Lubaton, and it turned out that Lubaton was a shohet; he showed us his certificate, and he had a book of rulings [on ritual slaughtering]. . . . He [Yitzhak Cohen] said, “I would like you to examine our shohatim, [to see] if they are really good.” . . . Then he [Lubaton] would inspect their knife. He complained, saying, “Their knives are no good. They should sit, if they are interested, and I will teach them how to whet a knife.” Some confessed [that he was right]; others did not. At that time, there were five people [i.e., shohatim]. He said, “Each one will pay 100 rupees.” One hundred rupees; five persons, five hundred rupees. They produced the money on the spot and gave it to him. Q: Is that a lot of money? A: Oh! Certainly. So I loaned them [money]. There were five men. Two of them had money of their own. Three of them did not have money, and I loaned [each of ] them one hundred rupees. Then he taught them, confirmed them, gave them certificates [as ritual slaughterers], took the money, went, and left. Q: Who were the five who learned ritual slaughtering with the shadar Ya‘akov Lubaton? A: One was Hakham Shim‘on [i.e., Shmuel] Baruch, one was the Hakham Rahamim I told you about, one was Hakham Menahem, who has passed away, and one Hakham Nahum, the father of the owner of the City Tower [in Jerusalem]. . . . So those paid. Q: Was Haviv ‘Alwan among them? A: No, no. Haviv was still fresh [i.e., a young boy]; he learnt ritual slaughtering from my friend, Hakham Rahamim. . . . So [Lubaton] trained them, confirmed them, and left. Meanwhile, there was a feud in the city with these shohatim and also with other shohatim from another village who encroached upon their territory [of the local ones]. One of them, Hakham Menahem, 123

01 Chapters.indd 123

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

chased after Hakham Ya‘akov Lubaton. He [Lubaton] was in Dohuk. He chased after him on foot and said to him, “Give me the one hundred rupees. I want them.” He chased after him, and he [Lubaton] returned to him one hundred rupees. Why? He saw that he was poor, had no work, and could not repay Cohen [Rahamim Cohen, the narrator of this story, who loaned him the money]. “I owe him.” He returned [the sum]. Q: Why did this hakham do this to Ya‘akov Lubaton? Was it only because he did not have money to repay his debt to you? A: Yes. He would slaughter an animal for a few pennies and sell some parts [of the animal]. . . . Then he could fulfill [his obligation; i.e., repay the debt to the narrator]. He said he had no prospect of earning, of working, so how would he pay? He got it [the sum] back [from Lubaton]. That was Hakham Menahem.107

From this testimony, the shadar instructed the shohatim at the request of the pious Hakham Yitzhak Cohen. That is why Rahamim Cohen related this episode in an objective, neutral manner. The fact that Lubaton returned the money paid by Hakham Menahem seemingly stands to his credit. However, when we repeatedly returned to the issue of money, and when Rahamim provided a detailed report of the sums paid Lubaton—one hundred rupees by each shohet and five hundred in all—one can sense a highly critical tone because of the difficult financial condition of three of the five who needed a loan in order to pay. One of them, whose livelihood was undermined by shohatim from another village, even chased the shadar all the way to Dohuk to get his money back and succeeded in doing so. When I asked Rahamim if this was a large sum, his reply was “Oh! Certainly.” This added weight to the feeling that the shadar had not acted properly when he asked for payment; his behavior can perhaps be viewed as being actually even more serious—as avarice. The episode of Lubaton’s instructing the shohatim and his extended stay in Zakho plays an important role in the collective memory of that community’s Jews. However, Rabbi Shmuel Baruch, unlike Rahamim Cohen, emphasized its positive aspects. He began with a concise description of Lubaton’s visit to Zakho: “After the English conquered Iraq, the emissary Ya‘akov Lubaton of Tiberias came to us. He remained with us for two months. He saw how we conducted our ritual slaughtering. He reaffirmed the certificates of all the shohatim who produced documents. He remained for two months. He came on behalf of the yeshivah of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes.”108 In reply

124

01 Chapters.indd 124

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

to another of my questions, he repeated the basic elements of the story, adding details that turned it into a real narrative: Lubaton was a hakham from Eretz Israel. The public asked him to check if the shohatim were in order, if we were not eating food that was not kosher. He came to us after the British conquest and remained for two months. He taught us the laws of shehitah [ritual slaughter] and examined us, and told the public, “Don’t worry, these are good shohatim.” Before that, the public had said to him, “Emissary, hakham from Eretz Israel, we ask that you examine our shohatim [to see] if they are alright or not, if they are not feeding us nonkosher food.” The members of our community were observant of religion and tradition, did not desecrate the Sabbath, and were punctilious about observing the commandments. So Lubaton checked [our knowledge] of religious laws [pertaining to shehitah], how we prepared the knives and used them. Finally, when he saw that we were well trained, that we were alright, he confirmed our certificates.

This narrative provides an explanation for the relationship that developed between the emissary and the community. Members of the community saw Lubaton, the first shadar who came to them since the end of the war, as evidence of “normalization” and of new connections with the outside, particularly the Jewish world. Zakho’s Jews expressed a yearning for knowledge in religious matters, wanting to feel certain that they were observing the halakhah, and this Lubaton provided to their fullest satisfaction. After the story’s opening orientation statement, which established its time, place, and protagonists, it took a more complex turn by relating the community’s doubts as to whether the ritually slaughtered meat it consumed was kosher. It can be surmised that a sort of revolt arose upon the arrival of the shadar, considered the highest halakhic authority because of his being “a hakham from Eretz Israel.” Lubaton, who intervened in the dispute only after explicitly being requested to do so by the community, allayed their doubts, reaffirmed the certificates of the local shohatim, calmed the situation, and appeared as a mediator and peacemaker for a public that was uncertain how to relate to the persons performing religious functions. From this narrative, we also learn of the relationship between the shadar and the narrator, and the long-standing influence of the former on the lat125

01 Chapters.indd 125

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

ter. My first interview of Shmuel Baruch was conducted in 1987. When I interviewed him once again in 1994, he repeated the principal elements in his previous testimony, thus confirming the episode’s historical veracity. Shmuel Baruch immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1925, bringing with him his certificate as a shohet, signed by Lubaton in 1922. As a professional and authorized ritual slaughterer, his absorption in the new country was facilitated, enabling him to earn a good livelihood and become one of the leaders of the community of Kurdish Jews in Jerusalem. This explains the conciliatory tone in which he related this episode and the gesticulations that accompanied his testimony. Haviv ‘Alwan provided a different description of the Lubaton episode in his story, treating it from a more distant, objective perspective, and perhaps also with some reservation: A shadar came to Zakho from Tiberias. His name is Ya‘akov Lubaton, Rabbi Ya‘akov Lubaton. He came from Tiberias to raise money for the yeshivah [named after] Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. Of course, the sum he would collect would be split. He would keep perhaps 50 percent for himself. Who knows how much was supposed to be his? Every emissary would stay in Zakho for a week, two weeks, perhaps three weeks. He stayed for two months. Why? He examined the shohatim of Zakho and didn’t like what he saw. He began to teach them once again the shehitah customary here [in Eretz Israel] and received payment from them. So he remained for two months. Meanwhile, the public there treated him with honor. It was customary to treat emissaries with much honor. Then he left and was away for a year, and came once again to Zakho. He remained a week or two in Zakho. Then he came here [to Eretz Israel]. That was Ya‘akov Lubaton.109

This personal memory narrative was related entirely in the third person, the “other,” and bears a tone of covert criticism of the shadar. It emphasizes the issue of Lubaton’s share in the money collected and the payment he charged for instructing shohatim. It also points to his lengthy stay in the city—two months—and his return after only one year. In contrast to his view of Lubaton, the narrator portrays the community positively because it treated shadarim with respect and honor. This contrast made even more conspicuous the undertone of criticism of the shadar, who overly exploited the great esteem with which the community generally treated emissaries from Eretz Israel. Haviv ‘Alwan’s intonation and facial gestures, communicating 126

01 Chapters.indd 126

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

an ironic and caustic undertone, left no room for doubt that he was critical of Lubaton. Criticism of Lubaton became more intense in the story related by Salim Gabbay, the son of the head of the community, whose home hosted the shadarim: “Yes, he visited us three times. He was in our home. Once he came and said, ‘What a rest home!’ We treated him with much honor, and he returned for a second time. On the third visit, he said, ‘Your shehitah is not kosher.’ Our shehitah is kosher, but not exactly according to the [halakhic] law. He came and taught them [the shohatim] and also took payment. Yes, he came to us three times and they treated him with honor.”110 In this story, criticism of Lubaton became more heated. It emphasized the repeated visits of the shadar to Zakho—that he came three times was mentioned twice in this short passage. What stands out is a feeling that Lubaton exploited the hospitality tendered him, exemplified in the phrase the narrator attributed to the emissary: “What a rest home!” More than any of the other narratives, Gabbay’s confirmed Lubaton’s avarice and added another biting remark absent from them—that examination of the practice of the shohatim came at the initiative of Lubaton, who maintained, “Your shehitah is not kosher.” Rahamim Cohen, the shadar’s companion during his stay, who provided only a brief description of Lubaton’s visit to Zakho, supplemented his testimony with open and sharp criticism of his relations with the emissary in Eretz Israel: I was very very close to Hakham Ya‘akov Lubaton. When I came to Eretz Israel, by chance I traveled to Tiberias because I had some work [to do] there. I went to him, I visited him. He offered me a glass of wine. I hosted a dinner for him, with ten, fifteen, twenty people. Believe me, during Passover, during the seder, I held a feast for him in my home. Altogether we were a group of sixty people. There were many people. I was a representative of the [Kurdish] community. I invited them to my house. We sat on the ground [i.e., floor]; there were carpets and pillows, and [low] tables, believe me, of copper. One here, one there, in three or four rooms. On them were grilled meat, kebab, fruits, mazza, almonds, sweets, arak, chicken soup—a rich meal. I took him there, to the vineyard. But when I was his guest, he barely gave me a glass of wine. And there is another problem, but that is their nature [of the shadarim]: they think that honor accrues [only] to them. With us, it is different. Honor me with an eye, I will honor you with seven eyes. That is their nature.111 127

01 Chapters.indd 127

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

This biting criticism was directed at the ingratitude of the shadar vis-à-vis those who helped him in Zakho and against all emissaries from Eretz Israel. Rahamim Cohen built his narrative around the contrasting behavior and supported it by intonation and gestures. Though he was “very very close” to Lubaton, the latter reciprocated by hosting him disparagingly, with a small glass of wine as compared with the magnificent feast prepared by Rahamim, to which he invited the entire community, whereas in Tiberias their encounter had been pathetic. This was an imbroglio that could not be settled, as intimated by the closing sentences of Rahamim’s testimony. Rahamim Cohen’s second story expressed sharp criticism of Lubaton’s ingratitude toward the head of the community in Zakho: Moshe Gabbay. It was related associatively when I asked him if Lubaton made a return visit to Zakho: “He came another time, he came another time, earlier he was in Persia, he came another time for himself. He was once in our [city], then went to Persia and came back, reached Persia and then returned once again to Zakho in the winter. And that year I returned [from a short stay in Eretz Israel] that year, in 1923–24. I returned and came to see him there. He was at Moshe Gabbay’s.”112 I then asked Rahamim whether Lubaton generally stayed with Moshe Gabbay, to which he replied at length: Yes. He [Gabbay] was the treasurer of the charitable fund. So he [Lubaton] returned from Persia, came to Zakho, and remained. Then I came to him and told him, “I was in Jerusalem.” . . . He said, “Why did you come back? Why did you come back?” I said, “The work did not suit me. I couldn’t go on.” After that, after five years, he came, visited [Iraq], but did not reach Zakho. He came to Mosul. Moshe Gabbay was in Mosul and met him there. He [Lubaton] said to him, “I want to come to Zakho, not as a shadar, but in my private capacity, private capacity.” He [Gabbay] told him, “Don’t come, don’t come to Zakho, I advise you, do not come to visit!” I don’t know, perhaps there is some secret. He didn’t want him to visit any more and told him, “It is not worthwhile.” Why? Once there came a Zionist hakham [i.e., one with Zionist inclinations]. The police, the governor came to the proprietor of the house [i.e., the host]: “Send him back, he must go, so there will be no problems.” There was already Zionist hatred [i.e., hatred of Zionism]. It had entered the minds of the Arabs, and he [Moshe Gabbay] did not want anything to happen again. When I was in his home [in Tiberias, after 1934], he [Lubaton] complained to me about Moshe Gabbay. He said . . . , no, I will not tell you the word he used in relation to 128

01 Chapters.indd 128

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

[Moshe Gabbay], because that is calumny, not good. . . . Why? A man should not be ungrateful if [someone] served him, God hears every word, and one must believe in the Lord. So there was a complaint there, but I will not repeat it.

The thrust of this story is Rahamim Cohen’s attempt to find an excuse to explain why Moshe Gabbay was opposed to a third visit by the shadar. Lubaton wanted to come for a third time to Zakho to raise money for himself, a legitimate request for emissaries from Eretz Israel113 that indicated he had felt good on his previous visits. Rahamim, who wanted to avoid calumny, let the spirit of the times color his story and grasped at the fear of hosting a shadar from Eretz Israel at a time when in Iraq there was growing hostility to Zionism. To this end, he provided us with skeletal information about an emissary who had been in Zakho and was expelled by the authorities. But Rahamim apparently had doubts about this when he said, “I don’t know, perhaps there is some secret.” This vagueness only lends support to the sharp criticism of Lubaton because of his ingratitude toward Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community, when he used a word in relation to him that could be considered calumny. Salim Gabbay, Moshe’s son, was more straightforward: “He [Lubaton] came two or three times. He came three times. I think that then he wanted to come once again. Then [my father] said, ‘We have given you enough contributions.’ It could be that he gave him something there [i.e., in Mosul] so that he would not come.”114 This seems to have been the attitude of most of the interviewees, with the exception of Shmuel Baruch, toward Lubaton. The shadar had apparently become loathsome to the community. He did not understand their difficult economic condition, made light of its people, and exploited their naïveté. Thus did negative feelings sink into the collective memory of members of the Zakho community that were expressed only years later—feelings that centered on Lubaton’s exploitation of their hospitality and his tendency to take money for himself, which they interpreted as avarice.

Stories about Shadarim Attributed to Ya‘akov Lubaton Jews from Zakho told me many stories about shadarim without mentioning them by name. These stories reflect great polarity in the attitude toward rabbinical emissaries. On the whole, the interviewees positively portrayed the figure of a classical shadar who was a pious man and highly esteemed. In those stories that reported a negative type of shadar, he is presented as an imposter or a cheat, and the narrators in this case felt more comfortable 129

01 Chapters.indd 129

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

about censuring them because of the anonymity of the emissaries.115 Some of these negative stories either were attributed to Lubaton or mentioned him by name. Julia Dekel, who emigrated from Zakho in 1923 related a core narrative about a shadar from Tiberias who took for his own use a carpet donated for the yeshivah of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. In reply to a question, she said, “Yes. To one of them [the emissaries] they gave a big carpet! We told him, ‘Take it, put it [at the tomb of ] the holy men such as Rabbi Meir Ba‘al HaNes in Tiberias.’ He was an emissary from Tiberias, I don’t remember his name. And when they went to his home, they saw the carpet in his room.”116 ‘Amram Levi, who was a cantor and a teacher in the heder that functioned in the synagogue, told us an informative story: “Ya‘akov Lubaton was with us for two months. My father would travel with him to the villages. Then he returned. He stayed for two months. They gave him donations of carpets. In Eretz Israel, we went to visit him in his home in Tiberias. He received us, but not so much in the manner that we received him [in Zakho].”117 Lubaton apparently was the only emissary from Tiberias to reach Zakho; from the stories recorded, we learn that he visited that city a year or two before Julia Dekel immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1923. ‘Amram Levi referred to Lubaton by name, but did not say that the carpets he received were earmarked for the yeshivah in Tiberias or that later they were seen in Lubaton’s home. However, his story does fit in well with the testimony of Rahamim Cohen about the parsimonious manner in which the shadar received former Zakho Jews in his Tiberias home.118 Nehemiah Hocha, born in 1927, was a cantor who dispensed spells, amulets, and segulot (special remedies) for a variety of ills. In his narrative, he stressed that he knew of shadarim in Zakho only from hearsay. He related that he had heard about two emissaries who were cheats and exploited the naïveté of villagers near Zakho for their own benefit: They say that there were villages around Zakho that had only a few Jews, perhaps only a few families. The Jews there were not learned in the Torah. They made their livelihood in commerce. They generally sold [felled] trees, making very little profit and living sparingly. They tell about a certain shadar from Eretz Israel who went to a certain village. He said to them, “I came to ask for donations for the fund-raising campaigns.” They told him, “We don’t give every day; only on Yom Kippur do we give a donation. We don’t have money now.” That was in the month of Tammuz [i.e., June–July], and he

130

01 Chapters.indd 130

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

said to them, “OK, on Tuesday it will be Yom Kippur.” That was the seventeenth of Tammuz, and for them he transformed it into Yom Kippur. They said, “But we have to slaughter kapparot 119 and to do this and that.” And so they brought fowls on one day, the sixteenth of Tammuz, on the eve of the fast, and slaughtered them. And he organized for them [the ceremonial] lashing and prayers of Yom Kippur. That evening, they began the prayers. [Next day], on Yom Kippur, he began to lead them in the Mussaf [i.e., additional prayers] for Yom Kippur. Suddenly another rabbinical emissary, a shadar, passed by. He [the first one] said to him [in a melodious tone], “Mister, keep quiet, keep quiet, don’t say anything. They gave me thirty dinars. Half for me and half for you. Don’t say anything, for they are all asses.” And he [the second shadar] also continued to pray. They split the money between them and in the evening set out for Eretz Israel.120

In a telephone interview conducted in 1994, Meir Edrei, the mayor of Tiberias in the 1970s, told me that he was well acquainted with the shadar Ya‘akov Lubaton: “He was my father’s age.121 He was a nice Jew with a sense of humor and a love for people. . . . He was an emissary of the yeshivah of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes.” Lubaton told him that he had been in Kurdistan. Edrei added, at his own initiative, “They said about him that he received a carpet for the tomb of Rabbi Meir, but that the carpet was in his home. They also told a story about him that he received special payment for conducting prayers on Yom Kippur, [that] in Kurdistan he celebrated Yom Kippur on Purim.”122 That in Tiberias these stories about the carpet and celebration of Yom Kippur in Tammuz or on Purim were also attributed to Lubaton does not mean that they are historical fact, but only that they contain some folkloricliterary truth, which makes an even stronger impression because it connects Lubaton to a motif in Jewish folktales about swindlers who cheat a community. In this case, the literary tradition added weight to the criticism of the shadar that accumulated in the oral tradition about Lubaton’s greed and exploitation of his status. Such stories undermined the positive image of shadarim in general and of emissaries from Eretz Israel in particular. These stories might have stemmed from the economic distress and socioreligious condition of the Jews of Zakho and its vicinity. They may also have resulted from the gap between the lofty conception of a shadar from Eretz Israel—supposed to be without blemish

131

01 Chapters.indd 131

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

and a symbol of the affinity with the Holy Land and its religious values— and his behavior in real life. Finally, we cannot rule out the possibility that there is a kernel of historical truth in these stories.

Zohara Levi Tells about Her Father Zohara Levi’s story about her father illuminates the image of the shadar Ya‘akov Lubaton from a very different angle, as though it was meant to justify the saying that “there are always two sides to a coin.” The circumstances of her storytelling in the interview I conducted with her were extraordinary, considering that I had tracked her down after a long search filled with surprises, which is a story worth telling in its own right. At the time of the interview, she was eighty years old, had health problems, and suffered from a failing memory. At times, she positively surprised me as she provided me with a good description of past events; at other times, she needed coaching from members of her family—several of her adult children were present in her home during the interview, having come to help their mother tell her story. The one who most assisted her was the eldest daughter, Ada, then fiftyfour years of age, who claimed to remember well her grandfather Ya‘akov Lubaton, who passed away when she was sixteen. The stories took shape within a conversation in which Ada repeated my questions to refresh her mother’s memory, adding to them in the style common to conversation stories created through the mutual help or the competition of the narrators.123 The image of Lubaton that emerged from this interview was one of opposite motifs: as long as he was at home the family lived well and harmoniously, but when he left on his mission the home was marked by suffering, sadness, and penury. Zohara described her father’s generosity—he could not refuse anyone. For instance, when he was in the market at Tiberias and the butchers would offer their wares, “He would say, ‘Weigh it, weigh it.’ My mother would be angry: ‘What am I to do with this?’ Then he would reply, ‘We’ll buy an icebox.’ ‘And who will bring the ice?’ ‘I’ll get up early’ [Zohara laughs]. It was I who got up to bring the ice. Yes, and that is how they lived peacefully, did not argue, were not angry, nothing. Whatever she [the mother] said was fine. Whatever he did, that was sacred.”124 But when Lubaton set out on his journey, the stable situation at home was upset. Her health took a turn for the worse, some of her children died, and later she would refuse to have any more. She received a small stipend from the yeshivah of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al HaNes to support herself and the family, had to contend all by herself with the upbringing and education of the children, and the home was marked by poverty. In the absence of the head of the family, and because of the family’s 132

01 Chapters.indd 132

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

difficult economic circumstances, Ma‘atuka sent her little daughter Zohara to the missionaries. This was an ironical turn of fate, for Ya‘akov Lubaton had gone on a mission to raise money to finance the education of children in Tiberias. Zohara told us, So my mother placed me there with the nuns. Then my father returned from abroad and said that he brought money for Jewish children. . . . What do I know? That’s not living. To go preach from synagogue to synagogue. So he said to her, to my mother [this in a lower and surprised tone], he said to her, “Bastard’s daughter.” [Haya and Zohara laugh.] I remember that he said to her . . . “How could you send her to the nuns? What’s this? We are Jews, I make the rounds to bring money for Jewish children.” Ada: That’s the point! Everything. Zohara: How do you want . . . [She stops.] Ada: No! He said, “You are the daughter of a rabbi and a hakham.” ... Zohara: Ya‘akov Lebton. Ada: And she will go to be educated by Christians? Zohara: Impossible. Ada: That was . . . [She stops.] Zohara: He came, took me out [holding me] by the ear, like this, by the ear. [She demonstrates with her hands.] I said to him, “My ear, my ear!” He said, “Come home. Now you are not returning here. You will sit at home until we find you a Jewish place! [Zohara’s emphasis], not an Arab or a Christian [one]. Only in a Jewish place will you go to learn.” And so I sat [at home] until they opened some elementary school. I remember, don’t I?125

The motif of the “shoemaker’s children going barefoot” gained momentum during the interview in additional unpleasant descriptions relating to the education of Zohara and her training to be a seamstress: Ada: It is important to mention that grandfather was not in the country to educate his children, he was [abroad] on missions and absent from home. . . . Zohara: He used to bring money for Jewish children. Ada: And so education was in the hands of her mother, education and health. That is why many children died in this home, that 133

01 Chapters.indd 133

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

is why her mother also had an eye disease. Mom [Ada says to Zohara], her eye was always closed, the eye of your mother, she had an eye disease and all the education [of the children] was in the hands of the mother, and all demands [made by the schools] that she could not meet, then the education of the children was impaired.126 Q: Do you remember your father’s travels? To where did your father go? Zohara: Ah, he went to Mosul. . . . Why? They told him that there were many Jews there and they knew nothing. Maybe he would go there, lecture to them, talk to them. From Mosul to Baghdad, and from Baghdad returned to Eretz Israel. Q: Did he mention, for example, that he was in Zakho? Zohara: Yes, he was in Zakho, he was in Zakho, they are all close one to the other.127

Later during the session, Ada asked her mother about the source of her grandfather’s money that enabled him later in life to build a three-story house, which also contained a synagogue, in Tiberias. Zohara tried to supply an answer, saying that the money came from his work as a shohet, mohel, and teacher. This did not satisfy Ada: Ada [to her mother]: Did he have money from his missions? He used to receive money? I corrected Ada’s question: Did he receive some of the money raised on his mission as a shadar? Zohara: He never told us. Haya: But he did receive. It was permitted. Zohara: Yes, when he traveled to Morocco [at the outset of the interview, she said that he had not been in Morocco, but in Iraq], to Baghdad, to all the places; they would fill him [i.e., his pockets] with money.128

Zohara confirmed that her father had received large sums, the source of which was probably his missions as a shadar, but also emphasized his generosity toward people and the help he tendered them without receiving any recompense: He built a synagogue. People used to come to pray, so they wanted to give him money. He said, “I will take money? [Zohara used an 134

01 Chapters.indd 134

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

intonation that expressed surprise.] If I do a good deed that makes you pray, I have to thank you that you come to pray here.” They were surprised at how a man built a place, paid out money, and did not want to take anything [in return]. If they did not know [a religious practice], he would teach them.129 He would prepare the Passover seder, invite dozens of widows . . . [Ziva nods her head in affirmation], let them come, hear the blessing, sit and eat with us, and hear the blessing.130

Members of Lubaton’s family, who emphasized his physical appearance, strength, and pedantry with regard to clothing—he generally wore white robes—revealed a different shadar, one whose outstanding attributes were in the realm of the spirit and religion, a man who was also generous and kindhearted.131 This complex character balances out the image that emerges from the testimonies of Zakho Jews, who were not acquainted with his background: he was not motivated by avarice per se; it was the economic distress of his family that he bore in mind during his lengthy absences from home, and it was this that undoubtedly influenced his behavior.

Lubaton and Zionism After World War I, Lubaton had to confront a new factor—persons associated with the Zionist movement who were beginning to be active in Iraq. A letter sent on 15 Shevat 5683 (1 February 1923) from the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim in Baghdad to the offices of the World Zionist Organization in Jerusalem noted two emissaries who had come to Iraq, without noting their surnames: “one from Tiberias whose name is Ya‘akov and the second from Safed, and his name is Meir, and the latter defames Zionism and also Herbert Samuel.”132 It may be assumed that the shadar from Tiberias was Ya‘akov Lubaton, whereas Meir apparently was Abba Yair, also called Abba Meir, who was born in Safed and was an emissary for the Hebron community. This document points to the tension that arose in post–World War I Iraq between emissaries who collected money for the various funds on behalf of religious communities in Eretz Israel and the Zionist movement, as was also the case with the shadar Shrem. The person who mentioned the two emissaries in his letter was Avraham Sasson Nissim, the representative of the JNF in the community of Khānaqin, who complained about many shadarim. In a letter, dated 13 Shevat 5683 (30 January 1923), appended to that of the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim, he complained about Meir, who vilified Zionism, but not about Lubaton. A hint of the latter’s sympathy toward 135

01 Chapters.indd 135

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

Zionism can be found in Rahamim Cohen’s testimony about Lubaton, who wanted to return to Zakho a third time. Rahamim met him in 1923, before immigrating to Eretz Israel, and they met again when Rahamim returned to Kurdistan after spending only one month in the Holy Land.133 The shadar asked Rahamim, rhetorically, “Why did you return? Why did you return?” This can be interpreted as an expression of sorrow that the latter was unable to find his place in Eretz Israel, or even as “Zionist” criticism of his having abandoned the Holy Land. Lubaton’s daughter Zohara, and his granddaughter Ada, provided surprising evidence of the “Zionist” aspect of his activity. Ada tried to refresh her mother’s memory about an old story they used to hear at home. It was related that Lubaton was attacked by highway robbers, and Zohara claimed that as far as she could remember, this was when he was accompanying a convoy of immigrants to Eretz Israel, an aspect of his character that was not mentioned in any of the narratives related by former Zakho Jews. Lubaton encouraged Kurdish Jews to immigrate to Eretz Israel, and it was only due to his great physical strength that he was able to rescue them from the robbers: Ada: You [turning to Zohara] also used to tell us that he influenced them to come on aliyah to [Eretz] Israel. Zohara: Ah, he influenced them to go on aliyah. Ada: And they came with the camels and mules in a convoy. Do you want to tell them [the interviewers] about the convoys? You used to tell us about the convoys in which they used to travel, that Arab robbers would come. He was strong, how strong he was that he would break the . . . , yes. These facts, that they came on aliyah, that he influenced them to come . . . , and that robbers used to catch them on the road, and you [turns to Zohara] used to tell that he was strong, that he used to break a brick with his hand, like this, on a piece of wood. Zohara: Yes, on the wood. Like this he would take a brick in his hand, a stone brick. Haya: He accompanied them in such convoys? Zohara: Yes. Ada: He used to return [to Eretz Israel] with them.134

Thus, unintentionally and though his mission was originally of a religious and financial character, Lubaton’s sympathy for Zionism was confirmed: he did not defame that movement, expressed sorrow when Rahamim Co136

01 Chapters.indd 136

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

hen failed to take root in Eretz Israel, and—in the personal narrative of his daughter—returned to Eretz Israel with a convoy of immigrants in whose formation he may have been involved.

Abba Yair: “This Is a Contribution, but Do Not Strike” Abba Yair, also known as Abba Meir, reached Zakho after World War I. Though born in Safed, he was an emissary of the Hebron community. The only archival documentation relating to him is his writ of appointment as a shadar to Egypt in 1925 on behalf of the community in Hebron, bearing the signatures of Hanoch Hasson, head of the rabbinical court in Hebron, the chairman of the Sephardic Committee in that city, Meir Shmuel Castiel, and Rabbi Meir Franco, the chief rabbi of Hebron.135 There are also two letters that touch upon the confrontation between him and the JNF representative in Khānaqin. Abba Yair apparently came twice to Zakho, the first time by himself in 1923–24 and the second time with his son Eliyahu, in 1927. It was this second visit that left the strongest impression upon the collective memory of former Zakho Jews. Abba Yair’s visits to Zakho, occurring during the same period in which Shrem and Lubaton did so, took on the form of a fierce confrontation with the Zionists. During the first visit his clash with them was much fiercer than that of the other two. His second visit, in 1927, was of a negative and violent nature. Yair’s name first appears in a personal memory narrative by Zakho-born Shabetai Piro. Due to its length, we shall bring only a synopsis. The basis for his autobiographical story was the post–World War I changes in the border between Iraq and Turkey that were detrimental to the livelihood of Jews in Zakho, who during the Ottoman period freely conducted commerce with villagers in Turkey. After the border was redrawn they had no choice but to engage in smuggling between the two countries and to confront the border police of both. According to his story, Shabetai Piro had to fill in for his ailing father, and in 1923 engaged in smuggling goods. But the young Piro did not calculate the days correctly and since he mistakenly returned to Zakho on the day of the Sukkot festival he was unable to go to the synagogue. The communal court of Zakho’s Jews found him guilty of desecrating the holy day and fined him five Majidi. “There was one rabbi there, from Jerusalem, Rabbi Yair, an emissary from Jerusalem. They brought me to the synagogue to pray, and sentenced me to a fine of five Majidi, to pay [it] and have them perform [the ceremony] of release [from sin]. . . . I confessed to the Jerusalem rabbi, 137

01 Chapters.indd 137

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

Rabbi Yair. He was there as an emissary and all the money [i.e., the fine] was earmarked as a present for the rabbi who came from Jerusalem.”136 Elsewhere during this interview, Piro mentioned both Yair and Ya‘akov Lubaton of Tiberias, noting that they stayed at the homes of “persons of a high level, at [those] of notables . . . , they used to receive enormous donations.137 It is most probable that the “emissary Yair from Jerusalem” alluded to was Abba Yair, a shadar from Hebron who, like other emissaries and travelers, passed himself off as coming from Jerusalem, a name commonly substituted for Eretz Israel. In the testimony he is presented as a traditional shadar, an authority in religious matters. Since the community wanted to show him its esteem, they gave him the money that Piro paid as a fine. Despite being forced to “donate” money to the shadar, Piro treated him and his office with honor. Support for the fact that Yair, or Abba Yair, or Meir was in Iraq during 1923–24 can be found in the letter quoted above sent on 15 Shevat 5683 (28 July 1923) from the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim in Baghdad to the Zionist Executive in Jerusalem. The letter mentioned two shadarim, “one from Tiberias whose name is Ya‘akov and the second from Safed, and his name is Meir, and the latter defames Zionism and also Herbert Samuel.”138 The letter centers round the complaint by Avraham Sasson Nissim, the JNF representative in Khānaqin, against Meir, the emissary with anti-Zionist views. The affair became even more complicated when a group of Nissim’s opponents in Khānaqin, in a letter dated 3 Ellul 5685 (23 August 1925) to the Central Bureau of the JNF, attacked Nissim for his activity against the shadarim.139 They accused him of gaining control of the collection boxes set aside for emissaries in the synagogues and replacing them with JNF boxes, thus causing the shadarim to leave town empty-handed and disappointed. In this letter, Abba Yair is mentioned by name: “[Nissim] also spread slanderous lies about emissaries, especially the emissary who came from Hebron two years ago and whose name is Abba Yair. They wrote about him to the city of Naharaim [Baghdad], and he was apprehended on some charges.” This letter explicitly relates to the struggle over contributions and seems to have overturned the accepted image of “good Zionists” and “bad emissaries,” or the other way around. The description of this episode provides us with insight into the condition of the Jewish communities in Iraq and Kurdistan after World War I. Abba Yair returned to Zakho in 1927, this time with his son. The date has been determined on the basis of the year in which a convoy of emigrants left for Eretz Israel, including Haviv ‘Alwan and the shadar’s son. Unlike Yair’s first visit, this one left its mark on the collective memory of former 138

01 Chapters.indd 138

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

Zakho Jews, appearing in their oral traditions as a traumatic event. As in the case of Lubaton, criticism of Abba Yair focused on his taking money. However, whereas there were mixed opinions about Lubaton, the attitude toward Yair was strictly negative. Shmuel Baruch, when testifying about emissaries who came to Zakho, told us the following about Abba Yair, who arrived there after World War I: After the British conquest [of Iraq], shadarim came to us once again. The first to come then was Lubaton. After him came Avraham Na‘im. After him the rabbi, Abba Yair of Hebron. He was hard of hearing, so his son came with him. He [the son] would say to him, “Father, this is what they are saying.” Abba Yair and his son lived in Safed. His son was a shohet with me [in Jerusalem] when I began working in ritual slaughtering. He [Abba Yair] studied Talmud in Safed with Yehoshua Falashi, the rabbi of Safed. After he studied Talmud, he left Safed and came to live in Jerusalem. In the mornings, he apparently went to Hebron. So the rabbi of Hebron sent him on a mission abroad.140

When I asked Haviv ‘Alwan about Abba Yair, he replied, “Yes, I remember him. . . . He also came and examined the shohatim, but all of them were OK. Whatever he checked and asked about, they knew how to answer his questions. Yes, I remember him. His son was also with him. He had a son by the name of Ezra Yair, here in Jerusalem. When we came on aliyah, we took him [the son] with us, and he studied with us here in the yeshivah.”141 Here came to an end the tranquil tone of Haviv’s narrative and we became acquainted with the details that created the oral tradition about Abba Yair: As I told you, that shadar, Abba Yair of Hebron, brought with him his son Ezra Yair. There was one man in Zakho who stubbornly refused to make a contribution. So the son of Abba Yair took a stick and struck him on the head. The public became so angry that it declared, “This is a contribution, a donation, and who wants to give will give. Who wants to donate less will give less. Who wants to donate more will give more; this is a contribution, but do not strike!” The public was very angry. But this was a very rare case. No emissary came with a son, and the son did not erupt [in violence]; only this one, Eliayhu Yair. He died here in Eretz Israel.142

Deeply moved, Haviv ‘Alwan delivered his narrative in unordered sentences 139

01 Chapters.indd 139

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

with much repetition: “This is a contribution . . . who wants to give will give. Who wants to donate less will give less. Who wants to donate more will give more; this is a contribution.” Despite his emotional state, the act of giving (whether a large or a small contribution) was emphasized in these few sentences and not the opposite—refusal to donate—but only that some give more and others less. The choice of words and the emotional manner in which they were uttered pointed to the negative impression left by Abba Yair and his son, even after many long years: “But this was a very rare case.” This unusual element in the character of the emissary Abba Yair is also evident in this story told by Rahamim Cohen: Abba Yair came to Zakho with a son. His name was Eliyahu. Abba Yair was a sharp-witted man. He was elderly, but he wanted money. For instance, one Jew came, and he [the gabbay] said to him, “Make a contribution.” The gabbay demanded a donation for him [i.e., the shadar]. [The man] said, “Two rupees.” “No that is too little. Give him more.” “I don’t have more, only two or three rupees.” What shall I tell you, once he struck a certain person because of that, as if he has the right to do that, but it should not be done; only he who wants to [donates]. His youngest son was there; he [Abba Yair] was elderly. When I came to Eretz Israel in 1934. I visited him. . . . I saw him here. That boy who was with him; he died young, the son that was with him. But he had two other sons. We treated them all with honor.143

In this narrative, the shadar is described as a combination of opposites: “sharp-witted,” “elderly”—“but he wanted money.” The negative element and the criticism are more marked in this story than in the former one, for there the person who struck someone was the emissary’s son, whereas in this one it was the shadar himself. He who was described as being an elderly person and sharp-witted, who could be expected to behave with wisdom and moderation, allowed the verbal confrontation with the potential donor to degenerate into violence. This very unusual episode led the narrator to share with me his emotions and evaluation: “What shall I tell you, once he struck a certain person because of that, as if he has the right to do that.” As a result of the associative element and the narrator’s free style, the end of the story is somewhat unclear, but he intended to emphasize that the shadar’s son died young. Perhaps he was hinting at punishment from Heaven meted out to the emissary because of his behavior and that of his son in Zakho. 140

01 Chapters.indd 140

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

While the Jews of Zakho generally stood on their dignity, in neither story is there evidence that the person who was struck returned the blow. Perhaps this is indirect corroboration of the status and immunity of shadarim from Eretz Israel, as hinted in Rahamim Cohen’s concluding sentence: “We treated them all with honor.” On the other hand, the content of both stories, as well as the body language and intonation of the narrators, indicate that there were emissaries who were unworthy of the esteem of the community, and who were probably not received with dignity. There is not doubt that personal traits overwhelmingly influenced the behavior of Abba Yair and his son, but the historical background also played an important role. This emissary came to Zakho in 1927, when its Jews were no longer filled with joy by the arrival of a shadar: the excitement engendered by first encounters with an emissary from Eretz Israel had faded and become something of the past. Many Jews left Zakho for Eretz Israel (like Haviv ‘Alwan, for example), and the willingness to contribute declined as time passed. From the oral testimony, we know that many shadarim came to Kurdistan, probably too many and too often. The financial burden was too heavy for the local communities to bear, while the emissaries did everything in their power not to return home empty-handed. Certain communities complained about this to Jewish institutions in Eretz Israel.144

Avraham Na‘im and Yisrael Turjeman “Only a Lowly Creature Having No Shame Could Become a Shadar” In their oral documentation, my interviewees mentioned the names of emissaries who came to Zakho but without relating anything about them. Those mentioned were Avraham Na‘im and Haghib ‘Amar of Safed, one Eliyahu from Tiberias, and Turjeman, without it being noted which community had sent him. I have found written documentation about Avraham Na‘im and Yisrael Turjeman, but it does not touch upon their efforts in Zakho, the events described having taken place in Khānaqin. Nevertheless, these documents are important because they give us a better understanding of the extreme escalation in the conflict between the religious emissaries and the representatives of the Zionist movement in Iraq in the 1920s, shedding light on its ideological and practical aspects.145 The shadar Avraham Na‘im was mentioned by Shmuel Baruch, who provided the names of emissaries in the order of their appearance in Zakho: “After the English conquered Iraq, the emissary Ya‘akov Lubaton of Tiberias came to us. . . . After that came from Safed the shadar Avraham Na‘im. He came for the [fund in the name of ] Rabbi Shim‘on Bar-Yohai.”146 141

01 Chapters.indd 141

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

Avraham Sasson Nissim of Khānaqin wrote to the Central Bureau of the JNF in Jerusalem on 1 April 1925 about the visit to Zakho by the emissary Avraham Na‘im and his anti-Zionist opinions: At this time, we are hosting an emissary from the city of Safed in Eretz Israel who goes by the name of Avraham Na‘im ben Aharon [i.e., son of Aharon]. He presented himself as an emissary of a kollel. We met with him and asked him about matters relating to Zionism and Eretz Israel, and he replied that Zionism is a movement of Ashkenazim and that they are all liars and apostates. On the Holy Sabbath, the Zionists smoke cigarettes [and] desecrate the Sabbath, and this includes the Hakham Bashi of the Ashkenazim [i.e., the Ashkenazi chief rabbi] and also the president [i.e., mayor] of the Tel Aviv Municipality. . . . I could have filed a complaint in court against him but refrained from doing so for two reasons: (a) it would have caused shame and disgrace, and (b) since I do not have a power of attorney to do so, arrangements should be made that all matters of halukkah (from the Hebrew lehalek, “to disburse”) be handled by me so as to prevent such cases and the public defamation of the Jews. You must take steps to arrange this matter.147

Due to the anti-Zionist stand of the emissary, Nissim requested authorization to control all halukkah funds—that had nothing to do with the JNF. Halukkah funds were monies collected in the Diaspora to support indigent Jews in Eretz Israel, particularly those who devoted their lives to study of the Torah and to prayer. Nissim sent another letter to the Central Bureau of the JNF in Jerusalem on 22 April 1925 in which he was even more critical of Na‘im’s anti-Zionism: “I wish to inform you that the hakham Avraham Na‘im ben Aharon said many wicked and shameful things about the Zionists, and as a result of his machinations all Jews in our city have come to hate Zionists and the Zionist movement.” Further on in his letter, Nissim requested a power of attorney from the JNF “to collect all the donations, vows, funds, etc. . . . and perhaps this will prevent emissaries who spread libel and false stories from coming to our city.”148 While in his letter Nissim attacked the shadar for being anti-Zionist, his intention was to gain control of the monies collected in the charitable funds. This letter was the opening shot in a conflict that lasted for about a year between Nissim and the shadar. Nissim had come out against other emissaries in the past, but the confrontation with Na‘im 142

01 Chapters.indd 142

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

was the sharpest of them all, and the Zionist institutions in Eretz Israel and members of the Khānaqin community were unwillingly dragged into it. In their reply of 24 April 1925, the JNF officials tried to skirt the issue. They belittled the adversary’s influence and intimated that responsibility for responding to the shadar’s behavior lay with Nissim: “We do not deal with matters of the kollelim and we cannot argue with every poshet yad [lit. “one who holds out his hand”] who goes from Eretz Israel to the Diaspora. It is incumbent upon the Zionists in each and every place to hold up their [the emissaries’] lies to their faces and to defend the honor of Zionism and its leaders against these provocateurs.” Nevertheless, they wrote, they would pass on Nissim’s letters about the “emissary from Safed” to the World Federation of Sephardic Jews. The JNF representatives in Baghdad wrote the World Federation of Sephardic Jews in Jerusalem on 24 April 1925 and appended copies of Nissim’s two letters of complaint. The letter ended on a note of restraint: “We ask you whether it is in your power to prevent to some degree the onslaught of the emissaries of the kollelim against the Zionist Organization and its institutions, and if so—what do you intend to do about it?”149 Meanwhile, the World Federation of Sephardic Jews complained to the JNF that, on behalf of the JNF, Nissim took all the collection boxes found in the synagogue of Khānaqin, including that of Safed. This can be ascertained from the reply of the Central Bureau of the JNF to the federation.150 The JNF wrote that the complaint had been forwarded to Nissim himself, even though the JNF believes that there is no basis for the charge “because long ago we specifically warned our representative in Khānaqin not to take monies of other institutions for the benefit of the JNF.” However, the letter continues, the institutions in Safed are also obligated to instruct their emissary “to put an immediate end to his deeds against the Zionist Organization, and they must do away with all calumny against the Zionist Organization and its leaders.” In response to the letter of complaint that was forwarded to him, Nissim wrote two letters to the Central Bureau in Jerusalem on two consecutive days in June. He claimed that “in the matter of the liar emissary, there has never in the city of Khānaqin been a collection box for Rashbi [Rabbi Shim‘on Bar-Yohai] of blessed memory in a synagogue, and I did not take one penny from the collection boxes of the halukkah representatives.” Nevertheless, the letters are replete with insulting remarks about the religious emissaries and challenge their right to raise money in the local community, and also express his anger at the representatives of the JNF taking the side of Avraham Na‘im of Safed and leaving him to fend for himself.151 143

01 Chapters.indd 143

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

JNF officials tried to placate Nissim in a letter dated 6 July 1925. They maintained that they did not take a stand against him but only wanted “to find out what really happened in Khānaqin in connection with halukkah funds, whether there is a basis for [the complaint] that reached us from Safed, or perhaps the facts are false.” However, they also informed Nissim of their univocal position on funds for the religious emissaries and those raised for the JNF, emphasizing the Zionist ideological aspect of the latter: And your honor well understands that we must collect donations for the redemption of Eretz Israel from the entire [Jewish] nation, for whom this is a great and meritorious deed, but we must under no circumstances touch the money of the charitable societies. Let their emissaries collect their own contributions, and we will not hinder them; rather we shall show the entire nation what the JNF does with its money for binyan ha-aretz,152 and we shall demand of every Jew that he support the redemption of the Land [of Israel; i.e., Eretz Israel] with all his soul and all his might.”153

The conflict, at first involving only the two emissaries and their institutions, was soon joined by members of the Khānaqin community. The struggle became ever more acute and emotional. On 3 Ellul 5685 (23 August 1925), the community sent a letter to the Central Bureau of the JNF signed by Elifaz Yehezkel and twenty-six other persons. From the letter, we learn that members of the community became aware of the issue only after receiving complaints from the kollel of Safed warning the representative of the JNF not to change an age-old tradition or to take the money of the charity funds for Zionist purposes, and if he has already done so that he must return it. They expressed their shock upon learning for the first time that Nissim had laid his hands on these funds without a power of attorney from the JNF. They claimed that they had maintained silence because they were certain that Nissim had received such authorization, and that is what led the shadarim to leave the city empty-handed and disappointed. The writers ended their letter with statements to the effect that they never heard Avraham Na‘im make “any detrimental statement about the Zionist directorate; only he [Avraham Sasson Nissim] spread libelous stories about the shadar” and that the emissary did not receive the funds to which he was entitled, whereas Nissim added these monies to those donated for the Zionists.154 In his reply to the JNF on 14 Teveth 5686 (31 December 1925), Nissim claimed that in the synagogue Avraham Na‘im had indeed said what was 144

01 Chapters.indd 144

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

attributed to him and that those who tried to disprove this are not credible witnesses, because they are antagonistic toward the present correspondent. In his letter, filled with invective against shadarim, Nissim maintained that “only a lowly creature having no shame could become a shadar. . . . That bastardly emissary [Avraham Na‘im] cried in the synagogue and, as a result of that, a meeting was convened, and it was decided to immediately prepare for him a certificate on behalf of the community according to his wish.” Nissim also expressed his astonishment that JNF officials had accepted the truth of the slanderous charges raised by members of the community without checking them. As proof of his claims, he appended the testimonies of three other members of the community who testified that the shadar had made defamatory statements about Zionism and that it was only on account of his tears in the synagogue that several persons agreed to present false testimony on his behalf.155 At the height of the conflict, the JNF wrote to the World Federation of Sephardic Jews, requesting that Avraham Na‘im be recalled from Khānaqin and that the kollel in Safed appoint in his stead a local person, “loyal and peace-loving,” as its representative “so that all institutions could work together without quarrels and squabbles.”156 The federation acceded to this request and on 16 February notified the JNF that the emissary from Safed had already returned home, but added that, in verbal testimony, Na‘im once again maintained that the JNF representative in Khānaqin was misappropriating monies belonging to the religious funds. However, wishing to put an end to this episode, the federation was content to rely upon the promise made by the JNF that it would “warn its representatives everywhere not to encroach upon the religious funds which are the sole source of income for member of the Old Yishuv,157 religious scholars, and the poor.”158 With this ended the conflict that had raged for about a year, though its offshoots were evident for months to come.159 The documentation relating to this affair indicates that the persons in the field, and not the institutions they represented, were responsible for the quarrels and confrontations. The institutions, for their part, tried to put an end to them and took a stand that called for coexistence. The dispute had two aspects—ideological and financial—with the latter bearing most weight. True, Nissim had issued a warning that the emissary opposed Zionism, but he himself took the law into his own hands and apparently confiscated money from the synagogue’s religious collection boxes.160 We may deduce that Avraham Na‘im spoke out harshly against Zionism in retaliation for the JNF’s demand that he be replaced. Moreover, that he was apparently the weakest side in this affair is borne out by his publicly breaking out in tears not because 145

01 Chapters.indd 145

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

he was accused of being an anti-Zionist but because he was unable to collect the money set aside for his fund; in other words, he was crying for financial reasons. The World Federation of Sephardic Jews, the umbrella organization for which Na‘im acted, did not try to present an ideological argument; it only emphasized the need to respect the ancient custom regulating the use of money collected by the religious funds for the livelihood of the poor and religious scholars of the Old Yishuv. In contrast, JNF officials did advance the ideological argument of binyan ha-aretz, but it was accompanied by financial aspects: despite the firm basis of the complaints against Nissim, JNF officials were prepared to accept criticism and praise their representative in Khānaqin because for a few years he managed to send them sums that were large when measured against the size of the community in Khānaqin.161 The Zionists ostensibly were victorious in this dispute. Avraham Na‘im never returned to Khānaqin, and Nissim continued to fill his post for the JNF, but this was apparently only one battle in the campaign against the religious charitable funds. Two years later, on 24 March 1929, Nissim complained about another shadar, Yisrael Turjeman, who came to Zakho.162 He claimed that Turjeman convinced the Jews of Khānaqin to remove the JNF collection boxes from the synagogue and replace them with boxes for the fund bearing the name of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes.163 That is how the competition for the contributions of Iraqi and Kurdish Jews evolved. Similar struggles between religious and Zionist elements did not occur in Zakho, but they possibly influenced the behavior of shadarim before their arrival in that city. Perhaps that might explain the enthusiastic reaction of Yosef Hayyim Shrem, noted earlier, to the contributions he received in Zakho and Arbil and Ya‘akov Lubaton’s eagerness to repeat his visits to Zakho, where he had received substantial donations. Abba Yair’s harsh reaction to the low sums he was given in Zakho may also, perhaps, be attributed to his confrontations with the Zionists in other cities, such as Khānaqin.

“One Emissary Who Came to Us Brought a Song of Redemption: ‘Hatikvah’ ” The shadarim who came to Zakho from the seventeenth century until the 1930s were not abstract historical figures like the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite or Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes, around whose image the community’s religious affinity to Eretz Israel developed. Shadarim were the embodiment of a human connection to Eretz Israel, because every emissary brought with him, to Zakho and elsewhere, the tidings of the Holy Land. Since they came 146

01 Chapters.indd 146

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Rabbinical Emissaries

from Eretz Israel, they were considered as the greatest authorities on halakhah. Until World War I, their missions followed traditional patterns: the shadarim were honorably received and did not leave empty-handed. After World War I, the traditional attitude toward the emissaries began to change as a result of difficult economic conditions, on the one hand, and the opening up of the region, on the other. Side by side with the enthusiastic and warm reception tendered the shadarim, the community also began to take a more realistic and critical view of them. As noted earlier, the spirit of the times had changed, and the emissaries also had to contend with the beginnings of Zionist activity in Iraq. Unconsciously, the later shadarim ended the Zakho Jews’ isolation from the outside world, and the information they supplied fell upon attentive ears, aroused the community, and encouraged some of its members to go on aliyah to Eretz Israel. Shmuel Baruch testified, “A rumor spread that the English had conquered [Eretz Israel] from the Turks. . . . So after I heard that they captured it, it was said that there was one man named Herbert Samuel, that he was the high commissioner of Jerusalem. That is almost half a Messiah. Now it is easier to immigrate to Eretz Israel.”164 The rumor that reached Zakho about the Jew, Herbert Samuel, was extremely influential.165 Meir Gershon, the mukhtar [head man] of the community of Kurdish Jews in Jerusalem, who came on aliyah in 1926, related, “Ashkenazim [i.e., Ashkenazi emissaries] came . . . to our city. I always used to accompany father to prayers in the synagogue. So I said, ‘What is this here?’ They told me, ‘These are Ashkenazim who have come from Jerusalem.’ I came and they told me, ‘There are pioneers there in Jerusalem, in Eretz Israel.’ I was young, about thirteen. I decided: I want to go on aliyah to Eretz Israel.”166 The fact that the overt status of the shadarim was in the religious sphere while any Zionist message they may have imparted was secondary and covert is exemplified in two additional stories told by Shmuel Baruch. The lesson to be gained from the first is in the area of religious life and presents the shadarim as pious persons, whereas the other is a Zionist narrative: One emissary passed away in Zakho. I was still in Zakho, [this was] before my aliyah. There came one emissary—I don’t know his name—from Eretz Israel—I don’t know from which city. He passed away in Zakho. We buried him in our cemetery. That night, so told us the Arabs who lived near our cemetery, something special happened. They said, “The pious man whom you buried yesterday, at night, in the middle of the night”—in the summer all the Jews would be on the roofs because of the heat. No one could sleep inside 147

01 Chapters.indd 147

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 4

a room. They used to climb up to the roof at night. We had beds on the roofs. There were Arabs near our cemetery, and they said that they saw a ball of fire come out of his grave and rise in the air. They said, “Your emissary, whom you buried, came out of the grave. The fire bore him. Who knows to where? Perhaps to the skies? Perhaps to Paradise? Perhaps to Eretz Israel?” We said to them, “We saw with our own eyes that a flame came out of the grave and rose to the sky.” We didn’t know to where he was taken. We told them, “They took him to Paradise, to Heaven.”167

This was Shmuel Baruch’s second story: “One emissary who came to us brought a song of redemption, ‘Hatikvah.’168 We heard this song for the first time from some emissary. He told us, ‘There is a song called “Hatikvah” that is heard in Jerusalem.’ We said to him, ‘Write down [the words] of this song for us.’ I don’t remember if the emissary was Hakham Ya‘akov Lubaton or Hakham Na‘im.” Shmuel Baruch immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1925.

148

01 Chapters.indd 148

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Chapter 5

Aliyah in the Prestate Period The Historical Context

Immigration to Eretz Israel from Zakho began in the mid-nineteenth century during the period of Ottoman rule, increased after World War I, slowed down from the mid-1930s, and came to a halt during World War II. The breaches that appeared in the tightly organized communal structure after World War I and the rumor spread by shadarim about the possibilities of aliyah were the central factors that caused a significant change in communal life and led members of the community to set out for the Holy Land. This was not a Zionist aliyah: even if the tidings of Zionism had reached Zakho thanks to the shadarim and their stories about pioneers who came to settle in Eretz Israel or about the singing of “Hatikvah,” Zakho’s Jews did not internalize the Zionist message. Aliyah from Zakho was a matter of individual or family choice. People chose to realize a collective ages-old dream of personal and religious redemption. And, if the desire to make this dream come true stirred the heart of every Jew, this was even more the case with Zakho’s Jews because of their state of isolation. Processes of modernization in Iraq that improved conditions in the fields of economy, health, and education did not reach Zakho. Thus, when suitable conditions arose, many of that city’s Jews did not hesitate to break free of the existing communal framework and fulfill their yearning for Eretz Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular. The passage from a dream to its realization, from substitutes for Eretz Israel (such as place-names reminiscent of the Holy Land, pilgrimage to the tomb of the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite, praying to Rabbi Meir Ba‘al HaNes, and visits by shadarim) to actually living there, was marked by difficulties and tribulations for individuals, families, and even the entire commu-

149

01 Chapters.indd 149

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

nity. The master narrative related by former Zakho Jews about aliyah is about their own personal odyssey, not an organized one. The decision to immigrate to Eretz Israel of one’s own free will called for spiritual and physical fortitude, determination, and the economic and physical capability to overcome obstacles that were an inseparable part of aliyah. Among the former Zakho Jews were those who due to the circumstances had to delay their emigration until the 1950s, after the establishment of Israel, because they could not counter the difficult conditions of the prestate period. There is very little written documentation about aliyah from Zakho to Eretz Israel, and even that is limited to a few requests for help. This being the case, I searched for documentation relating to aliyah from Iraq and Kurdistan in general. The documentary vacuum was filled by oral testimony that provided the aspect of personal and communal experiences. Information about aliyah includes what I heard from interviewees, the sparse written documentation, and what we know about aliyah from Iraq and Kurdistan in general and Zakho in particular. My Zakho interviewees related much about their own aliyah: I recorded about one hundred personal memory narratives on this theme, an abundance of testimonies that enables putting together the story of aliyah and interpreting it in depth from both personal and collective perspectives. It is impossible to quote the stories in their entirety; I shall reproduce only sections that relate to the historical context. Since it is my objective to conduct an historical study, I shall provide character sketches of the narrators only when necessary. The same holds true for distinctive linguistic and literary attributes that contribute to our understanding of the historical setting or the unique quality of a specific oral testimony.

The Ottoman Period Only a few individuals came on aliyah from Zakho from the late nineteenth century until the outbreak of World War I. Since very few of them lived to record their stories, oral documentation for this period is very sparse. The aliyah of these individuals highlights the significant transformation after World War I. These pioneer immigrants to the Holy Land (Heb. olim; i.e., those who “go up” [to the Holy Land]) are historically important despite the paucity of their numbers, for they formed the core around which the Kurdish Jewish community in Eretz Israel, and particularly in Jerusalem, developed—one that was instrumental in absorbing the larger wave of immigrants who arrived during the British Mandate period. Research literature contains little information about the presence of Kurdish Jews in Eretz Israel prior to the nineteenth century. Two cases are 150

01 Chapters.indd 150

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

students who came to study in Safed in the second half of the sixteenth century and a letter sent from Sondur to Jerusalem that testifies to limited aliyah from Kurdistan at the beginning of the eighteenth century.1 Except for these, we have no data about aliyah from Kurdistan until the late nineteenth century. Both Joseph Joel Rivlin and Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob maintain that Jews from Zakho were among the first to immigrate to Eretz Israel from Kurdistan.2 Itzhak Ben-Zvi supplies contradictory versions in two of his works. In the first he claims that the first Oriental Jews to come on aliyah to Eretz Israel were apparently a few emigrants from Kurdistan in 1812,3 whereas in the original Hebrew version of Nidhei Yisrael (the Exiled of Israel) he wrote, “With the beginning of the Hibbat Zion movement, the concept of the Return to Zion also penetrated the Kurdish mountains by unknown paths.”4 However, like aliyah from Iraq at this time, that from Kurdistan was spurred by religious, not Zionist, motivation. Emigrants from Kurdistan began arriving in Eretz Israel in groups even before the First Aliyah (the first wave of Zionist immigration, 1882–1904). Most of them took up residence in Jerusalem and a few in Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, and Beit She’an. They made their living mostly as porters, stonecutters, construction workers, and by other hard work. At the turn of the twentieth century, an effort was made to settle Kurdish families in agricultural settlements such as Sejera, Kfar Barukh, and Alroi—named after David Alroi, a Jewish hero from Amadiya in Kurdistan.5 Almost the only study touching upon aliyah from Iraq and Kurdistan during the Ottoman period is that by Hayyim J. Cohen.6 He assumed—despite the lack of statistics—that Jews emigrated from Iraq to Eretz Israel throughout the entire second half of the nineteenth century up to World War I. In 1854, a group of yeshivah (Talmudic academy) students and their families was organized and came on aliyah, believing that settlement in the Holy Land would hasten Redemption. Among their numbers were the Mani, Yahuda, and other families, whose members were later prominently involved in the Jewish community of Hebron, in acquiring land for the Motza Colony, and in the construction and upkeep of synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem. The immigrants were motivated by religious feelings, without the influence of Zionism, which had not yet penetrated Iraq. In his attempt to ascertain the number of immigrants during that period, Cohen consulted the first population census conducted in Israel in November 1948. From the information registered at that time, he learned that there were 160 Iraqi Jews living in the new state who had arrived in the country up to 1903 and an additional 310 who had come between 1904 and 1918. He concluded that 151

01 Chapters.indd 151

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

during the periods of the First Aliyah and Second Aliyah (1904–14) more than 1,000 Jews had arrived from Iraq: “In both aliyot [pl. of aliyah] there came from Iraq 12 of every 1,000 Jews who lived there. This is a high percentage, for with the exception of the Jews of Yemen and Syria there was no such high rate of aliyah from any other country in the world.”7 Even if we accept Cohen’s figures on arrivals from Iraq, they do not inform us about aliyah from Kurdistan and Zakho. We may only assume that the percentage of emigrants from Kurdistan was high in relation to the total number of those from Iraq. Most of the emigrants came from Baghdad and Basra, Iraq’s two largest cities. The motivation of Jews from these places to immigrate to Eretz Israel declined from the mid-nineteenth to the midtwentieth centuries thanks to improved economic, educational, and health conditions. Modernization, a process that encouraged them to remain in Iraq, did not affect the Jews in Kurdistan.8 Indeed, their political and economic conditions even deteriorated after the war and encouraged them to intensify immigration to Eretz Israel.9 I recorded only three narratives by Zakho Jews about aliyah during the Ottoman period. In two, the narrator provided secondhand information, having heard the story from others, whereas the third was a narrative of what the interviewee had personally experienced. When interviewed in 1987, Esther ‘Alwan, the wife of Haviv ‘Alwan, related how her father had made the journey via Syria and how he struck roots in Eretz Israel. Her story was told in a question-and-answer session, in both the third person and first person. She at times quoted her father, who arrived in Jerusalem at the age of eleven with a group of immigrants but without any members of his family: They came on aliyah eighty years ago, perhaps even more. My father passed away at the age of eighty-four. That is already forty-five years ago. They came eighty or ninety years ago.10 He told me that they set out—he and his mother and his brother, who was two years older than him. On the way, they came to Qamishliye, in Syria, and the older brother said, “I don’t want to go to Eretz Israel. Eretz Israel is here, too. There are many Jews here. I will settle down here.” My father said to him, “We came [to go to] Eretz Israel. For what reason will you stay here?” He [his brother] said to him, “No.” So he and his mother, that is, my grandmother, stayed there and my father came to [Eretz] Israel. He told me that he came with a group that numbered about ten persons. He said, “For two weeks we stayed in the train station [in Jerusalem] where the khan [caravansary] is located.”11 Perhaps there was a khan, I don’t know. So they stayed 152

01 Chapters.indd 152

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

there, outdoors, in the field, near the Jerusalem train station. He said, “We stayed there for two weeks. We didn’t know where to go. . . . They didn’t know.” After two weeks, an Arab passed by on his way to Jaffa. A day or a day and a half, he went to Jaffa. He had something [to do there] and returned. Then he said to them, “I see you here already two days.” They told him, “We have already been here two weeks.” “Why?” They told him, “We don’t know where to go. We are Jews.” Then he showed them the way. He said, “Walk straight ahead. That quarter is called ‘Shekhunat Hapahim’ [Tin Containers Neighborhood] . . . There are many Jews there and in Mahaneh Yehudah.” So we worked, and that’s it, we took root here.12

This aliyah narrative relating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries introduces a motif that would mark later stories—the obstacles encountered during the journey. The family members of this young boy, destined to become Esther’s father, became an obstacle when they reached Qamishliye and decided to remain there. That geographic space, Qamishliye—a way station on the journey to Eretz Israel—was in itself an obstacle to completion of aliyah because “there are many Jews here.” However, most surprisingly it was the young lad who withstood temptation and continued with the other members of the group until they reached Jerusalem, another geographic space in which yet an additional obstacle arose—one that was common to all in the group of immigrants whose difficulties did not end when they reached this foreign and alien city. They were at a complete loss in Jerusalem, not knowing where and to whom to turn, and no one was there to receive them. Having no choice, they remained near the train station for about two weeks. The motif of the long period they spent near the station was repeated three times in this short narrative, emphasizing the newcomers’ sense of alienation and helplessness. Salvation came from an Arab passerby who showed them the way to Shekhunat Hapahim near Mahaneh Yehudah, where, he said, “There are many Jews.” The fact that their source of help was an Arab lends even more emphasis to the group’s sense of alienation and foreignness. Apparently they had no acquaintances in Jerusalem who could help them settle in. It may also be that the style of their clothing was unfamiliar to the Jews who passed by the train station and therefore did not identify the group as being Jewish. That is why the immigrants confessed to the local Arab resident, saying, “We don’t know where to go. We are Jews.” The story had a happy ending when all of them, including Esther’s father, reached Shekhunat Hapahim, where 153

01 Chapters.indd 153

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

they found many Jews and took up residence. From Esther’s narrative, we learn that at this time Jews lived in Mahaneh Yehudah and Shekhunat Hapahim and that the emigrants from Kurdistan had no prior connection with them because the residents were not from Kurdistan or Zakho.13 Yet Esther emphasized, “We worked, and that’s it, we took root here,” a statement that points to the successful absorption of Kurdish Jews in Eretz Israel, a strong sense of being a vanguard, and a willingness to work hard, strike roots, and stay put. Tension between time and a specific place come to the fore in Esther’s story. This is one of the characteristics of the Jewish folk story, especially of the legend and personal memory narrative genres.14 It is also a place narrative because it provides an explanation, though not in much detail, of how a concentration of Kurdish Jews—especially those whose origin was Zakho—evolved. Shekhunat Hapahim and other quarters in the vicinity of Mahaneh Yehudah would in the future become the center for the core of emigrants who came from Zakho prior to the establishment of Israel.15 The other narrative relating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was told by Julia Dekel, who arrived in Eretz Israel in 1923.16 Julia, a teller of folktales who appeared publicly on various occasions, was about eighty-five years old when I interviewed her in her home in Shekhunat Hapahim. In part of her narrative, she told us, in the first person, that when she and other members of the group reached Tiberias, they were taken “to that place in which Ben-Gurion had worked”; that is, the colony of Sejera.17 “In that place were Kurds [i.e., Kurdish Jews] who had lived there for a long time. When we were in Tiberias, they sent us Kurds who took us there.” There, according to her story, they met Ben-Gurion, who said, “‘Hello, welcome. Now we will have many of Israel [i.e., Jews]; we will have a state of our own.’ . . . He wore khaki clothes and worked there together with the Jews and with the Arabs.” Julia had heard that Ben-Gurion had spent some time in Sejera and, as a teller of folktales, wove him into her story even though Ben-Gurion was no longer there in 1923.18 In 1967, Nahum Hafzadi (b. 1895) related in an interview to the Oral History Department of the Hebrew University that when he came to Eretz Israel in 1923 he saw Jews from Zakho in Jerusalem: “When I asked them when they had come on aliyah, when they had left Zakho, one of them told me that he has been thirty-six years in the country.”19 From his testimony, we can assume that there were already Kurdish Jews from Zakho in Jerusalem toward the beginning of the 1890s. Yona Salman told us about his family in a brief, and vaguely informative story filled with generalizations: “There was a member of the family 154

01 Chapters.indd 154

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

who many years ago served in the Turkish army and was responsible for transferring goods from Ein-Gev [on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee] to Tiberias, and he died and is buried there in Tiberias. This was about in 1917–18.”20 He added, “I heard from my father and my uncle about my grandfather’s brothers who immigrated during the last century. . . . There was a member of the family who came to Haifa two hundred years ago, and his sons lived in Haifa until a few years ago. Some of them moved to Karmiel.”21 The stories touching upon this period indicate that even at this early stage there were already a few emigrants from Zakho. However, these narratives do not explain aliyah as a phenomenon and what motivated it.

The Period of the British Mandate in Palestine Iraqi Jews and Kurdish Jews Aliyah from Zakho during the British Mandate period in Palestine was part and parcel of aliyah in general from Iraq and Kurdistan. Iraqi Jewry and Kurdish Jewry existed as two separate entities in Iraq. Iraqi Jews accounted for the larger and more developed of the two, with centers in Baghdad and Basra. Kurdish Jews lived in the mountainous and distant northern district of the country. According to a census conducted by the British in 1919 after their conquest of Iraq, there were about 14,000 Kurdish Jews, of whom about 7,000 lived in Mosul, Kirkuk, and the surrounding villages. The census recorded about 87,000 Iraqi Jews, known as Bavlim (Babylonians) or Yehudei Bavel (Babylonian Jews). They were concentrated in the capital city of Baghdad (50,000), where they accounted for about 20 percent of the city’s population. The rest lived in the southern port city of Basra (7,000) and in dozens of small towns and villages in various provinces.22 Even though both groups were formally part of one political entity, practically we are dealing with two Jewish societies living in different geographic areas. There were notable differences between the two in lifestyles, social significance, the status of their communities, and economic circumstances. These differences had a bearing on the circumstances governing aliyah, on the preference exhibited by the Zionist establishment, on the number of immigrants, and on their absorption in Eretz Israel. The different circumstances of aliyah by the two populations, their unique forms of livelihood in Eretz Israel, and particularly the attitude of the Zionist establishment toward them called for separate treatments of Iraqi and Kurdish immigrants. A survey of the existing written documentation raises several questions: What were the reasons for aliyah from Iraq, how was it implemented, and what was characteristic of aliyah from Kurdistan? What were the relations 155

01 Chapters.indd 155

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

of each of the two groups with the Zionist movement, and was one of them given preferential treatment? What was the mechanism that encouraged the aliyah of Kurdish Jews, particularly those who came from Zakho?

Iraqi Jews and “Easy Ways of Making a Living” In the years following World War I, Iraq was not the scene of vigorous Zionist activity, nor did its Jews evince a strong impulse for aliyah. Zionist activity was conducted in clubs and took on more of a social and cultural than a national and political character, more in the spirit of Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) than Zionism, as Jews became more integrated into the Iraqi economy and politics. Zionist involvement was the province of only several dozen active persons, especially in Baghdad. They engaged in cultural and educational efforts, raised donations for the Zionist funds (Keren Hayessod and the JNF), and handled the legal immigration to Eretz Israel of several hundred persons.23 Most of those who came on aliyah during the 1930s, about eight thousand, did not do so by means of the Zionist movement.24 The 1920s were a decade of advancement and expectation in Iraq that gave rise to a class of Jews with an Iraqi orientation who sought to integrate into Iraqi economic and social life.25 As there was no “Jewish problem” like in other countries, there was no need of a “Zionist solution” for it. As in other Islamic countries, members of the upper-middle class, the wealthy and educated among the Jews, did not belong to the Zionist movement,26 whose membership was primarily from the middle and lower-middle classes. What motivated Zionism at this time was not the difficult situation of Jews in the Diaspora, but the traditional love of Zion. Zionist activity was possible due to the ambiguous stand adopted by the British rulers and local Iraqi authorities vis-à-vis Zionism. Until 1921 Iraq was formally under British occupation, and from then until 1932 under the British Mandate, which had a positive influence on Iraqi Jews, for whom this was a golden era. Permission to conduct Zionist activity was granted in March 1921 but rescinded in July 1922, when anti-Zionist winds began to blow. It continued clandestinely, with the knowledge of the authorities, until 1929, when, under the negative impression caused by the Arab anti-Jewish riots in Palestine, leading Zionists in Iraq began to be persecuted. In 1935, Aharon Sasson (the “Teacher”), chairman of the Zionist Society of Baghdad, was deported and immigrated to Eretz Israel. He had been an intermediary between Iraqi Jews who sought to emigrate and the Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency for the disbursement of aliyah permits. Zionist activity came to an end with his deportation, though a few groups in the 156

01 Chapters.indd 156

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

capital and other cities tried to continue but soon disbanded and left no mark on the history of Zionism in Iraq. The political changes that came into effect in Iraq in 1932, when it achieved independence, encouraged its Jews to seek ways out of the new predicament, including aliyah to Eretz Israel.27 Three factors were at the basis of the new situation faced by Iraq’s Jews: (a) the growing strength of Iraqi nationalism, which left little room for the existence of elements that were foreign or different; (b) jealousy of Jews that arose from the competition for administrative and clerical positions; and (c) extreme elements in Iraqi politics that, in attempting to divert attention from vital problems, pointed to the “Palestine problem.” In doing so, they intensified anti-Jewish feelings and blurred the differentiation between Zionist and Jew. Reuven Zaslany (later, Shiloah),28 a teacher from Eretz Israel who was a student of Oriental studies in Baghdad and active in Zionist circles there, wrote in 1934, “Eretz Israel has become an organic part of the daily reality of Baghdad’s Jews.” Many wished to go on aliyah to Eretz Israel despite the obstacles placed in their path by the authorities, and large sums of money were put aside for aliyah each month: “We did not create, we did not raise, this host that is ready and desirous of making aliyah to Eretz Israel; however, . . . the time has come at least for us to begin to care for it seriously.”29 Despite the difficult situation, it was precisely then that all Zionist efforts came to a halt. As noted, the authorities prohibited such activity and forced Aharon Sasson to leave the country. Zionist activity would be renewed only in 1942, when the clandestine Zionist underground began operating in Iraq. During the post–World War I years, very few immigration certificates30 were allotted to Zionist organizations in Islamic countries.31 Zionist representatives in Baghdad saw this as a sign of discrimination against Oriental Jews.32 It could be that the reasons for this situation were the strained relations between Iraqi Jewry and the Zionist establishment in Eretz Israel, laws of the government of Palestine setting immigration quotas on the basis of economic criteria, and the public image of emigrants from Iraq.33 Iraqi Jewry benefited from good economic and political circumstances during the 1920s. In the next decade, its situation was still stable and secure, though weakened to some extent. Jews in other parts of the world were in a much worse state at the time: millions of Jews in eastern Europe suffered from deteriorating economic conditions, social discrimination, and political persecution, while the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany threatened European Jewry in general, whose distress commanded the attention of the Zionist movement. Furthermore, the financial and human resources of Zionism lay in Europe, in the form of Zionist political parties, societies, and 157

01 Chapters.indd 157

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

organizations that transferred monies and sent immigrants to Eretz Israel. The British government of Palestine set immigration quotas on the basis of economic ability (e.g., those who had private capital), professions, or persons who had relatives in Palestine who could support them. The quota for laborers—that is, healthy youngsters, but lacking in economic means, between the ages of 18 and 35—was set according to the “absorptive economic capacity” of the country.34 The Zionist Executive was authorized to distribute the immigration permits (called certificates) and since the number of those who sought to come on aliyah was much greater than the number of permits, it had to set its own order of preference. Ideological criteria were set, with preference being given to members of Zionist youth movements in the Diaspora who had undergone preparatory training for a new life in Eretz Israel. These criteria saw physical labor as being vital to national and social regeneration and frowned upon occupations that were common in the Diaspora, such as storekeepers, peddlers, brokers, and merchants.35 Ben-Zion Yisraeli, a member of Kibbutz Kinneret who visited Iraq twice and was involved with the aliyah issue, wrote in April 1934, Aliyah from Baghdad, which has increased during the past year, has added very little to the upbuilding of Eretz Israel from the perspective of its value or capability. The search for easy ways of making a living, for all types of jobs and positions, and the relatively small number [of them] who joined the ranks of labor, in general, and of agricultural labor in particular, should arouse serious concern on our part and calls for courageous and speedy action. I shall not even mention persons of means among the Baghdad Jews who, as I have been told by people who know, make a living in Eretz Israel from usury and excessive interest. What is most disheartening is that not a few of the young people of this [wave of ] aliyah have become a burden on our economy instead of being a blessing and an added strength.36

When some permits were distributed to candidates for aliyah from Oriental countries, this was due to the pressure applied by the Oriental ethnic communities in Eretz Israel through their representatives in the Elected Assembly (Asefat ha-Nivharim) and the National Council of the Jews of Palestine (Va‘ad Le’ummi; hereafter, National Council), and perhaps also through the personal influence of the chairman of the National Council, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, who did his best to help the Oriental Jews.37 158

01 Chapters.indd 158

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

Pressure from Baghdad to allot more permits for Iraqi immigrants increased especially after 1929, when incitement against Jews began because of events in Palestine. Yet, from October 1932 to March 1933, only five permits were set aside for Iraq out of a total of 2,400 at the disposal of the Jewish Agency.38 In November 1934, Aharon Sasson wrote the Jewish Agency’s Immigration Department that he had stopped registering prospective immigrants two months earlier because he already had 480 registered. He gave the reasons for the great demand: the deteriorating political situation, the difficult circumstances of several families, the firing of Jewish clerks, and the difficulty encountered by Jewish high-school graduates in finding employment. He therefore demanded that no less than two hundred permits be allotted between October 1934 and March 1935 for persons aged 18–35, and at least twenty more for those aged 35–45. He expressed his resentment at the fact that only ten permits had been set aside for Iraq for those months.39 In reply to his letter, Sasson received twenty-five permits, which led Yehoshua Batat to write Eliahu Epstein, “We requested 220 certificates and received only 25. We asked for the very minimum! . . . Please tell me how these permits can be distributed? How many [of them] for members of Maccabi and the Ahiever group?40 How many for other candidates? How many for the Kurds?”41 In the final tally, only thirty-five permits were set aside for Iraqi Jews during 1934 and 1935.42 As a result of the growing interest in aliyah on the part of Jews in Iraq, a black market developed for the few available permits, and some people were suspected of taking advantage of the distress of others to turn a profit. A letter sent from Baghdad to Jerusalem in July 1934 complained that private funds in Jerusalem were involved in buying immigration permits; its author did not mention names or indicate to which ethnic community they belonged, but the Jewish Agency was asked to look into the matter.43

“A Kurdish Jew Is a Productive Element” As already intimated, the Zionist establishment considered emigrants from Iraq to be a nonproductive element that could not provide the desired type of workforce; as a result, they were allotted few immigration permits. The Zionist attitude toward Kurdish Jews, on the other hand, was completely different. The dominant view in the Immigration Department was that Jews of Kurdistan should be preferred to Iraqi Jews when permits were issued. Even though they accounted for only 10 percent of the Jews in Iraq, were completely lacking in Zionist indoctrination, and their general educational level was lower than that of Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews indeed received the majority 159

01 Chapters.indd 159

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

of permits allotted to emigration from Iraq.44 The Zionist leadership in Eretz Israel was acquainted with the Kurdish ethnic group. According to figures supplied by Ben-Ya‘acob, of the 3,300 olim from Iraq during the 1920s, almost 2,000 were Kurdish Jews. Most of them, bearing passports and without any intention of returning to Iraq, traveled to Syria, from where they continued to Lebanon and were smuggled across the border into Palestine.45 Most of the Kurdish Jews who arrived during this period settled in Jerusalem, where they were employed in occupations characterized by hard work: porterage, mule driving, stone quarrying, construction, and dressing of building stones. Some of them turned to the veteran colonies, where they engaged in agricultural tasks with which they were familiar from their old homes in Kurdistan. Thanks to their simple manner, diligence, and willingness to engage in manual labor, they were preferred to Iraqi Jews. They were seen as suiting the ideological criteria of Labor Zionism even if they were not partner to its ideological concepts, but as laborers were a practical manifestation of the Zionist ethos of labor. The preference demonstrated by the Zionist establishment was the exact opposite of the informal hierarchy that had developed in Iraq between Iraqi and Kurdish Jews. There it was an encounter between an urban, educated, and well-off population, on the one hand, and an innocent rural element that differed from the Iraqi Jews in dress, manner, and unpretentiousness, on the other. The emissaries of the Zionist underground characterized the Kurdish Jews as marked by self-respect, religious devotion, and courage.46 The preferential treatment of the Kurds engendered much bitterness and protest among the ranks of the Zionist establishment in Iraq, which saw this as discrimination against the Iraqi Jewish majority. When fifteen immigration permits for 1935 were assigned to the Kurdish Jews, as against five to the Iraqis, Yehoshua Batat wrote to Eliahu Epstein of the Jewish Agency, “Don’t you think that there is injustice in the way these permits were divided?”47 When in 1936 thirteen permits were given to the Kurds and only seven to the Iraqis, this displeased the Association of Youth of Aram Naharaim, which sent a letter to the Jewish Agency in which it purposely downplayed the number of Kurdish Jews, who actually accounted for about 10 percent of all Jews in Iraq. The association claimed that Iraqi Jews, who numbered 120,000, were allotted seven permits whereas the 5,000–6,000 Kurdish Jews were given thirteen: “Where is the truth and where justice? Are we not Jews like all the rest of the Jews?!”48 As a result of their complaint, they were provided with two additional permits. In other correspondence, officers of the Zionist Society of Baghdad claimed that aliyah of Iraqi Jews should not be combined with that of Kurdish Jews because the two groups were different in 160

01 Chapters.indd 160

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

character and therefore the handling of permits for the two should be separate. In addition, between the lines, one can sense that the correspondents were weary of the separate and unique manner in which they were called upon to handle aliyah from Kurdistan.49 The official Zionist policy of preferring Kurdish to Iraqi Jews was further supported by the reports by persons from Eretz Israel who were either sent to Iraq or visited it of their own accord. They were much impressed by the Kurdish Jews and their ability to be a “productive element” that could contribute to the Jewish community in Eretz Israel. Ben-Zion Yisraeli, the leading personage who visited Iraq at this time, was asked to find laborers to engage in agriculture in the colonies of Eretz Israel. Yizhak Gruenbaum, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive upon whose initiative general labor exchanges had been established, wrote Yisraeli in March 1934 that he should “go to Iraq to choose from the Jewish community there laborers who were suitable for agricultural work in the colonies and who could immigrate immediately.” Gruenbaum’s request was accompanied by 15–25 immigration permits over and above the small quota allotted to Iraq at the time.50 And it was precisely members of the Zionist Society of Baghdad led by Aharon Sasson, who had complained of discrimination against Iraqi Jews, who were now asked to help Yisraeli select fifty agricultural laborers prepared to immigrate immediately upon receipt of the additional permits.51 After his visit to Iraq, with the zeal reserved for a person on a mission, Yisraeli wrote a report in which he stressed that “the Jews of Baghdad are not an agricultural element”; on the other hand, in Dohuk and Sondur, he did come across Kurdish Jews who were farmers.52 He described the difficult situation of communities in Kurdistan because of the political threat to their continued existence. These were remote communities of farmers that, should they not come on aliyah, “may be the first to pay with their lives for our [Zionist] enterprise in Eretz Israel.” Therefore, even if it was impossible to bring all of them immediately, “part of every family will come on aliyah and later all the rest.” He especially demanded preference for the younger generation. Among the larger urban Jewish communities in Kurdistan, Yisraeli preferred that of Arbil, at the time led by Salih Yosef Nuriel, “a very decent man who is truly concerned for his community and its relationship with and aliyah to Eretz Israel.”53 Yisraeli preferred Arbil’s Jews because of their self-respect and the Zionist spirit that prevailed in the community, and recommended, “They should be given preference for aliyah because they are Zionists and will be able to engage in agriculture.” Nuriel was known to be active on behalf of Zionism and as the person who collected donations for the JNF.54 Yisraeli, considered an expert on aliyah from Iraq, was involved in the 161

01 Chapters.indd 161

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

allotment of permits to Iraqi and Kurdish Jews.55 Officials of the Immigration Department even provided him with permits that he could distribute as he saw fit.56 After his return from the mission to Iraq, Yisraeli continued to press for preferential treatment of the Arbil community. In a letter of 10 September 1935 to Itzhak Ben-Zvi, the Zionist Society of Baghdad informed him that, on the basis of Yisraeli’s support for such a step, it was sending the list of Kurdish candidates for aliyah to Salih Yosef Nuriel in Arbil for his approval.57 Like Yisraeli, Reuven Zaslany, who visited Arbil in 1932, and the geographer Dr. Abraham J. Brawer, who was there in 1933, were also impressed by the community and its leader. Their opinions added force to the Zionist image of the Arbil community held by Zionist officials in Eretz Israel.58 When Nuriel came to Palestine for a visit in 1935, he met with Ben-Zvi and others and was warmly received.59 Was there mass emigration from Arbil to Eretz Israel? The answer is no. In 1963, Hayyim J. Cohen interviewed Nuriel, who told him that in 1935 he requested and received five hundred permits—a highly doubtful detail— but that, despite the hopes that the Zionist institutions in Jerusalem had placed in him, he was unable to find enough candidates for aliyah, so he sent the rest of the permits to Baghdad. It is almost certain that the impression transmitted by visitors from Eretz Israel about Zionism in Arbil was exaggerated and unrealistic. To a great extent, they were dazzled by the personality of Nuriel, who was really the only consistent Zionist in the city, and did not become thoroughly acquainted with the community at that time, which could not boast any Zionist activity or Zionist education for the youth and adults.60 Nuriel died in a traffic accident in Jerusalem in 1968.

There Is No Agricultural Element in Zakho Due to the preference of Zionist institutions for Jewish agricultural communities, like that of Sondur, or for those with a Zionist image, like that of Arbil, Zakho’s Jewish residents were not given any priority over other Kurdish Jews when it came to aliyah. They engaged primarily in commerce, which indeed involved manual labor, but only a few of them had any connection to agriculture. The relationship of Zakho’s Jews to Eretz Israel was essentially religious and not Zionist. Perhaps for these reasons, or because it was far from the center of the country, Zakho was not visited by emissaries from Eretz Israel, whose recommendations carried much weight when distribution of immigration permits was discussed. An exception to the rule was historian Dr. Walter J. Fischel, who visited 162

01 Chapters.indd 162

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

Kurdistan twice—in 1930 and again during Passover of 1936. He told of the Kurdish Jews’ passionate yearning for aliyah. During his second visit, he reached Zakho, where he identified, so he claimed, one of the most important Jewish communities in Kurdistan. While there, he copied inscriptions in Arabic and Hebrew that had been written on a wall of the great synagogue about 150 years earlier.61 His visit could also have had more practical implications since—like other visitors to Kurdistan—upon his return to Eretz Israel he met with Jewish Agency officials and reported about his journey. When he met with Haim Barlas, Eliahu Dobkin, Moshe Shapira, and Avraham Silberberg on 25 May 1936, he reviewed his impressions of Jews in Oriental countries and, like his predecessors, maintained that, as far as agriculture was concerned, “the [Jewish] residents of Baghdad are not a good element for Eretz Israel,” the only exception being members of the Ahiever Zionist society.62 On the other hand, “Kurdish Jews are good for that,” and as examples he pointed to the communities in the towns of Dohuk and Zakho.63 The truth of the matter is that, as noted, Zakho’s Jews did not generally engage in agriculture; Fischel may have been impressed by the work of a few farmers that he did see among them. Unfortunately, the documentation does not contain any follow-up to Fischel’s recommendations, so we cannot know whether his meeting with the Jewish Agency officials had any practical results in the form of immigration permits for Kurdish Jews in general or those of Zakho in particular. The impression is that, as far as institutional aliyah is concerned, Zakho’s Jews did not receive any preference even though they did write the Zionist institutions from time to time to request aid for the emigration of groups or individuals from among their ranks.

“There Are None among Us Familiar with Government Behavior”: Aliyah Letters Zakho’s Jews, who did not place much hope in visitors from Eretz Israel, initiated correspondence with Zionist institutions, asking for help with aliyah. This very fact is indicative of the significant transformation undergone by the Zakho community, which had always been a closed society and only after World War I began to open up to the outside world and create ties that might be of help. The correspondence I have been able to discover, though rather scanty, contains important information on the economic, political, and social circumstances in which the community found itself. In one of his articles, Zvi Yehuda published a letter written by the Zakho Jewish community on 12 Adar 5682 (12 March 1922) to the Bureau of the 163

01 Chapters.indd 163

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

Zionist Organization in London.64 The community’s leaders described the great economic and political distress of Zakho’s Jews, requesting financial support and help in organizing aliyah for members of the community. The letter was written against the backdrop of the great expectations aroused in Iraq by the British conquest of Palestine and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in favor of the establishment of a Jewish national home there. The Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim, established in Baghdad in 1919, received many requests from Iraq, Kurdistan, and Persia relating to aliyah, but Zakho’s Jews turned directly to the Zionist Organization offices in London. The letter is written in a florid style, in Rabbinic Hebrew, which says much about the cultural values and religious erudition of members of the community. It is addressed to “Our friends, the Zionist society” and is signed by Rabbi Yihyeh Rahamim Zaqen, chief rabbi of the community, and twenty-three others: “We, the residents of Zakho under His Majesty’s British government, come to inform your ears of the condition of our country and our patrimony, that is, the above-mentioned city, that all those living within it are in dire straits and distress, because want and hunger are our lot, poverty and penury our fate.” Later in the letter, the authors write about their sources of livelihood, bemoaning their poor living and that they are under the threat of robbery and murder at the hands of Kurdish villagers and subjugated to the will of extortionists in the city itself: For all are hewers of wood in the hills and porters, and sell cheaply. [Their income] is not sufficient to sustain life. Some of them are cobblers while others go in the villages from door to door of the infidels, and they [the villagers] subject them to their greed, or kill them and throw their bodies to the beasts of the field and they are not even brought to burial. . . . And for more than two years now there have been some murdered among them [the Jews] every month while others have been subjugated under the hands of cruel masters living in our city.

The community was powerless to help, for even the wealthy among them had become impoverished and there were no sources of financial aid: “We are powerless to save our souls, for from whence shall come a helping hand when those with wealth in their pockets have collapsed. . . . We are all imprisoned in the bonds of darkness, fog, poverty, and penury.” The new order in Iraq following the British conquest of the country left Zakho’s Jews perplexed and unfamiliar with its procedures: “There is no one among us familiar with government behavior or tongues that can speak for 164

01 Chapters.indd 164

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

us and save us.” In their distress, they turned to the Zionist Organization, their letter providing us with some information about the community: “And these are the Children of Israel who are in distress, more than three hundred heads of households [i.e., families] and the number of souls of all of the House of Jacob being more than 2,000, miserable in their hunger and troubles.” The situation being as it was, the authors pleaded with the Zionist officials for financial aid and that they be brought to Eretz Israel: Therefore we, the shepherds of the holy flock of Israel who are in deep distress, come to beseech you to support the miserable poor . . . , to raise the poor from the dust and lift up the needy from the dunghill and take pity upon us in your abundant mercy.65 May the living God console you. Send us some help, may the Lord protect you. For our souls grieve to fulfill our desires and breathe the spirit of life that is in Jerusalem. . . . Please, sirs, merciful sons of merciful fathers. Have compassion on our brethren, the Children of Israel who reside in the above-mentioned city of Zakho, to rescue them from their tribulations and extricate them from the pit of their exile.

We do not know whether the letter was acknowledged or led to any reaction at all. After Zvi Yehuda published this letter, I contacted Shmuel Baruch, the rabbi of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem (whom I interviewed on four occasions between November 1993 and February 1994), who was then ninety-six years old. At first he claimed to have no knowledge of the letter, but when I began reading it to him he exhibited a wondrous memory, completing some of the sentences before I had time to complete them. He identified most of the names of the signatories, including his own; there is no doubt that he was involved in drafting and sending it.66 To give even more weight to his connection to the letter, he told me that he married that year, at the age of twenty-two, but he was partner to preparing the letter despite his youth because he was a member of the communal leadership owing to his being a ritual slaughterer and the son of Yosef Binyamin, a judge in the rabbinical court and a teacher.67 When I asked him why they sent the letter to the Zionist Organization in London and not to the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim, which was then active in Baghdad, he replied that they had no connections with Baghdad and that he was not even aware of the society’s existence. As for the letter’s contents, Baruch confirmed that after the war the community was going through very difficult times: the trades the Jews plied did not produce 165

01 Chapters.indd 165

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

much income, and Jewish peddlers who made the rounds of the villages were brutally murdered by the Kurds. That is why they turned to the Zionists in London, asking them to rescue Zakho’s Jews and bring them to Eretz Israel. They received no reply to their letter, though they very much awaited one. When I asked him how they knew of the Zionist Organization in London, Baruch replied that he did not know, but came up with a conjecture, which he presented in the form of a story: It was then that investigating visitors from London came. They came to investigate around villages in Kurdistan. About three or four kilometers from Zakho, they found rocks for the railway. Rocks for the railway instead of fuel. They found there in the mountains rocks that could produce fire. They took samples of those rocks to London. These rocks, trains could run on them. I was told—I did not see this with my own eyes—that these rocks glowed at night like fire. They would shine like fire, and they took them to London. Apparently these rocks would ignite, fire would come out of them instead of fuel. [Ahuva, Shmuel’s daughter who was present during the interview, said, “Apparently this was a delegation of geologists.”] These investigators went to the village of Shiranis, where there are few Jews, only ten families. It was at that mountain of Shiranis that they found the rocks that could burn for the train. So they apparently told our “big boys” [i.e., leaders]—they met them there, talked, and apparently said, “Send a letter to London.”

This fascinating story points first and foremost to the wondrous memory of the narrator. It is also evidence of a British team that conducted a survey in the area and of the resourcefulness of Zakho’s Jews. There was an inactive coal mine at Shiranis-Islam, a small village in the hills about eighteen kilometers northeast of Zakho. Apparently the British geologists came to check whether it was worthwhile reactivating it.68 The connection in the story between the geologists, one of whom may have been Jewish, the coal mine, and the letter to London makes one think that perhaps there is something to this story and maybe that is how the letter was transferred to the Zionist Organization in London. Another letter was sent from Zakho by Rabbi Meir Shabetai Alfiya and the hakham bashi (chief rabbi appointed by the local authorities) Ya‘akov Elia Nissim. It was sent in 1931 to Itzhak Ben-Zvi, then chairman of the National Council. They described the harsh situation of the Jews in Zakho after World War I, acts of robbery and murder committed against Jewish 166

01 Chapters.indd 166

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

peddlers, and the abduction of women, and requested financial aid and immigration certificates for those wishing to leave for Eretz Israel.69 This was in reply to Ben-Zvi’s request for information about conditions in Zakho after hearing of murder and robbery committed against Jews there.70 The rabbis’ letter is also written in florid rabbinic Hebrew, and its content is similar to the one sent in 1922: And now we shall inform you sir . . . of our great distress and all that happened to us in these years. . . . After the Great War, we have remained under the English and Arab governments, not far from two other governments, the Turkish and the French [i.e., the French Mandate in Syria], which are distant from us two hours and four hours, and some five and six hours. Formerly, the people of our city would go out in convoys to buy and sell in the villages and towns, to trade with the Gentiles in order to bring food to the mouths of their [the Jews’] families. And it is now six or seven years that whoever went outside, that is to Turkey, was either murdered or robbed, and we are unable to leave our city even for [a distance of ] one hour in order to fund supplies for the members of our families. The people of our city [i.e., the Jews] have no knowledge of trades from which a living can be made, except for about twenty households that buy and sell in the city.

They then listed the names of those murdered: two persons from Amadiya and one from Zakho in 1931, three from Zakho on 8 Elul 5688 (24 August 1928), two from Zakho in 1927, and five from that city in 1923. They also reported about the abduction of women: “And also about the abduction of women and young girls who are abducted from their families, this year one young girl was abducted from our city and two from Dohuk.” In the matter of aliyah, they wrote the following: And as for what you asked about aliyah to Eretz Israel, how many houses [i.e., families] want to immigrate to Eretz Israel now, there are about fifty houses that wish to go on aliyah now, but . . . for the past two years our community has been left in a state of absolute poverty because there is no tranquility and no money for expenses, not for travel or expenses [involved in receiving] permits from the authorities, because we no longer have any selling and buying . . . and our pockets are empty. There are among them those who want to go on aliyah who have money for expenses, but there are none 167

01 Chapters.indd 167

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

among us familiar with government behavior [i.e., who know how to approach the authorities], and there are others who own houses that, should they sell them, would be enough to cover expenses— but there are no buyers, not for small or large sums, and whoever has a few pieces of jewelry, should he sell them, [the income] will not be enough for travel expenses.

The letter concludes with a plea: And we are unable to go on aliyah and our eyes . . . are turned to you, that you should hold our hands [i.e., support us] and bring [to Eretz Israel] a vanguard to precede their brethren who reside in Kurdistan. We should like to know whether you are able to send us permits from the government [of Palestine] so they should not detain us, and also if [you can send us] money, as much as your honorable hands are able. Have mercy upon us, our brethren, with the Mercy of the Lord and your own mercy, and should you wish that we inform of you the names of those who are going up to Eretz Israel . . . we shall send them . . . noting each by name. And may your reply speedily reach us.

The security situation in the Mosul area, from a different perspective, is described in a British report sent to the Colonial Office in London in July 1931.71 The report tried to lessen the seriousness of Jewish insecurity in Zakho, Amadiya, and Dohuk. For example, it stated that there were 220 Jewish families in Zakho, and that during the past six months there had been only one theft, of a donkey, money, and products, by Turkish thieves. The report’s author offered the conjecture—compatible with British immigration policy at the time—that the rumors about the supposedly serious conditions resulted from imaginary false stories spread by Jews who had entered Palestine as pilgrims and now wished to prevent their being sent back to Kurdistan. In August 1931, Ben-Zvi wrote Chaim Arlosoroff, head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, to report what he knew about the situation in Kurdistan, appending a copy of the letter sent by the rabbis of Zakho and sections of a letter from the rabbi of Amadiya to that of Zakho. Ben-Zvi concluded his letter with a suggestion: I, for my part, do not propose that we continue to investigate the past; in other words, how many cases of murder there were and 168

01 Chapters.indd 168

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

what the government did to punish the murderers. It is clear to me that we shall be unable to ascertain the facts because of the fear by Jews in Amadiya and Zakho of testifying against their government. However, I do propose that we take the necessary steps to ensure permits and certificates for those in Zakho and Amadiya and the rest of the Kurds who wish to come on aliyah to Eretz Israel.72

We are unable to verify whether Ben-Zvi’s proposal was acted upon and whether priority in allocation of immigration permits was given to Jews in Zakho, Amadiya, or Dohuk.

The Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem I first became aware of the Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem (hereafter CKCJ) and its efforts on behalf of aliyah from Kurdistan and Zakho during the British Mandate period when I interviewed Rabbi Shmuel Baruch, rabbi of the community in Jerusalem and secretary of its committee throughout its existence. As noted earlier, Baruch immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1925 and was the only committee member still alive. In addition, most of the committee’s correspondence went out under his signature. The first interview was conducted in 1987, but I also interviewed him four times in 1993 and in 1994 until a month before his death. The atmosphere in that first interview of 1987 was pleasant and optimistic. The information that Baruch provided about the CKCJ was part of his own successful aliyah narrative and personal absorption in Eretz Israel, a narrative that stressed only his positive outlook. Upon his own initiative, he provided information about the creation of the committee: After two years [after his arrival], I created a committee for the Kurds together with other Kurdish Jews who came with me. We brought one man from the [Jewish] Agency, from the Histadrut, to help us. We prepared a list of all the Kurdish Jews who lived in the Old City [of Jerusalem], the Bukharan Quarter, in Geulah Street, and the Nahalat Zion Quarter. We held elections with ballots, secret elections. I was elected [secretary] and another man as chairman of the committee. That was in 1928; that was the committee of Kurdish Jews.

He also spoke about immigration certificates; that is, permits: “Each year we would request and receive ten to fifteen certificates. Once we received 169

01 Chapters.indd 169

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

[certificates] for thirty families. We would then send the certificates abroad. We knew the addresses of those to whom they should be sent, since those abroad used to send us letters. Sometimes we used to send them immigration certificates through members of their families who were already here, and they would come. Our community here in Jerusalem took care of this.”73 After this interview, I began tracking down written documentation about the CKCJ and found much material. It turned out that the committee’s activities were well documented, but there was a glaring contradiction between the optimistic vein of the interview with Shmuel Baruch and the problems, hardships, and struggles—the harsh and cruel reality reflected in the documentation. After the passage of so many years, written documentation must be given priority over oral testimony. First of all, the documents show that the committee was established in 1931, not 1928, and that until its establishment Hakham Baruch Shmuel Mizrahi represented the Kurdish community in Jerusalem. Mizrahi had been born in Zakho, and one should differentiate between him and Rabbi Shmuel Baruch of Zakho. Though Mizrahi was active in several areas, such as identity cards for members of the community or handling health problems and economic aid, there is no evidence that he was involved in arranging the aliyah of Kurdish Jews.74 The CKCJ was active from 1931 to 1940, and among its efforts was receipt of aliyah certificates for Kurdish Jews on the basis of criteria set by the British Mandate government.75 Since 1940, the Association of Kurdish Immigrants has represented members of this ethnic group.76 From 1935 until the establishment of Israel, there was no organized aliyah from Kurdistan because all efforts to handle such requests faced difficulties arising from circumstances and constraints in both Iraq and Palestine.77 The committee was to represent all factions of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem, generally known by the names of the cities or towns of their origin in Kurdistan. Though the Zakho community in Jerusalem greatly influenced its composition, the committee represented all Kurdish communities in the city. The documentation it produced is therefore informative about Kurdistan in general, including Zakho, though the number of documents referring to that city alone is very small. Following the accepted procedure at the time, the committee sent the Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency lists containing names of candidates for aliyah from all over Kurdistan. The Immigration Department then forwarded the names of approved candidates to the government of Palestine, which in turn sent the permits to the British consul in Baghdad, and from there they reached the offices of the Palestine Office78 in that city, out 170

01 Chapters.indd 170

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

of which the local Zionist Society operated. Based on the directives of the Immigration Department, the society helped with the aliyah of Kurdish immigrants.79 The operation of the CKCJ during the 1930s was marked by serious internal conflicts, sectarianism, accusations of corruption, and the establishment of additional committees. There were diverse reasons for the conflicts and accusations: one person or another wanted to control the synagogue or to assume responsibility for distribution of food and mazzot (the plural of mazzah) to the community’s needy for Passover, for example.80 However, the central issue around which most of the disputes raged and the reason for the majority of the complaints was the immigration permits allotted to the committee and objections as to how they were distributed. The committee members considered the number of permits received to be a drop in the ocean. They complained, but without being aware that they had been given preference in this matter over Iraqi Jews. This stormy period was marked by fierce struggles within the community and by the intervention of several persons and institutions in an effort to settle the disputes. In November 1931, the Election Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem approached David Avisar, probably of the Department of Oriental Jewry of the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor), requesting that he help them prepare the ballot boxes for the upcoming elections to the CKCJ that were to be held in the synagogue of the Zikhron Yosef Quarter on Thursday, 26 December 1931.81 Only in 1933 did the committee inform Jewish institutions of the election results: Chairman, Netanel Nahum Cohen; Vice-chairman, Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi (“Chuche”); and Secretary, Shmuel Baruch Mizrahi. One of the committee members was Shmuel Baruch of Zakho.82 One of the first actions taken by the newly elected committee was related to aliyah from Zakho due to the difficult circumstances of the Jewish community there. In September 1933, committee members turned to the Jewish Agency, requesting that it help Zakho’s Jews immigrate to Eretz Israel. This appeal followed letters received from Zakho telling of vicious attacks by Muslims against Assyrians and expressing fear that similar attacks would be directed against the Jews. The committee wrote that “Kurds that killed Assyrians in the area want to kill Jews, a murder ‘like in the time of Haman,’83 and they [Zakho’s Jews] are imprisoned in their homes and the government there closes its eyes to [the situation].”84 This letter reflects political circumstances at the time. With the end of the British Mandate and the achievement of Iraqi independence in 1932, the nationalist Iraqi government encouraged the suppression of national minori171

01 Chapters.indd 171

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

ties in the country. Murder of Assyrians in northern Iraq began in 1933, and, though it is unclear from the written documentation whether Zakho’s Jews suffered, as well, there was apprehension lest they also become victims.85 Once it became clear that there was no imminent danger to the Jews of Zakho from the anti-Assyrian riots, the Jerusalem committee pointed to other hardships facing the Jews of Kurdistan and Zakho, in order to obtain immigration certificates from the Jewish Agency. Another letter, sent in October 1933, described the harsh condition of Kurdish Jews, “who are farmers, workers in vineyards, and laborers who suffer from difficult masters.” “Difficult masters” referred to the feudal landlords who high-handedly controlled and subdued their workers.86 In the letter, emphasis was placed on the situation of Zakho’s Jews, who were unable to leave their homes for fear of robbers. Two persons had been murdered just prior to the Jewish New Year: the peddlers Yitzhak Ben Avraham and Moshe ben Ya‘akov Salih. In view of the serious situation, the committee requested an allocation of one thousand immigration certificates. In a handwritten addition, Netanel Nahum Cohen, chairman of the committee, wrote that, immediately upon receiving a reply, the committee would provide the Jewish Agency with a list of candidates for aliyah, and asked whether there was any hope of receiving certificates for those aged 35–45.87 While the first two letters indicate that the committee in Jerusalem tried to come to the aid of the Jews in Zakho, we have no evidence that the Jewish Agency officials did anything about the matter. More evidence on the difficult situation in Zakho is included in a letter, between two officials of the Jewish Agency, that contained information supplied by David Adika, a porter living in the Sha‘arei Rahamim Quarter in Jerusalem, who had recently arrived from Zakho. He related that Jews were suffering at the hands of Muslims because of news reports from Palestine about Arabs having been killed by Jews.88 Adika reported about cases in which Jews were murdered in Zakho, emphasizing that there was a great desire for aliyah: “all want to come.” Perhaps to convince the Jewish Agency that Zakho’s Jews were compatible with the preferred criteria for aliyah, he said that they earned a livelihood in agriculture and sheepherding. In this case, most probably unlike the earlier ones, the agency officials did request that immigration certificates for Zakho Jews be forwarded to Mosul, but we have no evidence that their recommendation was implemented. Those first two letters already noted are the only evidence of efforts by the CKCJ on behalf of aliyah from Zakho or from any other specific community for that matter. The committee generally handled lists of candidates for aliyah from all of Kurdistan without preferential treatment of any community.89 Members of the committee were accused of corruption—selling 172

01 Chapters.indd 172

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

immigration certificates for money—throughout their entire term in office. Such charges reflect the tremendous gap between the number of requests for aliyah and the quantity of certificates allotted to Kurdish Jews. It was impossible to prove the accusations, which caused much tension and friction among committee members and between them and members of the Kurdish community. The Zionist institutions tried to intervene and settle these disputes so that they could continue issuing certificates according to the quota allotted to Kurdish Jews. These accusations, however, had a negative effect on the operation of the CKCJ. In June 1934, in a letter to the National Council, representatives of the committee charged that two of its members had approached the Immigration Department, passing themselves off as official representatives of the committee, and had received ten certificates that they then sold. The representatives also complained that they had requested one thousand certificates but had been allotted only ten.90 One of those accused was actually a formal representative of the committee, whereas the other was not even a committee member but, because of his standing within the community, had come to an agreement with the committee about “arrangements for certificates.” There was even a clause in the agreement between the parties that whoever should breach it would pay a fine to the other.91 Itzhak Ben-Zvi, chairman of the National Council and patron of the Oriental Jewish communities, was involved in affairs within the Kurdish community and throughout the entire existence of the CKCJ tried to help settle the internal disputes. In June 1934, he asked Yizhak Gruenbaum, head of the Immigration Department in 1933–35, to ascertain whether there was any truth to the charges and to distance persons active in Kurdish Jewish affairs from the process of certificate allocation. He suggested that permits for Kurdish Jews be sent to the Palestine Office in Baghdad for distribution.92 Accusations against persons active in the Kurdish community were also reported to the Palestine Office in Baghdad, even if only with the purpose of transferring responsibility for distribution of certificates to Baghdad.93 Histadrut officials in Jerusalem, who took the Kurdish immigrants under their wing, did everything in their power to clear the accused of the charges. They placed the blame on the reduction in the number of certificates, which led to their corrupt distribution. In 1934, a committee made up of four representatives of the Kurdish community and two of the Jerusalem Workers Council (affiliated with the Histadrut) was established to run a check on candidates for aliyah before they were issued a certificate. In correspondence with the Jewish Agency, Histadrut officials expressed their liking for the Kurdish Jews, “who are a laboring element, quarriers, stone dressers, and 173

01 Chapters.indd 173

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

farmers,” and wanted to ensure immigration certificates “for this tribe, which is in dire straits in Kurdistan.”94 Whether there was a real intention to settle the dispute or just to sweep it under the carpet, only one of the Kurdish Jews involved admitted the facts and expressed his contrition at accepting money for the certificates. At an inquiry convened through the mediation of Ya‘akov Shim‘oni of the Jerusalem Workers Council, in the presence of the chairman of the CKCJ, that person replied, “It is true. I made a mistake and took the money. I intended to give him a certificate but he struck me on four occasions. I was forced to return the money to him because I could not arrange [a certificate] for him, because he threatened me and hit me.” As the enquiry continued, Shim‘oni said, “This morning you said that you stole, but that Shmuel Baruch, Netanel Nahum Cohen, and Nahum Cohen Mizrahi [representatives of the CKCJ who were in the room] also stole, and that you would prove this.” To this the person replied, “That is not true, and this morning I lied.”95 This did not put an end to the accusations leveled by Kurds and Baghdadis regarding the sale of certificates. Menahem Avraham Mizrahi accused two members of the committee with receiving ₤P14.5 (₤P, Palestine pounds), of which one took ₤P3 and the other ₤P11.5 in return for immigration certificates for his (Mizrahi’s) brothers-in-law. Jerusalem Workers Council officials, who provided Kurdish Jews with employment and placed the community under their patronage, were asked to investigate the case. In August 1935, they forwarded the report of their inquiry to the Immigration Department, but without having come to any conclusion as to the truth of the charges.96 To clear the air, a series of investigations were conducted that led to the conclusion that, in the tense atmosphere of mutual accusations and verbal and physical violence, there had also been some false charges. In one case, the plaintiff Mordechai Ben Yosef admitted that “he had given false testimony about Moshe Matityahu because he [Ben Yosef ] had suffered from rejections by the [Jewish] Agency and believed Moshe Matityahu to be a representative of the Agency.”97 At that time, officials in the Palestine Office in Baghdad suspected that the Kurds had unduly exploited the immigration certificates. And indeed it turned out that permits allotted to the Kurds were used by Baghdadis. In January 1935, the head of the Palestine Office wrote the Immigration Department that, when his staff checked a list of twenty Kurdish Jews who were allotted certificates, they found that fifteen of the names were those of Baghdad Jews: “This certain assumption has been proven true in relation to six persons who have already approached us. This state of affairs obligates us to draw your attention to the fact that the heads of the Committee of Kurdish Jews in Jerusalem are exploiting the certificates for a purpose 174

01 Chapters.indd 174

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

unknown to us.”98 This episode reflects the difficult circumstances of the Jews in Baghdad, but also raises questions about the manner in which the heads of the CKCJ distributed the immigration certificates they were allotted. The Kurdish community’s problems became even more severe following the election of a new committee in March 1935, under the aegis of the Jerusalem Workers Council. The former chairman of the committee, Netanel Nahum Cohen, was replaced by his deputy, Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi.99 The committee members were all part of the council, comprising eleven persons; by prearranged agreement, five of these were former Zakho Jews,100 since they accounted for the largest group within the Kurdish community in Jerusalem.101 The committee elected in 1935 remained formally in office until 24 July 1940.102 Until mid-1938, the CKCJ was involved in the aliyah of Jews from Kurdistan.103 After this, the committee’s activities were paralyzed by accusations of corruption and bribery relating to the distribution of immigration certificates. These accusations intensified the schisms within the community and led to the establishment of additional committees representing Kurdish Jews on the basis of the Jews’ origin in Kurdistan. As in the earlier disputes, this time, too, personages and institutions in Eretz Israel were involved in attempts to end the intercommunal tension, the objective being to enable continued distribution of immigration permits for aliyah from Kurdistan—but to no avail. Most accusations were directed against the committee’s chairman, Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, and had a severe detrimental effect on the community and paralyzed the committee’s ability to deal with aliyah. In April 1935, shortly after the election of the new committee, its representatives wrote the Jewish Agency, warning it not to give immigration permits to Netanel Nahum Cohen, the former chairman, or to Moshe Matityahu, a person active within the community who had cooperated with the previous committee.104 In August, Netanel Nahum Cohen and Asahel Eliahu sent the Jewish Agency Executive a complaint against the new chairman, Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, claiming that he had informed on them to the British police—as revenge because they had given evidence against him in a criminal case—and testified that they had entered Palestine illegally.105 This affair had strong repercussions within the Kurdish community, and a complaint was sent to the Histadrut, as well: “You should be aware of what the chairman of the CKCJ in Jerusalem is capable of doing, and know how to handle such a man. It also worthwhile that your organization take the necessary steps against this man.”106 In an unsigned letter to the editor of the Hebrew daily Hayarden, six 175

01 Chapters.indd 175

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

members of the Kurdish community repeated the accusation and described the background that led to Mizrahi’s informing and its results. According to the members, Mizrahi and two other people had been accused of attacking someone. The judge fined each of them the sum of ₤P10 and trial costs. To avenge himself, Mizrahi filed a complaint against the two prosecution witnesses, Netanel Nahum Cohen and Asahel Eliahu, who were arrested by the police. It was only with much effort that members of the community were able to have them released on bail before the Sabbath. The letter ended with a sharp warning: “The public should be aware of what the president of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem is capable of doing.”107 In April 1936, Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi was again summoned to the offices of the Jewish Community of Jerusalem “in the matter of disputes between various parts of your community.”108 In November 1937, he was again accused of selling immigration permits, but the complaint was revoked in December for lack of proof.109 Internal divisions within the Kurdish community had a detrimental effect on the receipt of immigration permits for Kurdish Jews. Everyone had his say, particularly about Mizrahi. All means were considered legitimate in the conflict between the CKCJ and the breakaway committees, and those of the latter among themselves. Mizrahi encouraged the committees to support his fight against two of their number that intended to secede completely from the CKCJ. On 17 May 1938, identical, but separate, letters—obviously initiated by one hand—were sent to the Cultural Committee of the Histadrut by representatives of the committees of Jews from Amadiya, Barashi, Zakho, and Sondur, as well as the Club of Young Kurdish Jews and others: We and our community have elected the Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem at whose head stands Mr. Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, and we are part of the committee and go hand in hand with it, and support it, and we, too, are Kurdish Jews even though we have an authorized committee [of our own]. Therefore we do not recognize and do not believe in another object presented by the two parts [of the committee]—the committee of the Assyrians110 and the Committee of the Jews of Zakho, Oriental Zionists—which have seceded from the Committee of the Kurdish Community . . . for they are two parts and we are eight. Our trust is given to the chairman of our general committee, the aforementioned Mr. Nahum, and just as until today he appeared as our representative by our choice in official and necessary places, so do we demand that he continue to appear as our representative. . . . And if the demands of 176

01 Chapters.indd 176

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

the aforementioned two seceding factions be fulfilled and they receive what is their right not through our committee, the Committee of the Kurdish Community, even then we demand our rights and the fulfillment of our demand.111

Based on this the correspondence, the split within the ranks of former Zakho Jews was a substantial one. In July 1938, Haim Barlas of the Jewish Agency wrote the National Council, maintaining that it was impossible to allot immigration permits for Kurdish Jews because they were now represented by thirteen separate committees, three of them consisting of Jews from Zakho: the Committee of the Jews of Zakho, Oriental Zionists, led by David Adika; the Committee of Zakho Jews, headed by Sasson Zidkiyahu; and the Committee of Young Zakho Jews, led by Meir Gershon.112 David Adika wrote the Jerusalem Workers Council, maintaining that no importance should be attached to the letters of the smaller factions. He claimed that the only committees that should be considered were those approved by the British district governor, such as his own and two others—that of the Assyrian Jews and that of those from Arbil—and warned, “Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi is encouraging the splitting up into small groups in order to damage the community.” He warned the Workers Council not to recognize the CKCJ as the general committee for all Kurdish Jews and that, should his demands not be honored, his organization would file suit in the offices of the National Council, to be judged by Itzhak Ben-Zvi, or in a government court of law.113 Under such conditions, from mid-1938 until the end of 1939, when the CKCJ stopped functioning, the Kurdish community was unable to obtain the immigration permits to which it was entitled, because there was no universally recognized body to receive them. The Zionist institutions, especially Ben-Zvi, feverishly tried to come up with a solution, but at times even the institutions themselves were touched by differences of opinion and tension over this issue. The executive of the National Council called upon the Jewish Communal Council (Va‘ad Hakehillah) of Jerusalem to “urge representatives of all factions of the [Kurdish] community to create one united committee; otherwise it will be impossible to distribute the immigration permits for the Kurdish ethnic group.”114 In his reply, Haim Solomon of the Jewish Communal Council proposed dividing the twelve permits coming to the Kurdish community into three parts: six to Zechariah Moshe Mizrahi (head of the committee of the Assyrians), four to Nahum David Adika (leader of the Committee of the Jews of Zakho, Oriental Zionists) and two to Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi (representing the CKCJ). When attempts to establish a sin177

01 Chapters.indd 177

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

gle committee failed, Ben-Zvi proposed giving the twelve permits to another ethnic group, “perhaps the Yemenites.”115 However, officials of the Jewish Communal Council, having come to an agreement with the various factions among the Kurdish Jews, felt that the rejection of their proposal was a blow to their prestige. On 22 December 1938, they protested to the Immigration Department, noting that if their proposal was not accepted “this would be a harsh blow to the Council of the [Jewish] Community, and we vehemently demand to allot the permits to those people to whom they have already been promised.”116 The Immigration Department stood fast in its decision not to distribute immigration permits to the factions, but only to a universally recognized general committee.117 The issue was argued back and forth in 1939.118 At a time when a few individual families from Zakho jeopardized their lives by smuggling themselves across international borders to reach Eretz Israel, no solution was found for the imbroglio, and we do not know what happened to the immigration permits that were designated for Kurdish Jews. We can only surmise that, due to the fragmentation of the community and the campaign against Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, which continued even after the CKCJ ceased operating in 1940, Kurdish Jews, including those of Zakho, did not receive those permits.119

Epilogue: “It’s All Lies, Lies!” After reviewing the written documentation relating to the CKCJ, I once again turned to Rabbi Shmuel Baruch for answers to questions that had arisen. The circumstances of the four sessions that I conducted with him in 1993 and 1994 were much different than those of the first interview six or seven years earlier. He was now ninety-five or ninety-six years old and very cooperative, but his impaired hearing proved an obstacle. That is why his daughter Ahuva was present during the interviews and repeated my questions in words that he could easily understand. The interviews were conducted in a gloomy atmosphere due to his state of health, but also because I asked for his reaction to difficult questions that arose from the documentation I had read. Shmuel Baruch’s exceptional memory did not fail him. Carefully, and with great sensitivity, I tried to get his reaction to the accusations leveled against representatives of the CKCJ—that they had taken money for immigration certificates. He refused to comment, but emphasized on several occasions, with raised voice, his face showing signs of shock and pain, “It’s all lies, lies!” He tried to provide an explanation for the splits and disputes within the committee and the community as a whole. The root of the matter lay in the sharp confrontation between Netanel Nahum Cohen, 178

01 Chapters.indd 178

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

the first chairman of the committee who was elected in 1931, and Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, his deputy who replaced him as chairman in 1935: There was a squabble between him [Mizrahi] and Netanel Cohen. Netanel Cohen wanted to be chairman. At first, Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi was chairman. Later, after a couple of years, Netanel mounted an opposition. . . . Netanel Cohen wanted that he be chairman, not Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, so there were squabbles and disputes. . . . It [the dispute] began, it was Ya‘akov and Netanel Cohen, the two of them were responsible for it. They were one against the other. So they created all this mess, the two of them.120

Shmuel Baruch claimed that the fierce dispute led Netanel Nahum Cohen to harm some real interests of the Kurdish community, such as the agreement reached between the CKCJ and the Histadrut, according to which 25 percent of the taxes paid to the labor federation by a Kurdish worker would be set aside to finance the committee’s operations. Indeed, Cohen did manage to annul the arrangement, according to Shmuel Baruch: “For almost a year we received from the Histadrut 25 percent, and then came the dispute between Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi and Netanel Cohen. Netanel went to the Histadrut, tore up all the agreements, tore them. So we could no longer [receive money], we could not. He [Netanel Cohen] said, ‘We don’t want any taxes from you, we don’t want any taxes from you.’ He tore up the agreement, so we could not receive taxes.” This confession on the part of Shmuel Baruch explains the previously vague correspondence from 1939 between the CKCJ and the Jerusalem Workers Council about the cessation of financial support for the committee, without any reason being given for such an extreme step, which at first sight seems to have been contrary to the interests of the Histadrut itself.121 Shmuel Baruch made a point of telling me that, throughout all the splits and schisms within the Kurdish community in Jerusalem, he remained loyal to Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi and continued to be a member of the CKCJ.122 When I showed him that his name also appeared on letters sent by other committees, he said, “They listed me as a committee [member] with David Adika, but I was on the committee of the Kurds . . . with Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi.” Shmuel Baruch corroborated what I had learned from the written documentation, that the internal disputes had a detrimental effect on the receipt of immigration certificates for Kurdish Jews. He confirmed that confrontations within the community had begun in 1934 and reached their peak in 1938, when many groups split off and established their own com179

01 Chapters.indd 179

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

mittees. He admitted that this was the reason for the decline in the number of certificates allotted to the CKCJ, until they stopped coming altogether: Once we received thirty certificates, the first time thirty and then they reduced them, giving us twenty, fifteen. Later, the last time, they saw what a mess was created here, and they were hard pressed [for certificates] so we received four or five certificates. After that, they stopped. They did not give [them to] us nor to David Adika [who headed one of the breakaway committees] or to anyone. Yes, they saw that there was a mess and held them up. The [Jewish] Agency held up the certificates, they did not know to whom to give them.123

Thanks to Shmuel Baruch’s testimony, the cat was let out of the bag. He explained, in his own manner but very clearly, that the reason for the cessation of legal aliyah from Kurdistan was internal squabbling in the Jerusalem Kurdish community. He added that in the 1940s, when the CKCJ had ceased to exist and was replaced by the Association of Kurdish Immigrants, these squabbles also came to an end, but they did not receive any immigration certificates.124 From the foregoing discussion, clearly Kurdish Jewry did not receive preferential treatment, and immigration permits for Jews in Kurdistan, including Zakho, were allotted very sparingly, and even not at all during certain periods. The question arises, therefore, how—despite all this—former Zakho Jews in Jerusalem became the largest group in the Kurdish community of that city during the British Mandate period. The answer probably lies in semilegal and illegal aliyah from Zakho, which continued on a large scale without any help from the outside. Here the copious oral documentation by former Zakho Jews comes to our aid.

Dating Aliyah Because of the free narrative style adopted by interviewees, it is unrealistic to expect that memory narratives will be able to provide the exact time in which the related events happened. The various time periods mentioned by my interviewees regarding aliyah to Eretz Israel during the British Mandate period in Palestine exemplifies the chronological obstacles faced by historians trying to recreate this episode. Having said this, it is still possible to draw the chronological boundaries of aliyah in the stories of my interviewees despite the limitations of memory after so many years. 180

01 Chapters.indd 180

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

Emigration from Kurdistan to Eretz Israel received a strong impetus after World War I with the British conquest of Iraq and the beginning of the British Mandate over Palestine.125 This was no longer aliyah by individuals but a by growing stream of emigrants. Many families came from Zakho, one pulling another in its wake. According to Zaki Levi, the Jewish community of Zakho had numbered five thousand souls, of whom about two thousand came on aliyah to Eretz Israel or moved to Mosul and Baghdad before the period of mass immigration to Israel in the 1950s.126 The persons I interviewed told me that every family in Zakho had relations—grandparents, uncles, or brothers—who had gone to Eretz Israel before the establishment of Israel. Nahum Hafzadi, himself an immigrant in 1923, said, “After 1920 there was much enthusiasm and in 1922–23 until 1936 people came on aliyah and then it came to a stop.”127 According to Shabetai Piro, who immigrated in 1925, the chronological framework for this aliyah was from 1923 to 1948. He estimated the number of immigrants as two hundred; most had come illegally, he being one of them.128 The terminus ad quem given in the aliyah narratives was 1940–41, and in one exceptional case even 1943–44. Na‘ima Shmuel, who was born in Zakho but moved to Dohuk after her marriage, related a lengthy first-person memory narrative, replete with descriptions of difficult situations and daring deeds, about her own attempt together with members of her family to reach Eretz Israel illegally via Syria. An Arab who engaged in smuggling people across the border reported them to the Syrian authorities, so the father was tried in Zakho and promised that he would not make another attempt. That is why Na‘ima and her family came to Israel only in the 1950s.129 She did not supply a specific time frame for the episode, but only that it took place “during the thirties and forties,” but her husband Murad, who is also her cousin and well versed in the family’s history, provided us with a shorter version of the same story, dating it to 1940–41.130 Na‘ima told us another one about her uncle, Ya‘akov, who followed in the footsteps of the family, entering Syria illegally only to be apprehended. He spent a year and a half in jail, was released through the efforts of Syrian Jews, made his way across the border into Palestine, and joined the British Army.131 In this case, she did not try to date the story, but it obviously occurred after her family attempted its aliyah. Furthermore, the fact that her uncle joined the British forces indicates that this was during World War II. When interviewed, Yona Sabar said that every family in Zakho had relatives who had immigrated to Eretz Israel prior to the establishment of Israel and that contact with them was severed in 1940.132 He also related a brief story about the family of “Esther from Moshav Revahah” (Esther Ajamiya), which had come from Zakho in 1943–44;133 he believed hers to have been 181

01 Chapters.indd 181

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

the last family to reach Eretz Israel from Zakho in those years. He told of his surprise, as a young boy in Zakho, when he was sent to bring an “expiation cock” to her family but did not find them, and when he asked “What happened?” was told “They set out for Eretz Israel.”134 The secret aliyah of a family, an unusual event, was the surprise element in the story of this narrator, who reconstructed a childhood experience. Movement between Eretz Israel and Zakho was not one-way, but it ceased during World War II, and the contact of families with their relatives was then cut off. Shoshana Haviv told us about her father, David Hocha, who visited Eretz Israel prior to World War II. His relatives in Jerusalem received him with much honor, like a shaliah, an emissary. The narrator borrowed this term from the shadarim, but in an opposite sense, to emphasize the great honor that was reaped upon her father even though he came from Zakho to Jerusalem and not from Eretz Israel to Kurdistan. For about half a year, he was feasted in Jerusalem to prevent his return to Zakho. He did finally return so as to prepare his family in Zakho for aliyah, instructing his relatives in Jerusalem to buy some land for him. Because of his father’s opposition to the trip, the outbreak of war, and increased surveillance by the Iraqi authorities, David’s plans did not materialize.135 Whereas Shoshana set a general time frame for the episode—“before World War II”—Nehemiah Hocha, a relative, provided a more definite date for the round trip of David Hocha: 1938.136 Zaki Levi said, “From 1940, there were no conditions for aliyah because of World War II and the War of Independence [1947–49].” As an example, he related the story of a Zakho-born emissary by the name of Ralib who had immigrated to Eretz Israel as a youngster and returned to Zakho to collect money for “for some organization or synagogue or community.” Zaki related that “there were those who in the past had sent money with him [i.e., the emissary] to buy them land or a lot, or sent money to relatives—that they should keep it for them, or as a donation to a synagogue.” This emissary was of an exceptional character, for he would steal the hamin (the main dish of the Sabbath meal) from the homes of the rich to give it to the poor, and the Jews of Zakho forgave him for this. Zaki said that after he himself came to Israel during the fifties and became a senior official in the Kuppat Holim (Workers’ Sick Fund) in Jerusalem, he helped Ralib enter a rest home. We can therefore assume that Ralib arrived in Zakho around 1939 and was probably the last emissary to do so, as it seems improbable that others came during World War II.137 Aliyah from Zakho has been the subject of little published research. Yona Sabar has noted, “After World War I, and especially in the years 1920–26, 182

01 Chapters.indd 182

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

about 2,000 immigrants came [to Eretz Israel] from Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan, and by the outbreak of World War II there were about 8,000 emigrants from all over Kurdistan.”138 Even though Sabar did not focus on Zakho, when this information is considered together with his oral documentation and that of others, it can be established that aliyah of Jews from Zakho took place between 1920 and 1940, and primarily during the first six years.139 Except for a few sporadic attempts during the war years, aliyah came to an end and was renewed only during the 1950s. Not only was there no physical contact between Zakho and Eretz Israel, but correspondence by mail was also impossible except for incidental cases of letters that circumvented the severance of connections.140 A few families managed to get letters through to Eretz Israel until 1948, whereas correspondence of others with their relatives came to a complete standstill.

What Motivated Aliyah There were diverse reasons that led Jews from Zakho to immigrate to Eretz Israel during the British Mandate period in Palestine. Our major source of information about them are the stories told by interviewees.141 The outstanding reason was the news brought by shadarim of the appointment in 1920 of a Jew, Herbert Samuel, as high commissioner of Palestine. The emissaries apparently also told about the aliyah of Jewish pioneers (Heb. halutzim, sing. halutz) from Eastern Europe, stories that made a great impression upon their audience. There were also internal motivations of much importance, such as the desire to bring to fruition their religious attachment to Eretz Israel, economic difficulties, the deterioration of personal security and robberies committed in Zakho and its neighboring areas, and, last but not least, encouragement from family members who had already settled in Eretz Israel.

Herbert Samuel For Zakho’s Jews, Herbert Samuel was like a messiah bringing tidings of the Redemption of the People of Israel, and therefore he served as a signal, or sign, of impending aliyah. News of the Balfour Declaration had not reached them at all, for in November 1917 Iraq was still cut off from the outside world.142 Only at war’s end, with the renewal of visits by shadarim, were connections with Eretz Israel renewed, and it was then that they heard of Herbert Samuel’s appointment. Nahum Hafzadi: “After 1920, there was much enthusiasm that led to the 183

01 Chapters.indd 183

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

beginning of aliyah of Jews from Zakho to Eretz Israel. . . . We heard that a certain Jew was governor of Jerusalem and his name was Herbert Samuel. The rabbis used to say, ‘It is written in the Torah: Who can survive except for Samuel.’143 This Samuel will be the Messiah.” In reply to a question, Nahum said that his personal economic situation was not bad and that he did not know much about Eretz Israel, but “there was much enthusiasm among the younger people in Zakho when Herbert Samuel came [to Jerusalem]. So we said that the Messiah had come and that we would go on aliyah.”144 Shabetai Piro, who arrived in Eretz Israel in 1925, reported in a similar vein: “When we came to Eretz Israel [this was after] we heard at that time that here there was a King of Israel. People yearned very much and wanted to come. At first came a few families and then began the aliyah and one pulled the other.”145 Although it is claimed that the Balfour Declaration was one of the reasons for aliyah from Europe in the post–World War I period,146 from the testimonies of former Zakho Jews we know that they were unaware of it.147 Even if they had heard of the Balfour Declaration, it is doubtful whether they would have reacted with enthusiasm, for they needed a figure to lead them on. Rabbi Shmuel Baruch told us of his aliyah in 1925, a lengthy episode with many delays along the way. In his introductory sentences, mentioned earlier in another context, he said, “A rumor spread that the English had conquered [Eretz Israel] from the Turks, and there were also Englishmen who captured our city [Zakho]. So after I heard that they conquered it, it was said that there was one man named Herbert Samuel, that he was the high commissioner of Jerusalem. That’s almost half a Messiah. Now it is easier to immigrate to Eretz Israel, and there will be days when it will be more difficult.” Being a practical person, Baruch organized five or six families, who told him, “Since you are going on aliyah, we will go with you. It is in our hearts, as well.” He proceeded to name the families, to add credibility to his story, and repeatedly mentioned Herbert Samuel but did not note the Balfour Declaration. He related to the appointment of the high commissioner as a catalyst for his aliyah that stemmed from his yearning for the Holy Land: “We heard about Herbert Samuel. We heard that he had come to Eretz Israel as a high commissioner . . . that is partial Redemption.”148

Pioneer Emigrants from Europe Shmuel Baruch mentioned Samuel once more, at the opening of a story about another element that he identified as a catalyst for aliyah: “Many said ‘halutzim,’ so we thought, ‘These youngsters are like the army of [the People of ] Israel. Since there is almost no Messiah, the coming of the halutzim is 184

01 Chapters.indd 184

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

partial Redemption.’” He added, “Why are we still sitting here [in Zakho]? It is now easier to go on aliyah. Afterward, it may be difficult. Now there is freer travel along the roads because many are coming. The halutzim from Europe are like what is written in the Bible: ‘Halutzim cross the Jordan’ [a reference to Num. 32:21].” Apparently the shadarim also brought to Zakho the spirit of Zionism, manifested in “European halutzim,” but Zakho’s Jews did not internalize the meaning of that word, interpreting it in terms of their own conceptions. After his aliyah, Shmuel Baruch asked someone to show him the halutzim he had heard about: “They showed me a young fellow in short knee pants. They told me, ‘That is one of the halutzim.’ I said, ‘Good, Blessed Be the Name of the Lord.’” The end of this story made me smile because of the gap between the lofty biblical image of the halutzim held by Baruch before his aliyah and the very secular image of the halutz that he encountered in Eretz Israel. His body language and emphasis said everything: “We didn’t know who the halutzim were.”149

Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel Interviewees from Zakho, particularly the rabbis and others associated with spiritual matters, emphasized strong religious affinity with Eretz Israel as the central reason for their own aliyah. Rabbis Shmuel Baruch and Haviv ‘Alwan, as well as Rahamim Cohen, stressed that they sensed a religious attachment to the Holy Land when they came on aliyah; Rabbi Meir Alfiya and Rabbi Zechariya Moshe Mizrahi also immigrated during the British Mandate period.150 However, some of the testimonies intimated that there was also economic motivation for aliyah, and that religious attachment was in inverse proportion to the economic situation of the immigrants. In other words, although their economic condition influenced the decision to set out for Eretz Israel, the rabbis and others filling religious roles who participated in my research presented their testimony from the viewpoint of contemporary Israeli society and felt duty bound by their social status to place religious attachment before any other considerations as reasons for their own aliyah. Shmuel Baruch, for example, declared, I longed very much for Eretz Israel. To finally come on aliyah to Eretz Israel. Why remain [in Zakho]? The public cried bitterly. At first they did not let me go, but I did not listen to them. The entire public accompanied me for thirty kilometers. They began to cry when I left. I was a hazan [cantor], circumciser, scribe, and also a 185

01 Chapters.indd 185

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

shohet and rabbi who conducted marriages. I had much satisfaction. I lacked nothing, only yearning for Eretz Israel. I left Zakho, everything! I had a private home. Only because of my yearning for Eretz Israel did I leave.151

Rahamim Cohen, who was erudite in halakhah, immigrated in 1923, returned to Kurdistan, and came on aliyah a second time in 1934, stressed religious attachment to Eretz Israel in his two aliyah narratives. He began the first narrative with the following: “We always aspired to reach Eretz Israel. Every Jew in our city mentions Jerusalem in prayer or in reading the Bible. The Bible and the prayers refer to the destruction of the First and Second Temples, to Eretz Israel, and particularly to Jerusalem. We did not choose any other city. In 1923, twenty-six families organized and came on aliyah.” Further in his testimony, he said, “That’s what we came for? No, no. We did not come for economic reasons. The opposite is the case. We were better off there than here. . . . We came because we wanted Eretz Israel. . . . The very fact that I returned [proves this]. I immediately regretted, once again.”152 In his 1934 aliyah narrative, Cohen once again emphasized that there were economic difficulties both in Zakho and in Jerusalem, but that “I used to read about Eretz Israel in books, in the Bible, about the praises of Eretz Israel . . . so I personally was attracted to that [i.e., aliyah] until I succeeded, but it took eleven years.” He related that he was so enthusiastic about aliyah that when his visa arrived from Eretz Israel on a Friday, he did not stay to eat in his home but immediately set out for Mosul with his family. There they spent the Sabbath, eating a sparse meal of salads and bread, to expedite the journey as much as possible.153 Aliyah out of religious motivation was not the province solely of rabbis or religious scholars. Julia Dekel told us that her father sailed rafts on the river and that she herself came on aliyah with her husband in 1923 after only three months of marriage. When asked why she came, together with her husband, she said, “I will reply to your question with a story.” She and her daughter worked in a certain house on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, Julia as a laundress and her daughter in service with a physician. One day the physician’s wife came and asked her whether she knew how to prepare Turkish coffee. “Who is it for?” asked Julia. “For our emir.” “What emir?” Julia asked, and the wife said that the coffee was intended for Emir Abdullah, who was then in Jerusalem.154 During her narrative, replete with words in Arabic, Julia described her conversation with Abdullah, who asked her where she had come from and why:

186

01 Chapters.indd 186

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

He said, “I want to know from where hadirtek [your honor came].” What does that mean? Where were you born? From where did you come? He did me great honor! I said, “Ya sidi, I am from here.” He said, “No, you’re not from here.” I said, “I came long ago. I married and came from Zakho, from Iraq.” He said to me, “Why, my daughter? Was it not good for you there?” Then I said, “We and the Arabs, our houses were together. All of us were together. When we celebrate a holiday they come to celebrate with us. On the Sabbath we do not work. They love us.”

Then, finally, came the part of her story that was the answer to my question: “Just like your elderly who sit in the sun, so do we have our own elderly people. They said, ‘We must go to Eretz Israel, we are all Jews!’ Where do you go? You go to Mecca, to Medina, to Acre, to Jaffa. You need to go there.”155 This conversation ended in an invitation extended by Abdullah to Julia and her daughter to come to Transjordan, and a song that Julia sang aloud included an appeal to the emir to bring about peace between Jews and Arabs. Abdullah’s reaction was, “Salem tummec, may your mouth be well.” It was Julia Dekel, not the rabbis or Torah scholars, who devoted an entire narrative to the reasons for aliyah, perhaps because she had become a professional teller of folktales. From her story, we do not know whether the “elderly people” were rabbis, but it stressed the influence of the elderly on simple folk, comparable with the pilgrimage made by Muslims. Influence and the climate of opinion in Zakho are also manifested in the aliyah narrative of Haviv ‘Alwan, who came to Eretz Israel in 1927 at the age of sixteen. He said that they had acquired a “yearning for Eretz Israel” from the sermons and the prayers, but that his aliyah was a result of the influence of Rabbi Shmuel Baruch.156

Economic Circumstances Although religious attachment to Eretz Israel was undoubtedly an important element in the decision to set out on aliyah, a sober assessment of reality was also not lacking. Yona Zidkiyahu: “The major aliyah of the Jews of Zakho, Dohuk, and Barashi began in 1923. What caused this were the activities of emissaries from Eretz Israel and love of Zion. But economic conditions also contributed. There was hunger in the world, and many Jews in northern Iraq were left without anything.”157 Elsewhere, in oral testimony, he said, “The economic situation in Zakho in general was very bad. Most of the immigration to Eretz Israel prior to 1930, like the aliyah of Shmuel Baruch and 187

01 Chapters.indd 187

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

Haviv ‘Alwan and similar cases, was on account of a lack of food. There were simply hungry people. There was no choice but to go on aliyah.158 Zidkiyahu’s testimony illuminates how Zakho’s Jews interpreted the aliyah of rabbis and other persons who presented their emigration as stemming from religious attachment to Eretz Israel. None of them was comfortable about publicly admitting their true economic situation. Gurji Zaqen related that there was one clever family in Zakho, a poor family, who were the first to say, “We shall go to Eretz Israel, to Jerusalem.” In reply to my question, Zaqen admitted that he was referring to the family of Shmuel Baruch. Afterward he also mentioned the names of Hakham Zechariya and Hakham Rahamim, who immigrated to Eretz Israel: “Why were these the first? They were religious persons, and they thought that all religion is found in Jerusalem. They came as the vanguard, and there were other religious persons there [in Zakho], but these were the first to come on aliyah. Their economic situation was so bad that they said, ‘Perhaps here [in Eretz Israel] things will be better.’”159 Gurji, who came to Israel in 1951 at the age of thirteen, mistakenly believed that the aliyah of Shmuel Baruch in 1925 was the first such case from Zakho. As for the difficult economic circumstances after World War I to which he referred, the written documentation alluded to in chapter 4 bears this out. Things were no different throughout Kurdistan; economic reasons led Jews to leave their homes in the hill country and immigrate to Eretz Israel after the war. Incompetent political regimes in Turkey and Iraq added to the severity of the economic situation and unbearable poverty. Relatives writing from Palestine who described favorable conditions for making a living induced others to come on aliyah.160 Everything that the interviewees said about the economic reasons for aliyah was no more than a reaction to the narratives that presented religious attachment as the major reason, stories that placed economic circumstances in the background so as not to prejudice the honor of those who had related them. The interviewees were apparently influenced by Israeli society that gave preference to aliyah for ideological reasons, or even to save lives, over aliyah due to economic distress. In contrast to the earlier narratives, only one personal memory narrative drew a direct connection between aliyah and poverty—that of Simha Mizrahi. Perhaps she was not deterred from relating her family’s economic situation because she was a member of the second generation of Kurdish Jews in Israel and was not ashamed to reveal the reason for her parents’ aliyah. Her story centered round the immigration to Eretz Israel by her mother, father, maternal grandfather, and grandmother in 1920: 188

01 Chapters.indd 188

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

They came on aliyah because they were very poor. They were very many souls, and to feed many souls was very very difficult. . . . My grandfather’s brother was very young. He worked for a rich and respectable Arab. I don’t remember his name. He was a shepherd. He [the grandfather’s brother] was ten or eleven years old. On every holiday, the Arab, who greatly liked my uncle [i.e., grandfather’s brother] whose name was Meir, and Miro in Kurdish, . . . used to give him a lamb or a ewe, a present on every holiday, once for Passover and once for the New Year. Then they would slaughter it. They would dehydrate part of the meat and preserve another part in brine. They would pickle it so that it would keep for a long time. . . . They would live on this. They would cook meat only for Fridays and Saturdays [i.e., the Sabbath]. During the rest of the week, they would eat only vegetables, and wheat that they sowed between the rows, then reaped and beat in order to extract the flour.161

Simha added that her parents did not own land and therefore farmed it as tenant farmers: “How much could they earn [for themselves] from such land? Only what they could plant between the cultivated plots. That was their profit.”

Insecurity on the Roads The problem posed by the lack of insecurity while traveling was an important impetus for aliyah from Zakho. Jewish peddlers who made their rounds from village to village along remote side roads were under threat of attack by robbers. Since many of Zakho’s Jews made their living by peddling, more than a few suffered from this. It was a customary saying that Zakho’s peddlers did not die in bed, but on the highways.162 Jews from Zakho wrote to their relatives in Jerusalem about murder and robbery on the roads. As mentioned earlier, the CKCJ in Jerusalem appealed to Itzhak Ben-Zvi, head of the National Council, requesting his help in the matter.163 Ben-Zvi wrote to the Zakho rabbis, asking for more information. Rabbi Meir Shabetai Alfiya and the hakham bashi Rabbi Ya‘akov Elia Nissim replied in a detailed letter in 1931 in which they listed the names of Jews who had been murdered on the roads: “the well-known old man” Shabetai ben David, who was murdered on 8 Shevat (26 January) 1931; three others were killed on 24 August 1928: Asher ben Avraham Zaqen, Yosef ben Nahum, and Jum‘a ben Yeshaya; and five who fell victim in 1923: Shimon ben Shimon, Hayyo ben Darwish, Moshe Murdukh, Shabo ben Elia, and Moshe 189

01 Chapters.indd 189

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

ben Rahamim. The letter ends with an appeal to the National Council to send them immigration certificates and financial help for those wishing to come on aliyah. Traces of this letter are found in two personal memory narratives of Haviv ‘Alwan, who arrived in Eretz Israel at the age of sixteen. In these narratives, Jerusalem is portrayed as being in the very opposite of the situation in Kurdistan. The first story centered round Eliahu Shar‘abi: “He came thanks to his mouth, for he made a vow in his heart that should the Lord, Blessed be He, rescue him from those robbers, from those murderers, he would devote himself to Jerusalem, and that is what came to pass. They [the highwaymen] did not touch him, and he came to Jerusalem. That year he married. . . . I remember that . . . and, thirty or forty years later, during the [mass] aliyah, his parents came.” The second story concerned a middle-aged man, “also during my time”; that is, when Haviv was still in Zakho: “He too encountered robbers from a certain village. They intended to kill him, placed a sword to his neck. He made a vow that, should he survive, he would donate his home to Jerusalem, and this he did.” Haviv added, “And I remember them both; they passed away not long ago.” According to him, this middle-aged man was his cousin, the maternal grandfather of Rabbi Shabetai Alfiya. Jerusalem is mentioned in both narratives as the place to which one wants to come (the first story) or to which a person donates a home (the second story). Haviv summed up his narratives by saying, “This is interesting, for it is the sanctity of Jerusalem, the belief they held, that saved them.”164 Yona Zidkiyahu, who came in 1930, described the aliyah of his family: “In 1928, a very cruel and tragic fate happened to three heroes among the Jews of Zakho . . . , Asher Zaqen, Yosef Adika, and Jum‘a Zaqen, who left [the city] on business and commerce.” On the road, they encountered a band of thieves and murderers for whom robbery was not enough: “The bodies of the murdered remained lying [on the road] for three or four days, so that it was impossible to approach and identify them because the robbers mutilated their faces with daggers and knives.” This murder influenced Yona’s father, most of whose business was conducted in the hill country of Kurdistan. He took stock of the situation and decided to immigrate to Eretz Israel “because he did not want his brother and sons to be murdered before his eyes.” This shocking episode was not the first of its kind. To it we can add what Yona wrote of an earlier event—an attempted attack upon his father and grandmother in the Kurdish hill country. They rode out to a distant village for health reasons and were attacked by highwaymen who stole their belongings and stripped them of their clothes; fortunately they were not killed. Though his father managed to retrieve most of what was stolen, the episode was traumatic.165 190

01 Chapters.indd 190

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

Zaki Levi, Yona Zidkiyahu’s cousin, added a story about one of his own friends, whose father was mentioned by Yona. This friend was still in his mother’s womb when his father was brutally murdered and, when he was born, “he was called Eliezer Zaqen Jum‘a. That’s how we called him because he was born on Friday.”166 Mordechai Yona told of his maternal grandmother, whose peddler husband was murdered by robbers: “I don’t even remember if they succeeded in finding his body and if they brought it [to burial] or not.” His grandmother married again a year later even though she already had two children by her first husband—“the two children were my mother and her brother.” His mother told Mordechai that her own mother left the two children in Kurdistan and together with her second husband joined a group of people who set out for Eretz Israel. He was uncertain when this was, “1929–30 or 1915–16,” but was able to relate that the grandmother and her group made the journey on foot, which took three months.167 From this brief but informative story, we can understand that the grandmother did not get over the murder of her first husband and as a result, after remarrying, immigrated to Eretz Israel despite having to leave her two children behind in Zakho.168 Theft and murder also occurred on the waterways, on rafts that carried cargo and floated trees down the river. Shmuel Baruch mentioned his own disinclination to continue living in Zakho because four people were murdered on a raft: “When I saw that four persons were murdered before my own eyes, I said that we must not continue living in this city. That year I immediately sold what I owned and came on aliyah to Eretz Israel. Several dozen had been killed on rafts, but lately they had killed four people. That year I came to Eretz Israel.”169 Insecurity on the roads and highway robbery decreased during the 1940s as the central government became more effective in Kurdistan. Police stations were erected along the roads, and the means of communication improved. Zaki Levi told us that, thanks to improved conditions, the first motor car reached Zakho in 1939. It belonged to Hazim Bak, head of the most influential family in Zakho, who bought a Chrysler, “and from the beginning of the 1940s the roads were opened and the robbers disappeared.”170

The Drawing Power of Relatives Stories about aliyah are characteristically family narratives. Relatives already in Eretz Israel exerted influence on those still in Kurdistan. In the introduction to his father’s book, Shabetai Alfiya wrote that after World War I many came from Kurdistan thanks to the news and information received from 191

01 Chapters.indd 191

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 5

relatives and friends who wrote of the good prospects for making a living in Eretz Israel.171 As a result of this wave of emigration, certain villages, such as Barashi, were emptied of their Jewish residents.172 Shabetai Piro said that, when his father died in 1923, his grandmother came on aliyah that year. After some time, “she wrote us letters strongly begging us that we should not stay there, and we immigrated to Eretz Israel.” Piro did not believe that his grandmother held Zionist inclinations but very much wanted to come to Eretz Israel because of religious attachment and traditions, “because people would always talk about Jerusalem, what went on there, the Holy Land.” Piro and his family decided to make aliyah two years later, in 1925: “When we received the letters, and it seemed certain that we would come here and that there would be no problems, I began to liquidate everything we owned. We went down to Mosul.”173 Members of the Zakho community aspired to emigrate together with relatives or friends, thus gaining a sense of combined forces and mutual support. Shmuel Baruch told us that his wife did not want to come on aliyah and consented only after he organized families of friends and relatives, “her uncle and other relatives.”174 As for Haviv ‘Alwan, he said that he immigrated to Eretz Israel because “in Zakho I had friends, rabbis or hakhamim. I was young, but I used to stick around them. They taught me how to do kosher ritual slaughtering. They went on aliyah to Eretz Israel and then returned to Zakho without their wives. They came just for a visit. Since I was so closely attached to them, I said to my father, ‘I am going to Eretz Israel with them,’ and I did.” Haviv was referring especially to Shmuel Baruch, whom “I loved very much.” In the end, Haviv also brought his father, Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, to Eretz Israel: “And this is how it came about. I came, made progress, and sent him a visa.” Elsewhere in his testimony, he said, “I came first on aliyah, and then I pulled him [after me].” When describing the immigration of his father, who came in 1933 with a group of rabbis, Haviv related the following: “We took care of this. We got him an immigration permit, and I sent him money by mail from here. I bought currency of Zakho [i.e., Iraq]. Then it was the rupee. . . . So I bought some rupees for him, I put them in an envelope, and he came. He came legally. I still have his passport.”175 Rahamim Cohen came to Eretz Israel in 1923, returned to Zakho, and immigrated once again in 1934. He told us that he asked his uncle, Aharon Cohen, who lived in Jerusalem, to help him get a passport. With the aid of Shmuel Baruch, the uncle arranged a certificate as a rabbi for Rahamim, even though he was no rabbi and was older than the upper age level set for immigrants by the British Mandate authorities.176 192

01 Chapters.indd 192

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Aliyah in the Prestate Period

The outbreak of World War II severed the mutual connections that led to the unification of families in Eretz Israel. With the outbreak of hostilities, many were left in Zakho who had relatives in Palestine.177 Zaki Levi summed up the major issues well, touching on the reasons for aliyah: The major cause of aliyah in the distant past, during the twenties and thirties, was economic. There was hunger. A connection with Eretz Israel was created by the emissaries from Eretz Israel who came to collect donations, and also by the families that had already gone on aliyah. This connection stirred up matters. The word “Jerusalem” was very important in Zakho. All of [Jewish] Zakho was religious. It was unacceptable that someone did not pray. All this is connected with Eretz Israel and only naturally with Jerusalem. When the first families reached Eretz Israel, and particularly Jerusalem, despite their difficult situation they sent presents [to Zakho] such as olive oil, pottery, and more. That is how a connection was formed, and there was also the beginning of an awareness of Zionism, not by means of any organization but through these connections. And then one family pulled another. . . . People went on aliyah for economic or social reasons, for lack of any alternative, [or] because of ties with those already in Jerusalem. . . . Every period had its motivations: Jerusalem, Eretz Israel; the Holocaust significantly contributed to the understanding that there is nothing left [for Jews] in a foreign land. Then began illegal sneaking [across borders] and later all the rest. I cannot say that all came on aliyah for economic reasons, that all were true Zionists, or that all were wealthy and left the fleshpots behind them.178 There were diverse components. Every period had its own motivating forces. This began with murders that intertwined with economic reasons and ended up with Zionism. The more families that had made aliyah to Jerusalem—the more [additional] families wanted to join them. At one time, the community of Zakho numbered more than five thousand souls and, by the time of the [mass] aliyah [in the 1950s], about two thousand of them were no longer in Zakho. They were already in Eretz Israel, in Baghdad, and some in Mosul. Thus, to all effects, emigration from the city had taken place ever since World War I.179

193

01 Chapters.indd 193

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Chapter 6

The British Mandate Period Aliyah at All Costs

The Common Structure of Aliyah Narratives: Inhibitory and Advancing Factors Members of the Zakho community made arrangements for their aliyah without any help from the Zionist establishment. This was in direct contrast to the situation in Europe, where prospective immigrants to Eretz Israel, particularly groups of halutzim who had received Zionist indoctrination, were aided by Zionist organizations. How, then, did persons in the pre-Zionist community in Zakho carry out their aliyah? This can be ascertained from the themes found in their aliyah narratives and how these are reflected in the elements that shaped their common structure. Interviewees repeatedly maintained that about half the community came on aliyah prior to the establishment of Israel.1 These olim (Jewish immigrants) were not organized by the community, nor did they receive public financial aid. This was an aliyah of individuals, whether they came by themselves, with members of their family, or in groups of friends and acquaintances. Sometimes several families decided to join together for the journey; on other occasions there were arguments within a family about whether to emigrate. A personal decision was the motivating force for aliyah in the narratives referring to the prestate period. The olim had to break through social barriers and overcome inhibitory factors that placed obstacles on the path to achieving aliyah. That is why the aliyah narratives are characterized by two major motifs: advancement and delaying or inhibiting factors. Their stories fluctuate between the two opposite poles: passage from one region to another and overcoming obstacles until the successful completion of their journey. These characteristics are rooted in 194

01 Chapters.indd 194

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

the structure of the traditional aliyah story that belongs to the genre of legendary tales, which also includes supernatural elements.2 The leading figures in aliyah tales with a supernatural element are generally tzaddikim (righteous men) or famous historical figures, such as Rabbi Israel Ba‘al Shem-Tov, and Rabbi Haim Ben-Attar. In contrast, in personal memory narratives and other stories that have become secularized, the factors that encourage or inhibit the protagonists are human, not supernatural, beings, and these stories are marked by realistic elements.3 Zakho’s Jews, who for many years lived in a closed world that opened up only after World War I and who did not receive help from the community or from the outside, needed tremendous will power, enthusiasm, and resourcefulness to complete the difficult journey and overcome all obstacles. The elements of place and space, which take priority over the element of time, take precedence in their narratives because of the strong impulse to reach Eretz Israel. The passage from one region to another and the dynamics involved characterize their stories and counterbalance the impediments that cropped up along the way and influenced the time element. Thus, the structure of the prestate aliyah narrative was shaped by the tension between space and time. An example of passage through many regions and overcoming obstacles is the aliyah narrative of Shmuel Baruch. During his journey, he and his group traveled from Mosul to Aleppo to Damascus to Beirut to Sidon to Rosh Haniqrah and finally to Haifa. At each stop, some impediment prevented their passage onward through the region. Thus, Baruch told us, his aliyah journey lasted three months. The stories told by other interviewees also described passage through diverse regions, as well as events that delayed them for long periods, sometimes even years.4 David Salman told of his father, Eliahu, who together with his friends organized a group of six or seven families from Zakho for aliyah through Syrian territory in 1934. The father left for Syria and lived for a while in the village of Khaniq, near the Iraqi border; later the family moved to the Syrian city of Qamishliye. David, then sixteen years old, managed to reach Eretz Israel in 1936, but the rest of the family did not arrive until about a year later.5 There were diverse reasons for delays along the way. Internal factors relating to the family and the community sometimes impeded the major protagonists from setting out on the journey, whereas others factors were external, such as the need to acquire legal permits to leave Iraq, the hostile attitude of Iraqi and Syrian authorities, and harassment by highwaymen. According to the testimony of several interviewees, such obstacles at times gained the upper hand and their aliyah did not materialize, so the central figures in these stories would have to wait until the early 1950s to immigrate. The structure 195

01 Chapters.indd 195

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

of these narratives is similar to stories that tell of how the olim overcame the obstacles—they ended positively with the achievement of aliyah.

The Family: “I Said, ‘We Shall Go on Aliyah’; My Wife Said, ‘We Shall Not’” The first impediment to aliyah arose even before beginning the journey, when one or more members of the core or extended family opposed the move. A decision that entailed a dramatic about-face in the family’s tranquil and stable lifestyle caused a thorough shake-up in its ranks. As a result, women and children, whose social standing was low, exerted greater influence. The family could influence the decision in one of two manners: encourage aliyah, or delay or prevent it owing to fear of being cut off from other family members. Shmuel Baruch told us about his wife: From the day I married her, for three months we discussed the matter. I said, “We shall go on aliyah.” My wife said, “We shall not go on aliyah. What awaits us there? A foreign place. Here we have neighbors, friends, and relatives.” After I organized a few families for aliyah, she agreed. For two years, every month I arranged another family for aliyah. After two years, I finished organizing, and we came on aliyah. From the day of [our] wedding, I arranged for her uncle and her family [to agree to aliyah], and then she agreed.6

Rahamim Cohen, Shmuel Baruch’s good friend, who himself came to Eretz Israel in 1923 together with a group of families, told us that Shmuel was at first a member of that group and even traveled with it from Zakho to Mosul, but then returned: “There were persons who influenced him to return home, and he returned. He was hesitant because of his wife. There were two families from Zakho, and he returned.”7 It turns out, therefore, that Shmuel Baruch had made a previous attempt to come on aliyah that was unsuccessful because of his wife, Devorah. But, when they set out again in 1925, it was Devorah who urged her husband not to be tempted by the many offers made to him, neither for settlement outside of Eretz Israel (America, Syria, and Ethiopia) nor in Eretz Israel (Haifa), but to continue until they should reach Jerusalem and take up residence there.8 In some cases, when the wife opposed aliyah, the couple separated. Haviv ‘Alwan told us about the first connection that he and his family had with the idea of aliyah. It came about through a story he was told by his father, Rabbi 196

01 Chapters.indd 196

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period Devorah Baruch. Courtesy of her daughters, Ahuva Baruch and Carmela Baruch-Krupnik.

Shabetai ‘Alwan, about one of his father’s three sisters who was married to a rabbinical scholar who wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel: “[This was] maybe seventy, maybe eighty years ago, who knows exactly, I don’t remember.” The husband and his mother wanted to go on aliyah, but his wife refused: “All my brothers are here . . . how can I leave my brothers?” Meanwhile, she became ill and died, and “that same person came here [Eretz Israel] without a wife. He came and married here.” Haviv concluded his story: “From that very moment, our hearts were filled with the desire to come to Eretz Israel.” In response to a question, the story took on a supernatural character: “Many people said that her husband told her, ‘If you don’t come with me you will become ill, you will not have the good fortune [to reach Eretz Israel].’ They said that he told her something like that, and that because of this she died.”9 In this case and others, it was anxiety over separation from members of the family that led to the decision not to go on aliyah. Varda Shilo told about her family. Her father’s aunt, Rivka Shengeloff, who came to Eretz Israel in the 1920s or “perhaps in 1915–16,” wrote and entreated them to come: “She came on muleback with her husband. They went by roundabout ways. They were caught, tortured, and returned to Zakho, and then went again. They finally reached Eretz Israel, at first settling in the Old City [of Jerusalem] until the War of Independence. During the War of Independence, they evacuated to Shekhunat Hapahim [Tin Containers Neighborhood]. At the age of 100, she still worked.” 197

01 Chapters.indd 197

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

To lend credibility to her story, Varda showed me a family photo.10 In it, she, then two or three years old, is sitting with her family, all dressed in Kurdish attire: “This photograph is due to her. [It was prepared for her father’s aunt.] We sent it to her then, when we wanted to come to Eretz Israel.” As a result of this correspondence, the family made plans to come on aliyah, but “when my father wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel, my aunt cried bitterly; she didn’t want him to leave her. So he canceled the journey to Eretz Israel . . . , otherwise we would have been in Eretz Israel. I would have grown up here.”11 The family continued to maintain contact with the aunt: “This aunt supplied us with information. She continuously sent us letters informing us of what was happening in Eretz Israel. And the entire town learned from us what was happening in Eretz Israel.” What especially influenced Varda was that every year her father’s aunt used to send her family in Zakho an etrog (a sort of lemon) and a lulav12 (a palm branch) from Jerusalem: Aunt Rivka used to send us an etrog every year, and it is a great event when an etrog comes to the sukkah.13 Every night, we had an etrog and a lulav in the sukkah. My dear, that is a great thing! Very special for whoever has them during the festival. All would borrow the lulav while singing liturgical hymns and then return it, and we sat here and they sat at the entrance, just as I showed you in our house [Varda showed me a cardboard model of their home in Zakho]. And what liturgical hymns! I remember [them] from when I was still very young, the sound of these hymns still echoes in my head. I loved to listen to them as I lay drowsily in bed. And they [the guests] were offered coffee. All that is thanks to this aunt in Eretz Israel.14

The fact that they did not immigrate to Eretz Israel led to a substitute framework of ties to the Holy Land—one that provided members of the family with strength and encouragement, and even raised their standing in the eyes of the community. Only after the mass aliyah in the early 1950s did Varda’s family from Zakho reunite with her father’s aunt, who helped them move from the immigrant transit camp in Qastel (just outside Jerusalem) to the one in Jerusalem’s Talpiot Quarter.15 Yehoshua Miro, whom I located after interviewing his brother, Meir Zaqen,16 related a narrative of smuggling across the border that had two aspects: the family simultaneously delayed or prevented aliyah but also advanced the idea and helped aliyah. On the Ninth of Av17 of 1941 (2 August), after the 198

01 Chapters.indd 198

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

pogrom mounted by Rashīd ‘Alī against the Jews of Baghdad,18 one of the refugees, Avraham ben Pinhas Cohen, reached Zakho, intent upon crossing the border into Syria on his way to Eretz Israel. Mordechai Zaqen, who had agreed to help him, sent his son Yehoshua, then age nine or ten, to accompany him, together with a Christian who smuggled people across the border. The father even gave his son a letter addressed to relatives in Syria, saying, “I am supposed to go with the man from Baghdad to Eretz Israel to buy land for my family so that they can come on aliyah to [Eretz] Israel.” After some adventures, they reached Qamishliye, in Syria, where a cousin of his named Zemah lived. Zemah sent on Avraham Cohen—who successfully reached Eretz Israel—but prevented Yehoshua from going with him, leaving him in Qamishliye as a future husband for his daughter. Zemah tried to arrange Syrian identification papers for the Zaqen family in Zakho, “because Syria is close to Eretz Israel and in that way they would be able to go on aliyah.” To facilitate this, a meeting was arranged for the hakham bashi (chief rabbi) of the city, Zemah, and Yehoshua with the kaymakam (district governor). At that meeting, Yehoshua innocently revealed his Iraqi origin when, in reply to the governor’s question, he used the Iraqi word for village instead of the Syrian term. The governor challenged them: “What’s this, you say it [he] is Syrian?” The hakham bashi said to Yehoshua, “Get out!” and the cousin, too, told him, “Flee!” Yehoshua concluded his story: “Somehow they closed the matter; I did not get identity certificates. I remained there six or seven months. Then two Jewish smugglers arrived from Zakho. I returned to Zakho with them and never again set foot in Syria.”19 What emerges from this story is that Yehoshua’s cousin Zemah assisted in the aliyah of the man who had fled Baghdad, and he did his best to help the Zaqen family immigrate to Eretz Israel by trying to supply them with Syrian identity certificates, but was also the person who, out of egocentric considerations, prevented Yehoshua from going on to Eretz Israel and failed to arrange certificates for the boy and his family. The boy Yehoshua played a leading role in this story: it was he who was sent as a vanguard of the family to reach Eretz Israel with a message that land should be acquired for the family, and it was he who helped smuggle the refugee from Baghdad as far as Qamishliye. However, in his innocence, he was also the reason for the failure of his cousin’s plan to help the Zaqen family reach Eretz Israel via Syria. In conclusion, aliyah narratives that center on the family have a complex common structure: the family is depicted simultaneously as an element that advances, delays, or prevents aliyah. The stories contain diverse and unexpected developments and events within the family and those closest to it in Zakho, Syria, and Eretz Israel. 199

01 Chapters.indd 199

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

The Community: “Would [the Rabbi] Leave His Congregation without a Shepherd?” Aliyah rocked the communal organization of Zakho and dealt it a harsh blow. Rabbis and communal leaders, vital pillars of society, decided to pick up and leave for Eretz Israel. As a collective body, the community impeded aliyah and did all in its power to prevent the emigration of its leadership. The narratives related by my interviewees pointed to the community’s dependence upon the leader, but also to the opposite: the leader was dependent upon the community; he needed its blessing in order to emigrate successfully. The small Zakho community behaved like an extended family comprised of core families. Most members of the community were somehow related, and it is to their credit that, when a clash of interests arose between the extended family and the core family, they preferred the interests of the latter. Rabbi Shmuel Baruch told us, “I longed very much for Eretz Israel. To finally come on aliyah to Eretz Israel. Why remain [in Zakho]? The public cried bitterly. At first they did not let me go, but I did not listen to them. The entire public accompanied me for thirty kilometers. They began to cry when I left.”20 In 1933, two of Zakho’s rabbis, Shabetai ‘Alwan and Ya‘akov Babbika, appealed to the Sephardi chief rabbi of Eretz Israel, Ya‘akov Meir, requesting that he help them come on aliyah to Eretz Israel.21 Shmuel Baruch summarized their request: “We have a strong desire to come to Jerusalem, but the government did not give us immigration certificates. If you can send us [certificates] for two families, send them to us.”22 After much effort, Baruch was able to arrange immigration certificates for them as rabbis and thus opened the way for the aliyah of additional rabbis from Kurdistan.23 Shmuel Baruch continued, Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan and Hakham Bashi Ya‘akov Babbika were overjoyed. Rabbi Babbika didn’t come, for the community would not let him. They told him, “We will not let go of you.” And he did not come on aliyah. But after a year, he did not listen to them. He said, “I will go on aliyah. Rabbi Baruch sent me a certificate.” So then he sent me a letter in which he wrote that the matter is like this. . . . I turned to Rabbi Kook. The rabbi intervened and said [that] the certificate had been canceled, but we shall request its renewal. His certificate was renewed. I sent it to him there. He sold all his belongings, but died. Hakham Shabetai ‘Alwan did come to Eretz Israel. 200

01 Chapters.indd 200

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

Rabbi Babbika passed away after receiving an immigration certificate a second time—a twice-missed opportunity. Haviv ‘Alwan told about his father, Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, who three times unsuccessfully tried to immigrate to Eretz Israel, succeeding only on the fourth. His story was transformed into one of the legend genre because of the supernatural element it contained. This story, told on three occasions, places the emphasis on the motif of the community that tried to prevent its rabbi’s aliyah because it feared remaining without a spiritual mentor. Haviv told us that his father preached aliyah in Zakho, but that [h]e came as far as Mosul and returned. On several occasions, he came as far as Mosul and returned. [This happened] when I was still there and a few times after I was already here [in Eretz Israel]. He came to Mosul, and then several people from the community of Zakho came and brought him back, didn’t let him go until he said, “For God’s sake, now my son is there. I request that you give me permission to go.” Why did he ask them? Because, though they did not restrain [him] by force, something always happened. If he did not go with [their] permission, something would happen to him that would detain him. Thus it was until they gave him permission to go. . . . After that, he succeeded.24

This story was told summarily and laconically. Haviv repeated the following explanation several times: He left Zakho many times to come here [Eretz Israel], but the merits of the congregation did not let him come. Would he leave his congregation without a shepherd? So they would pray, and then it would be difficult for him to leave. No one would be able to leave. Whoever left would not succeed . . . , either the government detained him, or he would break a hand or a leg, or something would happen by which he knew: that’s it. Until the last time, when he said, “Forgive, me, let me go with all your heart, so that I may go, because my son is there [in Eretz Israel].” They said to him, “We forgive you, go and succeed.”

Three times his father tried unsuccessfully to come on aliyah, but only on the fourth did he succeed: Once when he went [to Mosul] to take out a passport, on the return 201

01 Chapters.indd 201

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

Rabbi Ya‘akov Babbika, the hakham bashi (chief rabbi) of Zakho. Courtesy of Oded Kirmah.

trip the car carrying him and members of his family overturned. He, my father’s wife [i.e., the narrator’s stepmother], and my brother fell into the water. Immediately, some Arabs who were near the water pulled out the car and the people. Thank God, nothing happened to them. They did not drown; they came out alive. Only my brother; he broke an arm and later they healed it. . . . On another occasion, the [Iraqi] government did not want to give him an immigration permit. He came to Mosul, sat there for some time, but they [still] did not want to give him a permit. That was the second time. . . . And on the third time, too, a certain event happened. My sister took ill, she almost died . . . but she is alive now. So they came from Zakho and told him, “You’re doing something wrong. How can you take her?” So he returned. . . . And the fourth time he succeeded.25

202

01 Chapters.indd 202

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

When I pressed him for more details, Haviv repeated this story three times. The circumstances of the storytelling provide an explanation for his willingness to repeat it. Haviv wanted to glorify his family, especially his father, Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, whom he greatly admired and to whom he was very grateful, and saw himself as the continuator of the family chain of Torah scholars and religious functionaries. However, the fact that the story was repeated several times in different versions apparently indicates the deep shock that the core family underwent because of the opposition voiced by the extended family, the community. This story was recorded indelibly in the memory of family members because it greatly influenced the course of their lives, and was probably told over and over again within family circles or even outside them until it took on the form of a legend.26 The impediments lasted for years, until 1927, the year in which Haviv came to Eretz Israel, although some occurred even later, until the aliyah of his father in 1933. On certain occasions, the community tried to prevent the aliyah of someone who was not a rabbi but filled an important role in the community or was a member of a leading family. Yona Zidkiyahu wrote a lengthy personal memory narrative, full of many subnarratives, about the aliyah of his family in 1930.27 The head of the family, Sasson Zidkiyahu, and his brother decided to immigrate to Eretz Israel after Jewish merchants from Zakho were murdered on the roads. Since the family business entailed making the rounds of the villages, the father feared that his sons or his brother would also be murdered. Preparations went on for about a year because the father tried to collect money owed him by villagers and to sell his house and other belongings. Yona remembered that his father’s efforts to sell their property were not very successful; people refused to buy “because they did not want us to leave the city. And so my father managed to sell one of our houses . . . but he could not sell the second, large, house, the one we lived in, and its care and sale were entrusted to my uncle Shaul Levi.” In this case, the community joined forces with leading Kurdish citizens to prevent the Zidkiyahu family from leaving: When the date of our departure from Zakho for Eretz Israel was formally announced, all heads of the Jewish community, together with the Arab leadership of the city, joined together and demonstrated against our leaving the country and came to our home the night before our departure, when all our belongings were already packed, to demand that we do not leave the country. Out of respect for the great community, which is like the Shekhinah [Divine Presence], 203

01 Chapters.indd 203

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

this time my father decided to accede to their will and remain in the city for another three months.

It is noteworthy that Yona used the phrase “leaving the country,” perhaps because his family’s aliyah was not based on religious or Zionist consciousness but on fear for their lives. In this story, like in previous ones, the central figure in the narrative showed consideration for the wishes of the community, so highly valued, as reflected in the religious term Shekhinah. Thus, the Zidkiyahu family, which numbered thirty souls, delayed its aliyah for three months but finally carried out its intention. In his personal memory narrative, Yona added a dramatic substory, with a tinge of the supernatural, to illustrate how difficult it was for Kurdish Muslim friends to separate from the family. He told about the mukhtar of a village situated along the road to Dohuk and Mosul: “This mukhtar, a rich and respected man by the name of Hassan Hassamo, sat in our home for ten days and cried, and tearfully recited a poem about our leaving the country. And in this poem he cursed himself, saying that he would not be able to live without us. And thus it transpired.”28 The mukhtar was the victim of an accident caused by mounted policemen, who, as was the custom, came to rest and dine in his home. One of the policemen’s rifles was loaded and a bullet was discharged by mistake, wounding the mukhtar in his thigh. The mukhtar declared on the spot that the policeman should not be blamed, for “what has happened is the will of Allah.” Yona concluded this part of his story: “The mukhtar was a close friend of the family. He was taken to the hospital in Mosul but to no avail. From there, he was transferred to a hospital in Baghdad, where he passed away. The curse with which he cursed himself—that after our leaving Iraq he would not stay alive—was fulfilled.” The Jewish community and Kurdish notables found it difficult to reconcile themselves to the departure of leading persons. It may be assumed that in a small city and community, such as Zakho and its Jewish population, such a phenomenon was even more common, so that the olim had to make an even greater emotional effort to overcome separation from their hometown, one that took time. According to Yona’s narrative, after the tragic event, “we remained in the city for another three months and departed, accompanied by most of the community and the notables until we reached the outskirts of the city, until [we reached] our vineyard. There our family, which numbered thirty souls, took its leave and we set out for Mosul.”

204

01 Chapters.indd 204

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

Passport and Certificate: “So the Kurds from Zakho Came on Aliyah Illegally” Acquiring a passport and an aliyah certificate were administrative acts that delayed aliyah. It was not enough that one desired to immigrate to Eretz Israel and was prepared to face the obstacles along the way; whoever did not acquire the necessary formal papers took a sevenfold risk. The acquisition of passports, visas, and certificates appeared in the aliyah stories as an impediment, but the interviewees confused these documents and did not differentiate among them. Whoever wished to leave Iraq needed a passport; a visa was necessary to enter Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine; whereas anyone wishing to settle permanently in Palestine needed a certificate. Immigration certificates—permits issued by the British authorities—were distributed to Iraqi and Kurdish Jews in the 1920s through the Immigration Committee of the Zionist movement in Baghdad; from the beginning of the 1930s, the Immigration Committee coordinated the distribution of the certificates for Jews in Kurdistan with the Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem (CKCJ). As we have seen, only a few certificates were allotted in the first place, and, because of internal wrangling within the CKCJ, their number gradually diminished until their distribution ceased altogether. The olim left Iraq legally, at least in most cases. There were those who were allowed to travel to Syria as tourists but from there had to continue illegally into Palestine. There were also olim who received visas to visit Palestine as tourists or pilgrims, but according to the law—which they generally disregarded—they were to return to Iraq after three months. Nahum Hafzadi immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1923. When interviewed in 1967, he described his own aliyah and immigration during the prestate period.29 He came together with four other families, and after that came “many many Jews, convoys of twenty or thirty families. The certificates were not distributed to Zakho Jews but to Jews in Baghdad, and if they did not have enough of their own who wanted to come on aliyah, they would give us [certificates]. But if their own people had parents, they would not give [certificates] to the Kurds. So the Kurds from Zakho came on aliyah illegally. Every year there were olim, until 1936.”30 Kurdish Jews on their way to Eretz Israel had no choice but to enter Palestine illegally. When asked whether the illegal immigration was organized by Zakho Jews themselves or by the Zionist movement,31 Nahum Hafzadi replied that only the Zakho Jews arranged it: “The Jews used to pay the goyim [nonJews]. The goyim would come to Baghdad and arrange for automobiles. The Iraqi government was told that we were going as tourists. As tourists, they 205

01 Chapters.indd 205

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

could take in with them sixty [Turkish Liras] and enter Syria. In Syria there were Arabs who received payment and would get them into Eretz Israel [i.e., smuggle them across the border].” The four families that came together with the Hafzadis received certificates from the Zionist Executive in Baghdad falsely describing them as farmers.32 Legal immigrants were very few, other than those rabbis and other religious functionaries who received permits. Shabetai Piro maintained that about two hundred people from Zakho came to Eretz Israel in 1923–48, generally illegally, and that he was among them: “They would say that they were leaving Iraq and going to Syria. In Syria they were allowed to stay. So from there they went [to Eretz Israel] on mules.”33 He related his story rather laconically: We came to Mosul. In Mosul, the Committee of the Jews of Mosul used to take care of every Jew who turned to it, of course under the influence of the hakham bashi. We would receive a letter from the community, from the rabbis [in Zakho]. We would come to Mosul bearing this letter. We were taken to the Syrian Consulate. They would be paid for their handling [our case], of course. At the time, I paid four Turkish pounds. I [and my group] came to Syria in automobiles, through the desert, and we stayed in Aleppo for about two months because we had no opportunity [to proceed] in any manner. In Aleppo, too, there were people who were prepared to receive any Jew who wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel; they were very concerned with this.34

In reply to a question, Piro replied that the persons who took care of the illegal immigrants in Aleppo did not represent the Zionist movement: “I think that these were people who did what they did on a commercial basis, using their influence. What did they do? Business transactions? We knew nothing when we came to Syria. So those who took care of the olim on their way to Eretz Israel—I don’t remember exactly who they were that cared for us—they sent us to Beirut in automobiles.” On the final leg of his journey, Piro set out from Beirut to Sidon, riding a mule and accompanied by an Arab smuggler. He finally reached Safed three or four days later.

Mosul: “Twenty-six Stranded Families” When they came to Mosul, Zakho Jews encountered their first obstacle: how to acquire a passport and a visa. The aliyah narratives of Rahamim Cohen, 206

01 Chapters.indd 206

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

who came to Eretz Israel in 1923, returned to Zakho, and emigrated once again in 1934 are an excellent example illustrating this problem. His narratives, particularly those relating to 1923, contain characteristic elements that describe preparations for aliyah, especially the first stage: journeying to Mosul and the stay there to receive a passport and visa.35 I reached Rahamim Cohen through Yona Zidkiyahu, who sensed that the brief interview he had granted me was “disappointing.” He suggested that I interview Rahamim, who had taught him biblical Hebrew in the state school in Zakho. Rahamim acceded to my request and, despite his age (eighty-six) and failing health at the time, cooperated fully and was prepared to add more and more details because he also thought that it was important to document his personal history and that of the Jewish community of Zakho. Rahamim told me that the leaders of the Zakho community supplied him and his group with a document confirming that “there are no claims against us,” and the members of the group wrote letters to the government of Iraq indicating “that we want to go on aliyah and settle in Eretz Israel.” He maintained that “this differs from tourism” because tourists generally would be supplied with a visa valid for three months, after which the holder must return to Iraq. But “we wrote differently. Each of us appended five Indian rupees. . . . We didn’t know that it was simpler to receive an exit permit for Eretz Israel as tourists.” They set out on their journey: “We came to Mosul. There the director of the Aliyah[!] Department was one Abdul Ghani, a Muslim from India. At the time there was an Arab government [in Iraq], but British [officials] signed the documents.”36 Abdul Ghani, the “bad guy” in Rahamim’s personal memory narrative, caused a delay in issuing the passports. “Abdul Ghani had connections with drivers who used to transport people from Mosul to Aleppo. So he offered us cars that he would supply through his people, that we should hire cars for [the trip to] Aleppo through him.” But there were elderly people in the group who said, “What do we care by what route we travel and with whom?” When Abdul Ghani realized “that we were not going to follow his plan, he came out with a libelous declaration: ‘You requested [permits] to settle in Palestine [Rahamim said, Eretz Israel], but today the government does not sanction immigration [to Palestine]. We will request instructions from Baghdad.’ We remained there for a month, and he refused to issue us passports. Twenty-six stranded families in Mosul.” The families endured much suffering, which Rahamim described in detail. But here, like in many other personal memory narratives, appeared a motif that advanced the story. The local Jewish community of Mosul came to their aid: 207

01 Chapters.indd 207

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

We were staying with relatives of ours in the Jewish community there. We turned to the chief rabbi of Mosul and said, “Listen, for the sake of God, do something! Go to the English captain and tell him that we made a vow to go to Jerusalem. It is a vow and this vow must be kept. [Ask him] to provide us with a tourist exit permit. Mistakenly we wrote ‘to settle in Jerusalem.’”

The general outline of this story reminds us of the biblical Book of Esther. The Mosul community comes to the aid of the stranded olim; Abdul Ghani is the wicked Haman, oppressor of the Jews; the rabbi, Hakham Eliahu Barazani, a well-known figure in Mosul, is Mordecai, defender of the Jews; and the English captain represents the neutral protagonist of the biblical text, Ahasuerus. Rabbi Barazani managed to persuade the English captain that the group intended to make a pilgrimage to holy places in Eretz Israel and then return to Iraq. The captain requested Baghdad’s consent to issue the group tourist visas and received permission on the condition that its members had enough money for such a journey. In the best tradition of such stories, at this point Rahamim related, “At this time, Abdul Ghani was ill due to an iniquity. He took ill because of the iniquity he had done us. We had among us Hakham Yitzhak Cohen. He said, ‘God Almighty, do something bad to him, to this man.’” The illness of the “bad guy” who three times delayed issuing the passports, added a supernatural element to the story that could have transformed the personal memory narrative into a legend that emphasized the power of Hakham Yitzhak Cohen.37 However, Abdul Ghani spoiled the legend: he recuperated, returned to the Immigration Department, and continued to obstruct the efforts of the group that had been issued passports by the English captain. Like Haman, he did his best to delay and prevent the journey, demanding proof that they had sufficient money. All but two managed to prove this. The others secretly gave those two enough money, but Abdul Ghani—the “bastard,” to quote Rahamim—saw this when he spied upon the Jews in the corridor and delayed issuing them their passports. But Rahamim’s story ended positively: We told a certain Jew in Mosul, a broker and merchant, that this man [Abdul Ghani] was thwarting us. He went to him. He also had connections with him. His name was Hai Mariuma. He came to the English captain, whom they used to call sahib, and said to him, “These are unfortunate people. Give them their passports and they shall reach [their destination]. This Abdul Ghani is spreading 208

01 Chapters.indd 208

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

libel. They are going on a ziyara [religious tour from one holy site to another]; they are making a pilgrimage and then shall return.” He permitted these two [to leave]. And we finished.

Haviv ‘Alwan, who came to Eretz Israel in 1927, apparently heard about the episode related by Rahamim Cohen when he was already in the country. Years later, he related this same story to Dalia Sabag of Jerusalem as a legend told in the third person—one that stressed its supernatural element.38 According to this version, this aliyah took place in 1923, but there was no mention of a group of Jews from Zakho, only the immigration to Eretz Israel of “a few Jews from Kurdistan.” Furthermore, it is missing many historical and realistic details found in Rahamim Cohen’s narrative, who told it in the first person, as a participant. Haviv ‘Alwan: Before they left for Eretz Israel, Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen of Zakho lifted his hands to the heavens and said, “Lord of the Universe, I have never in my life cursed anyone, but this man, Abdul Ghani Effendi, caused us much trouble and detained us for more than two months in Mosul, and as a result we have lost much money. May it be your will that he receive due punishment.” They left the city, and suddenly Abdul Ghani began to feel strong stomach pains. And the physicians who were summoned to treat him could not cure his pains, and that very month Abdul Ghani Effendi died.

The fact that olim from Zakho, the likes of Haviv ‘Alwan, transformed a personal memory narrative into a legendary tale indicates that it expressed the collective distress of emigrants of that period from Zakho and Kurdistan. The supernatural ending—the death of the “wicked” Abdul Ghani after being cursed by Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen—also gives vent to a collective wish for a speedy solution to the problem and for punishment of those who harass Jews.39 Rahamim Cohen’s narrative reflects a real historical situation in which it was difficult to come on aliyah to Eretz Israel even in the guise of a pilgrim or tourist. Written sources confirm that in the following years it was even more difficult to receive such visas and that their number decreased.40 Other interviewees also told about delays in receiving passports in Mosul, the first stop on the journey from Zakho. However, unlike the narratives by Rahamim Cohen, which were entirely devoted to this theme, the others referred to it only briefly in their own lengthy personal memory narratives. Shmuel Baruch told us, “We left together, five or six families from Zakho, 209

01 Chapters.indd 209

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

and reached Mosul. There we had to get a certificate [i.e., visa] to go to Eretz Israel. Mosul, near Nineveh, is a big city. We remained there for a month until we received a certificate. We received a certificate as tourists, not as permanent settlers. The certificate [was issued] on condition that we return. We said, ‘The Lord have mercy upon us.’”41 Yona Zidkiyahu, who came to Eretz Israel in 1930 with his family, wrote that they were detained in Mosul for a long time and described the financial burden this entailed: “Our family numbered thirty persons, and we traveled to Mosul in a closed truck. Because of the lack of a visa for Eretz Israel, we were forced to remain in Mosul for about three months, until my father managed to get a visa to Syria for the family. We spent most of our money for upkeep of the family in Mosul during three months and without any income whatsoever.”42 Acquiring the passport in Mosul was only the first stage of the tortuous journey and did not prevent further delays and impediments along the way. This was especially true of the interviewees who had received either a tourist visa or a passport good only for Syria or Lebanon. Prospective olim who were unable to acquire a passport and visa, even to Syria, took advantage of Zakho’s proximity to the international borders and tried to smuggle themselves into Syria. Some of them succeeded, but most failed, particularly during the 1940s.

Syria: “Even in Kurdistan We Were French Subjects” A Syrian visa did not clear the way to aliyah but served only as another step along the obstacle-strewn path. Syria was one of the elements in some of the aliyah narratives I recorded from my interviewees. I have chosen to concentrate on the story told by David Salman about the aliyah of his father Eliahu and his family because it took place almost completely in Syrian territory and exemplifies a real effort at communal organization for aliyah. The heart of his detailed personal memory narrative is the effort to attain Syrian citizenship. The entire emigration process, from its outset until Salman’s family arrived in Palestine together with all the others, was a lengthy one, beginning in 1933 and culminating around 1937. David Salman himself was sixteen years old when he reached Eretz Israel.43 This is part of the story he told: My father, my uncle Shlomo [Shlomo Salman Attiya], and Eliahu Mordechai Menashe [Ilya Hetteh], drew up a list of Zakho Jews from among those trustworthy persons who would keep silent about registering for aliyah to Eretz Israel through Syria. My father brought a photographer who took photos of the heads of families 210

01 Chapters.indd 210

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

who agreed to be French citizens, even though they lived in Iraq, and to move from Iraq to Syria, and in this manner reach Eretz Israel by smuggling across the border, a very dangerous act.

David said that his father had already wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel in 1910 and 1916, but “always hesitated to set out [on the journey] with only a few souls. Since our family and [other] families related to my father wanted to come on aliyah together,” his father waited for an opportune moment. The idea of immigrating to Eretz Israel this way was related to his father, who traded in animals in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. He had connections with people in all three countries, including with the French in Syria. Eliahu went to Syria and registered these families as French citizens. He entrusted the citizenship papers to Joseph Petito, a Christian acquaintance who loved him wholeheartedly and lived in a village on the Syrian border. And thus, “even in Kurdistan we were French subjects.” In 1934, Eliahu Salman realized that, if what they had done would become known to the Iraqi authorities, people might be arrested. Therefore, it was imperative to get the families out of Iraq. The first step was to acquire visas for Syria. “And these are the families that left: Of the Nahum Balila family, there were eleven people who came in this manner to Eretz Israel; today they are an extensive family in Alroi44 numbering more than eighty souls; the Saidoff family, who are today among the founders of [Moshav] Nes Harim in the ‘Jerusalem Corridor’; the Ben-Nahum family, who were among the founders of Ein Haemek; [and] the Moshe Ya‘akov family, five brothers, the sons, and daughters-in-law.” This last family was apprehended by the Iraqi authorities after the smuggling network was discovered, had to pay fines and bribes, and was unable to leave Iraq until the mass emigration of 1950–51. And so, we left Iraq from the city of Zakho . . . and crossed the border of the rivers Khabur and Tigris on rafts with oars to the village of Khaniq [where we were] under the patronage of the Christian, Joseph Petito, on the Iraqi-Syrian border across the Tigris. The Tigris separates the two countries. We were French citizens but residents of Syria. By the next day, my father had already rented a house in the village of Khaniq and began to trade in alcoholic beverages and anything that came to hand. The intention was to cover our tracks.45

David’s story details the ruses his family adopted to avoid being discovered and not arouse suspicion that they had come into Syria from Iraq: “We re211

01 Chapters.indd 211

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

mained in the Christian village of Khaniq for about two weeks. [Then] my late mother and my brother Salih arrived, whom we had left with relatives [in Iraq] so that the authorities would not suspect that we were leaving Iraq for good.” David wove into his narrative subplots that added suspense, such as the story about his father and other members of the family who extended their help in Iraq and Syria to young Jews who deserted from the Iraqi army: “Almost every day we would receive a few Jewish boys, who [had] deserted from the Iraqi army, along my father’s route to Eretz Israel.46 We sent these boys on from Khaniq to Qamishliye. I remember the names of some boys whom my father transferred to Qamishliye: Moshe ben Haim ‘Adika, Pinhas Katom Cohen, Ovadiah Ben-Nahum, . . . and others.” In another substory, David heightened the suspense even more. One night, before Purim, the family was surprised by a knock at the door after midnight. In came Uncle Shlomo Salman and his brother-in-law, Menashe Ya‘akov. They told them that the network had been uncovered, they had been arrested after someone informed on them, and they had been released on bail. The Saidoff family was caught, and there were more and more arrests and interrogations. The uncle and his brother-in-law returned to Iraq that very night. Due to these developments, the next day David’s family was forced to sell their store in Khaniq, near the border, and move to Qamishliye. There they came across the family of Baruch ‘Adika of Zakho, who had opened a money-changing shop. In 1936, they met the family of Rabbi Shalom Shim‘oni of Dohuk, who had received an immigration certificate from the Jewish Agency. In Eretz Israel, he became the rabbi of the Dohuk community and later a famous member of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem.47 David related, “After two weeks, we received certificates for me and Ovadiah Ben-Nahum, but after checking and giving the matter some thought it seemed complicated because I was less than sixteen years old and Ben-Nahum less than eighteen. My father somehow overcame the problem by going to a registrar and changing my age and that of Ovadiah Ben-Nahum for two gold lire.” Their wanderings throughout Syria went on for two years. David Salman and his friend went to Aleppo: “Three days before Passover, we traveled to Aleppo to take out a visa for Eretz Israel. . . . Two days before the holiday, we were issued a visa. We returned to Qamishliye by express train via Turkey. We crossed the Euphrates on Passover Eve and reached Qamishliye. We celebrated [the first days of ] Passover with our parents and reached Jerusalem during hol hamo‘ed [the intermediary days of the Passover festival].” The holidays mentioned so devoutly in the narratives served as landmarks of time. 212

01 Chapters.indd 212

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

Salman’s story began on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, of 1933. He told about Itzhak Ben-Zvi’s visit to Zakho, which aroused a desire to immigrate to Eretz Israel. The network of illegal immigrants was discovered on Purim, the holiday traditionally associated with a plot against the Jews, and he and his friend reached Jerusalem during Passover, also known as the Hag Ha-herut, the Festival of Liberty. It is quite certain that Ben-Zvi never visited Zakho, but the story comes full cycle when Salman describes the ties created between Ben-Zvi and Eliahu Salman in Eretz Israel. Eliahu, his wife, and two other sons arrived about a year after David and Ovadiah Ben-Nahum,48 and the reason for his contacts with Ben-Zvi was to help in bringing in those Kurdish Jews who were still in Iraq but had registered as Syrian citizens. The obstacles on the path of aliyah via Syria also emerge in other narratives. According to Shabetai Piro, the journey lasted for three months. His family reached Aleppo, where the local community extended its help: “In Aleppo, too, there were people who were prepared to receive Jews who wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel. They helped us very much.” They remained in Aleppo for two months until, with the help of the community, they were sent to Beirut in “automobiles.” From Beirut they went on to Sidon, where they remained for about a month until “an Arab came with mules and took us. We mounted the mules and came on foot from Sidon to Safed, where we stayed until Sunday morning. We took a taxi from Safed directly to Jerusalem.”49 Yona Zidkiyahu, who came to Eretz Israel in 1930 at the age of ten, wrote that his family waited in Mosul for three months to receive visas for Syria, and from there came illegally to Palestine via Damascus: “We traveled to Syria, as was customary then, in a truck. We entered Damascus, a beautiful and interesting city. Water and streams flow through the city. The entire city was covered with greenery and fruit trees. At first, many of Damascus’s Jews welcomed us. They put us up for a few days in a hostel and guided us until our eyes were opened in [i.e., we came to know] this big and modern city.” Yona then described how his family was impressed by the wonders of the “big and modern city”: We had no idea about many things we saw in Damascus. For instance, electricity, and in Damascus we saw bananas for the first time. We remained in Damascus, a large family of about thirty souls, for about three months. We spent most of our money on our living expenses until my father managed to find a Jew who smuggled people across the border illegally into Eretz Israel for one gold lira per person. We made arrangements for the journey, set out at 213

01 Chapters.indd 213

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

might, and reached the border between Syria and Eretz Israel, [from there we traveled] to Zemah [on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee], and from there to Tiberias, near the old cemetery.50

This is the only testimony I encountered about a Jew who smuggled people across the border from Syria into Palestine. In this case, the delay in Syria resulted from the time required to find a Jew to lead them to where they could cross the border—that is, someone who could be trusted—because the family feared that, if they were to rely on Arabs to guide them, they might fall victim to mishaps, robbery, or even murder at their hands.

Illegal Border Crossings and Treacherous Guides The olim from Zakho encountered difficulties due to treachery on the part of some of those who smuggled people across international borders. The aliyah narratives that include this element refer to the 1940s, years in which aliyah from Zakho came to an almost complete standstill because of World War II. In those years, very few dared set out on such a journey, and they were forced to seek the help of smugglers. Jews from other Iraqi cities also arrived in Zakho, from where they hoped to cross illegally into Syria. The border smugglers were Muslims, Christians, and even some Jews, who had various motives for engaging in such activity. Even though a major theme in these memory narratives is that the smugglers could not be trusted, one should not jump to the conclusion that all of them were treacherous guides. Mazliah Kol, a member of a family of Zakho merchants who became a building contractor in Israel, explained why he and his family did not come on aliyah prior to the establishment of Israel: “We very much wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel, and so did others, but—how shall I put it—we didn’t find the way to come on aliyah because of great fear. That’s the first thing, and the second thing is that there was no one to guide us.” Even as a child, he heard from his parents that they wanted to flee Iraq through Syria, but this did not materialize: “He [the father] wanted to flee through Syria, but he was warned that through Syria is not a clean [i.e., safe] route. Arabs in our vicinity used to cross the Euphrates. They used to cross to the other side, [to] Turkey and back. These were certain Arabs who were known [to do this]. Someone on this side would pay them money and tell them, ‘Accompany this Jew to Aleppo.’” Aleppo at that time was the base for aliyah to Palestine through Syria. But these border smugglers were treacherous:

214

01 Chapters.indd 214

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

There were rumors—and I can almost verify them but have no absolute proof—that [for] all those who fled by this route, the smugglers [first] cheated their conscience [i.e., lied] and then the Jews themselves. These young Jews—they killed them and stole their money. I don’t believe that ten of one hundred reached Eretz Israel. There were many who fled, who came from Baghdad, from Mosul, who came here from various cities, because ours was a border city. But my father was afraid; they [the smugglers] scared him, and he had a small boy, and I would want a pitta [would want to cry], and that was forbidden, [you know]—borders and all that. I remember that one family that fled was caught at the border.51

The border smugglers, who were expected to be a factor that advanced aliyah, turned out to be an inhibiting element, an obstacle around which the story developed. Some aliyah narratives were told in pairs: one describes a successful aliyah despite all the difficulties encountered whereas the other, related by the same interviewee, is one of failure. Na‘ima Shmuel, who was born in Zakho, moved to Dohuk at the age of fifteen to marry her cousin Murad. I interviewed Na‘ima in her home in Nes Harim, a moshav in the hill country around Jerusalem. Her mother was present during the entire interview, and we were later joined by her husband. The interviewee was most cooperative, and her husband, who at first refused to talk at all, soon was in the mood and added his own versions of the stories Na‘ima related. She spoke with much emotion in somewhat faulty Hebrew, her testimony accompanied by emphasis and body language that exemplified her narrative. Murad, on the other hand, spoke flowing, faultless Hebrew in a restrained tone with almost no emphasis or body language, obviously weighing every word in his short contributions. In her first story, a lengthy, detailed memory narrative delivered in the first person, Na‘ima described how her family tried to reach Syria with the help of a border smuggler. Murad added that this was in 1941–42.52 The attempt failed when the smuggler turned them in to the Syrian authorities. Na‘ima said, “My father wanted to flee to Eretz Israel illegally” because he was religious. “He said, ‘This is not my country. I will go to my country, Eretz Israel.’ . . . He believed in what was written in the Torah.” She did not describe the crossing from Iraq into Syria in real terms but by means of evasive answers to questions, which she illustrated with names of places with which she was acquainted in Israel:53 “On the way, we passed by all kinds of villages and towns. They caught us and asked, ‘Where are you going?’ So we said, 215

01 Chapters.indd 215

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

‘We are going to Bar-Giora; there is no livelihood in Nes Harim.’ I’m saying this as an example. We passed through Bar-Giora, so they asked us, ‘To where are you continuing?’ We said, ‘There is no livelihood in Bar-Giora; we are going on,’ and that [is how it went] until we reached the Syrian border.” The border smuggler was supposed to bring them across into Syria, but the story had a different ending. When we reached the Syrian border, we prepared Syrian identification papers and set out. We gave a great amount of money to an Arab to take us across the border over the sea [i.e., the river], at a place where there are no guards. He had already taken across many Jews. We gave him all the money received from what we sold. We had gold lire, and we gave them to the Arab who was supposed to get us across. . . . A family crossed before us that did not pay the Arab money. Apparently that Jew thought, “I have [managed to] flee. What do I care what happens after that?” This Jew who crossed over before us said to the Arab smuggler, “I will give the money for you to some Kurd. Let’s say so-and-so—for example, Shlomo Ben-David [a fictitious name she used for her narrative]—and then he will give you the money.” The Arab believed him. After that, the Arab went to Shlomo Ben-David and asked for the money, but he [Ben-David] said to him, “God forbid! I swear to you that I did not receive any money.” That’s how the Jew “fixed” the Arab and then he “fixed” us—he took his revenge upon us.

The story became more dramatic when Na‘ima related how they were informed upon to the authorities: When we prepared to cross to the other side, he [the Arab] went to Syria, saying, “I will buy cigarettes there.” My father told him, “No, no, I will go and buy. . . . He already sensed that the Arab intended to do something bad. The look of his [the Arab’s] face had changed, so he had bad intentions. “I will go.” The Arab did not agree. To make a long story short, it was the Arab who went. He said [to himself ], “What’s going on? I, an Arab, bring[ing] Jews across into Eretz Israel? So that they will oppose us?” Policemen arrested my father in order to hang him.

In the end, the father was extradited to Iraq, where, thanks to his acquaintance with an important Kurdish family in Zakho, he was sentenced to 216

01 Chapters.indd 216

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

only three months in prison with hard labor, which he served doing light work.54 The motif of an Arab smuggler as an impediment to aliyah in Na‘ima’s narrative is not clear-cut, for it was a Jew who deceived the smuggler and led him to revenge himself on her family, which later paid a heavy price for the unsuccessful aliyah attempt. Na‘ima’s brother Zechariah, who was fifteen when they made the attempt, was conscripted into the Iraqi army at the age of eighteen and, as punishment for the attempted aliyah, served five years, double the regular term of service, without possibility of evading any of it by paying an indemnity.55 Army service ruined him physically, and he became ill and died young.56 Murad, Na‘ima’s husband, provided a more concise version of the unsuccessful attempt to emigrate via Syria: “He [Na‘ima’s father] was caught and imprisoned. He spent some time in jail, after which he posted a bond [to ensure] that he would not immigrate to Eretz Israel and would not even try to do so. So because of this bond he did not try to immigrate, because if he did and even succeeded, they [the authorities] would imprison the guarantors who had signed his bond. So he did not come [to Eretz Israel] but sat quietly [until the early 1950s].” Na‘ima told us another story, this time about her uncle, who was arrested in Shams (i.e., Damascus): “Uncle Ya‘akov immigrated to Eretz Israel without a passport. He intended to come illegally but was caught in Syria. He followed the same route we had traveled to come to Eretz Israel.” As in her previous narrative, Na‘ima did not mention real place names, substituting instead geographic names in Israel so as to bring the point home more clearly to her Israeli listeners:57 He [Uncle Ya‘akov] said like we say, for example, when we want to reach Eilat. You ask people on the way, “Where is Tel Aviv?” and, later, “Where is Jerusalem?” and so forth until your reach the objective. . . . He came as far as Syria but was caught in Syria. They asked him, “What are you doing here?” He said, “I came from Iraq. I want to live in Syria; I have no livelihood. I have no one . . . I do not know anyone in Syria. Tonight I will sleep here.” But their reaction was “Ah! You are a liar!” They handcuffed him and took him to the prison.

Some Damascus Jews helped her uncle during his imprisonment. Thanks to them, he was released and succeeded in reaching Palestine. In Na‘ima’s own words, 217

01 Chapters.indd 217

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

He remained in prison in Syria, in Shams. When they [local Jews] came to visit them [Jewish prisoners], they told them about this case and asked if something could be done for him. . . . After that, there was someone there who took care of him. He [this person] said to the Syrians, “I know him, and I will bring you letters and proof of that. He is miserable and wretched. You’re locking him up for no good reason!” And he got him released. This was a Syrian Jew who helped him. He brought a lawyer to release him—and he got him out.

As she concluded this part of her narrative, Na‘ima noted, “Afterward, this uncle joined the British Army. How did he finally manage to reach Eretz Israel? He was able to get a passport after a year and a half in jail. This was in the late thirties or the forties.”58 As in many personal memory narratives told a long time after the event, Na‘ima could not give an exact date. Based on the testimony of her husband Murad, and on the fact that Ya‘akov joined the British armed forces after reaching Palestine, we may assume that this episode occurred during World War II.59 True, the gates of Palestine were shut during the war, but a few dared to make the effort to reach Palestine through Syria.60 From Na‘ima’s testimony, we also learn of the help extended to olim by Syrian Jews, a motif that encouraged aliyah and therefore was a positive element in the story. The pattern of a pair of stories—one that focuses on a successful aliyah attempt, whereas, in the other, the major protagonist fails to do so—is also present in two additional personal memory narratives related by Murad. These stories added details about Uncle Ya‘akov that were lacking in that told by Na‘ima: “He was caught but crossed over again and again. He tried to cross [into Palestine] four or five times—and was apprehended. Only with great difficulty did he get across to Eretz Israel. We received a letter that Ya‘akov reached Eretz Israel, but his entry into Eretz Israel cost us 100 pounds sterling. He squandered 100 pounds sterling, [that is the sum] he spent until he reached Eretz Israel. He was caught several times, not once. That is the tale of Uncle Ya‘akov.” Murad’s use of “tale” (Heb. ma‘aseh) hints that the story about Uncle Ya‘akov was quite current in the family and was told in different versions. Murad’s choice of words expressed an ambivalent view of Ya‘akov’s aliyah: he “squandered” or “spent” a large sum of money to reach Eretz Israel. It may be that his choice of these words expressed the ambivalence with which those who remained behind viewed the illegal efforts of the olim: even if seen in a positive light, they endangered other members of the family or forced them to bear heavy expenses. 218

01 Chapters.indd 218

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

The small number of aliyah narratives by Jews from Zakho relating to the World War II period indicates that only a few tried to reach Palestine in those years because they were aware of the dangers that lurked in their path. At that time, Shlomo Salman and Ilya Hetteh, both of Zakho, engaged in smuggling goods. They also cooperated with the Zionist underground in Iraq in spiriting olim across the border, most of whom came to Zakho from other cities, primarily Baghdad. I was told only one story about a Baghdadi Jew who was smuggled into Syria after reaching Zakho in 1941, following the pogrom in the capital city mounted by Rashīd ‘Alī. A family in Zakho helped him, even though it had no connection to the Zionist underground, in the spirit of the Jewish saying: “All Jews are responsible one for another.” Thus did it encourage aliyah and also provide a positive impetus to the theme of the narrative. This story was related to me by Yehoshua Miro, the brother of Meir Zaqen whom I had interviewed.61 The events described in this story occurred on the Ninth of Av 5701 (2 August 1941). This lengthy memory narrative is divided into two parts: the first ends with a successful aliyah and the second in a failed attempt. The literary pattern in which one protagonist succeeds while another fails is repeated here, but this time both are part of the same story, not two separate ones. A refugee from the Rashīd ‘Alī pogrom in Baghdad reached Zakho in order to cross the Syrian border as a first step on his way to Palestine. Disguised as a soap vendor, he entered a Jewish-owned café, disclosed his identity, and told of his intentions. The café owner pointed him toward the home of Meir Zaqen, saying, “Look, you can’t go just like that. Just this home right opposite . . . only the person who lives in the house opposite, whose name is Mordechai ben Meir Zaqen, only he can help you and no one else.” Mordechai Zaqen was the father of Yehoshua Miro, who said of him, “My father was a Zionist. He wanted to come to Eretz Israel. He was illiterate, he was religious, he wanted to come to Eretz Israel.” Mordechai Zaqen hosted the refugee from Baghdad, Avraham ben Pinhas Cohen, in his home for a week after the Ninth of Av. This lengthy narrative included a substory about the pogrom in Baghdad and what had happened to Avraham Cohen’s family, on the basis of what he himself told his host. Mordechai agreed to smuggle the refugee into Syria, where he would be helped by people living in Qamishliye who were related to Yehoshua Miro’s mother.62 The man said, “I want to flee [Iraq],” and the father replied, “Eat [the meal that ended the fast of the Ninth of Av], I will get you across.” Yehoshua continued the story:

219

01 Chapters.indd 219

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

I was then ten or eleven years old. My mother was born in Syria. We corresponded [with her family]. With the help of villagers, we could go and reach Syria. He [the refugee] remained with us for a week. My father contacted a certain Christian village where there was a priest who respected my father. He [the father] said, “I will send my son to take this man to Qamishliye.” . . . After he had stayed with us for a week, my father contacted this [border] smuggler. Until evening fell, we traveled—me, him, three she-asses, and the smuggler—toward that city, which is two or three days distant from Zakho. That night, he got us across the Syrian border near the Euphrates River.

The continuation of the narrative included more details—how they crossed the border under the cover of darkness, and how the smuggler mistakenly led them to a spot where the water was so deep that the she-asses and all they carried became soaked. They reached the home of the Christian village’s mukhtar, who extended his hospitality. The mukhtar’s wife said that she knew a woman who lived in Zakho; to the great surprise of all, it turned out that she was referring to Yehoshua Miro’s mother. Next morning, the mukhtar’s wife sent Yehoshua and the refugee from Baghdad on their way after supplying them with food and dry blankets. They arrived by rented car at the home of Zemah, Yehoshua’s cousin, in Qamishliye. Complications arose when Zemah prevented Yehoshua from continuing to Eretz Israel with the Baghdadi, as related earlier, because Zemah wanted Yehoshua to remain and marry his daughter: I brought him [the cousin] a letter from my father in which it was written that I must accompany this man from Baghdad to Eretz Israel in order to acquire land for my family so that they could come on aliyah to [Eretz-]Israel. My cousin didn’t want me to go. He said, “You will stay, and he I will send off.” Later I found out that he wanted me to stay and marry his daughter. After a week, he sent him [the Baghdadi] off to Aleppo, to Damascus, and to Eretz Israel. In every place that he came, he would present a letter to the “chief ” of the Jews there, and they would send him on [to the next station]. He arrived here [Eretz Israel] and sent a letter to my cousin in Syria in which he wrote that he had reached Eretz Israel.

Thus ended the first part of this personal memory narrative that began on the Ninth of Av, a day that simultaneously symbolizes Destruction (of the 220

01 Chapters.indd 220

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

Temple) and Redemption. The story, beginning with the calamitous events in Baghdad, ended positively: Avraham Cohen reached Eretz Israel. Yehoshua Miro remained in the home of his cousin in Qamishliye. Meanwhile, the cousin, who perhaps repented somewhat because he had not allowed Yehoshua to continue to Eretz Israel, tried to arrange Syrian identification papers for his relatives in Iraq to help them immigrate to Palestine: “My uncle said, ‘I shall send you Syrian documents, because from Syria Eretz Israel is not far.’ My cousin began to arrange for these documents. We filed a request and gave names. He went to the kaymakam, who was his friend. He spoke with him and said, ‘There are some Jews who live in the villages. Their son is here. He requests to take out identity cards for them.’” The attempt ended in failure because of a slip of the tongue by young Yehoshua, who unconsciously gave away his Iraqi origin.63 Since the way to Eretz Israel was closed to his family, Yehoshua returned to Iraq after six or seven months. The motif of smuggling across borders, so prominent at the beginning of the narrative thanks to many picturesque details, also stands out very clearly at the dramatic end of Yehoshua’s story: “The two people who brought me back to Zakho were Shlomo Attiya and Ilya Hetteh. . . . I returned with them to Zakho. When I reached the border with them, they received money. I wore a long dress. They were afraid that they would be caught. They put the money in my dress, and I brought the money to Iraq in my dress.” The motifs of illegal crossing of the border from Zakho into Syria and the help extended by Syrian Jews form the basis of these stories and create their common structure. However, the last narrative contains several events that are described in a complex manner and there are turnabouts. In contrast to earlier narratives, here the smuggler is a Christian who does not deceive the Jews; moreover, Mordechai Zaqen is presented as a powerful man with commercial ties in a hundred villages, a man both religious and a Zionist but also illiterate who did not achieve his wish to settle in Eretz Israel because he passed away shortly before the mass aliyah of the early 1950s. Even the Baghdad-Zakho relationship, in which Baghdad generally took priority, was turned around in this story: a refugee from Baghdad needed help from Jews living in the outlying area, in Zakho. Another contradiction was the familystranger equation: members of Yehoshua’s family in Zakho and Syria helped a stranger—the refugee from Baghdad—to the best of their ability, and other Jews in Syria did the same, but it was precisely Zemah, Yehoshua’s cousin, who prevented Yehoshua from continuing to Eretz Israel. And then came another turnabout: Zemah did his best to acquire passports for Yehoshua’s family so that they could reach Syria on their way to Eretz Israel, but this effort failed. 221

01 Chapters.indd 221

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

Another important contrast was the young-old relationship: the family’s vanguard was the young Yehoshua, who had been given responsibility for acquiring land in Eretz Israel for his family, but whose status was overturned when his older cousin prevented him from continuing his journey and achieving the family’s objective. But it was then that there was once again a turnabout in his status: when he accompanied his cousin to the kaymakam, it was Yehoshua who, because of his Iraqi accent, innocently ruined his family’s attempt at aliyah. And, finally, the narrative ends with yet another change in Yehoshua’s status, since it was he who safely hid in his clothes the money of those who smuggled him back to Zakho.

Highwaymen: “Each Rider Held a Gun in His Hand. We Said, ‘Oh Western Wall!’ ” Immigrants to Eretz Israel from Zakho had to face yet another obstacle along the way: thieves. In the period prior to World War II, security along Kurdistan’s roads left much to be desired, and those who traveled them risked their lives. This was one of the reasons that spurred Zakho Jews to set out on aliyah. According to their stories, when they encountered robbers, they presented their journey as a pilgrimage and almost always escaped unharmed, as if in fulfillment of the saying “Those who set out on pious missions will meet no evil.” This motif is included in four stories, three of them personal memory narratives and the fourth belonging to the legend genre. The pattern common to all four includes encounters with highwaymen, detainment on the road, and extrication from their clutches. These narratives portray the extraordinary elements in the story, and in one case also the saving miracle, as a secret collective wish that came true. Three stories described an event that occurred on the way to Eretz Israel, whereas the fourth related an episode on the return from Palestine to Zakho. The first three stories centered around olim who held tourist passports but had no intention of returning to Iraq and decided to settle down in Eretz Israel. Though two of these narratives were told by different interviewees, their details and result were very similar. The first was told by Shmuel Shurqi. Born in Zakho, he was all of twelve years old when he came to Eretz Israel in 1921. Relating a personal memory narrative, Shurqi provided an exact date of his aliyah: “We arrived in Jerusalem on the eve of the Ninth of Av.”64 Even though the threatened robbery and the manner in which the travelers were saved are described very summarily, the story does contain many details whose purpose is to make it more credible: “On our way from Zakho to Eretz Israel, we passed through 222

01 Chapters.indd 222

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

Mosul. . . . On the way, we came to a mountain. The Khabur River flows there. . . . We encountered a group of some eighty or ninety Bedouins, from the tribe of Arab Shumar, who wanted to rob us and slaughter all who were in the convoy emigrating from Kurdistan.” However, to the good fortune of these olim, among them was the daughter of Mazliah Zaqen of Zakho, and she had grown up among the members of this tribe: “That is where she was wet-nursed.” She had been given to a Bedouin woman to be wet-nursed and thus “was under their protection. This sheikh [of the Arab Shumar tribe] was the son of the woman who had fed the milk from her two breasts to the daughter of Mazliah Zaqen. Both [the Bedouin sheikh and the daughter of Mazliah Zaqen] had suckled at the breasts of the same woman. And afterward he recognized her.” Shurqi continued his story: “She knew the customs of Arab Shumar, and so she went and tied one knot [in the robe] of one of their sheikhs. The head of the band [of robbers] said, ‘You are saved!’ He ordered his buddies to stop pursuing us.” When asked to clarify this, the interviewee replied, “It is their custom that, when the knot is tied, it is as if she is a prisoner and is saved from death and is released from everything.” He added, “The woman’s father, Mazliah Zaqen, was not a rabbi, but rather a rich and important merchant whom all the Arabs of the region knew and respected.” Julia Dekel, who came on aliyah two years later, in 1923, told a story very similar to that of Shurqi’s.65 She provided three versions of this episode, each differing in details and style but all containing the same basic elements. Two of them were told on other occasions, not when I interviewed her.66 The fullest story, richest in detail, was the version she told me on 6 December 1987. Her narrative is constructed section by section, the encounter with highwaymen accounting for a major part of it. The route followed by Julia and her companions was similar to that of Shmuel Shurqi two years earlier. Her presentation of the background leading up to the attack by the robbers was more detailed. Unlike Shurqi, from time to time Julia added an emotional reaction that heightened the dramatic element in her narrative: “We went from Zakho to Mosul. We numbered more than fifteen families, with children. We traveled on donkeys. From Aleppo, they sent us two large trucks. We left Mosul on Thursday.” To make her story more credible, and even though the details she related were sometimes mixed up and contradictory, she added, “I remember it as if it was today!” “When there was a mixture of light and darkness,” to use her phrase for twilight, the group was forced to spend the night in some lonely spot along the way; this was also because the truck broke down and the driver had to repair it. The place where they stopped is described as a forest, and Julia 223

01 Chapters.indd 223

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

projected upon it scenes with which she became acquainted in Israel many years after the event:67 “We sat in the forest. There were no housing developments like today. Everything is empty in the forest!” The fear she sensed was expressed in a rhetorical question: “We said, ‘Oh my, won’t Arabs attack us? It’s night now!’” Julia Dekel, a natural teller of folktales,68 addressed me during her story as though I was an audience: “My dear, my beloved child, believe me, I am not telling lies. . . . Suddenly we saw fifteen or more men riding camels. . . . Each rider held a gun in his hand. On the gun was a sword [bayonet]. . . . We said, ‘Oh Western Wall, Oh Western Wall, Oh sainted men!’” This reaction to a perilous situation expresses the very essence of the Zakho olim’s emotional attachment to Jerusalem and is indicative of their belief in the miraculous properties of its holy sites, especially the Western Wall.69 “They came, took all the men, and stood them with their hands to the wall. One walked among them and fired a shot in the air. He said, ‘Give me money. . . .’” The people in the group were in a difficult position because they had already spent all their money “for some sheikh.” “So what were we to do?” Julia asked rhetorically. Communication between the robbers and the group was difficult because Zakho’s Jews spoke a Kurdish-Jewish dialect, not Arabic. The people sought a way out of the predicament, and Julia told me, “One woman said to me, ‘Perhaps your father, of blessed memory, used to say a few words in Arabic?’” Julia explained, “He used to work with Arabs sailing boats on the water.” Other people, too, turned to her: “Perhaps you heard some word in Arabic from him? Perhaps? Let’s go talk with their commander.” At this point, an autobiographical element appeared in her narrative. “I said, ‘I am young, I married only recently, three months ago, but since they are doing nothing to us I will go to them.” The reason for mentioning this autobiographical detail was to magnify the atmosphere of fear and danger and their deliverance by one of the younger women in the group. Together with another woman, Julia walked toward the brigands, who wore white robes: “Dehilak, dehilak [please, please], awwal arab, tany arab, which means Arabs first and Arabs last [i.e., Arabs will exist forever]. I paid them respect. . . . After that, I did not speak Arabic with them. We don’t know Arabic. I said, ‘There, there’ . . . and they understood that Arabs, too, go to visit the tombs of their holy men.” To explain how they were saved, Julia added, “I also tied [a knot in] the fringes of his robe [one of the Arabs] and that, together with the words I said, that was their secret.” The result of her efforts was that “they went, they left us. . . . After that, all came to me and kissed my hand. They said, ‘What luck! God gave you common sense and you spoke 224

01 Chapters.indd 224

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

the way you did.’ . . . I said, ‘That’s how my father talked. I learned from him. God also put that in my heart.’ ” Thus did Julia’s realistic memory narrative take on a turn of sorts toward the miraculous, somewhere between a memory narrative and a legend about the wonder of their deliverance. Julia Dekel’s narrative is similar to Shurqi’s, but much richer in detail and in the manner in which it was told. The difference between them stems from the conditions under which they were narrated. Shurqi told his during a session with the Oral Documentation Department of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The objective of the interviewer was to receive from his interviewee information that was as exact as possible. He therefore intervened, asking many questions, so that, even when a narrative emerged, it was very concise. In contrast, in an interview conducted by a folklorist, the interviewee is allowed to speak without obstruction or questions for clarification, a style that well suited Julia, a teller of folktales par excellence who was especially competent at reciting folk songs in public. In addition, there is also a difference in content associated with

Julia Dekel. Courtesy of Mordechai Yona. 225

01 Chapters.indd 225

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

knowledge of Arabic: whereas that is the key to the group’s deliverance in Julia’s story, narrative language was no barrier in Shurqi’s because the girl who was the major protagonist, the daughter of Mazliah Zaqen, seems actually to have been raised among the Arabs and to have spoken their language. Despite these differences, the two stories are very similar, especially in the manner in which the group of olim was delivered from danger. It could well be that the core of Shurqi’s story somehow made its way into Julia’s, whose narrative was transformed into a legend. In both stories, the image stands out of a young girl whose status changed under these conditions when she rescued the group from a band of Arab highwaymen. It is also interesting to trace the variations between the three versions related by Julia Dekel herself. In the earliest one the episode took place in a forest, whereas in the other two it occurred in the desert, and the robbers lined the men up against a wall. Although it was related that the group rode donkeys, a truck broke down, and whereas in the basic story her father worked with Arabs in Zakho on sailing boats, in one of the versions he was a merchant who made the rounds of the villages, which is how he learned Arabic. In one version a solitary robber with a dagger between his teeth attacked the convoy of olim, whereas in the other two the attackers were a band of thieves. Also, the style in which the narratives were related differed from version to version; the one richest in style was used for our presentation.70 Differences in framework and time at which the narratives were delivered account for variations between the stories. Such differences generally crop up when various persons tell the same story at different times, but in this case we have one storyteller who omits or adds elements as she sees fit at the time, on every occasion changing even the factual elements in the episode and thus creating a new story. All this notwithstanding, there is a common denominator in all her versions: the basic theme of how the olim encountered robbers, were delayed on their journey, and were finally delivered from danger. Repetition of the story from time to time lends it credibility and historical validity, at least in the eyes of the teller and the listener. The fact that Julia told it at least three times indicates that she believed it to be an important part of her own life story and that it played a significant role in shaping her personality. Highwaymen are also part of the narrative about Shmuel Baruch’s aliyah in 1925.71 After a delay in Mosul while awaiting passports, an impediment arose: “In Mosul, we hired a big truck with cushions, quilts, and mattresses, and all our household goods. We sat on the cushions in the truck. On the way, between Mosul and Aleppo, Bedouins sprang out before us; they wanted to kill and rob us.” In contrast to Julia Dekel’s story, that told by Shmuel Ba226

01 Chapters.indd 226

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

ruch was concise, with realistic details: “Our driver bribed them. The driver knew their ‘big man.’ Drivers travel back and forth and know everyone. We gave the head man money, and [he] freed us.” Shmuel ended his tale with a motif that also turned up in the previous story: “The driver told him, ‘These are poor people. Take some money. These are tourists. They are going on a ziyara [tour of holy sites] to holy Jerusalem, and then they will return.’ And that is how he [the leader of the robbers] was convinced. He gave orders to the soldiers [i.e., the Bedouins], and they left us alone. We paid them.” One of the stories describes an encounter with thieves on the way back from Eretz Israel to Zakho. Shabetai Alfiya published a book about his father, Rabbi Meir Alfiya, who immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1926 after his sons died prematurely one after the other. When his son Shabetai was born, Meir vowed that he would “bring him up to Jerusalem,” which he did. However, he was unable to support his family in Jerusalem “because of weakness and old age” and, after much soul-searching on his part and pleading by members of the community, he decided to return to Zakho.72 Sasson ‘Amadi, of Jerusalem, drove the rabbi back to Kurdistan and related what happened along the way: “I drove the family to its destination. In the afternoon, we reached a police post between Homs and Hamāh in Syria.” The policemen asked him to wait for a police escort because of highway robberies, but the rabbi refused. Sasson continued, “After a short drive, I suddenly saw in front of me, at some distance, four Arabs armed with guns waiting for the car to approach. When I saw this, the blood froze in my veins. There was no way of retreat. If I advance our lives are at stake, but if I stop all is lost.” The greatness of Rabbi Alfiya that emerges from Sasson ‘Amadi’s narrative is commensurate with the extent of the danger they faced. The rabbi used supernatural powers to rescue his family and the driver: Your father, the rabbi, instructed me to continue driving with confidence, without fear. I did as he instructed and continued driving, completely terrified and frightened. . . . I continued driving, and then the rabbi instructed me to stop. We stepped down from the car, and the rabbi said to me, “Look behind you and look at the robbers.” And what I saw was those robbers, with guns in their hands, standing as if paralyzed. I said to the rabbi, “What happened here?” because I did not believe what I saw. The rabbi answered, “I bound [i.e., paralyzed] them as they stood, but since the danger has passed I do not have the right to keep them in their present state.” He muttered what he muttered, and we saw that the spirit of life returned to them. And we continued on our way, our mouths expressing praise, 227

01 Chapters.indd 227

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

glory, and thanks to the Blessed Creator who gave of his wisdom to those who revere him.

The driver’s narrative takes the form of a legend praising the virtues of a holy man. The supernatural element in it is indicative of the society in which the tale was fostered to provide rabbis with an aura of sanctity. Like every legend, it has a factual historical underpinning because it occurs in a specific place, focuses on a real person, and confirms what we know about the insecure situation along the roads at that time.

The Border: “We Almost Cried, ‘We Came Such a Long Way, Only a Month, and Then We Will Return’ ” Immigrants to Eretz Israel, who had overcome all other obstacles, had to face one more: the border crossing. The necessity to cross the border illegally entailed surprises. In three aliyah narratives that I collected, the interviewees dwelt upon the difficulties encountered in border crossings. In the first the crossing is only a marginal element in the narrative, whereas in the other two it plays a more prominent role. In one case, the border crossed was that which divided Iraq from Syria, whereas in the other two it was the border between Lebanon and Palestine. Simha Mizrahi’s story centered round the aliyah of her mother, then three years old, and her family in 1920–21.73 They made their way into Syria illegally and had to hide in villages along the way. Pregnant women and the very young girls in the convoy took turns riding horseback. They would hide during the day and travel by night: “I don’t have to tell you how difficult this journey was for them, because there were many children. Most of them were young [children], and the young don’t have endurance.” Simha related what happened when the convoy, numbering seventeen or eighteen families, reached the Syrian border: “They did not know that they had to pay. This was payment of customs. . . . So they [the customs officers] took their horses, and they had to walk and that was Hell, to walk with sores on your feet and [wearing the same] clothes. . . . They had nowhere to wash their clothing, and nothing to drink. They arrived in Eretz Israel in very bad shape. Just think of that, to come [all the way] from Aleppo in Syria to Jerusalem on foot!” Simha’s story arouses some amazement, perhaps because it was told on the basis of hearsay. The family hid in villages on their way to the Syrian border, but if they had to pay customs when they reached it, what was illegal 228

01 Chapters.indd 228

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

about their journey? They did not try to hide from the Syrian authorities and continued on foot all the way to Jerusalem! The other two narratives, as noted, describe crossing the border from Lebanon into Palestine. Shmuel Baruch: “We came to Sidon and there, at a checkpoint, they began to search us to see if we had dinars and [other] money. Women searched women, and men searched men. This was on the way, between Sidon and Rosh Haniqrah [a border crossing between Lebanon and Palestine].” The longest delay was at Rosh Haniqrah, where they were not permitted to enter Palestine with tourist visas, which they had acquired in Mosul after much effort: “We came to Rosh Haniqrah on the day after Rosh Hashanah [the Jewish New Year] in 1925. . . . They didn’t allow us to enter. They said, ‘You have to return to Sidon. Your documents are for tourists, not permanent residents. You are not allowed to immigrate to Eretz Israel as tourists. You must return to Beirut.’” This scene is reminiscent of Moses on Mount Nebo, allowed to see the Promised Land from afar but not permitted to reach it: “We pleaded with them, we almost cried, ‘We came such a long way, we came only to tour Eretz Israel, only a month and then we will return.’” The story had a happy ending, not by the supernatural intervention characteristic of legends and fairy tales, but in a realistic manner typical of personal memory narratives. After much effort, they were allowed to enter Palestine: “We phoned the Immigration Department [of the government of Palestine] in Jerusalem. We said, ‘We are tourists, we came as tourists, please let us in.’ And they did, and we entered [Palestine].” Like the previous story, this one, too, raises some eyebrows because olim never tried crossing the border at Rosh Haniqrah unless they carried valid certificates. Perhaps one can explain the delay at the border as resulting from an administrative check that the border officials were obliged to conduct, but the fact is that Shmuel Baruch and his companions were finally allowed to cross over into Palestine. It could be that the British authorities knew that tourist visas were often no more than a cover and that those bearing them did not intend to return to Iraq and might become an economic burden. This issue had been raised by Iraqi Zionists who complained that the British consul in Damascus refused to accept tourist visas issued in Iraq even though their holders had all the necessary means: “This does great injustice to the persons who received visas and walked at length in order to cross the terrible and dangerous desert, and then the consul does not allow them to enter.”74 Of all former Zakho Jews whom I interviewed, Shmuel Baruch is one of the few whose aliyah narrative can be confirmed by written documentation. A statistical list prepared by the Immigration Bureau of the Zionist Executive 229

01 Chapters.indd 229

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

in Jerusalem includes the following notation, apparently for 15 September 1925: “Shmuel Baruch ben Yosef [son of Yosef ], age: 30; his wife: Devorah, age 25; his children: Yosef, four years old, and Eliahu, two years old; his sisters: Rahel and Salha, about 15 years old.”75 The final story about crossing the border from Lebanon into Palestine was told by Haviv ‘Alwan, who came in 1927.76 He described the border, the smuggler who brought them across, his companions on the journey, and the customs check. Despite his being delayed at the border, his story surprisingly includes a positive episode. Haviv told us that he traveled together with rabbis. Among those with him were Shmuel Baruch and his brother-in-law, who were on their way back to Eretz Israel after an eleven-month fund-raising mission in Kurdistan. The first delay, not surprisingly, was in Mosul, where they had to wait for visas. Shmuel Baruch and his brother-in-law, who were returning to Eretz Israel, received visas valid up to Beirut. The second delay for Haviv and his other companions was in Beirut. Whereas Baruch and his brother-in-law received a visa for Palestine from the British Consulate in the city, Haviv was forced to remain there, together with an elderly woman, also from Zakho. This is his narrative: They [Shmuel Baruch and his brother-in-law] said, “We can reach Jerusalem. That is a one-day journey, but you will stay here until you can come illegally.” . . . They entrusted me to the [Jewish] congregation and the heads of the community. I was sixteen years old. The heads of the community in Beirut said that they would provide me with a place [to stay]. There was another old woman with me, also from Zakho. They let us sleep in a hospice for visitors in the synagogue and of course provided us with food for three or four days. And I kept asking, “When will the vehicle come?” A vehicle full of illegal immigrants was supposed to arrive in order to send us on. They would not send only one or two. And that’s how it was. They filled two big buses with Kurds, but not Kurds from our city. I did not know any of them. The important point is that they came to an agreement with the Arabs [the drivers] that they would bring us to Tiberias, where they would receive a note affirming that we had arrived, and only then would they be paid. The buses were arranged by the Beirut community, which had connections with Arabs.

The story has some surprising elements: the Arab border smuggler is presented in a positive manner and the director of customs and the border 230

01 Chapters.indd 230

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

police, who conducted the customs check, in the continuation of the story, were Jewish. All were advancing elements encouraging illegal immigration and adding momentum to the plot. The dramatic element in Haviv’s narrative was somewhat blunted when it turned out who the border policemen were: When we reached the border of Eretz Israel, we came to a stop. One had to stop [there]. Then we saw that our driver told the border policemen, in Arabic, “These are all Jews.” . . . My hair stood on end, as the saying goes. Is he turning us in to the border police? But it turned out that I was mistaken. The police there were Jewish. Okay, so he knew that we were Jews and asked, “Jews?” That was how we would be allowed to cross without any problems, even though we had no passports.

At the border crossing, there was some misunderstanding between the olim from Kurdistan, who spoke only their own language, and the Jewish border policemen: The border policeman said, “First of all, I want to check if anyone has to pay some customs. Who among you speaks Turkish?” No one replied. “Who among you speaks Hebrew?” I answered, “I do.” He said, “Tell them to inform us if they have anything that is forbidden to bring in.” I told them. They replied, “No, nothing” [this Haviv related in a tone expressing surprise]. Then the policeman said, “We will search.” They searched and found five cards, playing cards. He [the policeman] was angry at me and said, “You said there is nothing.” I said, “They didn’t know that these were forbidden.” Okay, he threw them away.

This border-crossing narrative includes many surprising features: the Arab smuggler, the customs officers, and the young Haviv who speaks fluent Hebrew though he had not been born in Eretz Israel. Even Haviv seems to have been surprised by his ability to converse fluently in Hebrew: [The policeman] said to me, “Come, go into the director’s office.” The director, too, was a Jew. I entered his office. He saw that I was a young boy, that I spoke Hebrew, and that I had never visited Eretz Israel. So Hebrew was spoken not only in Eretz Israel. . . . The direc231

01 Chapters.indd 231

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

tor said, “How did you learn Hebrew?” I told him, “I never visited Eretz Israel. I learned Hebrew from the Torah, and there were also [in our city] emissaries, emissaries from Eretz Israel, and I used to sit next to them and learn from them.77

Even the conversation between Haviv and the customs director took a surprising twist: “He began to tell me all kinds of things. He asked me to talk about Torah, the People of Israel, the Ten Commandments, and the River Sambation.78 He treated me to a cigarette and coffee, and we gave him our passports, even though they were not valid [for Palestine].” The biggest surprise in the story was that this youth, one of the youngest illegal immigrants, showed the greatest resourcefulness. From the narratives, crossing the border was clearly a tense matter, for the immigrants feared the confrontation with authorities who might prevent their aliyah even if they bore proper documents and permits. In the last story, one is surprised to hear that the border crossing went relatively smoothly thanks to a combination of extraordinary conditions—Jewish border policemen and a Jewish customs director, as well as those people who received the group of immigrants. This is the sixth surprising element in the story, as we ask ourselves who those were who received the immigrants and conducted the customs check. This remains an open question.79

“We Came for Jerusalem!” Among the olim from Zakho were those who had to contend with psychological inhibitions associated with the regions they passed through. These are often mentioned by my interviewees in many of the personal memory narratives relating to aliyah. Passage from one region to another illustrates the dynamic element in their stories—advance toward Eretz Israel—as opposed to the time element, which hints at delays. However, the surrounding area at times also serves as an impediment or presents the leading protagonist in the story with a tempting offer to contend with. Among the locations mentioned, other than the final destination, are cities in Eretz Israel, because most of the olim identified Jerusalem with Eretz Israel, and a failure to reach Jerusalem was equated with failure to reach Eretz Israel. In her aliyah narrative, Julia Dekel mentioned Mosul, Aleppo, Beirut, and Metulla, a Jewish colony just inside the northern border of Palestine in 1923.80 The immigrants in her group spent one night in Metulla in a house where the colony put them up. Because they had no money, “[people] came, we heard [they were called] halutzim. These were Ashkenazim. They had wagons. They put 232

01 Chapters.indd 232

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

us in their wagons and took us to Tiberias. In Tiberias we remained for three days, and then they took us to Haifa . . . , from there to Sejera . . . where there were Kurds who settled there a long time ago. . . . From there to Haifa . . . and from Haifa we reached Eretz Israel, by which I mean Jerusalem.”81 The places mentioned by Shmuel Baruch in his aliyah narrative were Mosul, where the group spent about a month until they received their immigration permits, then Aleppo, where they stayed for about another month, and then Damascus, from which they traveled to Beirut, Sidon, and Rosh Haniqrah. After being delayed briefly at the border, they went on to Haifa and from there to Jerusalem. As in the other stories, the interviewee did not describe these places, only mentioning them as stations on the way to Eretz Israel. As noted earlier, at times the geographic space through which they passed served as an impediment to aliyah. To demonstrate this, I have chosen three short stories in the narrative of Shmuel Baruch, who related how he was offered employment as a rabbi when still on the way to Eretz Israel, whereas, once inside the country, he was offered tempting positions outside of Jerusalem but declined because of his wife’s strong emotional attachment to Jerusalem, even though at first she had opposed aliyah. In the first story, Shmuel Baruch told us that, while in Aleppo, he was approached by people who knew that he was a ritual slaughterer and performed circumcisions, because he had brought with him relevant certificates from Iraq: They said, “We have relatives in America who asked us to send them a rabbi from Jerusalem who is a circumciser and a ritual slaughterer, a ‘jack of all trades.’ We have a lot of acquaintances in America. They will provide you with a house in America, they will give you money to conduct weddings, arrange prayers, this in addition to your monthly budget. Go to America!” . . . My wife said, “No! We came for Jerusalem! Not for America. We came to reside in Jerusalem. We are not thinking about a livelihood. We also made a living back in Zakho. We did not leave our city because of poverty. We left for Jerusalem. Under no condition are you going to America. The Lord, Blessed Be He, will give you a livelihood in Jerusalem like in Zakho.”82

Another story in his narratives was devoted to Haifa, where there were former Zakho Jews whom Shmuel Baruch had previously helped come on aliyah:83 “When they saw me in Haifa, they hugged me and kissed me. They said, ‘Hakham, you remain with us. We will not let you go to Jerusalem. Just 233

01 Chapters.indd 233

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 6

as you were a shohet in Zakho, you will be a shohet here. We have access to Rabbi Eliahu Larena, the chief rabbi of Haifa. We are on good terms with him. You will live here in Haifa. Don’t go to Jerusalem!’. . . That’s what they said because they loved me.” But once again his wife exerted her influence: “My wife said, ‘No! We came for Jerusalem. We will live there. We will stay there for a month. If you find work, we shall stay there. If you don’t find a livelihood, then we shall return to Haifa.’” Shmuel Baruch concluded this story by saying, “I did my wife’s bidding.”84 Even years after settling in Jerusalem, Rabbi Shmuel Baruch withstood the temptation to leave Jerusalem for another locale that offered better prospects of making a living, even if for only a short time: “In 1940, the Religious Council sent me a letter in which it was written that they are sending people to Ethiopia to slaughter [animals there] and bring frozen meat here. . . . They wanted me to go there. I didn’t go. A friend of mine from the slaughterhouse, Yosef Monsa, went. My wife didn’t let me. She said, ‘We are in Jerusalem. We don’t have to go anywhere. We are earning a living.’” Thanks to the wife, the Baruch family overcame the element of temptation exerted by other locales, even though from the income standpoint they were preferable to what Jerusalem offered. For the olim from Zakho, places in Eretz Israel other than Jerusalem would not mean true and full realization of their dream: to be in Jerusalem, the real embodiment of Eretz Israel. The image of Shmuel Baruch’s wife Devorah stands out in these stories as a woman who was imbued with a strong religious attachment to Jerusalem: “She had a religious desire for Jerusalem.” I interviewed Shmuel one day after the annual commemoration service for his wife, who had passed away in 1981. Under the influence of that event, he told me these stories to stress the wonderful character of his wife. Shmuel Baruch ended his chain of stories with one praising the Holy Land in general, and Jerusalem in particular, when compared with the Diaspora, including Zakho. The story centered around the festival of Tu biShevat (the New Year of the Trees) and the planting of saplings in the new Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hakerem. The protagonist of this story is Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, the revered rabbi of Zakho, who came to Eretz Israel as one member of a group of rabbis whose aliyah Baruch helped arrange in 1933. This is Shmuel Baruch’s story: One time, on Tu bi-Shevat, we went out to the fields in Beit Hakerem. We went there—Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, his son Haviv, and me. There was almost nothing in Beit Hakerem then. We came [to participate] in the Tu bi-Shevat planting [of saplings] by the chil234

01 Chapters.indd 234

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The British Mandate Period

dren of Beit Hakerem. We took with us food, beverages, and arak. Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan did not drink arak. He liked sweet things. And there, in the field, I saw that Rabbi Shabetai was writing something. I asked him, “What are you writing?” He replied, “I am writing to Zakho [to tell them] that here is a real joyous event. I am writing to the Diaspora that they should come, that they should see what celebrations are conducted here, what joy there is here. Why do they stay there? What do they have there? Rabbi Shmuel Baruch is with me here, drinking arak and making merry.”

In Kurdistan, Tu bi-Shevat was a special festival that served as a symbol of fertility. Many magical customs were practiced on this day. Women linked their fate to that of the fruit trees: they believed that the trees were inseminated by the rainwater and therefore they, too, would become pregnant that night. They used to scatter raisins and sweets around the trees to enhance their fertility, hug the tree trunks, and recite a special poem.85 Now, in Jerusalem’s Beit Hakerem neighborhood, this was a moment of grace for two rabbis and the son of one of them—himself to become a rabbi later in life—who were strongly tied to each other by bonds of love and strong, renewed friendship, and who helped each other achieve aliyah.86 Fertility and rebirth, the motifs associated with Tu bi-Shevat in Kurdistan, are also a most suitable background for the narrative of Shmuel Baruch. It contained everything anyone needed in Jerusalem: taking root in Eretz Israel, the creation of a new identity, a blending of the religious spirit and Zionism, of the corporeal with the spiritual. The protagonists expressed fully their spiritual longing for Eretz Israel by consuming sweets and drinking in the enchanting atmosphere of the Zionist rebirth and by participating in the planting of saplings on Tu bi-Shevat, an act that symbolically represented taking root and beginning life anew in the ancient homeland, and all this in the company of the uninhibited children of a new neighborhood in Jerusalem.

235

01 Chapters.indd 235

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Chapter 7

Zionism in Zakho Zionist Cell or Center for Illegal Immigration?

According to most of my interviewees, it was during World War II that the words “the movement” and “Zionism” were first heard in Zakho. Whereas World War I had left a significant impact on the Jewish community of Zakho, opening it up to the outside world, World War II severed connections between Jews in Zakho and members of their families in Eretz Israel. Thus, the war became a second milestone, a watershed that left its mark on the members of the community. The pro-Nazi regime in Iraq, which in 1941 instigated a pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad, enacted restrictive legislation against Kurdish Jewry. Though these decrees were annulled with the fall of Rashīd ‘Alī, this did not alleviate the sense of despair that was the lot of Zakho’s Jews.1 They feared a possible incursion of German forces into the heavily defended border region. The destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust, news of which reached Kurdistan indirectly, also influenced to some degree the Zionist awareness of Jews in Zakho. Because of this information, the community was prepared to do what it could to rescue Jews; however, in practice, only very few were partner to these efforts, under the leadership of the Zionist emissaries. News of the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine following World War II also reached Iraq and Kurdistan, including Zakho, contributing to greater awareness of concepts such as “the movement” and “Zionism,” though from a different aspect. Yona Sabar reported, “I heard about that as a boy in 1947, and perhaps even earlier. The Palestinians were also an issue in 1947 that often appeared in the press. Sometimes my family would get a paper and I would read it to them, and it was then I learned that Iraqi newspapers were writing about it [the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine]. That

236

01 Chapters.indd 236

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

was before 1947. We also heard of Zionism; of course, we heard negative things.”2 Some claimed that they had never heard of Zionism in Zakho, but only after they came on aliyah to Israel. Salih Hocha, who arrived with the big wave of immigrants in 1951, said, “About a year or two after we were here [in Israel], we knew or understood the meaning of Zionism; we did not know [previously].”3 Some of the interviewees who claimed ignorance of Zionism engaged in some of its practical aspects without internalizing them. Some helped smuggle olim across the border into Syria, while others were aware of this activity but kept their silence. Smuggling was conducted primarily by two members of the Zakho community, Shlomo Salman and Ilya Hetteh, who first operated independently and later under the direction of emissaries of the Zionist underground. The emissaries reached Zakho in 1942–49. The first was Shemariah Guttman in 1942, followed by Yitzhak Shweiki in 1944 and Menahem Aloni in 1949. Whereas Guttman was in contact only with the head of the community, Moshe Gabbay, Shweiki and Aloni met the entire community. The emissary Yehoshua Baharav and his deputy Mordechai Bibi, who were active in 1945, did not come to Zakho but maintained contact with Salman, who acted upon their instructions. Zakho was important for the Zionist underground because of Zakho’s location near the point where the borders of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey met. From the 1940s onward, its emissaries sought loyal contacts in various cities in Iraq in order to smuggle out olim with help of these contacts; in time, they tried to establish the Zakho community as a focus of their activities but were unsuccessful. This can be seen in the testimonies by former Zakho Jews, which reflected a gap between the real state of affairs and their awareness of it: they believed Zionist activity in Zakho to have been so scanty as to even deny its existence at all. They stressed that a branch of the Zionist movement was never established in Zakho because of its geographic situation—a peripheral area lacking good roads—and fear that it would be uncovered by the authorities of a city in which the presence of every foreigner was immediately noticed.4 When all was said and done, though, there was some Zionist activity in Zakho, even if some members of the community were unaware of it. Zionism took the form of learning Hebrew, smuggling emigrants across the border, and the efforts of emissaries from Eretz Israel. Nehemiah Hocha testified to the teaching of Hebrew in the late 1940s and just prior to the collective aliyah in the early fifties: 237

01 Chapters.indd 237

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

I had ties with the branch [of the Zionist movement] in Mosul. From there, I received educational materials in Hebrew, such as songs and more. I taught Hebrew to children. Yona Sabar, who was my pupil, helped me, serving as my secretary. He would help me look up words in a dictionary of modern Hebrew. For we in Zakho knew primarily biblical Hebrew. I taught various songs from Eretz Israel. In my group, there were about twenty bachelors and young boys.5

Nehemiah’s testimony about Zionist activity is supported by written documentation, though he is not mentioned by name.6 The greatest part of Zionist activity in Zakho was attributed to two people: Shlomo Salman and Ilya Hetteh, who engaged in smuggling olim across the border, and it turns out that many were aware of this at the time. Moreover, though most of the interviewees claimed that they never saw a Zionist emissary in Zakho and did not know them, they were able to tell me about them.7 The clandestine activities of emissaries, even if their stay in Zakho was brief, could not be hidden in such a small town where everyone sensed that something was in the air. There were also others who cooperated with the emissaries in one way or another and additional people who wanted to participate in these efforts but were unable to do so. In addition to the oral testimonies provided by former Zakho Jews about these two border smugglers, they also appear in reports sent by the underground’s emissaries in Zakho.

World War II: “We Lived in Fear” Though Iraq received its independence in 1932, Britain continued to wield considerable influence in the country. From the outbreak of World War II until the spring of 1941, Britain’s military power on many fronts suffered setbacks. Most European countries had fallen to the Germans; Britain’s cities were subject to the Blitz and her ships sunk at sea; Rommel’s Afrika Korps had gained control of all North Africa, pulling up for awhile only at the gates of Egypt; and the British suffered heavy defeats in Greece and Crete. All these seemingly undermined Britain’s control of, and influence in, the Middle East, as well. These changed circumstances encouraged a nationalist group of Iraqi colonels, led by Prime Minister Rashīd ‘Alī al-Jīlānī, to mount a pro-Nazi coup and free Iraq from British dominance. The uprising took place on 2

238

01 Chapters.indd 238

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

April 1941, and its leaders ruled Iraq for about two months before being deposed by the British at the end of May. During the short period in power of Rashīd ‘Alī, who was actively supported by the mufti of Jerusalem, Hājj Amin al-Husseini, Baghdad’s Jews were subject to extortion, several were murdered, and others were accused of various crimes. However, precisely after the coup was quashed, while British troops were encamped in the vicinity of Baghdad, the Iraqis mounted a pogrom against the city’s Jewish population on 1–2 June, during which 150–180 people were killed, about 700 wounded, and some 1,500 Jewish shops and homes looted. All in all, about 2,500 suffered injuries or property damage—some 15 percent of Baghdad Jewry at the time. These riots—apparently the only pogrom in Iraq during the past century—were a turning point in the history of Iraqi Jewry.8 The roots of these riots, known as “Farhud,”9 lay in the antisemitic incitement and activity targeted at Jews in Iraq during the 1930s against the background of the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. Behind the incitement were primarily pro-Nazi, Syrian, and Palestinian elements who took advantage of rising Iraqi nationalist sentiments.10 Jewish reaction immediately took the form of attempts to leave Iraq. Many fled to Iran, while others reached Beirut. A few received entry permits to India, but, when their permits expired shortly afterward, most returned to Baghdad when they saw that order had been restored, that the political scene was calm, and that the economy was flourishing again. Several hundred Jews tried to reach Palestine, but most were apprehended and returned to Iraq.11 The murderous riots left an indelible impression on Iraqi Jewry in general and on Baghdad’s Jews in particular. It’s true that economic rehabilitation was relatively speedy when the immense extent of the damage is taken into account. Moreover, the economic boom that began a few months after the British regained control of Iraq and continued throughout the war years contributed to the financial rehabilitation of the Baghdad Jewish community. But the shock they experienced could not be blotted out; its results were felt for some time primarily on an emotional-psychological level. Jews now felt insecure in Iraq and no longer had a sense of belonging to the country and society within which they had lived and worked for centuries. Furthermore, it was clear that such events could recur as long as the circumstances that had induced them in the first place remained unchanged. The riots were also a turning point in the relationship between the organized Jewish community in Palestine, known in Hebrew as the Yishuv, and Iraqi Jewry. The former now sent emissaries to Iraq to organize self-defense, aliyah, and later also Zionist education.12 239

01 Chapters.indd 239

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

The Rashīd ‘Alī Coup and Its Effect on Zakho’s Jews Rashīd ‘Alī al-Jīlānī’s pro-Nazi regime posed a real threat to the Jews of Kurdistan. Ten Jews were murdered in Sondur, and residents of the Jewish quarter in Kirkuk did not set foot outside their neighborhood for several weeks out of fear of the rioters,13 while a mob of Muslim riffraff besieged the Jewish neighborhoods in Arbil, where a pogrom was prevented by the city’s governor, who called in military units loyal to the British.14 The Jews were instructed to collect a large quantity of gold, a decree that was rescinded only when the Rashīd ‘Alī regime was deposed. The great tension and fear that befell the Jewish community in Zakho is evident in the narrative about the decree that I heard in many versions, evidence of its historical validity. Because of the importance that my interviewees attached to this event, I shall present four versions of the narrative. The first is by Mordechai Sa‘ado: We lived in fear. People would say, “Now they will kill us.” Before Passover, the government sent an order. In the order it was written, “Take gold from the Jews.” They told us, “You will give one thousand gold coins; in other words, two kilograms of gold. No! You will give the government ten kilograms of gold. It needs it.” What were we to do? From where would we take the money to give them? Every day we would argue with one another until the war [i.e., the uprising] ended. Then the governor summoned Moshe Gabbay [the head of the community], who was a member of the Zakho local council. The governor told Moshe Gabbay, “The government has released you [from payment].” The English came to Baghdad and the others fled.15

Haya Gabbay: They [the government] wanted about six kilograms of gold from our “big guys” [i.e., communal leaders], then, during the time of Rashīd ‘Alī. So they took my brother-in-law Moshe Gabbay; they summoned him and another person whose name I have forgotten. They took them to the prison and placed them before the kaymakam. They said, “We will give you three days. If [by then] you don’t bring six kilograms of gold, all the Jews will be killed.” So they came, these unfortunate people, and all the men and [representatives of ] all the synagogues; they got together and came to my brother-in-law: “So 240

01 Chapters.indd 240

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

what shall we do? What shall we not do?” [Gabbay said,] “Tell your wives to give gold. We shall collect. What can we do?” They said, “The best thing is that first of all we shall fast for three days and go to the cemetery and see what happens.” And really, all the Jews, all the Jews there fasted. They all fasted! On the third day, they said, “No more. They called it off. The edict has been lifted from the Jews.” And there was much rejoicing; everyone drank and sat; they did not collect gold. They said, “First of all, we shall see what happens. We shall fast and pray to God and see what happens.” And God removed it [the edict] and after that Rashīd ‘Alī was killed. A miracle. In Baghdad, they killed a few Jews in the Farhud, but thank God they did not reach us.16

Mazliah Kol: When Rashīd ‘Alī al-Jīlānī came to power, may his name be blotted out17 together with Hitler!—I forgot to tell you [that] he wanted to deal with the Jews [in Iraq] like they were dealt with in Germany. . . . What did they [i.e., he] do? He wanted to pass a more sophisticated law. He set a tax only on the Jews, and on each and every city, a quantity of gold. I remember that I came home from the coffeehouse on the Sabbath.18 My mother was crying. “What’s happening?” She said, “Your father is imprisoned.” Why? What did he do?” They arrested Moshe Gabbay, and my father, and the father of Ephraim Ela, and Yosef Shaul; in short, the ten [Jewish] notables of the city. They arrested them. And the governor of the province told them, “Such and such a quantity.” They were talking about gold, miskal, miskal. Do you know what that is? It is a measure of weight. Here [in Israel] they sell it to you by the gram. Miskal is one and a half grams. This measure; I remember that they said that we, the Jews of Zakho, had to give 500 or 600 miskal, about 1,000 grams, a kilogram of gold. That was the first stage, the beginning. So everyone went to his wife [and said], “Prepare your gold,” because in our community every woman had gold, all types of jewelry, she wouldn’t marry without jewelry [as a dowry]. Her father would say, “What do you [the bridegroom] intend to do for her?” [Gold] for here and there, for the neck, the ears, the ankles [the interviewee points to the various parts of the body]. The answer [to the governor] had to be given within a week. Now this sheikh I told you about, Hāji Agha, I went to him and so did the son of Moshe 241

01 Chapters.indd 241

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Gabbay go to him, and I wept. I said, “My father has been arrested, and Moshe Gabbay, and so and so.” And he came to the police and released them on bail, for otherwise they would immediately put them in jail because the orders of Rashīd ‘Alī al-Jīlānī were “Gold now, or prison.” Peace upon Israel.19 That’s what happened.

Salim Gabbay, whose father was the head of the community: There was a revolutionary group [in Iraq] whose objective was to take money, because they did not know whether or not they would remain in power. So they levied a ransom in gold on all the Jews in the various cities in Iraq. Such a tax was also levied on us. I don’t know how much. Perhaps its value was 2,000 grams of gold. My father [Moshe Gabbay] had friendly relations with the governor, the kaymakam. . . . The governor said to my father, “You will keep asking for an extension [in the date of payment] and I will give you an extension until we see what happens. I think that this coup is not so viable. It won’t succeed.” And that’s how it was on several occasions. Until one day, on the eve of the Sabbath, when my father left the bathhouse, a policeman came and said to him, “The governor summons you.” When my father came to him, he [the governor] said, “Gabbay, I want to tell you good news: the revolution has failed and you don’t have to pay the ransom.”20

The various versions of this event are testimony to the great shock experienced by the Jews of Zakho during the brief revolution. The community’s internal social fabric, which had been created over many years and had protected the community, was rocked by an external event over which it had no control. For the first time in its history, this proud and honorable community in Kurdistan, along the northern border of Iraq and far from the central government in Baghdad, was the subject of a harsh decree with which it was unable to comply. The stories also reflect the apparently declining influence—for the first time—in the status of the rich Muslim Kurdish families that for generations had protected their Jewish neighbors. Though powerless to annul the decree, they did everything in their power to ease the situation for the Jews and to delay execution of the decree as long as they could. According to Mazliah Kol’s narrative, Haji Agha, Zakho’s mayor, released on bail the Jewish communal leaders who had been arrested, whereas, in Salim Gabbay’s version, the kaymakam, the representative of the central government, who may have 242

01 Chapters.indd 242

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

been a local resident, advised Moshe Gabbay to request a postponement in paying the levy, a bit of advice that in the end provided a solution to the problem.21 From the narratives, we also learn that this was a period during which the communal leadership was at a loss and there were differences of opinion as to how payment of the gold was to be split up among members of the community: “Every day we would argue with one another until the war ended,” related Mordechai Sa‘ado. According to Meir Zaqen, the gold was to be collected from the wives, who received it from their respective bridegrooms as a sign of their love and financial standing.22 It may also be that the gold was not collected, because of the women’s refusal to relinquish their jewelry, which for them was not only a measure of the esteem in which they were held but also an assurance of their economic security. The status of the communal leadership suffered a harsh blow. Whereas in normal times they received honor and support from the community, as well as from the Muslim notables, now they were thrown into jail. Even when they were released on bail, they could not advise their bewildered fellow Jews. According to Haya Gabbay, the members of the community asked, “So what shall we do? What shall we not do?” and Moshe Gabbay’s reply “Tell your wives to give gold” did not seem logical to Zakho’s Jews, who decided to go to the cemetery, fast, and await Heavenly salvation. Like the harsh decree in the Book of Esther, this one, too, was finally revoked. The narratives reflect personal viewpoints and the identity of the interviewees. Since Mordechai Sa‘ado, for example, who filled no official capacity in the community and made a living floating trees downriver, expressed the viewpoint of “an ordinary member of the community,” he made a point of the arguments within the community about how payment of this quantity of gold would be distributed among its members. Haya Gabbay, the sisterin-law of Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community, presented a femininefamilial view of anxiety over the fate of a member of her family who was imprisoned and that of the community at large. That, perhaps, is why her story contains supernatural elements, borders on the genre of legend, and is marked by inaccurate historical facts, such as the death of Rashīd ‘Alī.23 In his story, Mazliah Kol presented his lineage—the son of one of the leading families whose members served in various capacities in the community— and expressed the anxiety of the sons over their father’s imprisonment. Salim Gabbay emphasized the lofty status of his father, whose good relations with the kaymakam stood the community in good stead. It is against this background, the Zakho community’s distress caused by the “gold decree,” that its members first heard of modern Zionism, and 243

01 Chapters.indd 243

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

this—strangely enough—thanks to local representatives of the pro-Nazi regime who accused the Jews of being “Zionists” and jailed them. This is what Zaki Levi told us: When World War II ended—I was then fifteen and a half [or] sixteen years old—we already began [hearing] the terms “the movement” and “Zionism.” Actually, it was during World War II that this was somewhat more valid, due to the pressure applied by the Iraqi authorities, because they were convinced that the Germans would soon arrive. They applied pressure on Iraqi Jewry and on the Jews of Zakho. I was witness to this, and there was a time when my father and all the heads of the community were summoned [to the office] of the city’s governor and told to bring the jewels and all artifacts of artistic value in order to donate them for the war effort. They forced us young boys to dig communication trenches and build shelters against planes . . . in order to prepare themselves so that, should Germany conquer [Zakho], then they would join forces with the Germans, and thus began hostility toward the English. And this hostility increased. And in our house, we had a set of coffee cups that we received from Jerusalem, from the Zidkiyahu family, on which was painted a Star of David and was written “Jerusalem.” And we [also] had a plate for Passover Eve that bore a Star of David. And they found these two items in our home and arrested my father. In one moment, he almost lost his status as a member of the municipal council and was called “a Zionist.” Zionist—that was the worst thing possible! And they were tried in military courts, not a civilian court. After that, there was intervention. After all, there were some connections. He was released, but these items were confiscated.24

Unlike the previous narratives, in all versions, that by Zaki Levi painted the situation of Zakho’s Jews in very harsh colors: all persons, irrespective of their social status, were harmed. This included the community’s leaders, whose homes were searched, and they themselves were thrown into prison under false pretenses, lost their special status, and their lives were in danger. Under the Rashīd ‘Alī regime, Zakho’s location near the borders with Vichy Syria and pro-German Turkey were to its disadvantage. One of the elements in Zaki Levi’s story—how young boys were mobilized to prepare shelters against attack from the air due to the “hostility toward the English”—is supported by external evidence. On 3 April 1941, 244

01 Chapters.indd 244

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Rashīd ‘Alī received a commitment from the Vichy regime in Syria that German planes stationed in Syria would attack British targets in Iraq, and about fifty German planes landed at Mosul during 8–10 May. Young people were mobilized to dig trenches, probably because it was feared that the British would attack the Germans in Iraq—this after, on 14 May, British aircraft attacked airfields in Syria from which German planes took off to bomb targets in Transjordan and Iraq.25 Zakho’s Jews, fully aware of their city’s critical geographic location and having already felt the yoke of the pro-Nazi regime, were seized by great fear of the Germans. Trepidation permeated all levels of the community and was even the lot of little children, as Shlomo Duga, then a pupil in a traditional heder, related: I remember that Hakham Mordechai Zebariko, of blessed memory [i.e., his teacher], one morning during World War II [taught us] our motto . . . when we heard that Germany was conquering [Iraq]. So on that morning he said to us, before beginning our studies, “Pupils! I want to hear one thing from you! Instead of saying ‘Long live so and so’—Inglizi or Aleman [English or Germans]?” we all yelled out, “Inglizi!” We all wanted the English to come, not the Germans. We feared them. That was our motto. After that, we began our studies.26

Faced with the trauma of being in an isolated area, in addition to the severance of all contact with their relatives in Palestine and persecution by the Iraqi regime—like the case of Zaki Levi’s father, who was arrested on charges of being a Zionist—Zakho’s Jews were unconsciously driven for the first time to internalize the terms “Zionism” and “the movement.” There is an interesting point in Zaki Levi’s story when he notes that recognition of these terms became stronger (“more viable”) during the war; in other words, they had penetrated the consciousness of Zakho’s Jews prior to the war but had not yet been internalized. These concepts penetrated in various manners, perhaps directly through relatives who had already gone on aliyah to Eretz Israel or indirectly by means of traditional artifacts with religious significance found in their homes that were transformed into “Zionist” objects by an external and hostile factor—the pro-Nazi regime. In the continuation of his story about his teacher in the heder, Shlomo Duga said, “And so we heard that there was a fighting movement. That there is the Haganah.27 . . . Moshe Shertok [later Sharett, first foreign minister of Israel]. We heard a lot about Moshe Shertok.”28 245

01 Chapters.indd 245

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

The Impact of the Holocaust on the Zakho Community The Holocaust, too, contributed to the shaping of Zionist consciousness among Zakho’s Jews. Rumors about the Holocaust came as an immense shock to Jews, especially the younger generation. The Jews of Zakho lived in clanlike extended families and for generations had little real contact with Jews outside the city or region. But, when they themselves began to suffer under an anti-Jewish regime, they felt deep sympathy and identification with the fate of Jews everywhere and were prepared to act. Some of my interviewees claimed, brokenheartedly, that, had they been recruited by the Zionist emissaries, they would have volunteered for rescue operations. Mazliah Kol: During World War II of Hitler, may his name and memory be blotted out,29 we heard rumors that Jews were being slaughtered, and this pained us. If someone had come then, he would have succeeded in organizing us, the young people who at the time had reached the age of sixteen, fifteen, and eighteen and were capable of holding a gun in their hands. On several occasions when we met, we, the young people, were pained by the fate of the Jews. Why are they killing Jews? Who are these people? What beasts? Are they human? We at least wanted to see them. If we had been there, we would have cut them to pieces. . . . And we, it could very well be—and I am certain that if some emissary had come and said [to us], “I want to recruit you, about a hundred fellows, two hundred fellows, and I want to lead you by this and this way and reach Germany, and there are Jews in the camps, imprisoned there. And you will have to carry out retaliatory operations, and so forth, and help, and kill Germans,” I believe with all my heart that just as I wanted to go, and believe in myself, many would have joined in. Perhaps there was some emissary [in Zakho?], [but] he didn’t have precise information.30

Consciousness of the Holocaust and glorification of acts of bravery, both of which had developed over the years in Israel, no doubt influenced the testimony of the interviewee and his phrasing, as evidenced by use of the very Israeli term “retaliatory operations.” On the other hand, even after so many years the helplessness that Zakho’s Jews sensed “then,” under the circumstances of the time, because of their inability to help rescue the European Jews and their strong identification with their fate seems to be real and have 246

01 Chapters.indd 246

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

been set firmly in those days. In addition, the will to exact vengeance can be attributed to the tradition of honor and bravery that was widespread in Kurdistan, and in Zakho, among non-Jewish Kurds. How did information about the Holocaust reach a city as remote as Zakho? Did it have any direct effect upon Zionist activity there? In his testimony, Meir Zaqen responded to these questions: This may surprise you, but we knew about the Holocaust without reading about it in the papers. We knew only from bits of information we heard over the radio and from rumors that people passed on to one another. You have to take into account the mentality of people in our areas of Kurdistan. It is an Arab mentality. And thus, they would hear one word and add many additional words, to the best of their imagination. And yet, what we heard apparently was true. We heard that they castrated the men in the Holocaust; we heard how they put [Jews] to death in gas chambers and cremated them there. We heard a lot of things. You will be surprised [to hear] how we, who lived in such a backward area, helped Jews who fled to us from all directions. We helped bring them to Eretz Israel. This was not done by transferring groups but by transferring individuals [across the border]. In our city, we would transfer people to Eretz Israel through Syria. There was a strong Zionist movement in Syria, and the Zionists would then get those people over to Eretz Israel. Here and there were also a few individuals who reached us from Turkey, and we used to get them across.

Meir Zaqen ended his testimony with a personal memory narrative to which I have already referred in various contexts—a narrative intended to show how Jews in Zakho helped Jews who were intent upon reaching Eretz Israel. In his story, Meir described how his family helped a Jew who had fled Baghdad in the wake of the pogrom mounted by the pro-Nazi elements in June 1941 and reached Zakho “with knife wounds in his stomach and chest.” The father, Mordechai Zaqen, sent Meir’s brother Yehoshua, then ten or eleven years old, with the Baghdadi Jew in the company of a Christian border smuggler to spirit him across to Qamishliye in Syria. There Meir’s Uncle Zemah was to help the refugee continue on his way to Eretz Israel.31 Such efforts were carried out in Zakho by individuals even prior to the arrival of emissaries of the Zionist underground movement.32

247

01 Chapters.indd 247

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Underground Emissaries until 1945 In March 1942, in the aftermath of the pogrom of June 1941, three emissaries from Eretz Israel arrived in Iraq: Shemariah Guttman, Ezra Kadoorie, and Enzo Sereni. Guttman was the first emissary of the underground to reach Zakho, in 1942. The arrival of the three marked a change in policy on the part of the Zionist movement, which, prior to the war, concentrated on European Jewry. Now attention was also turned to Oriental Jewry, particularly that of Iraq.33 Their objective was to organize local self-defense and aliyah to Eretz Israel. The assumption was that organizational frameworks already existed, that there was strong motivation for aliyah, and that Iraqi Jewry needed only a guiding hand.34 The emissaries were soon confronted with a much different situation. The local self-defense organization, Shabab al-Inkaz (Rescue Youth), centered around only a few high-school students, so the emissaries had to start from scratch. Moreover, the motivation of Iraqi Jews, especially those in Baghdad, to immigrate to Eretz Israel had cooled off during the nine months that had passed since the Farhud. Nuri Said’s pro-British government looked favorably upon its Jewish subjects, while the resurgent economy had also improved the economic condition of the Jews.35 In a letter from Iraq, written on 22 September 1942, Enzo Sereni best expressed the frustration felt by the three emissaries: “It should not be forgotten that we missed the opportunity for such a speedy operation because we were not here immediately after the riots, and because even before the riots we did not prepare the suitable instruments to exploit this ‘propitious moment.’”36 Because of these circumstances, and because several attempts at illegal emigration from Iraq had failed, after consulting with Zionist officials in Eretz Israel the emissaries decided to establish the Hehalutz (Pioneer) Movement whose objective was to prepare people for aliyah in the future.37

The Sapling Planted by Shemariah Guttman That was the background for the mission of Shemariah Guttman, who was classified as an aliyah emissary.38 In an interview conducted on 13 September 1992, he explained how Zakho came to be one of his endeavors in Iraq: “One of the things we [the three emissaries] thought about was that it was necessary to concentrate on the means for aliyah to Eretz Israel through Syria, and thus northern Iraq started to become an important place to check out regarding the possibility of contacting border smugglers.” At first, Guttman spent some time in Mosul, from where he tried to form contacts with 248

01 Chapters.indd 248

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Shemariah Guttman, 13 March 1939. Courtesy of his daughter, Michal Enokh.

tribes of the Yazidi in northern Iraq along the Syrian border so as to reach an agreement with them for smuggling Jews into Syria. When this attempt failed, “I decided to come to Zakho, which is located at a strategic point near the Syrian border [and] the Turkish border, and is part of Kurdish Iraq.”39 Guttman was aware of the sensitive security situation in and around Zakho at this time and of the great difficulty entailed in reaching it: “I knew that in [trying] to get there [I] could be caught, because the Iraqi police detectives were very touchy about this entrance into Zakho. It was from there that Nazi elements penetrated Iraq, and this was a period of great wariness in these matters and very dangerous for us.”40 One lesson learned from the German incursion led to intensive construction work by the British forces in the Mosul-Zakho region as part of preparations to halt another German advance. These efforts also included preparations to blow up five bridges in the mountain passes and to block the roads to Zakho.41 To protect himself, Guttman, who was in Iraq clandestinely without official papers, approached a Jewish engineer serving as an officer in the British forces as part of the Solel Boneh42 contingent working in Mosul and asked him to accompany him on his journey to Zakho.43 The engineer had a worker’s permit issued by the 249

01 Chapters.indd 249

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Shemariah Guttman in a British Army uniform while visiting Yazidis near Mosul, 29 September 1942. Courtesy of Michal Enokh.

British army, which the two planned to produce if they would be stopped by the Iraqi police and maintain that Guttman had forgotten to take his with him. Fortunately, Guttman told us, they were forced to stop along the way and take along an Iraqi police officer whose car had broken down on the way to Zakho. Guttman, who wore a British army uniform, passed himself off as someone who was trying to improve his Arabic and soon won over the police officer, with whom he conducted a lively conversation. It turned out that, thanks to this officer, who remained in Zakho for three days, they were able to enter and exit the city safely: “The entrance to Zakho is narrow, with mountains rising on both sides, and in one place there was a police [checkpoint] that stopped anyone traveling along the road. . . . When we arrived at that entrance, policemen accosted us, but suddenly said, ‘Inside [the car] is the commander of the police!’ Of course, they saluted and apologized.”44 Upon their request, the car’s driver brought Guttman and his colleague to Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community, who hosted them in his home for three days. The visit to Zakho and his contact with Gabbay left their mark on Guttman, who referred to them on three separate occasions, each 250

01 Chapters.indd 250

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Demolition preparations to block mountain passes between Zakho and Mosul and prevent a German invasion, 1941–42. “Demolition Zones,” PRO, WO 201/1472.

time within a different context and with subtle variations of emphasis that slightly changed his impressions. In a report he sent on 4 February 1943 to the Hehalutz Committee of Hakibbutz Hameuchad (his own kibbutz movement), he described his impressions of the visit to Zakho in telegraphic style: “In Zakho, 8 km from the Turkish border, 20 km from the Syrian border, this is a Zionist Jewish community 50 percent of which has gone to the Holy Land within twenty years. The majority speak Hebrew. [In the home of ] the head of the community, whose name is Gabbay, is a boy who is called Chaim Weizmann. Even without our preaching it, Zionism is there.”45 Although Guttman expressed his admiration of the Jewish community of 251

01 Chapters.indd 251

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Zakho and its Zionist orientation, and also of the Jewish herders and farmers in the hill country of Kurdistan, in his report he was most critical of Iraqi Jewry, especially of those residing in Baghdad: The Baghdadi Jew is very Levantine. . . . It is unreasonable to assume that a Baghdadi Jew will engage in physical labor. . . . Iraqi Jewry—its behavior is like that of an Arab effendi, the way he lives, in his home, how he relates to social issues, etc., in addition to his being religious. . . . Now that religion is declining, [the situation] is even worse. . . . This is absolute assimilation into the Orient. . . . Iraqi fantasy and enthusiasm hinder everything. When an Iraqi says “Yes, yes,” say [to yourself ] “No, no.”

As for the Baghdadis’ attitude toward Zionism, Guttman wrote, “My . . . colleague [apparently referring to Ezra Kadoorie] gave a lecture on Eretz Israel, and they [his listeners] were most enthusiastic. But I decided to test them and asked them what they would do if tomorrow a vehicle would come to take them to Eretz Israel—and then they got up and ran away. We must be careful and not be deceived.” A discussion of Guttman’s impression of the Jews of Baghdad would be a digression that has no place in our study,46 but it should be noted that, except for that community, Guttman referred only to the Zakho community, presenting it as the exact opposite of Baghdad Jewry from the aspects of culture (knowledge of Hebrew) and Zionism (the fact that half of the community had gone on aliyah over a period of twenty years without Zionist indoctrination). On 13 October 1988, Shemariah Guttman was invited to deliver a lecture at Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, a research institute in Jerusalem, during an evening devoted to the publication of Mordechai Bibi’s The Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement in Iraq.47 In the lecture, he also told of his visit to Zakho: Zakho, Jerusalem of Babylon, Kurdish Jewry. When I arrived in Zakho and visited the head of the community, who owned an agency for kerosene and gasoline, and told him who I was, he smiled at me and said, “Weizmann, Weizmann, come here!” It turned out that his grandson was named Weizmann. He named him Weizmann. That is Zionism! It is interesting that Weizmann is the son of Shmuel, the son of the head of the community. Shmuel [i.e., Samuel], named after Herbert Samuel. Is that Zionism or not?

252

01 Chapters.indd 252

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Guttman added, “When I came to Iraq, I felt the influence of emissaries of all generations. Throughout all the years there were emissaries, and I found their traces in every corner of Iraq.” He was referring to the praiseworthy activity of Mordechai Bibi, and previous emissaries to Iraqi Jewry, who had created the Zionist infrastructure there. He noted that he was mentioning this contrary to the accepted tendency in Israel “to remember and praise primarily Shlomo Hillel because of what he contributed to the final stage in the aliyah of Iraqi Jewry in the fifties.”48 While in Iraq, Guttman also came across books by modern Hebrew poets Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Shaul Tchernihovsky, and was witness to efforts by teachers of Hebrew. Even in relatively remote Zakho, to his great surprise, there was an earlier Zionist infrastructure upon which the emissaries of the underground could base their efforts. In what he related about Zakho in the lecture and in the report he sent in 1943, Shemariah Guttman expressed his admiration for the community of “Jerusalem in Babylon,” its religious commitment to Eretz Israel, and the Zionism of the head of the community, who gave Zionist names to his son and grandson: Samuel and Weizmann. In Arbil, he came across a boy whose name was Mohilever49 and termed this as “Zionism of Hovevei Zion”; in other words, Zionism that does not necessitate deeds, only love of Zion.

Mordechai Bibi, 16 February 1947. Courtesy of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, or Yehuda. 253

01 Chapters.indd 253

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

The Zionist seed sown in Zakho and elsewhere in Iraq Guttman attributed, among other things, to the 1935 visit of Itzhak Ben-Zvi in Iraq and claimed that he and his fellow emissaries demanded of Iraq’s Jews that they not be content only to “love Zion,” but also come on aliyah to Eretz Israel. Guttman’s mention of Ben-Zvi’s visit to Iraq called for further clarification. Six of my sources from Zakho were convinced that he had been in Zakho. Some said only that they had heard of his visit, whereas others maintained that they were witness to the event and that it influenced their decision to immigrate to Eretz Israel.50 Itzhak Ben-Zvi never came to Zakho, nor to Arbil, as was claimed. According to his own memoirs, he visited Baghdad and the community of Hilla, south of the capital, and then continued on his way to Iran.51 In no archival documentation, nor in Ben-Zvi’s own diaries, did I find any evidence of his having visited Zakho or other places. When I interviewed Guttman on 13 September 1992, four years after his lecture, I asked him if it was Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community in whose home he stayed, who told him that Ben-Zvi had visited Zakho. His reply was “No. He did not mention this, and I didn’t want to stretch the point too much. But later I heard what I heard in Arbil and Kirkuk, the names Mohilever, names of leaders of Hovevei Zion, and that this was brought to them by Ben-Zvi. He passed through and brought this to them.”52 Doubts about Ben-Zvi’s presence in Zakho are also relevant for Arbil and Kirkuk. Salih Nuriel, the head of Arbil’s community, affirmed that he met with Ben-Zvi in Baghdad,53 while Nuriel’s son Ya‘akov confirmed in another interview that Ben-Zvi never visited Arbil and that his father met him in Baghdad.54 Responsibility for the Zionist names that Guttman heard in Arbil may have lain with Salih Nuriel, who was a fervent Zionist, received Zionist periodicals, paid the shekel (the annual fee of membership in the World Zionist Organization), was in contact with the Zionist national institutions in Eretz Israel, and even visited that country in 1936. He named his children after Zionist figures such as Herzl and Ahad Ha‘am, and his home was a source of information about Zionism.55 We may assume that the first rabbinical emissaries to reach Kurdistan after World War I brought news of events in Eretz Israel and particularly about the appointment of Herbert Samuel as the first high commissioner of Palestine. Jews in Zakho related to Samuel like the Messiah who would bring Redemption to the People of Israel.56 The name Weizmann apparently appeared in Zakho at a later stage, because people there had not heard of him or the Balfour Declaration immediately after World War I. Unlike the name of Herbert Samuel, which they uttered in religious overtones, Weizmann is connected to later identification with Zionism on the part of the Zakho 254

01 Chapters.indd 254

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

community in Iraq and in Israel.57 It seems, therefore, that Guttman interpreted the few symptoms of identification with Zionism that he encountered in Zakho with what he knew about the Jewish community of Baghdad, where there had been earlier Zionist activity—during the 1920s and until the mid-1930s—that also included social and educational efforts.58

“And You Will Rely on Smugglers?” Following Shemariah Guttman’s lecture at Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, I began to track down all sources that documented his visit to Zakho. As noted, I interviewed him in his home, in Kibbutz Na‘an, on 13 September 1992. He gave me his full cooperation and in a lengthy interview provided the most detailed description of his short stay in Zakho. As on earlier occasions, Guttman treated this visit within the wider context of his mission in Iraq. He repeated motifs mentioned in the earlier report and narrative, such as Moshe Gabbay, the head of the Jewish community, and the Zionist names he had given his son and grandson, and attributed signs of Zionist identification that he came across to the influence of Itzhak Ben-Zvi. However, my interview, conducted for research purposes, led him to expand upon the bare skeleton of his narrative, adding new details that enabled him to add implications to his story, some of which were completely different from those that emerged from his previous descriptions. Because of the importance of his narrative relating to Zakho, I quote it in full: The courtyard of [Moshe] Gabbay was a big courtyard. He was the supplier of fuel for Zakho and also engaged in other occupations. He was a wealthy man. I said to him, “I am a Jew from Eretz Israel and this officer [who accompanied him and was from the Solel Boneh contingent] is also from Eretz Israel. He is working in Mosul.” He, Gabbay, knew about this matter, and I told him that my role was a mission to Iraq in order to bring them on aliyah to Eretz Israel. How to do this? How to proceed? I, too, need to learn this, and he, too, needs to learn. He needs to teach me. First of all, he needs to want [that]. Then he looked at me with his wise eyes: “To want, you say?” He called out, “Shmuel! Shmuel!” And then Shmuel appeared. A grown-up. Then he [Moshe] said, “You see Shmuel? He is named after Herbert Samuel, the first British high commissioner of Eretz Israel. I named my son Shmuel after him.” In this, he wanted to tell me, “What do you want? You will teach me Zionism? It’s a waste of time, let it be.” Okay. Then I went on to explain to him that I want to contact smugglers so that they should smuggle [people] across 255

01 Chapters.indd 255

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

borders, into Turkey, into Syria. In Syrian [territory] is the townlet of Qamishliye, and into Turkish [territory], and [from there] they will transfer them to Damascus and from there to Eretz Israel, and I want you to get me these people. “And you will rely on smugglers?” [he asked.] I said, “That’s the only option I have. We shall take the risk and hope for the best.” Suddenly I hear “Weizmann! Weizmann!” And then I realized that there were traces of much earlier connections to Eretz Israel. Later I sensed this in other places [as well]. Just think of it, in Arbil I hear the name Mohilever, [here Guttman’s tone is one of surprise] Mohilever as a given name. I sensed traces of Ben-Zvi, who once traveled to Iraq and brought there [knowledge of ] Hovevei Zion. We did not bring Hovevei Zion. We demanded aliyah to Eretz Israel!

This version by Shemariah Guttman reflected mutual images—not only how he interpreted the character of his host, but also in what light Moshe Gabbay saw him. Guttman revealed the techniques he applied in his meetings with heads of communities to gain their cooperation.59 He tried to seem modest, to create a sort of equality between himself and the head of the community, and ask for help. All the while, he was aware of the “wise eyes” of Gabbay, who surprised him in the covert competition between them over “who is a Zionist” when he proved his Zionism by loudly calling out the Zionist names of his family members. However, what Guttman called for was not symbolic Zionism but deeds: aliyah to Eretz Israel, practical support, and the location of border smugglers. Was the head of the community ready to meet the challenge? “I did not succeed in Zakho,” Guttman admitted, because he received no help in contacting smugglers and was prevented from meeting with the community at large for fear that his identity would be revealed. Though trying to justify the logic in what Gabbay told him, Guttman could not conceal his disappointment at, and criticism of, the caution with which his visit was treated: He was prepared [to act], but always told me, “The smugglers I was able to contact, I wouldn’t want you to see them and for them to see you, because I do not trust them. I don’t believe [them]. We have to invest much more effort in this.” That’s the reason I abandoned Zakho, even though later it was our lifeline for a certain number of olim from this area. That’s what I can tell you. I was unable to

256

01 Chapters.indd 256

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

meet there with additional Jews, other than Gabbay. He made sure I would not meet with others . . . , he was afraid.

Guttman’s disappointment over the results of his mission to Zakho is understandable, even though he himself understood that his host needed time to digest the significance of the first visit by a Zionist underground movement emissary to his city. Guttman arrived at a time when security problems and fear were at their height, as he himself admitted. Moshe Gabbay opened his home to him and his companion even though they were strangers and their presence might incriminate him. As a result of the unexpected visit, Gabbay was supposed to recruit border smugglers on very short notice, but any mistake on his part could have jeopardized the entire community. It is very possible that the shock of his first contact with a representative of the underground movement, the difference in temperament between the calculated head of the community and the impatient emissary, as well as the danger that lurked within and outside of the community, were what intensified Gabbay’s fears and led him to prevent Guttman from meeting other members of the community.

We Shall Move with the Money Despite these limitations, Guttman toured the Jewish quarter. His impressions are colored to some extent by bitterness and disappointment: I walked around [the Jewish quarter], of course. I saw them. I saw how they lived. I saw the difference between them and Baghdad, even between them and Mosul. That they are in [seemingly difficult] circumstances . . . that does not mean anything. The home is very simple. Their lives are very simple, but sometimes the accumulation of wealth with such people is more than with a Baghdadi who has a house, because they kept their money, and this is what Gabbay told me, “We shall move with the money.” . . . All the time I argued that things are not so simple and that they should take advantage of it [aliyah while it was still possible]. Okay, so it didn’t work.60

Though Guttman’s impressions were those of a passing visitor, in the long run he was right. Moshe Gabbay, who over the years avoided immigrating to Eretz Israel because of his extensive assets, finally came with the last group from Zakho in 1951 as one who had “missed a golden opportunity” because the Iraqi government confiscated all his property.61 On the other hand, he

257

01 Chapters.indd 257

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

was mistaken when he assumed that much money was hidden away in the simple homes of the Jewish quarter. His assumption probably rested on a mistaken view or his impressions from other cities, perhaps Mosul and particularly Baghdad. Although there were a few wealthy families in Zakho, most of the Jews there were very poor. Guttman also visited one of Zakho’s two synagogues: “I was in the Zaqen [family] synagogue. I did not visit the [Big] Synagogue of Gabbay. He was afraid.” In this case, too, he was disappointed: They opened the Holy Ark62 for me; the gabbay [i.e., beadle] of the synagogue showed it to me and told me about it. The synagogue left a pleasant impression, even though the great majority of buildings in the city—I would guess that the situation has developed somewhat now—were dilapidated, though there were also some large permanent structures in the city. The synagogue was in use. I asked to receive a parokhet 63 to bring to Eretz Israel. . . . I wanted to bring it to . . . [Kibbutz] En Harod. Zisling64 had requested of me, “Any religious artifact from synagogues, from batei midrash [lit. “houses of study”] that you can bring, try to do so.” Under no condition [would they agree]!

When I asked Guttman why they would not agree, he replied, “They were unwilling to remove it from there, and I don’t know if they succeeded transferring [the parokhot] when they left. . . . I am unfamiliar with the details of their leaving . . . it was already a completely different period. [Shlomo] Hillel organized that aliyah. I only caused them trouble.” I told him, from personal knowledge, that most of the artifacts remained behind, and they only succeeded in bringing a few with them. Guttman’s reaction was “What a pity.” The frustration and bitterness that marked Shemariah Guttman’s testimony no doubt stemmed from his immediate lack of success in recruiting Moshe Gabbay’s help in smuggling out emigrants, from his disappointing visit to the synagogue, and from his sense of failure when compared with the later efforts of Shlomo Hillel.65 Yitzhak Shweiki, the second emissary of the underground who reached Zakho in 1944, told me that Guttman had brought with him an old Bible as a present for the head of the community so as to gain his help.66 Guttman never mentioned this, but, if this is true, therein may lie a reason for his frustration: whereas he could bring himself to part with an old Bible, Zakho’s religious Jews zealously refused to part even with a parokhet. However, it seems that the misunderstandings between the two sides can be attributed primarily to the cultural gap between them—be258

01 Chapters.indd 258

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

tween secular and religious Jews and between West and East. Whereas for Guttman the parokhet was a museum piece representative of a backward culture, for the people of Zakho and the synagogue’s beadle the synagogue and its furnishings were a living, vital culture.67 Despite his frustration, Shemariah Guttman was aware of the importance of his visit to Zakho. He saw it as the beginning of a process whose results would be reaped by the emissaries who would follow in his footsteps: “That’s the reason I abandoned Zakho, even though later it was our lifeline for a certain number of olim from this area.” He repeated this idea, phrasing it somewhat differently: “I really did not succeed in Zakho. After me came people [i.e., other emissaries] who exploited the matter [i.e., his first efforts]. They also helped with the exodus of all the Jews of Zakho.” Years after the event, Guttman summed up for me his efforts in Zakho and activity throughout Iraq: “My primary objective was to plant a sapling that would grow. When someone else would come, it would already bear fruit.”68 Munya Mardor was sent to Iraq in 1942 to help the first three emissaries. When he visited Enzo Sereni in Mosul, they both met with Guttman: We found him tired and exhausted after a lengthy journey in search of contacts for Aliyah Bet69 in the region. His fatigue and tension stemmed from the circumstances under which he operated. He used to disguise himself as an Arab and wore a Feisal headgear that was customary in Iraq. Despite his fluency in Arabic, he was always in danger of being discovered because he did not know the local dialects—this in addition to the hazards presented by the forged documents he was using. After this meeting, Enzo and I decided that at the first opportunity we would send Guttman back to his family in Eretz Israel for a rest after a lengthy period of activity under very nerve-racking conditions. We also decided to find a way to legalize his presence in Iraq.70

Yitzkah Shweiki and the Clandestine Route to Qamishliye Yitzhak Shweiki, the second emissary of the underground to reach Zakho, arrived in November 1944, about two years after Shemariah Guttman.71 Shweiki’s visit was completely different from Guttman’s in both character and the climate in which it was conducted. A breakthrough was achieved in Zionist underground activity in Zakho during his stay. He was able to meet with the community and was even warmly received. Moreover, he managed 259

01 Chapters.indd 259

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

to set up contact with two Jewish smugglers who very much wanted to become involved in the activities of the Zionist underground movement. Shweiki was sent to Syria in 1941 as a member of the Palmah (the strike force of the Haganah) unit of mista‘aravim, people from Eretz Israel who spoke Arabic and passed themselves off as Arabs. From 1942 to 1944, under the guise of a teacher in a heder, he was an emissary in Qamishliye. He used several pseudonyms, such as Mu‘allem Zaki (Zaki the teacher); Hilmi was his name in the Palmah’s Arab unit while in Syria, but he was also “known as ‘Manzili,’ derived from ‘Manzil,’” the code name for Qamishliye.72 There is copious documentation, written by Zionist emissaries, about his mission and efforts on behalf of the Zionist underground in Syria and Iraq. The documents are also informative regarding his efforts to transfer illegal emigrants while in Qamishliye, his arrest as he tried to leave Mosul, and the conclusion of his mission.73 Shweiki’s mission to Syria and Iraq and those of other emissaries were a result of a changed policy on the part of the Zionist leadership regarding aliyah from Arab countries in 1941–45. Mass aliyah from these countries

Yitzhak Shweiki in the guise of a Syrian teacher, 1943–45. Courtesy of Yitzhak Shweiki. 260

01 Chapters.indd 260

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

became an important element in Jewish Agency policy because of greater awareness of the existence of Jewish communities in the Oriental countries and the dangers those communities faced, but primarily because of the Holocaust in Europe and its implications for the very basis of Jewish existence and the Zionist enterprise in Eretz Israel.74 This is hinted at in the interview I conducted with Shweiki in his home in Jerusalem on 22 July 1992. As background to his testimony about his visit to Zakho in 1944, Shweiki dwelt briefly on the major objective of his mission for the Mosad Le’aliyah Bet (the organization for illegal immigration; hereafter, the Mosad) to Qamishliye: This was mid-1942, and then, in a discussion with Enzo Sereni and Ben-Zvi, the Mosad’s problem arose—how to solve it and bring Iraqi Jewry to Eretz Israel—for there was no problem from Syria. Any Jew who wanted to come on aliyah from Syria, within a week, [or] three or four days, contacts were made. . . . There was no problem for any Jew who reached Syria. There was a problem to bring [Jews] from Iraq. Then they decided to send an emissary to Qamishliye, and the choice fell on me for several reasons.75

Shweiki met with the underground emissaries in Baghdad, where one of the suggestions raised for smuggling Jews out of Iraq was to use Zakho as a way station: “I arrived in Baghdad. We sat down with the [members of the Zionist] movement and began to discuss the route, all types of routes how to reach [Eretz Israel]. Okay, one route was to follow the oil pipeline to Jordan [i.e., Transjordan] and from Jordan to Eretz Israel. And there was a second route that I proposed, via Mosul and Qamishliye. Meanwhile, movement members raised the idea of a route via Zakho.”76 Following this consultation, Shweiki decided to check out this last route and set out for Zakho. The underground Zionist “sapling” planted by Shemariah Guttman helped Shweiki succeed in his visit to Zakho. He related that he and a longtime member of the movement who accompanied him got in touch with “that person whom the archaeologist from Na‘an77 [had contacted]. We notified him that we were arriving.” As a result, “we were received very well by Moshe Gabbay” and the two were guests in his home from Friday until next Sunday morning.78 Shweiki’s stay in Zakho, his encounters with members of the community, and contacts with two Jewish smugglers, Shlomo Salman and Ilya Hetteh, are all documented in a report summing up his efforts in Syria and Iraq that he wrote on 30 January 1945 upon his return to Palestine, about two 261

01 Chapters.indd 261

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

months after his visit to Zakho.79 In florid language, in the form of a personal memory narrative that covered a wide range of topics, Shweiki surveyed the objectives of his mission and reported about passport checks on the road and his meetings with sheikhs and border smugglers, on the one hand, and with the emissaries in Baghdad—Aryeh Eshel and Yehoshua Giv‘oni—on the other. He began by presenting his objective: I decided to go to Zakho [from Mosul] to check out the possibilities of activity from there. . . . The checks on the road [to Zakho] were very strict. Before setting out, I consulted with Jews from Zakho and received from them the names of families to whom I was going, in case I should be asked about that. I exchanged my identity card for a local identity card of a Jew. My profession was a shoemaker. The purpose of my trip: to buy nails in Zakho. There one can find nails that are imported from Turkey.

Shweiki provided a short description of the topography and described a comic confrontation with an illiterate policeman who conducted the security check of those coming to Zakho: The region is hilly, and a few kilometers before the city we were stopped for inspection at a narrow pass. I was very much afraid because of my non-Iraqi accent. The policeman who was to inspect us came with a big pad in his hand. To my great surprise (but also to my joy), he asked the passengers: “Who among you knows how to write?” His question seemed very strange to me, but it immediately became clear that he did not know how to read and write and wanted one of the passengers to fill his role—the role of inspector. Since all the passengers were Kurds and were illiterate, I took upon myself the pleasant task of inspecting the legal identity of the passengers. I gave the policeman a cigarette, and he sat by the side and calmly smoked it. I recorded the passengers’ names and the reasons for their journey. Of course, I forgot to note down my name among the passengers, and that is how I passed through this strict inspection. I arrived in Zakho. Here I was received enthusiastically by the Jews because I carried letters of recommendation from the leaders of their community in Jerusalem. These Jews in this area differ greatly from the rest of Iraqi Jewry and stand out in their pride of being

262

01 Chapters.indd 262

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Jewish and in religious piety. They engage in agriculture, crafts, smuggling, and floating trees as rafts. The Jews of this vicinity call Zakho “Jerusalem of the Diaspora,” all children study Torah, and the number of rabbis in Zakho is great. They have a strong desire for aliyah, and all want to come to “Jerusalem, the Holy City.” I met there with two Jewish smugglers, piously religious persons by the name of Shlomo [Salman] Attiya and Ilya Hetteh. They agreed to work with me only on the condition that I arrange a meeting for them with responsible people in Baghdad who will swear in their presence that all these efforts are only for the sake of Heaven in order to rescue Jews, and not for trading in people or monetary profit.

Shweiki wrote that the two had good reason to be suspicious. A week before his arrival, there came to Zakho “a swindler by the name of Moshe al-Baghdadi, who brought a group of young men from Baghdad to Zakho, took thirty dinars from each of them, and promised to bring them to Eretz Israel, but ditched them in Zakho, and they never saw his face again. This group remained as a burden upon the community in Zakho, and later I brought it across to Qamishliye and from there to Eretz Israel.” Shlomo Salman Attiya and Ilya Hetteh briefed Shweiki about topographic and weather conditions and how to cross the river safely by which the smuggling of olim from Zakho was to proceed: “These smugglers brought to my attention the fact that this route could be used only during the summer because [in other seasons] the river flows strongly and there is no way to cross it, and [warned me] that there are many robbers who assault passersby.” A few days later, they all met in Mosul to finalize their collaboration, but, after “the smugglers from Zakho arrived and, since we had a more practical and convenient option, we deferred working with them to a more propitious time.” In summing up his report, Shweiki recommended smuggling olim to Qamishliye through Mosul—not from Zakho—because [i]t [Mosul] is a city of smugglers. . . . (1) This route is more secure from highway robbers. (2) Because along this route we have contacts with the Bedouins. (3) This is the closest and most direct route to Qamishliye, where we have already established a center and ties with the authorities, with whose help we can transport groups by train, using identity cards and passes. And also [we have contacts] with important circles of Arabs in the big cities . . . all the way to

263

01 Chapters.indd 263

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Damascus. . . . (4) After lengthy and difficult efforts, we have recruited some of the local Jews [to join in] this activity and are even helped by them, and we should take advantage of this help.

Shweiki’s visit to Zakho is also documented in the personal memory narrative he told me. A comparison of it with the written documentation indicates a great degree of compatibility in the central motifs, such as the objective of his mission, his activities in Syria and Iraq, the guise of a teacher that he adopted in Syria, the events on his journey to Zakho, his posing as a shoemaker, and his meeting with Salman and Hetteh. Such compatibility lends credence and historical validity to both sources and especially to the narrative that he related after almost fifty years. However, some variations in facts or emphases stem from the difference between the two types of sources. The orderly, stylized report was written for the information of the persons who sent him on his mission and those who would follow in his footsteps to serve the needs of the Zionist underground movement. The oral testimony delivered in his home in Jerusalem many years after the event was intended to answer my questions, but also to transfer his legacy to his twelve-year-old granddaughter, who was present during the interview.

“Here an Emissary and There an Emissary” In the written report, the Zakho community, termed “Jerusalem of the Diaspora” or “Jerusalem of Kurdistan,” was presented as being unique among the rest of Iraqi Jewry, one whose important characteristics were deep religiosity and pride in being Jewish. It is these that led to their emotional attachment to Eretz Israel and Jerusalem. In comparison to the report’s dwelling upon the religious aspects of the community, Shweiki’s narrative stressed the practical side of the community and reflected its warm welcome and how they hosted him with food and drink. It may be that, after the many years in which Zakho Jews had been living in Israel, Shweiki saw no point in noting their religious character, much of which had vanished. In addition, the sense of encountering an exotic, isolated community in northern Iraq had been dulled with the passage of time. This is part of his oral communication: In short, we reached the village [i.e., city]. We were well received by Moshe Gabbay. Now, as is common among Jews, they fought among themselves. There are two synagogues there, and they began to quarrel where I would be. Before that [i.e., coming to Kurdistan], I had gone around the neighborhood here [in Jerusalem] and 264

01 Chapters.indd 264

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

brought regards. . . . Before coming here [to Zakho], I went to the [national] institutions [i.e., the Jewish Agency] and told them that I was going, that I intended to reach Qamishliye, so they suggested [that I contact families from Zakho in Jerusalem]. I think I came to the family of this Salman [Eliahu Salman, brother of Shlomo Salman, who had come to Eretz Israel in 1939] that was here [in Jerusalem]. . . . I collected regards [and information]—who got married, who was divorced, who was born—and did the same for Qamishliye.80 And then they began to quarrel there [about] where I would be, in which synagogue I would pray. Then I said, “Come, a compromise. I will pray, but after that let us all sit down together in one synagogue, and everyone will bring [refreshments].” The whole problem boiled down to this: that they drank a lot of arak and ate, and it was [considered] an honor who would host. . . . In short, we sat there, they brought food, [and] we drank without end throughout the entire Sabbath, the whole community.81

In both testimonies, the written and the oral, Zakho’s Jews are portrayed as a religious community untouched by political Zionism. Shweiki emphasized this last point in another context when he related that, among the illegal olim from Iraq who were passed through him in Qamishliye on their way to Eretz Israel, there were none from Zakho: And there was an organized Hehalutz Movement—they studied Hebrew, and all that—that was from the area of Baghdad, Basra. And in all this . . . there was also a very much organized Hehalutz organization, and that was in Mosul. They [members of a Zionist organization] did not come from Zakho. Because in Zakho, let’s say, to the extent that there was some desire for aliyah, they had such a desire because of the Holy Land and because they had family [there], but there was no Zionist awakening in this matter [aliyah].82

Though one cannot refute Shweiki’s conception of the Zakho community, it would seem that his impression, like that of Guttman before him, was one of a passing visitor who could not fathom the intricacies characteristic of a society that was foreign to him. He did not mention the process—perhaps he was unaware of it—by which the community of Zakho gradually became aware of modern Eretz Israel and its Zionist attributes, already begun just after World War I, as noted earlier, thanks to rabbinical emissaries from the Holy Land. It also seems 265

01 Chapters.indd 265

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

that he was unaware of how the community reacted to the Rashīd ‘Alī coup that made them increasingly conscious of terms such as “the movement” and “Zionism.” That is why Shweiki attributed Zakho Jewry’s willingness to help him only to their religious attachment to Eretz Israel. What did the community know about Shweiki? Perhaps due to the many years that had elapsed, in addition to Shweiki’s own testimony there was only one interviewee who could supply some information, and even he was not an eyewitness. This was Yona Salman, the son of Shlomo Salman, who was born in 1938 and was all of six years old during Shweiki’s visit to Zakho. Yona told me what he had heard from his father about his relations with the Zionist emissary: “Shweiki used to come to us then, ‘the teacher’ he was called [one of his underground pseudonyms was Mu‘allem]. . . . Today he has a store where he sells pipes in Coresh Street [in Jerusalem].”83 Shweiki also related this aspect of his visit: “They knew I was from [Eretz] Israel, here an emissary and there an emissary, and told me, ‘On Saturday night we will contact you with smugglers,’ and on Saturday night after [prayers in] the synagogue, in some place they brought me a group of smugglers.”84 From the phrase “here an emissary and there an emissary,” in addition to Shweiki’s written and oral testimony, we may assume that the community considered him a rabbinical—not a Zionist—emissary. He was received enthusiastically as one who came from Jerusalem bearing letters of recommendation, as was the case with shadarim: he was treated with the honor befitting a man who represented the rabbinical authority of Eretz Israel and Jerusalem, despite his different appearance and that he spoke a different language. In contrast to shadarim, who spent long periods in Zakho and generally made repeated visits, so that local Jews had become used to them, Shweiki appeared suddenly on the scene for a brief time and, instead of collecting donations, discussed how to rescue Jews.85

“They Brought Me a Group of Smugglers” Zakho Jews were well aware of the objective of Shweiki’s mission, for in addition to a warm welcome they arranged for him to meet with smugglers: “On Saturday night after [prayers in] the synagogue, in some place they brought me a group of smugglers. . . . Ilya Hetteh and Shlomo Salman were the ones they brought, but Ilya [and Shlomo] brought non-Jews. Ilya and this one [i.e., Shlomo] . . . were their leaders. They brought me smugglers and, of course, [these said], ‘We are a victim of this one and a victim of this one, we will die for this.’ They told me, ‘We will do what you want.’”86 Since Shweiki’s written report was intended to inform those who sent him, it contains 266

01 Chapters.indd 266

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

many more details: vital information for smuggling olim, such as physical conditions, the state of the river they had to cross, and the weather during the different seasons. To increase confidence in the smugglers, Shweiki stressed that Hetteh and Salman were both religious persons who were prepared to participate because they identified with the objective, not for money. In his narrative, however, the meeting with the smugglers is treated very briefly without emphasis on the piety of the two smugglers; quite the contrary, the non-Jewish and practical aspects of the action are stressed because Salman and Hetteh brought with them Muslim smugglers. Shweiki’s success in Zakho is evidence that Shemariah Guttman’s efforts had not been in vain. One should bear in mind that Guttman was the first Zionist underground emissary to reach Zakho, and all beginnings are difficult. Furthermore, he came about a year after the Rashīd ‘Alī pogrom in Baghdad, the effects of which had left their mark on the Zakho community, as well. True, the events of June 1941 had increased awareness of Zionist ideals and readiness to help other Jews in danger, but the community was still seized with fear and insecurity. The key figure in Jewish Zakho, as noted, was Moshe Gabbay. Shemariah and his companion appeared before

Yitzhak Shweiki’s Syrian identity card. Courtesy of Yitzhak Shweiki. 267

01 Chapters.indd 267

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

him in British uniforms, a step that made them stand out and could arouse suspicion. That is why Gabbay was wary of presenting Guttman in public and prevented him from meeting with members of the community or with smugglers. Shweiki’s short stay came about a year later. It could be that time had dulled Zakho Jews’ sense of fear and insecurity and also increased their willingness to extend aid to other Jews. This would explain why in this case Gabbay was more cooperative toward Shweiki than he was with Guttman. This opened the way for Shweiki’s success, though in the final tally he recommended that Mosul be preferred as the starting point for smuggling olim to Qamishliye: “Zakho was no longer taken into account because we realized that this was very very dangerous. . . . Let me put it this way, to cross the border from Mosul was also no problem because there were very many sheikhs there, and the sheikhs had immunity. They could take people across in their vehicles . . . without any problem, only for money.”87 All this notwithstanding, Shweiki had a good opinion of the possibilities presented by Zakho: “I gained the impression that they [i.e., Salman and Hetteh] had much influence. They were men of their word, and there was no question or doubt that they very much wanted to help, very much wanted to help. They [only] wanted to know the background, who was coming, who sent me. That’s all.”88 Due to his positive impression, he even met Shlomo Salman and Ilya Hetteh once again, this time in Mosul, but “the smugglers from Zakho arrived and, since we had a more practical and convenient option, we deferred working with them to a more propitious time.”89 When all is said and done, even if Zakho was not considered at the time a fitting place for an underground cell and as a station on a route for smuggling olim into Syria, the infrastructure was laid there for underground activities in the future. The emissaries who arrived in Iraq after Shweiki were aware of his contacts and impressions. They cooperated with Shlomo Salman Attiya and Ilya Hetteh, and with their help opened a route for the illegal transfer of olim through Zakho to Qamishliye.

Local Participants in the Underground: Shlomo Salman Attiya and Ilya Hetteh Connections between the Zionist underground and Salman and Hetteh, begun during the visit by Shweiki, matured during the mission to Iraq by Yehoshua Baharav (Rabinovitz), who arrived in 1945. At this time, the Zionist leadership in Eretz Israel no longer intended to establish a branch of Hehalutz in Zakho but rather to create a local infrastructure for smuggling olim from other Iraqi cities into Syria. For security reasons, those engaging 268

01 Chapters.indd 268

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Shlomo Salman Attiya (left). Courtesy of David Salman.

01 Chapters.indd 269

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

in such activity preferred to have contacts with only one or two local persons. As a result, the center of gravity of Zionist underground efforts in Zakho was transferred from the community to Salman and Hetteh. Although the community was not partner to this activity, it was aware of it and all saw the efforts of these two as reflecting the will of the entire community.90

Shlomo Salman Attiya, a Man of Great Courage Salman, more than likely, was the most enthusiastic and loyal Zionist to emerge from the Zakho community. In addition to the deep emotional attachment to Eretz Israel, which was the lot of many of Zakho’s Jews, Salman was practically engaged in the clandestine transfer of olim to Syria on their way to Eretz Israel. His character and underground efforts impressed the emissaries who coordinated his activity. Perhaps that is why some of them decided to concentrate some of their own efforts on Zakho’s Jews and not only relate to that city as a base for illegal crossings into Syria. Three groups of interviewees contributed insights into the character and activity of Shlomo Salman, who passed away in 1979, before I began my study. I interviewed members of his family, other interviewees from among former Zakho Jews in Israel, and a few of the Zionist emissaries to Iraq, thus gaining three different perspectives regarding him.

The Salman Family’s Attachment to Eretz Israel Among my interviewees, the family was represented by Shlomo’s son Yona, and his nephew David. This is part of Yona’s narrative: The Salman family is our family. Now, the Attiya family is the family of my grandmother. In other words, my grandmother, my father’s mother, is of the Attiya family, so all [of us] are also [called] Attiya [Yona laughs], do you understand? My father was Eliahu Salman and there were several generations of Salmans. There were stories in our family that I heard from my father and my uncle about brothers of my grandfather who already came on aliyah in the previous century. Some of our grandchildren are named after them because it is customary in the Kurdish community, when someone dies, to name a newborn after him. For example, my brother Mordechai, my brother Ovadiah, my cousin Shabetai, and a few others in our family bear the names of my grandfather’s brothers and uncles. Now, one of them came two hundred years ago to Haifa. His sons [i.e., descendants] lived in Haifa until a few years ago. Some of 270

01 Chapters.indd 270

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

them moved to Karmiel. We had some [relatives] in Ashkelon, in Netanya, who were actually cousins of my father; these were several generations. In addition, we had some who while on their way to Eretz Israel were stuck in Aleppo; some of them [finally] reached Haifa and stayed in Haifa, while some came to Jerusalem and stayed there.91

To stress the Zionist inclinations of the family, Yona and David Salman told me about two of Shlomo Salman’s older brothers who preceded him to Eretz Israel. Yizhak came in 1915 or 1916, served with the Jewish Battalion recruited by the British in Eretz Israel during the later stages of World War I, and was one of the founders of the Achva Quarter in Tiberias. Eliahu arrived in 1939, after years of hardship in Syria, and settled down with his family in Jerusalem. Why, then, did Shlomo defer his emigration and come only with the mass aliyah of the 1950s? Yona: My father always wanted to come to Eretz Israel, and not my father alone. All of Zakho’s Jews wanted to come on aliyah. Their dream was to come to Eretz Israel. He [Shlomo] did not come for several reasons. I know that when we were young he got passports for us and got Syrian or Turkish identity cards for us on several occasions, but because of special circumstances that always cropped up he did not come on aliyah. And in the later period he did not emigrate because they wanted to organize the underground, to make it better and increase its activity.92

David told us that his father Eliahu had planned, together with his brother Shlomo and other people, to smuggle their families into Syria in order to reach Eretz Israel from there with passports issued by the French authorities in Syria. To their bad luck, the Iraqi authorities learned of the plans because some Jews who were party to the secret informed on them. Of them all, only Eliahu Salman and his family managed to reach Eretz Israel.93

Profession: A Smuggler Shlomo Salman’s involvement in underground activity rested on his profession. In an informative narrative, Yona Salman described what his father did to earn a livelihood: “My father, Shlomo Salman, engaged in buying and selling trees and transporting them on the rivers. This was a family occupation for many generations. They would transport the trees southward to Mosul 271

01 Chapters.indd 271

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

and from there transferred them to Baghdad.”94 He had the following to say about the attributes of his father, particularly his leadership: “My father used to serve as an arbitrator in all kinds of disputes [that arose] in this sector, [regarding] transport of trees on the rivers or in their purchase and sale, and in all kinds of other disputes. He was respected [by all]. He was a member of the working class there.”95 Mordechai Sa‘ado, Shlomo Salman’s partner, also testified about his profession: “We would make the rounds of the villages and buy trees. He was my partner.”96 However, if we rely on what was told us by other interviewees, Salman also engaged in smuggling goods from Zakho to Syria, an occupation that enabled him and his friend Ilya Hetteh to become involved also in smuggling people across the border. That is the picture that emerges from the narrative of Yehoshua Miro, related earlier in a different context. He described how, in 1942, at the age of ten, he accompanied a refugee from Baghdad across the border to Qamishliye in Syria. In order to return to Zakho, Yehoshua needed the help of Salman and Hetteh, whom he did not name in the first part of his narrative: “I remained there [in Qamishliye] six or seven months. Then two Jewish smugglers arrived from Zakho. I returned to Zakho with them and never again set foot in Syria.”97 Only as he ended his story did Yehoshua refer once again to the two border smugglers: In that story I told you, how I accompanied a Baghdadi Jew to Syria, the two persons who brought me back to Zakho were Shlomo [Salman] Attiya and Ilya [Hetteh]. Shlomo Attiya had connections in Syria. When he came to Qamishliye, he would bring a truckload of goods and sell it there to a Jew: coats and bundles of clothes. He would transfer things to Syria. [For instance], he would bring cooking gas in sealed square tins. He would bring them by smuggling. He was there on rafts. At night he would bring the merchandise to the city where I was in Syria. I returned with them to Zakho. They were afraid of being caught, [so] they put their money in my dress [i.e., robe]. I brought the money to Iraq in the dress.98

Members of Shlomo Salman’s family did not mention the smuggling of goods, perhaps because this was not considered an honorable profession. But the emissaries and the members of the Zionist underground who had contacts with Shlomo considered this an element that prepared him for his role in smuggling olim, and had a positive opinion about his ability to recruit additional smugglers. As already mentioned, Yitzhak Shweiki noted that, in 1944, Salman and Hetteh brought a group of non-Jewish smugglers to 272

01 Chapters.indd 272

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

meet him.99 In his oral testimony, Mordechai Bibi, a leading member of the underground movement in Iraq who was in contact with Salman in 1945, also stressed Shlomo’s “occupation” and his contacts with Salim and Abu Salim (a son and his father), Jewish smugglers from Mosul: “They would meet [from time to time]. Apparently they were acquainted from the smuggling business. Salim and Abu Salim, even if they did not admit it to me, apparently engaged in smuggling. This was not an honorable occupation that everyone was prepared to admit [involvement in]. But there were some who were famous for such matters and saw it as an occupation, a business like any other business.” But Bibi sensed in Shlomo Salman the character of “the good smuggler” who could be trusted.100 Arbil-born Menahem Aloni, the last member of the underground to be in contact with Salman in 1949, also came away with a good impression from their first meeting in Baghdad, and said to himself, “Wow, he looks like an Arab smuggler.”101

Contacts with the Kurds Shlomo Salman, who was imbued with Jewish values and deep attachment to Eretz Israel thanks to his family and the community, was also very much influenced by his Kurdish neighbors, their style of dress and values, and, above all, their bravery. Mordechai Bibi described how impressed he was by Salman’s outward appearance, dressed in Kurdish garb and bearing a sword, and also by the fearlessness he radiated.102 He was one of the few Jews in Zakho who had widespread contacts with Kurds, both in Iraq and Syria, which greatly contributed to his ability—and that of Ilya Hetteh—to participate in the efforts of the Zionist underground. Salih Hocha told us, in this respect, Among us, Shlomo Salman Attiya was connected with them [the underground], and there was another one among us, Ilya Heddeh [i.e., Hetteh] who was connected with this. They had contacts with people in the villages, the mukhtars. The mukhtars controlled areas in the vicinity of Syria [i.e., near the Syrian border]. From us, Syria was five hours away on foot. Between us and Syria flowed the Euphrates River. Those who wanted to reach the Syrian border from villages near Syria would come from Baghdad. Most of them would be killed [on the way], and some would come to us in Zakho. From Zakho, they would be taken to those villages that were controlled by the mukhtars with whom Shlomo Attiya had contact, and the mukhtars would provide them [i.e., the smugglers] with the op273

01 Chapters.indd 273

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

portunity to take them across into Syria. From Syria, they would be handed over [to someone else] to continue.103

In his testimony, Yona Salman presented a literary-dramatic twist to his father’s relationship with the Kurds: A certain Jew informed on my father to the authorities, that he was smuggling Jews into Syria. The governor sent two people to bring in Shlomo Salman. When they came, he was asleep. They informed the governor, and he told them to wait until he awoke. When he awoke, he spoke with them, and they told him that he had to come to the governor. He came, and the governor said to him, “You are accused of this and that.” So Salman brought him to the café, and there people testified that he had been there at such and such an hour. Then the governor said, “You could in any case have had time to transfer [people to Syria].” Meanwhile, there was a feast at the district governor’s [residence], and Salman, too, was invited and brought French cognac that obviously had been smuggled from Syria. The governor [who is the police chief ] saw this and brought it to the attention of the district governor, who told him, “Keep quiet and do nothing. You’ve got food and drink—eat, drink, and do nothing, because otherwise this man [Shlomo Salman] can harm you in many ways.” And that’s the way the matter ended.104

This narrative is indicative of Shlomo’s tactics when engaging in underground activities and also of the smuggling of goods, such as French cognac. Shlomo used to spend some time in a café before he took people over into Syria, so that there would be some who could testify to his presence in Zakho. Yona told me that his father used to sit in the café until 9 p.m. and invite people to drink at his table. Around midnight, he would set out on the river aboard his raft with the emigrants, ferry them across into Syria, and return to Zakho in the early morning without anyone seeing him.105 Shlomo’s relations with Kurdish high government officials are also not to be scoffed at. Yona’s story contains a literary illustration of a hidden wish to show Jewish superiority over non-Jews. The first thing that stands out is the close relationship between Shlomo and the district governor—one that adds to his reputation. This is followed by a turnabout in the story: from one who is under threat, Shlomo is turned into a person who poses a danger to others, including the governor of Zakho. This is reminiscent of situations in many folktales about how Jews escaped danger thanks to their wisdom and 274

01 Chapters.indd 274

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

resourcefulness. In this case, however, owing to the good relations between Jews and Kurds, reality is truer than what any literary element can describe, and Salman is described as wielding power and control over others. Paradoxically, Yona’s narrative includes a unique motif that is missing from those of all the other interviewees—a Jew informing on a Jew. Though there are no details about the circumstances under which this was done, inserting such an element into the story serves to destroy, to some extent, the ideal impression of the community—as one fully supporting Salman’s underground activity—that emerges from the testimonies of Zaki Levi, Mordechai Sa‘ado, Salih Hocha, and Meir Zaqen.106 This, however, was apparently not the only case of a Jewish informer in Zakho in matters of aliyah. On another occasion, David Salman described an attempt organized by his father Eliahu (Shlomo Salman’s brother) and his friend Ilya Hetteh to smuggle seventy families from Zakho to Syria on their way to Eretz Israel in the 1930s. David Salman was convinced that the operation failed because one or more Jews who knew of it informed on the group to the authorities.

Shlomo Salman’s Bravery In oral documentation about Shlomo Salman, the interviewees time and again attest to his bravery, an attribute that made his Zionist activity possible. His son Yona related, “My father and my uncle Eliahu Salman—my father’s eldest brother—used to perform impossible missions. For instance, something that anyone else could do during daytime they would carry out at night. Their acts of bravery were very very famous! And what they did, others simply were incapable of doing.”107 He added that other members of his family also exhibited a courageous character, like his father’s uncle who deserted from the Turkish army and committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the river in Zakho so as not to stand trial.108 As an example of Shlomo Salman’s extraordinary courage, Yona and David Salman provided me with two versions of a dramatic memory narrative. The emissaries of the Zionist underground in Iraq were also familiar with the details of this story, and this encouraged them to initiate contact with Shlomo. The following is Yona’s version: There were other cases in which my father was involved. There was the murder of two Jews: Nahum Cohen and his son, Avraham. . . . They were murdered there in the north, and my father recruited people, a sort of private intelligence unit of his own, to find out exactly who killed them and where their belongings were. They [the searchers] had mules and also the equipment in which they traded. 275

01 Chapters.indd 275

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

They found everything. He recruited people to transfer their remains from one place to another, to remove them from where they had been hidden to another place. These murdered men were from Zakho. My father went to the police and arranged to have the district governor and fifteen policemen come there, and also enlisted the support of a few Kurdish leaders. He mobilized them to search in a number of villages and find the grave in which their bones had been hidden. He wanted to bring their remains to rest in a Jewish burial. It was due to his efforts that the murderers were arrested and the belongings they took were returned to the family. This was in 1947–48, at a time when the situation between Jews and Muslims was already very tense. Even one of the officers there [in the search party] said, “Nahum and his son were killed, murdered. So Salman wants to kill us in the snow and rain through which we are moving in order to search for the murdered.” But [despite this] they went and found the remains of the murdered and found their belongings, and placed the murderers on trial. One was sentenced to life imprisonment and the other to twenty years in jail.109

This is David Salman’s version of this event: And one Jew was killed there together with his son: his name was Nahum Cohen and his son was Avram [Avraham]. They went to cut down trees in the mountain area, and the Arabs caught them, killed the two, and put them [i.e., their bodies] into tree trunks and sealed them up there. This was a relative of my grandmother, yes my grandmother is of [a family of ] kohanim [descendants of the priestly tribe]. All of Zakho’s Jews, who numbered several thousand, were afraid to search for their bodies. He [Shlomo] went to Abdul Karim and told him, “This is my cousin and I want to extricate the body, and I know where the body is.” He [Abdul Karim] replied, “No problem. Tomorrow I will give you twelve policemen, and you, too, will be dressed like an officer and will proceed at their head to wherever you go. They will see officers and policemen and be afraid.” Then he [Shlomo] said, “I know in which tree his body is [hidden].” Abdul Karim accompanied them, and an Arab came who revealed [the hiding place] to him. . . : “In that tree trunk, a tall oak tree.” He said to him, “If you just remove the stone, the bones of the two bodies will come down.” My father’s brother, my uncle [i.e., Shlomo], removed [them]. For four years, he could not leave 276

01 Chapters.indd 276

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

his home because they wanted to kill him. Why? Because it was he who found the bodies and the Arabs who killed them, and they were imprisoned. He was one big hero, my uncle.110

The major motif in both versions centers round the courage of Salman, who set out to locate the bodies of the two murdered itinerant peddlers and their property and to apprehend the perpetrators. The story is built along the lines of a complication and its resolution. The complication arose because in contrast to the customary reaction of Jews in Zakho, which was generally one of helplessness, Salman took action. He recruited “intelligence,” people, policemen, and Kurdish leading figures.111 On the one hand, Shlomo received support from representatives of the authorities, but, on the other, his efforts aroused antagonism on the part of the policemen who were ordered to accompany him and from Muslims in Zakho, whose attitude at this time had been influenced by the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. The complication in the story was resolved because Shlomo was unswervingly devoted to his objective: the bodies were located, the belongings returned to the family, and the murderers tried and convicted. As noted earlier, this episode also came to the attention of the emissaries of the Zionist underground. Mordechai Bibi told us the following: Contact with him [Shlomo Salman] is really a story unto itself. It is also mentioned in one of the documents published in my book.112 It occurred that non-Jewish Kurds murdered a Jew and his son and threw them into one of the pits. Their whereabouts were unknown . . . until this Shalom Attiya113 snooped around and, together with some other Jews, acquired, through bribes, information about who the murderers were and found [them], as is related in one of the documents in my book. . . . This was a brave deed. Not every Jew in Iraq, or even in the north [of Iraq; i.e., Kurdistan], was prepared to take such a great risk. So this gave us an indication with whom we could work.114

Bibi’s testimony corroborates the previous stories, which are then no longer solely a family tradition. This episode is also mentioned in written documentation that illuminates it from an additional vantage point and dates it more exactly. In a letter sent by the Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem to the Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency on 18 October 1944, the committee 277

01 Chapters.indd 277

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

describes Salman’s difficult situation because of his involvement in locating the bodies of the murdered father and son, Nahum Yihya Cohen and Avraham Cohen. The Kurds in the area threatened to exact their revenge upon Salman, who did not set foot outside his home. The writers, influenced by Jewish public opinion in Eretz Israel, no longer identify positively with the Kurds but term them “Arabs”; that is, enemies: “Because of this, all the Arabs in the area around have become true haters of Shlomo, the head of that family. Since that day until the present, he cannot set foot outside the door of his home because they are always looking for him and, should they find him, they will kill him immediately. And therefore he has remained wretchedly within his home, unable to work and fed up, and his entire family is starving.” The committee concludes its letter with a request that an immigration certificate be procured for Salman and his family to rescue them from the danger hovering over them. The letter was passed on to the “Mosad”115 and from there to Baghdad to see what could be done, and that is how the members of the underground learned of Shlomo Salman.116 This letter brings us back to the version of David Salman, who said, “For four years, he could not leave his home because they wanted to kill him.” We may also assume that Yitzhak Shweiki, who arrived in Zakho only in November 1944, learned of the episode before setting out on his mission and that is why he met with Salman’s relatives in Jerusalem and with the members of the underground in Baghdad before he came to Zakho. Salman came to Israel only in the 1950s, perhaps precisely because he was “discovered” by the underground emissaries. In his activity on behalf of Zionism in Zakho, he could give full rein to his great courage, as Zaki Levi testified: “It was then that the campaign to leave Zakho illegally began. There was in Zakho one Jew, whose name was Shlomo Attiya. This was a man of extraordinary courage. He began to smuggle Jews on the river of Zakho that flowed to the borders of Turkey and Syria, and [then] got them clandestinely across the border into Syria, and from there to Eretz Israel.”117

Ilya Hetteh: A Great and Enthusiastic Zionist Ilya Hetteh was Salman’s partner in efforts to smuggle olim across the border from Zakho. My interviewees always mentioned the two of them together. Ilya was no longer alive when I conducted my study, having been killed in a traffic accident in 1973. There is little oral documentation about him, concentrating particularly in the testimony of his nephew Hananiah Mordechai [Darwish] who was brought up in Ilya’s home from the age of nine, after his father passed away, and participated in his activities.118 The sparse writ278

01 Chapters.indd 278

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

ten documentation, too, concerns his efforts within the framework of the underground movement.119 Most of the emissaries stressed that their contact in Zakho was Salman, but that they heard and knew of the activity of Ilya, as well; only Yitzhak Shweiki reported that he met with the two of them together. Mordechai Bibi told us, I never had direct contact with him. My contact was through Shlomo Attiya. . . . We were careful not to disclose ourselves too much to strangers. We did only what was absolutely necessary to get the wheels turning. Since we had contacts with a Jew upon whom we relied, Shlomo Attiya, and through him we could create ties with whomever we wanted, it was unnecessary to disclose our identity to others. But I knew about Ilya and heard about him. He helped Shlomo Attiya in all those matters in which we were involved.120

As with Salman, a strong attachment to Eretz Israel, and particularly to Jerusalem, was a tradition in Ilya’s family. Moreover, he, too, engaged in smuggling goods and had close relations with non-Jewish Kurds. To point to matters of the heart that induced Ilya to engage in Zionist activity, Hananiah told us a personal memory narrative about Ilya’s grandmother, who used to collect donations in Zakho for the charity of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes.121 What one can infer from that story is that the Hetteh family’s religious attachment to Eretz Israel—and especially to Jerusalem—over many generations, accompanied by practical deeds, led naturally, without intermediaries, to Ilya Hetteh’s Zionism. This is what Hananiah related in the opening passages of his narrative: He [Ilya Hetteh] was a great and enthusiastic Zionist whose heart was especially filled with love for Jerusalem that he imbibed [at the breast] of mother Hetteh, our grandmother. She was responsible for the charity of Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes. . . . And she always dreamt of Jerusalem—“When will we reach Jerusalem?”—because it was believed that if he should appear, the Messiah of the House of David, then we would all reach Jerusalem as if on wings of eagles and will even see our dead [resurrected] in Jerusalem. Then there was a Jerusalem consciousness.122

Another source of Zionist influence on Ilya, according to Hananiah Mordechai, were Ilya’s uncles Menashe Ovadiah and Nahum, who came on aliyah in 1926 and settled in Jerusalem: “My grandfather’s uncles, in 1926, or 279

01 Chapters.indd 279

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

[twenty]-five [twenty]-six, they came [to Eretz Israel], they left Zakho. Of course, they took a roundabout route: from Zakho they came to Qamishliye, from Qamishliye they came to Aleppo, from there to Damascus, Tiberias, until they reached Jerusalem. It took them many months, maybe years, but they arrived.”123 Ilya, too, remained in Zakho and only managed to immigrate to Israel in the 1950s. During the interview, Hananiah tried to explain why this was: “That very Ilya Hetteh, whom she [grandmother Hetteh] imbued with a love of Jerusalem and who truly dreamt [of Jerusalem] . . . could not leave for reasons associated with the family, the community, livelihood, and a thousand other things.” Ilya apparently found compensation and a substitute for aliyah in smuggling olim into Syria. His activity in this field began even before his contacts with the Zionist underground and, from 1945, continued under its leadership. Like Salman, Ilya’s involvement in smuggling goods, and his many Kurdish contacts, led the underground to consider him a suitable person for this activity. Hananiah told of Ilya’s widespread contacts with officials, with local Kurds, and with the Bedouins: “Ilya Hetteh had many contacts with the government, with persons in the administration, and with the military, and he was a merchant [selling goods] in the villages and would come there from Zakho. He engaged in commerce as far as Qamishliye and. . . . He was popular in the Kurdish villages and the entire district and area, particularly with the people who lived in the desert, including Bedouins and the villages along the Syrian border.”124 Hananiah’s testimony, characterized by associative speech, emphasized Ilya’s devotion to the Zionist ideal, which took the form of smuggling olim into Syria without any recompense: “So everyone knew: whoever wanted to reach Jerusalem . . . then it was [by means] of that same Ilya; that [for] anyone who wanted to reach Eretz Israel through Syria, there was only one way to do so: Ilya. Ilya used to do this faithfully, devotedly, and not to profit from it; his success was his reward.” Hananiah described the relationship between Ilya and Salman. As a relative of Ilya’s, it was only natural that he placed him first in the hierarchy: “Number one was Ilya Hetteh. Shlomo Attiya was number two, perhaps even number three.” But, when asked a question, his tone became less emphatic: “Let’s say that the two [worked] together, but most of the work and the contacts were Ilya Hetteh’s.” Elsewhere during the interview, he said, “Shlomo Salman, too, was in good standing with the authorities, and he had an impressive, an impressive appearance. He was a superb personality, a superb personality.”125 280

01 Chapters.indd 280

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

In reply to my question, Hananiah Mordechai told me a lengthy personal memory narrative that highlighted Ilya Hetteh’s attributes and abilities that made him a candidate for involvement in Zionist underground activity, particularly his willingness to help anyone in distress. The event around which his narrative centered—the clandestine transfer of Esther Ajamiya and her children from Zakho to Syria—took place in 1942, a few years before the underground emissaries contacted him. The story emphasized the long family tradition of aiding whoever was in need of help. After the murder of her husband, a peddler who made the rounds of the villages, Esther decided to immigrate to Eretz Israel and settle down in Jerusalem near her two brothers, Yehuda and Rahamim Ajamiya-Parsi. Ilya Hetteh and Hananiah agreed to help her and brought her and her children to Qamishliye in Syria: “Who could get her across if not Ilya Hetteh? . . . He was also a boyhood friend of Esther’s brother. He also wanted to perform an act of kindness toward her, [an act of ] rescue, because for her the whole world was darkened after the death of her husband. Also from the perspective of livelihood, it was not easy to support her orphan children. If she would come to Eretz Israel, she had [there] two brothers and her family, the Parsi family; she had relatives in Eretz Israel.” Hananiah then went on to describe the route they traveled from Zakho to Syria: I think . . . in 1942, I was then twelve years old. It was on Hanukkah that we took her. . . . We left Zakho . . . and I think we came on mules as far as Shilikiya on the other side of the river that flowed there, still in Iraqi territory, but not far from Syria. And I together with my uncle stayed with them in Shilikiya. And, after Hanukkah, came the rains, cold weather, and we stayed there for two months. I remember that one day, he [Ilya] came [and said], “This evening, there are already these persons who will take them across.” We were supposed to bring them to the Syrian border and hand them over to persons [with whom we were in contact] who would put them on horseback and bring them to Qamishliye. . . . And I remember that during these dark nights I would lead the horse, me a boy of twelve . . . and carry on my shoulders that Zeev [Esther’s son], who was younger than me . . . he was six years old. . . . So we brought these people, this family, in diverse ways, and they reached Qamishliye. I remember that they stayed in Qamishliye for several months and, after that, traveled from Qamishliye to Aleppo [and from there to] Lebanon and reached Eretz Israel.126

281

01 Chapters.indd 281

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Hananiah ended his narrative on an optimistic note, making a point of the spiritual satisfaction common to all that ensued from the successful smuggling of this family. From his words, we can also infer the religious and Zionist message transmitted by the successful completion of their mission: “And our reward was that, when we came in 1951, when I came and I saw that same Esther in Jerusalem, that very [Zeev] Golan whom I transported on horses in the mountains, over the paths, in the hills at night. Who could believe all this? Today the two of us live in Jerusalem!” The episode of Esther Ajamiya’s aliyah also appears in the narratives of her children and of other interviewees. They pointed out that this was the last family to leave Zakho during World War II.127 The connection of Shlomo Salman and Ilya Hetteh with Zionist underground emissaries was the result of three elements: their deep emotional attachment to Eretz Israel and Jerusalem, their involvement in smuggling merchandise, and their good connections with the Kurds. True, they were not the only persons who engaged in smuggling, but they were apparently the most proficient at this “profession.”128 No doubt, other factors also motivated them to participate in this aspect of the underground’s activity: perhaps a desire for self-fulfillment or to express their Jewish national pride, influenced by the Kurdish national pride to which they were witness. To all these, we can add personal attributes such as courage, bravery, devotion, and altruism: all these kindled the spark that led them to engage in Zionist endeavors.

Emissaries of the Underground from 1945 Yehoshua Baharav (Rabinovitz): Opening Blocked Paths Shlomo Salman and Ilya Hetteh stepped up their underground activities in 1945, when Yehoshua Baharav was a Zionist emissary in Iraq. That was the period of the great breakthrough in aliyah from Iraq—one marked by new possibilities and additional routes, including activation of the one from Zakho to Qamishliye. This was also the period that saw a change in the underground’s attitude toward the community of Zakho: it was no longer considered only a jumping-off point for clandestine crossings into Syria but also as an arena for Zionist activity. As a result, a decision was taken to establish a branch of the Zionist movement in Zakho, while furthering the idea of smuggling all Jews of northern Kurdistan, including Zakho, across the border. For several reasons, this was not to be.

282

01 Chapters.indd 282

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Difficulties with the Northern Routes Yehoshua Baharav, a member of Kibbutz Ginnosar, was sent to Iraq to replace Aryeh Abramovsky.129 In an interview conducted on 29 July 1992, he defined the objective of his mission: In 1945, exactly on the first of January, I left Eretz Israel as an emissary of the Mosad for activity in matters pertaining to aliyah in the countries of the East, and most concretely in Iraq. I found there a highly developed framework of people studying Hebrew and Eretz Israel who had a number of instructors at their disposal, but routes for aliyah were blocked. And when there is no way to achieve aliyah, there is also no sense in [carrying out] intensive [Zionist] movement activity that is not accompanied by hagshamah.130 My role was clearly defined—to cause a breakthrough in aliyah.131

Baharav was an aliyah emissary in Iraq until September 1945. His underground code name was Bin Nun. Simultaneously with him in Iraq were Meir Shilon (Shlank), representing Solel Boneh, Yehoshua Giv‘oni as an emissary of Hehalutz, and Dan Ram on behalf of the Haganah.132

Yehoshua Baharav [Rabinovitz]. Courtesy of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or Yehuda. 283

01 Chapters.indd 283

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Baharav tried to continue using the aliyah routes that were operative prior to his arrival: (a) Travel to Syria or Lebanon as tourists, convalescents, or students. This option was available to members of the middle class who carried forged passports. (b) Clandestine crossing of Iraq’s northern border, in the vicinity of Mosul. (c) Smuggling olim with the help of Jewish truck drivers who were in Iraq serving in the British Army during World War II. However, during the early period of his mission in Iraq, despite his efforts Baharav was unable to implement any of these options. Only after some time were these routes available once again, and for a short time it was possible to transport olim in unprecedented numbers. It seemed as though they could provide a solution not only for individuals but also for masses of emigrants.133 The opening up of a new underground route, from Zakho to Qamishliye, with the help of Salman and Hetteh resulted from Baharav’s hurried efforts to find new routes for aliyah, primarily in the north of the country. These efforts, and his activity in Zakho during 1945, are reflected in letters he sent to members of the Mosad, written as unembellished reports during the time it was impossible to use the other options.134 In a letter he sent under his code name Bin Nun to Hofshi [David Nameri] on 6 March 1945, he reported the difficulties posed by the aliyah routes and about some of the persons active in the Zionist movement.135 He described the difficult climatic conditions along the northern routes during the winter and early spring, stressing that his people “are doing everything possible to prepare what is possible for spring and summer.” He also reported about the contact he had established with Salman on the basis of the recommendation included in Shweiki’s final report about his own mission: “I have contacted the Zakhoite Shlomo Attiya, who is mentioned in the report by Manzili [i.e., Shweiki], and he agrees to work with us. He is about to come to us any day now, and we shall clarify additional points.” Baharav also reported about an unsuccessful attempt to send a member of the underground to Zakho to find out what conditions were like there. From his report, we learn of the difficulties involved in activating local Jews: On the whole, things are pretty bad. The local helpers turn out to be of little help, seized by unfounded fear and trepidation. I wanted to send someone to visit Zakho, and he was simply hesitant and expressed all kinds of fears: What will happen if he is arrested on the train? What should he say in Mira [Mosul]? What should he say on the way from Mira to Zakho? And so on and so on. And I’m talking about a local person, a member of the movement, who has domestic [Iraqi] papers and relatives in Zakho. 284

01 Chapters.indd 284

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

So, instead of a representative being sent to Zakho, the underground managed to bring “Jews from Zakho” to meet with Baharav: I met with Jews from Zakho. Their situation, too, is quite difficult. They described the route from Zakho to Manzil [i.e., Qamishliye] as very dangerous and even very expensive—more than fifty d[inars] per person from Zakho to Manzil, to which is added the problem of how to reach Zakho. One needs a special permit for that, and the most difficult point in the whole matter is that all of them [i.e., the smugglers] demand payment in advance and declare that, should something happen on the way, they are not responsible for either the money or the people.

He was uncomfortable about depending upon non-Jews who “do not want to deal with living people, only with merchandise, because merchandise doesn’t talk and is very profitable.” Baharav concluded his letter with the following: “On the whole, all the smuggling routes in the north are such that we have to put our trust in non-Jews. In any case, this is not an independent route. Furthermore, there are widespread rumors about Kurdish disturbances in the north, as a result of which security and checks have been much increased along that route.”136 In contrast to his letters in 1945, in which he reported the difficulty encountered in sending a member of the movement to Zakho, in the interview I conducted with him many years after the event Baharav told me that he asked Mordechai Bibi, who was responsible for the Mosul District, to send one of his men to Zakho to report about the town, its topography, and the livelihoods of its population: “We sought routes in the north. What’s going on? As for the north, [emissaries] who preceded me operated there. The town of Zakho, if you look at a map, [you will see that] it is located exactly where we needed it: [near the borders of ] Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. . . . In such a town, there is also smuggling; people make a living by smuggling. They smuggle everything: cattle, sheep, anything worthwhile. We also wanted to smuggle [people], so we needed to make contact.” The person sent by Bibi returned bearing the names of persons with whom he had met, but, following the instructions he had received, did not come to any agreement with them.137 Whereas in the written documentation Baharav noted only “Jews from Zakho” without identifying them, in reply to my question his story became more informative: 285

01 Chapters.indd 285

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

[This was] precisely Shlomo Salman Attiya. He [the person sent to Zakho] told me about a respected person [Salman] who is capable and so on. I invited Shlomo Salman to come to see me, to the [aliyah] committee. He arrived and I spoke very openly with him. . . : “We want to smuggle out boys and girls, Jews, and families from Iraq through Zakho to Syria. Syria is not enough. I want them in Aleppo. I am trying to set a lengthy route to travel, but if we cannot go all the way, we will compromise.” To my surprise, he expressed both enthusiasm and hesitation. Now, I had to test him. When someone reacts enthusiastically, that doesn’t impress me. I become excited together with him, but deep in my heart I think, “Slowly, slowly.” When someone hesitates, I have to be sure that this does not stem from cowardice. Hesitation is fine, but fear in this kind of undertaking does not contribute to anything. Fear will cause him to fail. I had found a real he-man [here Yehoshua’s tone expressed emotion and surprise], and the final result is that we sent men [with him]. I didn’t want to send women, even though I spoke about women too. He agreed. Question: Was he paid for this? Baharav: Expenses. Now understand that, when I said “expenses,” this is what we called expenses, but I made sure that the expenses were reasonable. Now look, if the man would be caught, could I get him free? What influence did I have? What was my ability [to do so]? So I should not [see] the person only in the guise of an extortionist who found an opportunity to become wealthy. You see, the person coordinating the operation has to consider many things. So he received [money for] expenses. He paid the smugglers, and I believed what he told me he paid. People who advised me also asked, “How are you so certain? Why don’t you bargain [with him]?” I told them, “Gentlemen, if I had bargained, they would not have been present [i.e., participated in the activity].” I did not bargain. Question: Did you gain a positive impression of him? Baharav: Yes. Furthermore, we did not have other options. [Actually] there were others, and this was one of the options. . . . On several occasions, he [Salman] and his men and smugglers transferred people [across the border] for us, once even to Aleppo. That was great.138

286

01 Chapters.indd 286

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

The description of the meeting between Baharav and Salman was very complimentary to the latter. His courage, described in the narratives by former Zakho Jews, also comes through in the narrative by Baharav, who adopted a psychological approach. He described Salman as a complex personality whose hesitation pointed to a more balanced psyche that was more fitting for an underground agent. Baharav’s narrative also reflected his own personal deliberations. As an emissary of the underground, he had to bear the heavy responsibility of one who must assay the attributes of the candidate he was considering. No doubt, his correct choice of Salman also enhanced the standing of Baharav himself. It was my intention to check what Salman thought of Baharav. But, since Salman was no longer alive during my research, this was impossible. Nor did Baharav’s story reflect the “other,” as did Guttman’s impressions of Gabbay and Shweiki’s of the Zakho community. We do, however, have the testimony of Mordechai Bibi, who was second in command to Baharav, which throws additional light on Salman’s personality: Salman Attiya was a Jewish type, a tall man who dressed in traditional Kurdish garb with a dagger in his belt. It was strange to see such a Jew in Baghdad, which generally boasted a completely different [human] scene. That garb and everything associated with it indicates a Kurdish male, but to see a Jew with a dagger—that was a bit picturesque, a bit. [Here was] a Jew who gave us the impression of a brave man prepared to risk himself for the sake of Zionist activity, and indeed we did seek out smugglers through him. I could avail myself of his help up to a certain point. He helped us. He located a smuggler or two for us. With some we succeeded, with some we failed, as is usual when engaging in illegal emigration. That’s the way it always is in illegal undertakings.139

Thus, while Baharav concentrated on Salman’s character and psychological traits, Bibi, an Iraqi Jew born in Baghdad, paid more attention to external exotic features: the proud Kurd from the north of the country who bears a dagger, from whose metonymic items—the belongings he bore—one can make assumptions about his bravery, but also about his innate nature.140

Operations along the Zakho-Qamishliye Route Once contact had been made between Salman and members of the Zionist underground, the way was open to establish the route from Zakho to Qamishliye as the first stage of illegal immigration to Eretz Israel. Baharav 287

01 Chapters.indd 287

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

reported to the Mosad, in coded terminology, about the first operation of this kind, carried out by Salman and Hetteh: “On 22 April, we sent to Manzil [Qamishliye] six laborers [olim] with the help of the teachers [smugglers] Shalom Attiya and Eliahu Hetteh.”141 On 17 May, Baharav requested a full report from the Mosad about the manner in which these six olim had made their way, so as to ascertain how to continue operating along this newly opened route: In reference to the six who reached Manzil mentioned in your letter of 11 May 1945, we sent them via Zakho. The teacher is prepared to take additional people. We are in the midst of negotiations with him about details and conditions. In any case, this is a route that is not paved enough [i.e., is not fully ready]. I ask that you try to get from the above-mentioned a detailed report and forward it to me. Among the laborers is one whose name is Siman-Tov. I asked him to pay close attention to the route so that we can learn the details [of their journey].142

In his book, Bibi noted that Baharav had instructed one of the olim, Zion Siman-Tov, to pay attention to all details of the route so that he could report about it, because Siman-Tov was “one of the veteran instructors in the [underground] movement, who in the past had been a member of the Ahiever [Zionist] Society [for the study of Hebrew].”143 However, even before Baharav’s request reached Palestine on 24 May, a report about this operation had been sent to Iraq on 16 May. It seems to have been a regular procedure with the Mosad to send such reports to expedite learning from experience.144 The detailed description of this operation in the report was based on the questioning of four of the olim who reached Kibbutz Na‘an. Two others remained for some time in Syria. The inquiry was conducted by Uri Sheffer, who coordinated the Mosad Bureau for Liaison with Immigrants. His findings were detailed in the report in the form of a collective memory narrative in the third-person singular and plural on the basis of what he heard from the olim. Sheffer’s report is more than just a reflection of the testimonies of the four olim; it also contains his own considered opinion that was simultaneously critical and laudatory. Because of the underground context of the report, it contained a detailed discussion of the central topic—the journey—and its lessons; however, it also touched upon secondary episodes; described the obstacles posed by, and the topography of, the river and the mountainous region; mentioned the names of the emigrants, the smugglers, and people who impeded or helped the olim; and 288

01 Chapters.indd 288

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

included geographic names, dates, and schedules.145 I shall present only the important information. According to Sheffer’s inquiry and report, the operation began during the evening of Sunday, 29 April 1945.146 The six olim, all members of the underground movement, left Baghdad by train for Mosul, where they were picked up at the station by Mordechai Bibi and a local Jewish resident, Abu Salim (the nickname of Yosef Najolla). Yosef and his son Salim were Jewish smugglers who lived in Mosul and helped the Zionist underground spirit olim out of the country.147 The olim were divided into two groups of three. The first group carried identity papers and therefore “traveled by motor vehicle along the road to Zakho, over the bridge where [police] conduct a check and ask for citizenship papers,” while the second group, which did not have such papers, “traveled in a wagon and sang songs sung in Mosul, and thus they were not checked at the bridge.” Problems began when the car’s driver refused to let the olim and Abu Salim off in the village of Gali, as planned, but only in Zakho. He suspected that his passengers were illegal emigrants and wanted some remuneration for not turning them in. A government official traveling in the same car also became suspicious, but kept his silence when he was made to understand that he would receive some money. When the three arrived at the police station that controlled travel along the road to Zakho, they were asked about their destination and other details. Two gave the right answers, but the third, “who is a dumbbell and stupid . . . didn’t know how to give the right reply.” As a result, the group was sent to the Zakho police station, where they were questioned. Thanks to intervention by “Abu Shlomo [Shlomo Salman], a local resident of Zakho, who is in contact with Abu Salim,” they were placed in the custody of the mukhtar of the Jewish community, who accepted personal responsibility for them.148 Meanwhile, the three men who were traveling from Mosul by wagon were also apprehended at the next checkpoint. Only after the police chief was bribed did the two groups finally reach Gali, a village distant six hours on foot from the Syrian border. The head of the village was Abdul Karim, who engaged in smuggling, knew Ilya Hetteh, and was on friendly terms with persons in the Jewish community of Zakho and helped them from time to time. Uri Sheffer’s report pointed out the central role played by Ilya and stressed his positive character and motivation: “Abu Salim is in contact with a Jew from Zakho named ‘Ilya’ who is connected with the agha [the village chief of Gali], and he is the most important [element]. Ilya is a good fellow with a Zionist heart, and he is not engaging in this operation for money.” Ilya made the connection between the Kurdish escorts and the olim and 289

01 Chapters.indd 289

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

transported them by boat to the village of Khaniq,149 with whose mukhtar he also had good relations. Ilya was also behind a staged attack by Kurdish border police against the emigrants and their abduction, mounted to allay suspicion about them. He contacted a Kurd by the name of Qasim who was to escort the olim, with the help of his relatives in villages in the vicinity, until they should safely reach the synagogue in Qamishliye. The report ends by noting the names of the six olim: “The names of the young men who reached Eretz Israel: Avraham Haya, Shimon Yusif Sufi, Yosef Shu‘a, Ezra Na‘im ben Meir, and two who remained in Syria: [Zion] Siman-Tov and Yehezkel [Deshet].” More information about the first operation along the Zakho-Qamishliye route can be gleaned from the story told by Hananiah Mordechai, Ilya’s nephew, who participated in it at the age of fourteen.150 His story contains two interconnected parts. The first is an informative section that describes, with emphasis on the role played by Ilya, how the six olim from Baghdad led by Zion Siman-Tov were smuggled across the border. This section in Hananiah’s story supports, and is quite similar to, the information in the written documentation, though it is much more laconic.151 In the second part, which is a dramatic direct continuation of the first, the young Hananiah plays a leading role. It contains some additional information—that the underground demanded confirmation in writing from the smugglers about the operation’s success. However, its major importance lies in that it is told from the personal vantage point of someone who participated in the operation and was able, after many years, to experience it anew and present it in a vivid and emotional testimony no less important than that provided by the olim immediately after their arrival. This is what Hananiah related in the first part of his narrative: Between [19]40 and [19]44, [Ilya] also smuggled across a group that came from Baghdad. It came to our home. It was headed by Zion Siman-Tov. He is still alive today and lives at 16 Ha’arazim Street in Jerusalem, in [the] Beit Hakerem [neighborhood]. He was employed for many years in the postal service and was also very active in the Histadrut. Zion Siman-Tov. With him were five or six young men. They came to our place, and we transported them by car beyond the Galilee. They called [this area] Galilee. From there by pack mules, horses, perhaps also donkeys. I remember, I came with them until Faishkhabur.152 From Faishkhabur, they crossed [the river]. Opposite Faishkhabur, on the other side of the river, was a village by the name of Khanaqeh, where my Uncle Ilya was very 290

01 Chapters.indd 290

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

popular [with the villagers], and he brought them [the emigrants] across to Khanaqeh. This is a village on the border, in Syrian territory. From there, they went to Qamishliye, and from Qamishliye— after Qamishliye, we were free [i.e., we were no longer responsible for them]—they came to Eretz Israel. And when we came on aliyah [to Israel] in 1951, we went to [the] Katamon [neighborhood in Jerusalem], and they received Ilya with open arms, that same Zion Siman-Tov.153

The second part of Hananiah’s narrative centers on the note that Ilya was supposed to get to Salman so that Salman could give it to the representatives of the underground movement as proof that the group had arrived safely at its destination. This section is marked by much self-aggrandizement and a sort of formation novel (bildungsroman) of a young boy who shaped his own self-identity most positively from the perspective of his family and community. Even if the personal aspect is dominant in this part of Hananiah’s narrative, it clearly reflects the collective values of Zakho’s Jews, which also guided Hananiah: absolute obedience to the father—in this case his Uncle Ilya, who served as a father to him, observance of the Sabbath, and emotional attachment to Eretz Israel: I remember that there was one condition that, if by a certain day they would not bring a letter containing a password that they [had] arrived, this would mean that they had already been murdered, and these men, Salman and Ilya, would be put on trial. . . . This letter, this letter that they gave, was a note. They gave it to Ilya, Ilya was to bring it to Shlomo Salman, and Shlomo Salman was to give it to the movement, to the persons involved in the Zionist movement in Mosul, and they had communications with Baghdad: “Here is the note, they’ve made it.” One Friday, when I was in Shilikiya, Ilya gave it to me. I was fourteen years old; he gave me the note and said, “Today you must take this note to Uncle Salman, at all costs!”

Hananiah was brought across the rising river by an Arab from the village of Shilikiya in Iraq, about ten kilometers from the Syrian border, to the village of Tusneh.154 There a horse awaited him, which he rode to Zakho. He rode this tired, wounded animal up to “the vicinity of Zakho, [to the place] called Galilee”:

291

01 Chapters.indd 291

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

This was a circuitous route. . . . It was Friday, and I could put up in one of the villages. It was enough that I should say, “I am the nephew of Ilya Hetteh,” and I would be well received. But the next day was the Sabbath, and on the Sabbath it is forbidden [to travel].155 Since we were religious and such strict observers of the Sabbath, and I did not want to reach the city on the Sabbath, I began [to walk] that night, and it was dark. There was no moon to light [the way]. I walked, and every twisting kilometer that I covered I would call out, “Hear O Israel!” so that I should not be preyed upon by beasts [or] robbers. And I was fourteen years old, and I had placed that note around my neck, in the collar of my coat, the coat I was wearing. I wanted to bring the note that very night to Shlomo Salman Attiya. The horse was already tired and I, not only did I not ride him—the horse—but I dragged him.

Hananiah concluded his story with the following description: It was almost midnight, perhaps past midnight. To cut things short, I finally got to Zakho and, while walking, I saw Shlomo Attiya sitting with a woman whose husband had been murdered by Arab villagers in Zakho—her name was ‘Aziza Cohen—sitting.156 And she is still alive and can confirm this entire testimony. I came and said to him, “Uncle, Mamo [in Kurdish], I have brought this note.” He got up and said, “I haven’t slept all night; all this time I have been waiting for you to come, [when] salvation will come, Ilya will come, Hananiah will come, and bring me the note.” I said to him, “Here is the note.” And he, since it was Saturday night [i.e., after the Sabbath], phoned. Was there a telephone? There was one telephone, in the home of Moshe Gabbay. Perhaps he used it. . . . But the note was already in his possession. He gave a sigh of relief, and the note made its way to the Zionist movement [testifying] that Siman-Tov, Zion Siman-Tov, together with his five comrades had arrived safely. That was the password. I will never forget this.157

Documentary support for the arrival of the note that confirmed the success of the operation is contained in a letter sent by Baharav to the Mosad on 5 May 1945. Though he refers to the note, Baharav makes no mention of Hananiah. From this letter, we can learn of the steps taken to ensure that the smugglers, including Salman and Hetteh, would carry out their part of the bargain and in the best possible manner.158 292

01 Chapters.indd 292

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

In view of the successful smuggling into Syria of the six olim, about a month later, on 22 May, Baharav notified the Mosad that another group was being taken by Salman: “Tomorrow I am sending six additional laborers [olim] by the same route. The escort [is] Shalom Attiya, who is mentioned in the famous report of Zaki [Yitzhak Shweiki], [written] after his lecture [i.e., imprisonment] in Mira [Mosul].”159 It is not clear from the surviving documentation whether there were additional operations along the Zakho-Qamishliye route. But there is no doubt that these two, together with the smuggling out of persons along other routes, signaled the increase in underground aliyah during the final stages of World War II and the period of Baharav’s mission in Iraq.

The Turning Point in Underground Activity in Zakho In view of the successful aliyah operations during the latter stages of Baharav’s stay in Iraq, those involved became more optimistic and self-confident. They—and above all, Baharav—no longer wanted to limit themselves to smuggling out members of the Zionist movement, most of whom were from Baghdad. They now sought to include Kurdish Jews among the illegal immigrants. This led them to consider sending a member of the movement to Zakho to establish a branch of the movement there and also work within the community. Baharav wrote of his plans to the Mosad in Eretz Israel: “As a result of my contacts in the north, I intend to send one of my assistants there to prepare the ground and organize illegal emigration from among the Kurdish Jews themselves. I believe this matter to be very important from all aspects.” Mordechai Bibi also referred to this change in operative policy: “The idea was that if we succeeded in getting across [into Syria] Jews from Baghdad through the north [of the country], it should all the more so be easier to organize the Kurdish Jews themselves and send them off to Syria. . . . The idea was to send Gideon Golani for this purpose.”160 Baharav returned to this issue in a letter in which he stressed the strong desire of the Jews of Kurdistan to come on aliyah to Eretz Israel and his own wish to have them settle in labor settlements, preferably kibbutzim: And, last but not least, the desire for aliyah is great among the Jews of Kurdistan. Thanks to my contacts, I meet with them from time to time. It is my intention to send one of my assistants [Gideon Golani] there soon to prepare the ground and organize illegal emigration. These mountain Jews are handsome and of imposing stature, farmers, and there are some among them dressed like Bedouins and 293

01 Chapters.indd 293

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

bearing arms. We shall do everything so that already this summer we shall reap fruit [i.e., have some come on aliyah]. It is my strongest wish that our kibbutz [movement; i.e., Hakibbutz Hameuchad] shall be privileged to train them in one of its settlements.161

Baharav intended to send Golani to Zakho, whose underground code name was Shilgiya (Snow White), to organize there a group of pioneering immigrants who would settle on the land when they reached Eretz Israel.162 Baharav’s altered views about Zionist activity among Kurdish Jews and encouragement of their aliyah should be considered within the wider context of the changes undergone by Zionist activity in Iraq as a whole. In 1945, after months marked by crises and efforts to maintain what had been achieved in the past, the Zionist movement sought ways to expand its activities and extend them to include wider sectors of the Jewish population in the peripheral communities of northern, southern, and central Iraq. Although the idea of organizing new branches in the north wherever there were concentrations of Jews in cities and villages was included in the decisions adopted by the movement’s national office in April 1945,163 the Zionist emissaries had wanted to work among the Kurdish Jews as early as 1942. From the perspective of Zionist objectives, Kurdistan’s Jews, as noted earlier, presented a positive image. Even before Baharav described them as “mountain Jews, . . . farmers, . . . dressed like Bedouins and bearing arms,” similar descriptions appeared in the reports by aliyah emissaries Shemariah Guttman and Enzo Sereni. They were especially taken by the Jews of the village of Sondur, all of whose residents were Jewish farmers who spoke Hebrew.164 Despite this, owing to the difficulties faced by the Zionist movement in Iraq during its early years, which led the emissaries to concentrate on establishment of the branch in Baghdad, activity among Kurdish Jews did not gain momentum until 1945. It was then that branches were established or reorganized in Kirkuk, Arbil, Sulaymānīyah, Khānaqin, and elsewhere. Efforts began in cooperation between instructors sent from Baghdad and local youth. At the beginning of 1946, Gideon Golani was given responsibility for all branches in the north, which early in 1948 had over three hundred members.165 Was Yehoshua Baharav able to implement his plan to smuggle out Kurdish Jews? That idea occurred to him after his first successes in smuggling Jews from Baghdad across the northern border into Syria in the hope that it would be easier to organize Jews of Kurdistan themselves for such illegal emigration. Members of the underground movement soon realized that mat-

294

01 Chapters.indd 294

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

ters were not as they had expected. To quote Mordechai Bibi, “Theoretically this concept was correct, but not its implementation.”166 We can learn the reason for this failure from the testimony of Shemariah Guttman, who visited northern Kurdistan in 1942 and tried to influence Jews there to immigrate to Eretz Israel. From what he told us about his visit, we know that Kurdish Jews demanded that entire families immigrate. They were opposed to selective aliyah of young, unmarried persons. The condition they set meant failure for any attempt at aliyah in view of contemporary political circumstances in Iraq and the state of the Zionist movement there. A striking example is found in Guttman’s impressions of his discussions with the rabbi of Sondur. After Shemariah introduced himself as “a Jew from Eretz Israel” and told him that “I want young men and women to go on aliyah to Eretz Israel,” the rabbi replied, “There was already another emissary before you . . . Ezra the Scribe was here before you. How many Jews went with him to Eretz Israel? And now, just as you see them [Sondur’s Jews], we will go home, take a few belongings, take the Scroll of the Law, and go with you [to Eretz Israel]. But you want us to send the young people, under very difficult conditions, and leave us here to die in the Diaspora. How can that be?”167 Mordechai Bibi made the same point: “We knew that the Jews in the north were ready to go on aliyah, and to go whenever they would be called upon for aliyah, but under one condition only: the entire family.”168 When Baharav was in Iraq, there were as yet no younger people prepared to turn their backs on the tradition of the community, and none who had been trained to come as pioneers. That was the reason why there were no candidates for illegal immigration. It was only then that the process of Zionist indoctrination of young Kurdish Jews began, to which purpose branches of the Zionist movement were established in northern Iraq. In 1945, it was Baharav’s intention that Gideon Golani organize a branch of the underground in Zakho, and that, in 1946, he would coordinate activities among all branches to be established among the Kurdish Jews in the north. What led him to this decision, no doubt, was the success of the smugglers, his positive impression of Shlomo Salman—the “Kurdish type” par excellence, and Zakho’s location on the route for illegal crossing over to Qamishliye and its proximity to the Turkish border.169 Baharav even added that someone had proposed bringing Turkish Jews to Zakho and, from there, to smuggle them into Syria, but this idea did not materialize. Golani had to intervene to extricate a group of illegal emigrants from Mosul. This attempted transfer failed and dealt a blow to the underground network be295

01 Chapters.indd 295

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

cause the parents of one young boy in the group informed on it to the Iraqi authorities. Involved in this episode were Bibi and Salman, who was the contact between the underground and a non-Jewish smuggler who was to be the group’s guide. Bibi’s description of the event is informative about why a branch of the underground was not organized in Zakho: “In my small book, there is a story called ‘In the Lion’s Jaws.’ On one occasion, they [Salman Attiya and the two smugglers from Mosul, Salim and Abu Salim] recommended a smuggler with whom I met, a non-Jewish smuggler.” This person had successfully brought four olim from Mosul to Qamishliye, and now, encouraged by his success, wanted to lead a group of ten, so as to earn more money: And all this was through the means of Shlomo [Salman Attiya], Abu Salim, and Salim. I have given a detailed description of all this [in my book].170 I came to Mosul. I took a room in one of the hotels along the bank of the Euphrates and arranged with Shlomo Attiya and Salim that they should come to me and we would agree on details. Suddenly I saw them coming with the smuggler, with the non-Jew. I was stunned because this must not be done. The smuggler must not know my whereabouts and my identity. I know, we had already met with him, but he could be caught by the police, turn me in, tell them that I was staying at this or that hotel, and all would be over. But I was in a situation [over which I had no control], so we sat in my room in the hotel. We concluded everything that had to be arranged.

The smuggler set out on the journey with ten young boys and was apprehended by the police, together with the entire group, as they left Mosul, because the parents of one of the boys, who had joined the group without their permission, informed the police. This placed Bibi and Salman in difficult straits: I was ordered to come to the CID [Criminal Investigative Department] in Mosul. They asked me who I was and what I was doing here, and the whole episode is told in [my] book. He [Salman Attiya] was also in a difficult position because, after the smuggler was arrested, he didn’t know exactly what had happened, if the smuggler, or perhaps someone else, was not in order. Therefore, he returned to Zakho and stayed there. I think this was already in July 1945. I think maybe even later I may or may not have met him once 296

01 Chapters.indd 296

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

more. By then, I was involved in smuggling activities primarily in Syria and Lebanon.171

Following the failure of this attempt, Bibi did not visit Zakho together with Salman as he had intended: I myself planned, together with Shlomo Attiya, that after we would send off this group of ten I would accompany him and come to Zakho to acquaint myself with the place because I had been told it was a difficult place [for smuggling activities]. But what does difficult mean? If you don’t know the topography and don’t pass through the territory and don’t see how the border is there, how the mountains are, and where the water [i.e., river] flows and how it is crossed, and the police—for you know all the stories of the smugglers. If you are not acquainted with all of these, that makes it difficult. I wanted to know. I didn’t want the smugglers [to be able] to sell me fake merchandise, to tell me tales. So I had to get acquainted with the territory. . . . But this was not to be. As I told you earlier, I was unable to reach Zakho, and the facts were not at my disposal.172

How this episode influenced the efforts of the underground in northern Iraq and Salman’s situation was reported by Baharav, using underground terminology, in one of his letters: The person [Gideon Golani] recruited to come to my assistance in the north suffered a setback in Mira [Mosul] even before he had time to do anything about matters in the north, and I was forced to direct him to take care of those who failed and the addenda [the results of their arrest]. By the way, one of the teachers [smugglers] from among our brethren in the north with whom we cooperated in this matter is connected to the aforementioned failure and out of great fear is hiding in the clefts of the rock173 in the north.174

Once things had quieted down, underground activity in the north was renewed and branches organized that began operation in 1946. A branch in Zakho that may have been intended to be the spearhead of all movement activity in northern Iraq was never established, perhaps because Zakho’s geographic advantage was lost when smuggling emigrants across the northern border came to a stop. Baharav reported on this cessation in two letters, 297

01 Chapters.indd 297

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

from 5 and 17 July 1945, that also signaled the end of his mission in Iraq. In these letters, he reverted to the pessimistic tone that characterized his reports during the early days of his stay in that country. He reported that the two routes—Mosul-Qamishliye and Mosul-Zakho-Qamishliye—were open and that he had at his disposal many smugglers who were willing to take olim across the border, but there was a lack of people prepared to emigrate. Furthermore, since the continuation of the road from Qamishliye to Aleppo was not secure, he could not send any additional illegal emigrants.175 The final blow to illegal emigration through northern Iraq was dealt in 1946 when French rule in Syria and Lebanon collapsed. One of the results was a rising wave of fanaticism and nationalist feelings that put an end to Zionist underground activities there.176 Branches of the underground movement were organized in the Kurdish territory in the north during 1945–46 because certain cities and villages were nearer to the center of the country and Baghdad, or were situated along good roads that made communication easy. To some extent, Zakho returned to its natural isolation, and underground activity there came to a complete standstill until it was renewed years later, in 1949.

Menahem Aloni: Between Zakho and Turkey An extraordinary endeavor was made by the underground in 1949 to smuggle the Zakho community en bloc into Turkey, from where it was to continue on its way to Israel. This was a unique attempt that failed because no previous effort had been made to smuggle out an entire community. Arbil-born Menahem Aloni and Shlomo Salman jointly came up with the idea and were involved in the attempt to implement it. This proposal and its implications raise many questions: Why precisely was the Zakho community chosen? What was the background for the plan? What is known about the scheme’s evolution and the reasons for its failure? What did Aloni think of Salman, and what were his impressions of Zakho and its Jewish community? I heard of Menahem Aloni by chance. Yona Salman, Shlomo’s son, told me of the connections his father had with various emissaries, including one Nahum Aloni—Nahum, not Menahem. But as he continued his testimony he mentioned another name: “After World War II—this [more or less] coincided with the establishment of the State of Israel—came there Nahum of Arbil. . . . Nahum of Arbil, his family name was Nahum Nevo. He was a Kurdish Jew from the city of Arbil. He was active in the movement, and we hosted him in our home.”177 On 1 December 1987, I approached Mrs. Shoshana Arbeli-Almoslino, former Israeli Minister of Health, and asked 298

01 Chapters.indd 298

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Menahem Aloni, 1950. Courtesy of Menahem Aloni.

whether she had been active in Zakho and could identify Nahum of Arbil. She replied that she had never been in Zakho, but that Nahum of Arbil was the underground name of Menahem Aloni.178

The Plan to Smuggle Zakho’s Jews into Turkey In an interview on 3 August 1992, Menahem Aloni told me about the circumstances that led to the formulation of the plan to smuggle out all of Zakho Jewry. To explain how he became involved in this plan, he first briefly described how he rose in the ranks of the Zionist underground. After a warm appraisal of his home city, Arbil, he spoke proudly about the Zionist activity that was characteristic of its Jewish community: “The best-developed branch, which was proudest of its Zionism, was called the Alonim Branch. Every Jew in Arbil was a Zionist Jew who saw Eretz Israel as his homeland, as his future, and so forth.”179 From there, he went on to provide a short autobiography, with emphasis on his movement and underground activity: 299

01 Chapters.indd 299

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

[I was] born in 1928. In 1946, I was recruited into the pioneering underground in Iraq, first as a rank-and-file member and afterward as an instructor. We attended an instructors’ seminar in Mosul, and later [I became] a council member. After that, I was appointed by the central Aliyah Committee as the person responsible in the [Mosul] branch for illegal immigration. That was the beginning. We moved olim along the route from Kirkuk to Baghdad and from Baghdad onward. In other words, I gathered together the people who wanted to go on aliyah and coordinated details with them. When I was told over the telephone to “send a few crates of tea” or “a few crates” of I don’t know what—say “sugar” or various other code words—then I would send them [the olim]. Later I became active in the national Aliyah Committee, which means I was active in Kirkuk, active in Mosul, active in Baghdad, in the framework of the Aliyah Committee. I was partner to [the activities of ] the Aliyah Committee in all kinds of matters. That means that I took part in all those areas in which the pioneering movement in Iraq was involved: aliyah, education, and the underground. Everything.

Aloni then told me of the impression he gained of Salman when they first made each other’s acquaintance in Baghdad, and of Salman’s decisive importance to the Zakho operation: At the end of 1948, I believe early 1949 but I have no written records, I was in Baghdad on some activity. Moshe Aliyah, known as Moshe Shapiro, came to me—he was the coordinator of the Aliyah Committee—[and said], “Gentlemen, there is an interesting Jew from Zakho. I want you to make his acquaintance. Let’s go to him.” He led me through all kinds of narrow streets in Baghdad until we reached a certain house with a very large courtyard. There we met a tall Jew, with long features, a real man with [Kurdish headdress] on top, [and] a moustache. I said, “Walla, this looks like some Arab smuggler.” Okay, so I made his acquaintance, his name was Shlomo Attiya, Shlomo Salman Attiya. He said, “Pleased to meet you.” [I said,] “Well, what are the plans?” He said, “I want to come to you [to Zakho].” “So come, please.” The plan was to check out the possibility of bringing Jews to Israel by means of a raft on the river that flows through Zakho.180

300

01 Chapters.indd 300

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

The strong positive impression left by Salman on all the emissaries who met him encouraged them to make him a partner to their efforts. Salman did not come to Baghdad very often, and this occasion called for much courage to renew his contacts with members of the underground. After Israel’s War of Independence, a harsher attitude toward Iraq’s Jews was noticeable, and relations between Jews and Muslim Kurds had deteriorated even in Zakho. The most difficult period for Iraqi Jews was during the rule of the military regime, from May 1948 to September 1949.181 Na‘im Attiya, Shlomo’s son, was arrested in late 1948 or early 1949, together with another fourteen Jews from Zakho, on the charge of engaging in Zionist activity in an episode that I have called “Tee, Tee, Tee, Israel.”182 It was apparently enough to say the word “Israel” to be arrested for subversion, and that is what happened to some of them. The arrested Jews from Zakho were first held in a jail in Mosul. After some time, four of the older men were released and the others were transferred to a prison in Baghdad, where they were jailed until their aliyah to Israel after three and a half years. Shlomo Salman was in Baghdad to see what he could do on behalf of his son and the other prisoners.183 Under such conditions—the state of emergency and the persecution of Jews by the military regime—aliyah from Iraq decreased greatly. In the second half of 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, all ways of escaping the country were blocked. This led the underground to seek unconventional ways of continuing aliyah efforts, so in December 1948 they opened a route through Iran. During this entire period, especially in the spring of 1949, only 961 persons immigrated clandestinely to Israel from Iraq.184 This led the members of the movement to check out Zakho once again, but from two aspects: as a way station for emigrants through the north of the country, and for the type of olim possible. Zakho’s location near the border of Turkey, which had not declared war on Israel, and the availability of Salman, who had a reputation for smuggling out emigrants, were weighty considerations that led to the decision to renew efforts there. The written documentation indicates that members of the underground movement in Iraq discussed with the Mosad in Israel the idea of transferring the entire Zakho community from Berman (the code name for Iraq) to Turkey and from there to Israel. Menahem Aloni related what the incentives were for this proposal: Late 1948 and early 1949, when all the routes toward the west and Iran were blocked and there was no possibility [of leaving], we thought of developing the possibility of [transferring olim] through Zakho. In the distant past this had been done. Shlomo Attiya was 301

01 Chapters.indd 301

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

connected with the Aliyah Committee in this matter of illegal emigration over his routes from Zakho through Syria. He, very much in the know about such matters, knew smugglers, knew what was going on, knew how to “sniff out” things. He was the expert about Zakho in this matter. In other words, he was someone who could be relied upon. If we had to come to [someone] and begin advancing the subject of illegal emigration from Zakho, then Shlomo Attiya [was the man] and no one else.185

Once the decision had been made to carry out this operation, preparations for its implementation were undertaken both in Zakho and in Turkey. The groundwork in Zakho was the responsibility of Menahem Aloni and Shlomo Salman. Aloni told of his trip to Zakho and the hostile reception he received from the local authorities, who placed obstacles in the path of implementing the operation: And so, we decided that I would travel there. Then he [Salman] said, “Come, we’ll travel together.” I said, “Not together. You are well known. If I am with you, that’s no good.” Until the taxi filled up! For to Zakho there is not [a vehicle leaving] every minute like between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, or Haifa and Jerusalem, or Haifa and Tel Aviv, with a bus leaving every minute. The moment I reached Zakho I was arrested—the moment I arrived! They saw that I was not a local, [had] green eyes, a fellow eighteen years old came, what’s he doing here? They took me to the police. I told them that I had come to visit my relatives, my acquaintances, and that is Salim Gabbay, Dr Salim Gabbay.

Salim Gabbay, the son of the head of the Zakho Jewish community, had been a pharmacist and physician in Arbil, where he and his wife lived in the home of Aloni. That was how Aloni knew of Salim Gabbay.186 The Zakho police turned to Salim Gabbay, who knew nothing of Aloni’s visit to Zakho nor of its objectives. He confirmed that Menahem was a relative of his and released him from jail.187 In the continuation of his narrative, Aloni told me of the circumstances of his stay in Zakho and his efforts to advance the planned operation: Well, I wanted to put down roots as a cover story: [to explain] what all of a sudden I was doing there. I bought a little sugar [and] some of this and that and began to sell [products] in a store. We rented 302

01 Chapters.indd 302

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

a small store. We placed the son of Shlomo Attiya—one of them, I don’t remember which—in the store. He sold sugar and tea; even today I don’t know at what prices he bought and at what prices he sold. That’s my [cover] story, that’s my store. . . . We tried to check out the possibilities, how and what could be done. The idea was to build a ship [a raft]—you put it on the river, put it together, and it easily reaches whatever destination it reaches. This did not pose a problem. At midnight, you put on it as many people as you want, locals as well as those who come there [to Zakho]. So, from that aspect, there was no problem. The plan took all this into account. We had to wait until envoys or smugglers arrived from the other side, those who prepared the background— how the people would be received on the other side, where they would be received, and to where they would be sent. We didn’t have a foggy idea about this issue; it had not been checked out, it was unclear. It had been assigned [to others] for handling. We did not receive any reply from them. Now, if there is no reaction from the other side, you cannot simply send people, put them aboard the raft, and off you go, they will get to wherever they get. There must be someone from among them [the smugglers on the other side] who comes to the destination and they disembark there and someone collects [i.e., receives] them and so forth. That was what I was waiting for, and I did not receive any confirmation [about these arrangements], and no one came. We waited tensely, but no one came. The intention was to develop this subject [i.e., illegal emigration through Turkey] through Qamishliye in Syria188 or to reach Turkish territory in even greater numbers. But, as I said, it did not materialize. I remained [in Zakho] for almost a month. Shlomo Attiya, of course, could do nothing, absolutely nothing, without communication from the other side. We had nothing in hand, so I returned. . . . I had a period, but the period was over and I am sorry about it, that this matter did not develop. . . . I returned to Baghdad to continue my activity.189

It is not clear what happened on the Turkish side of the border, and why the operation could not be implemented. The written documentation does throw some light on the circumstances under which the operation was to have been executed and its Turkish aspect. It supports Aloni’s version about the failure of members of the underground 303

01 Chapters.indd 303

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

on both sides of the border to communicate and adds a few details that were not included in his testimony. The oral and written evidence complement each other. Aloni’s oral testimony is vivid and stresses the personal aspects because he could express himself freely, no longer inhibited by the shackles of underground secrecy, whereas the documents, written at the time of the events, were phrased laconically and employed language that reflected the atmosphere of an underground organization. In a telegram sent on 3 February 1949 from Israel to Iraq, the Mosad notified its counterparts in that country that contact had been established with representatives of the underground in Turkey and that they were checking out the possibility of bringing over the entire Jewish community of Zakho. The telegram included the question that was bothering the people in Turkey: what help could be expected from the underground in Iraq?190 In their reply of 10 February, the members in Iraq reported that there were about two thousand Jews in Zakho191 and asked whether it was possible to establish contact with Turkey in order to bring them over. They also wrote that the section of the river between Zakho and Turkey could serve as a route.192 In the next messages, they referred to Shlomo Salman, though without mentioning him by name: “According to the man from Zakho, crossing the northern border of Berman to Turkey is very simple. Only ask for the possibility of contacts in Turkey.”193 That the plans took a practical turn is confirmed by a telegram, from the Mosad to Iraq, notifying the underground there that a comrade from Istanbul would set out for the border during that week to check into the possibility of bringing across the Zakho community. He would “visit Diarbakir, Nisibin,194 and more. . . . Immediately check out [the possibility] of crossing over from your place to Nisibin or Diarbakir, or somewhere else, and supply us with exact addresses in Zakho and elsewhere, in case envoys from Istanbul will have to enter your country. Inform us about the details of the route, how the exodus would be carried out, and costs.”195 Upon receipt of this message, the underground called upon Shlomo Salman, still referred to as “the man from Zakho,” to ascertain the possibility of carrying out the plan.196 Salman provided the underground activists with a pretext for visitors from Turkey, informed them of the proposed route by which Zakho’s Jews would be brought over into Turkey, and informed them of the costs per capita. These details were forwarded to the Mosad in Israel, but Salman’s name was purposely distorted. A. The man from Zakho who had contacted us a while back, reached us. His name is Shalon Attiya, a trader in wood by profession, and owns a 304

01 Chapters.indd 304

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

grocery store in Zakho. His name is Abdul Shalom.197 B. According to him, it is possible [for an envoy] to come as a merchant from Turkey to buy dates; that is how many tourists come. C. The route by which to enter Turkey illegally can be through Mt. Silopi,198 which is located between Nisibin and Zakho, if there will be someone to receive them at the border. D. The incursion [of envoys is] to Bat-Berman [Iraq] from Nisibin via Jezireh,199 Silopi, up to the border. From the border, it is possible to pick them up if prior notification is given. E. Arrangements are to be made separately by the police on both sides. F. From Berman, each person will cost about ten dinars. G. There are more than 1,000 persons in Zakho; 300–400 of them are young boys and youths. Most of them want to come on aliyah to Israel as fast as possible.200 When Menahem Aloni was sent to Zakho, the plan advanced one more stage. On 3 April, the underground in Iraq notified the Mosad: “My [man] in Zakho is Nahum Aloni, Menahem Aloni; the man from Istanbul will come to him.”201 From this point on, the people in Zakho tensely awaited the arrival of a contact or contacts from Turkey. A letter sent to the Mosad on 9 April reported “from our people in Zakho”: “Daud Nasser has not yet arrived. Because of the authorities in Zakho, there is no possibility for a lengthy stay [there].”202 Daud Nasser was the envoy expected from Turkey, while “our people in Zakho” were Shlomo Salman Attiya and Menahem Aloni. In its reply, the Mosad pleaded, “The man, the emissaries [i.e., Salman and Aloni] must wait in Zakho for David Nasser. Daud Nasser should arrive there any day.”203 A garbled telegram of 17 May communicated that a member of the underground in Izmir had set out for Diarbakir in an attempt to rescue the Jews of Zakho.204 A telegram was sent from Iraq on 11 June: “Our representatives in Zakho received details [needed] to meet people.”205 But contact was never established, as is evident from a telegram sent from Iraq to the Mosad on 22 June: “Our representative in Zakho returned today. He could not wait any longer because of the authorities in that place. He had arranged with Abd al-Karim, Abdul Karim Agha, a well-known Kurdish sheikh, that he should bring people across to . . . Turkish villages near the border, and so forth.”206 In sum, Menahem Aloni’s mission to Zakho, where he was helped by Shlomo Salman Attiya, did not come to a successful conclusion. Despite this, the members of the underground in Iraq did not give up completely and the exchange of telegrams with Israel continued, but without any mention of 305

01 Chapters.indd 305

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

Aloni or Salman. On 22 June, the Mosad was requested to ask Mordechai Bibi, who had already come on aliyah to Israel and at this time was an aliyah emissary in Iran, “whether he knew of the smuggler Abd al-Karim, Abdul Karim Agha from the vicinity of Zakho, and if he had worked with him.”207 Another telegram from Berman to the Mosad asked, “What about Zakho and what are the chances?”208 About half a year later, some two months before the Iraqi government’s formal announcement (9 March 1950) that Jews would be allowed to leave Iraq, members of the underground still toyed with the idea of smuggling Zakho’s Jews to Turkey and from there to Israel. On page 5 of a report sent by Mosad agents from Iran, it was maintained that there were one thousand Jews in Zakho who wanted to immigrate to Israel, and it recommended that reconnaissance be conducted along the Turkish-Iraqi border in preparation for smuggling them out.209 Even after the declaration by the Iraqi government, members of the Mosad raised the possibility of bringing the Jews of northern Iraq to Israel through Turkey, and the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government asked the Israeli delegation in Ankara if it could help in this matter.210 Thus, despite the failure of the original plan, the underground and the Israeli government considered it once again. There was more to this than just the tempting location of Zakho near the Turkish border. It was definitely a logical idea, considering present circumstances, in addition to the geographic location, which was an advantage worthy of investigation. It should also be borne in mind that there was also an advantage in the existing communal structure, thanks to Shlomo Salman, for all those involved relied upon his capability and devotion.

Aloni in Zakho Even though the planned evacuation of all of Zakho’s Jews to Turkey did not materialize, preparations for the operation caused Menahem Aloni to stay for some time in Zakho, during which he learned a lot about the city and its Jewish community, particularly regarding Zionist sentiments. He remained there for a month or two while awaiting the arrival of underground envoys who were supposed to come from Turkey.211 This was a longer period than that spent there by all the other underground emissaries taken together, whose visits were very brief—no more than two or three days. During his sojourn there, he came to know the city and its population. His firsthand impressions were doubly important because he was the last member of the underground to visit Zakho before the aliyah of its community in the early 1950s. 306

01 Chapters.indd 306

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

I showed Aloni the map of Zakho prepared by Meir Zaqen,212 and he used it to describe the city and its topography: The village of Zakho, a beautiful village, a picturesque village. This river does a lot for that unique village, with these bridges that you see, in brown. The people are very quiet, very joyful, very nice. . . . They go to cafés [and] meet Jews there, Jews loyal [to their religious and national heritage], natural, really natural, true Jews. It is enough that you say Eretz Israel—that is for them something, how shall I say, something holy, something lofty, something sublime. [They are] very nice, very hospitable, very outgoing. And that is how I gathered around me a band of young men of various ages, older than myself or younger than myself, and we would go on hikes, to hike in the fields, to hike near this bridge here in the upper [section of the map], to dance the hora [traditional round dance] there in the field, to sing in the field, to visit their workshops, because they were all craftsmen: carpenters, dyers, and so forth. I enjoyed myself. Their special food proved a difficulty for me; I didn’t get very used to it, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to eat in the home[s]. There were no restaurants there. I became very friendly with the young boys there, and then I taught them a few Hebrew songs that I knew from the underground, that I had learned in the underground. We spoke Hebrew. I told them stories. They became very attached to me; we were very close, really. They saw me as something special, . . . I very much enjoyed their company.213

Aloni’s description provides us with a rare opportunity to delineate the differences between a young Jew from Arbil and Jewish youngsters in Zakho. Menahem Aloni was the product of the Zionist movement in Arbil, which began operating there in 1945–46. After three years of involvement there and elsewhere, he was sent to Zakho at the age of twenty-one. Unlike Jewish young people in Zakho, he had been exposed to modern Zionist Western-oriented education. He spoke with much warmth about Zakho’s Jews, but unconsciously described what differentiated them from his own community in Arbil. They impressed him as Jews whose attachment to Eretz Israel was still in the pre-Zionist stage, manifested in traditional adoration for the Holy Land that knew no bounds or doubts and bordered on innocence—a “natural” emotional attachment as yet unblemished by reality. That perhaps explains why Zakho Jews were so attracted to him, because he filled 307

01 Chapters.indd 307

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

a vacuum in their Zionist experiences, and this made him feel superior, as it were, to them. The documentation related to the establishment of branches of the Zionist underground in the Kurdish north of the country, including Arbil, indicates that the Zionist movement was much more successful in that city, especially when compared with the difficulties it encountered in Baghdad and Basra. In the larger cities, the communal leadership feared that Zionism would undermine its status, as well as traditional Jewish values. All they sought was a life of comfort and tended toward integration into Iraqi society.214 In Kurdistan, on the other hand, Zionism was seen as a continuation of traditional Jewish values and not as an ideological, religious, or political revolutionary movement that intended to uproot tradition. That is what led the communal leadership in the north to allow the Zionist movement to operate within the community; they believed that Zionist initiatives were a contribution to the education of the community and did not challenge their own status. With the consent of the local leadership, the schools and hadarim (traditional religious schools for the young) were under the influence of the members of the Zionist movement, though there was tension from time to time between the young people involved in the movement and the communal leaders. Such conflicts were generally the result of the generation gap, not of any opposition to Zionist ideals: the youngsters doffed the traditional garb and created frameworks in which boys and girls spent time together, raising the ire of the traditional leadership. In Arbil too—Aloni’s home town—there was at times conflict between the young members of the Zionist movement and Salih Yosef Nuriel, the head of the community, despite his connections with, and activity on behalf of, the Zionist movement since the 1930s. Menahem Aloni, the Zionist emissary who did not come from Eretz Israel but was himself born and bred in Kurdistan, knew how to communicate with the younger generation of Zakho Jews. He gathered them around him as a fellowship, taught them Hebrew songs, and in his straightforward manner imparted to them something of his unconventional education. Both parties became very attached to each other and enjoyed assimilating the new Zionist message: “They became very attached to me, we were very close, really. They saw me as something special, . . . I very much enjoyed their company.” Meir Zaqen, a member of the largest family in Zakho—a family with a synagogue of its own—was seventeen or eighteen years old at the time, and his story about Aloni is the testimony of an eyewitness: 308

01 Chapters.indd 308

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

We were pupils in the heder—I, together with Na‘im, with his brother Mordechai and the little brothers [sons of Shlomo Salman Attiya]. We were taught in the heder by Hakham Moshe ‘Alwan. We also studied with Hakham Levi. And there came from Arbil someone connected with the Zionist movement. His name was Nahum, and he was from Arbil. I can’t give you any further details about him. You should ask members of the Salman family. They knew much more than I did. I think he came to us around 1947–48. He came and began teaching us such small matters, and we called ourselves an underground. What did he teach us? The song “Ehad mi yode‘a? Ehad ani yode‘a.” That’s a song sung on Passover.215 We sat in a room inside another room in the home of the Salman family. Na‘im Attiya’s parents—his father Shlomo Salman was a man who thought that it was important to aid the Zionist movement. He was acknowledged in Israel as a Zionist. He brought people over to Syria and from there they came to Eretz Israel. In other words—all our Zionism was comprised of this little matter.216

In this unique narrative, even “Ehad mi yode‘a” became a Zionist song. This is a very revealing example of the character of Aloni’s Zionist teaching: not the opposite of traditional Judaism but its continuance. Another interesting aspect in his testimony is the reversal of concepts. On the one hand, the emissary taught them “such small matters” that, in the circumstances of that time and place, were “all our Zionism.” On the other hand, anyone listening to Meir Zaqen would gain the impression that they did “great things” under those same circumstances, because of the involvement of Salman in the smuggling of Jews to Syria, from where they continued to Eretz Israel. In another story, Meir told me of his further contact with Menahem Aloni and of the deep attachment of Zakho’s Jews to Eretz Israel even in the difficult situation in which they found themselves with the establishment of the State of Israel: I want to tell you another story. Later, I served in the Iraqi army for three months. I paid a ransom—they called it bedel. The sum of the ransom was fifty dinars. I was in the oil city [i.e., a center of the petroleum industry] of Kirkuk when that same Nahum of Arbil came to me, with whom I was already acquainted from Zakho. He came to take me out of a movie theater and bring me to Eretz Israel without paying the bedel. He said to me, “Give me [the] fifty dinars. I will get you across through Iran, and [from there] you will go 309

01 Chapters.indd 309

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

on aliyah to Eretz Israel.” . . . I was crazy about Israel. We had come to be in such a state when Israel was established. We said, “If we don’t reach Eretz Israel, we’ll commit suicide!” But . . . and there was a big but here, if I were to desert from the Iraqi army—and I was able to desert—and would come to Eretz Israel through Iran before the aliyah (at the time, we didn’t know that in another year and a half there would be aliyah), they would throw my father and all my brothers into prison. So I did some moral stocktaking, and I understood these matters; I knew what could be the outcome. I said, “It’s out of the question. What will be the result? I will go to Israel, but my father and my brothers will go to prison on no account of their own.” And I did not do that. That is our Zionism.217

In this story, too, appears an unusual and reverse meaning of the term Zionism. Nahum (Menahem) tried to extricate Meir Zaqen from service in the Iraqi army by smuggling him out of the country and setting him on his way to Israel. But Meir, who was “crazy about Israel” and prepared to commit suicide if he could not reach it, personified a Zionism that was extraordinary precisely because it was not acted upon, since Meir valued the welfare of his family above his own interests. For him, the welfare of his fellow men was the zenith of Zionist behavior, even if this meant that he would have to forego fulfilling his Zionist aspirations. When I repeated Meir Zaqen’s testimony to Menahem Aloni, he had this to say about the first story: “That’s reasonable, taking into account the social relationships that I created with people in Zakho.” His reaction to the second story was “Though I do not personally remember Meir Zaqen, I was active in Kirkuk and it was my job to smuggle people out to Iran. It is possible that it happened.”218 As noted, Aloni was the last Zionist emissary to the community of Zakho prior to the mass aliyah to Israel. When I asked him why a branch of the Zionist movement was not established in Zakho during that period, he replied, Well, at the time I was there, first of all whenever strangers came there they were immediately suspected by the authorities. To develop a movement, someone has to be there. Local people cannot do that. There have to be, if not emissaries, then at least instructors [who come] from all kinds of places. I was not sent to develop the movement. I was sent on another mission: my job was to develop

310

01 Chapters.indd 310

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

aliyah and not develop the movement. Instruction belonged to another department. There was an Aliyah Committee. I told you that. The movement was divided into three or four parts. There was the Haganah . . . but I found my place more in aliyah matters. Actually, I stuck firmly to aliyah. That’s why it [a branch] did not develop. There were not many opportunities, even though the background [of the Zakho community] was so warm, so pleasant, so ready, ready, even more than ready—it would not have taken much. [They were] loyal, devoted. That’s it, that was Zakho.

At the Threshold of the Spring of Zionism One of my objectives was to examine how former Zakho Jews, after their aliyah to Israel, evaluated Zionist activity in their hometown. I also wanted to learn whether, after having internalized the customary meaning in Israel of Zionist activity, they believed Zionism in Zakho to have been unique in character. In terms of the commonly held view of Zionism, my interviewees believed that Zionist activity in Zakho was very limited. Some of them even expressed a sense of discomfort and inferiority: they pointed out that a branch of the Zionist organization was not established in Zakho even though the entire community was ready to accept Zionism in heart and soul. This ruled out the chance for any Zionist activity, especially in view of the city’s sensitive location and less than satisfactory geographic circumstances. Among them were those who compared this situation with that of Arbil, where there was a vivid, active Zionist cell. One of these was Zaki Levi: Arbil was geographically nearer to the center [of the country], to Baghdad, and to Mosul. Zakho . . . like Dohuk, for example, for in Dohuk, too, there was a Jewish community, but it did not have an organized Zionist movement, nor was there in Amadiya, because these cities were far away from the closest provincial capital, which was Mosul. In contrast, Arbil, Kirkuk, and Sulaymānīyah were on railway lines, something lacking in Zakho. All travel between Mosul and Zakho was conducted either by beasts of burden—asses, horses, mules—or by motor vehicles or on the river, which was not used to transport people but to transport merchandise. This was primarily in the spring. In the summer, there was almost no traffic on the river because the water was shallow and reached such a depth that it could not carry these rafts that were used to bear goods. . . . I

311

01 Chapters.indd 311

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

think that the reason why there was no strong Zionist organization in Zakho was its geographic location, because, from the aspect of Zionism, or feelings, and even actual activity, all these were present in Zakho. The exodus [the mass aliyah of the 1950s] is one proof of this, because the community of Zakho liquidated itself much faster than did the communities of Kirkuk, Sulaymānīyah, and Arbil. Much faster.219

It took former Zakho Jews in Israel many years and much hindsight to acknowledge the important Zionist activity carried on in their former city. As proof of it, they pointed to the fact that the Israeli establishment acknowledged Shlomo Salman as a person involved in the materialization of Zionist objectives. With the help of former underground emissaries to Iraq, Salman was afforded such recognition, as well as material aid, after his aliyah to Israel.220 In contrast, Ilya Hetteh did not receive similar status and help, perhaps because he had not been in direct contact with the emissaries.221 Although former Zakho Jews did see the efforts of Salman and Hetteh as the realization of the community’s collective will, they believed the extent of Zionist activity to have been very limited. Meir Zaqen, for example, said, “Shlomo Salman was a man who thought that it was important to aid the Zionist movement. He was acknowledged in Israel as a Zionist. He brought people over to Syria and from there they came to Eretz Israel. In other words—all our Zionism was comprised of this little matter.”222 For a more balanced picture, we should bear in mind that the vast majority of Zakho’s Jews knew nothing about the steps taken to implement the Zakho-Qamishliye route. Nor were they aware of initiatives on behalf of the community that were adopted by members of the underground, such as the establishment of a branch of the movement or the plan to spirit the entire community out through Turkey, even if these did not materialize for various reasons. Furthermore, they were completely unaware of the very positive impression the underground held of Shlomo Salman or of his and Ilya Hetteh’s contributions to underground activity. The emissaries, particularly the last ones to visit Zakho, recognized the potential embodied in its Jewish population and valued it highly; this may explain why their evaluation of Zionism in Zakho differed from that of former members of the community. Moreover, among my interviewees from Zakho, there was a gap between awareness of the facts and the true situation: whereas most of them informed me that they had never seen or met Zionist emissaries in Zakho, there were some who could tell me about them,223 and a few who even knew what

312

01 Chapters.indd 312

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

was happening outside their city. That there were those who wanted to join in the underground’s activities and sought out the emissaries in Mosul or Baghdad is confirmed by the personal memory narrative of Mazliah Kol, born in 1926, who returned to Zakho after serving in the Iraqi army.224 “In 1945–46, or maybe in 1948,” he heard rumors that an emissary from Eretz Israel had come to Baghdad. “Then he was an emissary and today his name is Shlomo Hillel, today he is the Speaker of the Knesset. . . . He came to Baghdad.225 There was an underground in Baghdad. This underground was illegal, and [this] was very dangerous.” Mazliah asked his parents for permission to go to Baghdad and join the underground: “I very much wanted, when I was young, to get to Eretz Israel, to Palestine. . . . There are Jews there, and it is a Jewish place, and I don’t feel comfortable with all the agitation of the Arabs in this country [Iraq], and I never consider myself as being born here. I don’t feel that I belong here.” After arguments with his parents, who tried to prevent him from going, Mazliah traveled to Baghdad, where he stayed with relatives and tried to contact the underground: I went out to “the field” [Baghdad]. I asked around, investigated: “There is one great emissary, he came from Eretz Israel, from BenGurion, from Moshe Shertok, they sent him” [I was told]. I did not succeed in contacting him . . . there was much fear. At that time, the underground in Baghdad was big, and they rescued many people. But the underground was so secret, in cellars, in shafts, with [secret] communications, that it was impossible to discover them. They could not be found easily. Today I state why I couldn’t find [the underground]: [it was] because I was wearing Kurdish dress, and this Kurdish dress differed from the clothing people wore in Baghdad, and I also did not look Jewish. I was slightly darker, and people didn’t believe me. Everyone wanted to help other Jews . . . , in this situation it was only a question of confidence and fear. So I was unable to locate Shlomo. . . . After a week’s effort and making the rounds and asking questions, I found myself . . .—Baghdad is a very big city—I found myself in a tremendous sea, suffocating, without rescue, without anyone coming to my rescue. I turned back [to Zakho] just as I was. I said, “God is great, God is great, God is great.”226

Mazliah Kol’s narrative is indicative of the great change in the outlook of Zakho’s Jews during the twentieth century. The younger people revolted 313

01 Chapters.indd 313

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 7

against the passive lifestyle conducted within a traditional, closed, and conservative community; they sought to break out and be masters of their own fate as part of a new, Zionist-nationalist–oriented framework. This was not a revolt against tradition but an integral element in the historical developments resulting from the great events of the twentieth century. Mazliah Kol’s narrative contains all the elements of his own personality and of the change in outlook: the religious aspect (“God is great”), the Kurdish aspect (the clothes he wore), and the Zionist aspect (the underground movement that would rescue him and give him a new start in life). When he was unable to contact the underground, having no alternative he returned to his former life in Zakho, comforted only by the yearning for Eretz Israel that had shaped his life. A few years later, Mazliah exhibited independence of action and initiative. Of his own accord, he organized the first group of olim from Zakho in the 1950s, led it, and took it to Baghdad—all this without waiting for an official emissary. What was important was that he reach Israel as soon as possible. It is difficult to appraise the extent of Zionist feelings only by what meets the eye. Even if the presence of modern Zionism in Zakho was limited, its extent was much greater than its image in the minds of former Zakho Jews. Was there anything unique about the Zionism of the Zakho community? Unlike other communities in Iraq, such as those of Baghdad and Basra, Zakho’s Jews became cognizant of modern Zionism rather late, only after World War II. While in the larger communities Zionism arose as a revolt against tradition and locally accepted values, in Zakho it was not in opposition to tradition but rather its natural continuation. In the larger communities the Zionist movement indoctrinated its members to value manual labor, but this was unnecessary in Zakho, many of whose Jews engaged in manual labor for a livelihood. In various Jewish communities in Iraq those who underwent Zionist indoctrination within the movement first engaged in practical Zionist activity in their hometowns and only later came on aliyah to Eretz Israel. In Zakho, in contrast, a branch of the movement was never established but—perhaps because of the deep emotional attachment of its Jews to Eretz Israel—many of them immigrated to Eretz Israel after World War I and some of them were later to aid Zionist underground activity. In the realm of practical Zionist efforts, even without modern Zionist indoctrination the community in Zakho differed from others in northern Iraq in which branches of the movement had been established. Salman and Hetteh had engaged in smuggling olim out of Iraq even before the advent of the Zionist underground, and later did so within its ranks. 314

01 Chapters.indd 314

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Zionism in Zakho

Zionism in Zakho was unique because of the path it followed: only after beginning at the end of the process—that is, taking practical steps to achieve the ideal of aliyah—were the members of its community mentally prepared to absorb the values of modern Zionism. The Jews of Zakho had stood at the threshold of the spring of Zionism without drinking from it.

315

01 Chapters.indd 315

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Chapter 8

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation 1950–51

Revocation of Iraqi Citizenship The aliyah of Zakho’s Jews to Israel in 1950–51 did not come at the initiative of Iraqi Jewry, nor did it stem from consciousness of Zionist ideals or changes within the Jewish communities. It was forced upon them as part of Iraqi government policy to rid the country of its Jewish residents. In contrast to the voluntary aliyah of individuals and groups prior to the establishment of Israel, the mass exodus of Iraqi Jewry to the Jewish state in 1950–51 was the initiative of external forces: the governments of Iraq and Israel.1 The fortunes of Zakho’s Jews in this massive aliyah were the same as those of Iraqi Jewry in general. Since it was my intention to determine what changes occurred in the community of Zakho prior to the mass aliyah of Iraqi Jewry, I dealt with it separately and tried to ascertain the following: How did they learn in Zakho about the impending aliyah? How did the community prepare for that operation? How did economic problems influence preparations for aliyah? How did the exodus of Zakho’s Jews influence their Kurdish Muslim neighbors? Finally, I was interested to learn how former Zakho Jews connected the past with their new lifestyle in Israel.2 On 15 May 1948, the day on which Israel declared its independence, Arab armies, including three Iraqi brigades, invaded the young state. Following decisions taken by the Arab League, the government of Iraq declared martial law throughout the country. It was convenient for the Iraqi authorities to pass emergency laws because the country was going through a deep economic crisis accompanied by much social and political unrest encouraged by a vigorous opposition. Military rule lasted for eighteen months, until De316

01 Chapters.indd 316

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

cember 1949. During this period, the condition of Iraq’s Jews was constantly changing in accordance with shifting public opinion that was influenced by many factors, including the decisive defeat of the Iraqi contingents in Palestine. In July 1948, the Iraqi parliament declared Zionism a “political crime,” and accusations of Zionist activity could lead to lengthy periods of imprisonment or even a death sentence. Iraqi Jews were now liable to suffer persecution and were hostages of a sort for the Palestinian Arabs. Many were sentenced to long terms in prison. In August 1948, Shafik ‘Adas, a wealthy Baghdadi Jew, was tried, sentenced to death, and executed; his trial placed all of Iraqi Jewry under suspicion of being disloyal to the state. Although the government’s attitude toward the Jews eased somewhat in September, members of the aliyah underground waited no longer. In December, they managed to open a route for the clandestine transfer of Jews to Iran. In early 1949, several dozen Jews fled to Iran every month. These were primarily persons, and their families, who had been active in Zionist affairs or regime opponents who were on the run and had also been hard hit economically. In the wake of a wave of persecutions of Zionists in October and November 1949 that began with the aid of a Jewish informer—a former member of the Zionist movement who was arrested on the charge of being a Communist—a mass flight of other members of the Jewish community began. The persecution of active Zionists was interpreted as aimed at all Jews. It did not take long for this mass exodus of Iraqi Jews to leave its mark on the country’s economy, increasing domestic instability. To stop the mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Iran, on 9 March 1950 the government enacted a law permitting any Jew who so wished to leave the country on condition that he forego his Iraqi citizenship, but kept open the possibility of regaining it by a return to Iraq within one year. The government’s assumption was that only a few thousand Jewish young people who were discontented, unemployed, and poor would take advantage of the law and that most of the Jews, who were well off and politically uninvolved, would prefer to remain. The authorities were to be disappointed: too late, they realized that their law complemented the process of the Jewish exodus from Iraq, and that they had failed to deal properly with the Jewish problem in their country. The vast majority of Iraqi Jews, who numbered about 125,000, chose to leave; only a few thousand remained.3

News of the Open Gates News that aliyah was imminent took Zakho by complete surprise. The reaction was commensurate with the extent of the surprise, leading to social 317

01 Chapters.indd 317

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

upheaval in the community and undermining the traditional framework. Communities throughout Iraq were taken by surprise, as were Israel and capitals in the West.4 A confrontation developed in Zakho between the older and younger generations that also took the form of contention between those who were referred to as “the wealthy” and other social classes, or between “Zionists” and “non-Zionists.” This latter conflict proved to have been an imaginary one. After years of living in Israel, my interviewees were able, in hindsight, to analyze how the process that began with a rumor that reached Zakho over the radio was brought to fruition.5 They said that the rumor “turned on” the impatient younger members of the community, especially those who identified with Zionist objectives and sought a way to become active within the movement. According to their testimony, they did not wait for support from Zionist emissaries or for the communal leadership to show the way. One of these young men was Mazliah Kol, who, as will be remembered, related that in the past he had attempted, but had been unable, to contact a Zionist emissary in Baghdad. While sitting in a café, he heard over the radio about the law permitting emigration. He and his friend Ephraim Ela immediately spread the news. The first step they took was still within the bounds of traditional behavior: they asked their parents to go to the governor of Zakho to determine whether what they heard was true, because their parents were among the dignitaries of the community, and the young did not want to go against tradition by acting upon their own initiative: “That is the usage and the custom, and that’s how it was. We didn’t want to do anything more than what the older people wanted. First of all to bring it to their attention.” The district governor received the parents courteously, but said “that he had not heard” of this. Mazliah admitted, “We were disappointed. How could that be? I was sitting in the café, Ephraim was sitting in the café, and someone else was sitting in the café. That is what the Baghdad radio station announced! That the government and the parliament said [that] Jews could leave. Why all of a sudden the district governor doesn’t know [anything]? He [the governor] said, ‘Gentlemen, I did not receive any notification.’”6 His reply did not satisfy Mazliah and Ephraim. Excited and enthusiastic, they set out to act independently even though this clashed with accepted behavior. According to Mazliah’s testimony, they overcame their fear of the authorities. Circumventing the communal leadership and disregarding the traditional hierarchy, they went in person to the district governor. They softened him up with a “gift,” an envelope containing ten dinars. The governor received them courteously, promised to look into the matter, and told them to meet him on the morrow. When they saw him again, he confirmed the 318

01 Chapters.indd 318

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

rumor: “‘Gentlemen, because of you I returned to the office yesterday. I phoned the Ministry of the Interior. What you said is true. A Jew who wants to leave and to seek a livelihood.’ . . . That’s how they defined it, the government,” Mazliah explained as he went on with his story “that the situation was difficult and there was no work, and all kinds of such stories.” And thus Mazliah Kol and Ephraim Ela took the initiative into their own hands: “And then we asked him [the governor]: ‘How do we organize [emigration]? How does one register?’” And, when registration began, they offered suggestions of their own; for example, that instead of the Jews coming to the police station to register for emigration, “you [the governor] kindly consent to come to the great synagogue where there is room to register them. Why? For fear of the Arabs, because the kishle [police station] is in an Arab neighborhood and opposite the market, and we fear that they will beat the women and children, and so forth.” Mazliah repeated, “We requested of him that the Jews come, instead of go to the police, and the police would list every one of them, noting his name, the name of his wife, how many souls, ages, [in order to] send the list to the Ministry of the Interior, that [he] would kindly consent to come to the great synagogue and register them there.” The involvement of Mazliah and Ephraim in the organization of this group of olim was an extremely unique phenomenon. According to their version, they did not turn for help to the head of the community and its elders. They bribed the police, as was customary in Zakho, to ease and expedite the process of registration: “Of course we gave him [the commander of the police station] two dinars, five dinars, something like that. So he phoned a junior officer.” And when the junior officer appeared, he looked longingly at Ephraim’s expensive pen, so “we also left the pen there, and we came, we really registered. It was then that the process began. The process was a bit lengthy because the entire procedure was unfamiliar to the police, as well. Our Jews began to organize themselves and registered. About a 100 or a 105 families registered, if I am not mistaken.” As is usual in oral documentation, there were other versions of Mazliah’s story, but there is a consensus of opinion that it was he and Ephraim who organized the first group of olim to leave Zakho.7 Mazliah’s narrative focuses on the parallelism in time between the news of the breakthrough regarding aliyah and the breakdown of the hierarchical familial and social structure of the community. Zakho’s young people did not hesitate to approach the authorities personally and assumed responsibility—according to their version—for the advancement and realization of their intense desire to immigrate to Israel. This initiative soon became a revolt of the younger generation 319

01 Chapters.indd 319

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

against the communal leadership and seemingly also a conflict of “Zionist” against “anti-Zionist” young people: whoever had hesitated was considered “anti-Zionist.” Recriminations were also leveled against the wealthy and Moshe Gabbay, the head of the community, who did not want to emigrate because they feared they would lose their property, and that their status as communal leaders who did not want to emigrate would be an example that would thus impede aliyah of the entire community. There is no written evidence documenting the mass aliyah from Zakho— only oral testimony. According to Shabetai Alfiya and Meir Zaqen, there were four waves of aliyah from Zakho.8 The first group comprised about seventy people who set out on 20 October 1950, after the Sukkot festival. That group was followed by three more that left one after the other in April and May 1951: the second group, the largest, began its journey before Passover and the last one began on 9 May. These three groups met once again in the Sha‘ar Ha-Aliyah immigrant transit camp on the outskirts of Haifa. The four groups were organized on the basis of economic status. There are those who maintain that the first group was comprised of persons with limited means and did not need much time to sell their property.9 After the news that emigration was permitted became public in March 1950 and registration began in the synagogue, members of the community did their best to sell their property to Muslims. Since the local residents exploited the situation and waited for prices to drop, most Jews were unable to sell their homes or did so at a fraction of their real value. The majority of those in the first group, then, were people who could more easily sell the little property they owned. Yona Sabar, who was in the second group, testified that his family’s home was sold for seven or eight dinars, whereas its real value was estimated at 300 dinars. Olim in the third and fourth groups were unable to sell their property at all.10 Mazliah Kol and Ephraim Ela, as noted, became the organizers of the first group because of the circumstances under which mass aliyah from Zakho began. They were not poor, but they divided their money among the olim so that each carried with him the sum permitted to be taken out of Iraq. The wealthier delayed taking the final step, wishing to gain time to sell their property: homes, stores, land, and belongings. The final group was made up of the richest and poorest families, the former because of their wealth and the latter because they lacked travel expenses. When they saw that Zakho had been emptied of its Jews, they, too, had no alternative but to relinquish their Iraqi citizenship. The rich, who had lost all of their property, covered almost all the expenses of the poor.11 Between the departure of the first and second groups, the Jews became 320

01 Chapters.indd 320

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

the object of an additional law. When the Iraqi government realized the economic implications of the exodus of its Jewish citizens, it decided not to renew the validity of the original law. Exactly a year after it had been promulgated, on 10 March 1951 and in absolute secrecy all Jewish assets were frozen—all property, stocks, bonds, and bank accounts. Those who had not succeeded in selling their property were stunned by this move.12 Only 38,000 Jews had managed to leave Iraq; all the rest were the victims of the new law, which also dealt a harsh blow to Zakho’s wealthy Jewish families, especially to that of Moshe Gabbay, whose wealth was legendary.13 Haya Gabbay, Moshe’s sister-in-law, related how this happened: We didn’t sell it [the property]; actually we did sell but didn’t get any money. Precisely on the Sabbath they [the Muslims] summoned my brother-in-law and my husband: “Come, sign!” But Moshe Gabbay said to them, “No! Today is the Sabbath. How can we sign?” And, after that, at 5:51 [p.m.] the tajmid [freezing of assets] was declared—that all property of Jews who leave Iraq would belong to the state. At 5:51! I remember that we all turned cold as ice! Because we had a lot of property: seventy stores and two caravansaries, and a gas station, and our house and the house of my brother-in-law that had twenty rooms. A two-storey house! . . . And we lost everything! We locked the house with all the carpets and all the other things inside and left. . . . That was a blow! I don’t know whether anyone could survive it. The property of generations, property belonging to our forefathers and to ourselves.14

Real and Imaginary Conflicts in the Community On the whole, Zakho’s Jews received with joy the news that aliyah was imminent. After years of living in Israel, when they looked back they interpreted it as true Zionism. But their enthusiasm at the time is reminiscent of religious fervor, as is evident from the description supplied by Na‘ima Cohen: “After they [i.e., the Israeli forces] were victorious and the state [of Israel] was established, my family conducted a “henna night,”15 because they said [that] registration has already begun, all are going to Eretz Israel, the old and the young. Until daybreak they remained at our place and danced. What is Zionism? That is Zionism!”16 However, fear and hesitation were other reactions within the community. Yona Sabar told me, “I want to say that not everyone wanted to come on aliyah. There were conflicts within certain families that were not so keen 321

01 Chapters.indd 321

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

on aliyah [particularly for economic reasons]. Until 1940–41, there were Jews from Zakho who went on aliyah and returned. When they were asked, ‘Why did you come back?’ they would answer, ‘Because we couldn’t make a living.’” Thus, it may be assumed that the return of people from Eretz Israel prior to the establishment of Israel influenced the decision about whether to immigrate to Israel in the 1950s.17 But Yona Sabar also noted additional elements that had a negative influence on the decision to emigrate: “Uprooting is another matter. There were those who felt that they were more Kurdish. Aliyah was only a matter for prayers, something abstract. When it arrived [i.e., became possible], it meant giving up the former life and taking leave of non-Jewish friends, and saying goodbye to a lifestyle that was tangible up to that very minute, and then there was the matter of property that had to be sold and relinquished.” Sabar remembers that it was these families, the ones who were not happy about aliyah, that were also the first to say, “We told you so” when the olim faced the harsh reality of life in the early years of Israel. The conflict between the younger people and the community’s wealthy families erupted after the first group had left Zakho. Meir Zaqen, one of the younger generation who had met underground emissary Menahem Aloni in 1949, told us, “All we thought about at that time was when we would come on aliyah to Israel. Morning, evening, noon. We thought only of when our turn will come and we would go on aliyah.” Meir, who was conscious of Zionism at that time, spoke in the first-person plural years later when he wanted to describe the situation in the community: “We were Zionists without knowing what Zionism was. We would sit at night in the home of my father-in-law, whose name was Salih Daud, of blessed memory. He was also one of the city’s [i.e., community’s] leaders and a respected figure. We, the younger people and persons my age, would sit in his home during the nights. At that time, we said, ‘If every way [for aliyah] will be blocked to us, we shall reach a stage of despair and even of suicide.’” The young people, he himself first and foremost, accused the community’s rich of “seemingly inhibiting aliyah.” Although he did not mention anyone by name, from his earlier singling out the great wealth of Moshe Gabbay we may assume that such criticism was aimed at him. Years after the event, Meir admitted, “Perhaps we were wrong. It could be that the delay in aliyah was connected to Baghdad, with the Zionist movement there—I don’t know. It could also be that the delay was due to the authorities. To this day, I don’t know the reason for the delay of several months between the first and second groups.”18 That is how Meir Zaqen ended his story years later, when he was more calm and collected and expressed doubts about his youthful convictions. The government of Israel slowed aliyah because of the difficulty of ab322

01 Chapters.indd 322

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

sorbing masses of olim, though this was not known to the Jewish public in Iraq—not in Baghdad and certainly not in outlying cities—but only to a handful of people in the Zionist movement there.19 It was then, in May 1950, that Romania opened its gates, allowing mass emigration of its Jewish population, and within a year more than 62,000 immigrants arrived in Israel from that country. When the government of Israel had to choose which of these two “rescue aliyah” operations would take priority, the choice was Romania. Finally, on 14 January 1951, the government did acknowledge that Iraq’s Jews were in a state of emergency and that they, too, required a “rescue aliyah” operation. Between March and July of that year, a great portion of the Iraqi Jewish community, more than 55,000 people, was evacuated to Israel.20 Meir Zaqen continued to describe how he organized matters, both in his home and in the synagogue: “So I began to organize a few youngsters who were two years younger than me and told them, ‘We won’t keep quiet!’ And where did all these things take place? In the synagogues and from time to time even in our home.”21 At his home, they debated, “Why are we not going on aliyah?” and pointed an accusing finger at Zakho’s wealthy Jews. Meir told me that they chose an aliyah committee and that, in addition to him, its members were Zvi Hayuka, Mordechai Shar‘abi, the mukhtar of the community, among others. Everything was done at Meir’s initiative, though he was then only about twenty years old. Just as in the case of Mazliah Kol, he needed the support of older persons: A few more people were added to our aliyah committee. I was the cause of that. I did not hold a status of much importance because there age was important. I had to look for people who were at least ten years older than me and of some repute. I was, like they say, only a boy, but in truth I was the moving spirit. I remember that I convinced my brother to go to Baghdad and find out what was happening there because I was crazy about [going to] Israel. And, really, the matter seemed to move . . . I don’t know how or why it moved, whether because of the Iraqi authorities or because of the Zionist movement in Baghdad.

This was a period of confusion in Zakho. Meir told about the atmosphere at the time: “We would argue in the synagogue between Minhah and Ma‘ariv.22 At times the arguments were in gentle tones, whereas at other times they were threatening, and we would say [to the wealthy of the community], ‘You are causing the delay; you are the reason for it.’ And again I tell you that I 323

01 Chapters.indd 323

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

don’t know whether we were right. Perhaps we were and perhaps not. I don’t know.” Once again, that was Meir Zaqen’s conclusion to his testimony many years after the event, when he looked upon it more calmly and expressed doubts about his youthful convictions.23 In retrospect, we may ask whether there was truly a conflict in Zakho between young Zionists burning to set out on aliyah and the wealthy members of the community and its leadership who hesitated and were seemingly anti-Zionists. Were they really on opposite sides of the fence? Was Moshe Gabbay, who hosted emissaries of the Zionist underground in his home at great personal risk, really anti-Zionist? Nehemiah Hocha claimed that “the wealthy did not want to come on aliyah. The Gabbay family hated Zionism, but they had to come; they were forced to come.”24 Shlomo Duga said, There were about twenty families [that wanted to remain], but in the end they realized that they had no choice. Zakho is not Baghdad, where there were fifty to sixty thousand Jews. There were only a few thousand [in Zakho]. So if they saw, for example, that this wealthy man had a daughter who was married to a man who went on aliyah, and his [the wealthy man’s] sister is married into another family [that emigrated], how could he stay? Alone? He had no choice! In the end, they came on aliyah to the very last wealthy man!25

Most Zakho Jews did not consider Moshe Gabbay and other wealthy families as being anti-Zionist, but instead maintained that economic aspects made those families put off their aliyah. That is what was argued by Zaki Levi, a member of a wealthy Zakho family, who was in Baghdad from the age of seventeen and helped Jews from Zakho on their way to Israel: “[There were only] two or three families, especially those with property, not cash money” who did not want to emigrate. “This was mostly hesitation, not unwillingness. They feared that they were about to lose everything, so they didn’t want to make haste.” Further on in his testimony, he differentiated between those who stood aside passively to see how matters developed and those who were opposed to aliyah: “There is a difference between being careful and opposition. I differentiate between the two completely. The opposite is true. Not only did they [wealthy families] not oppose, they lent a helping hand. But, how do you say? A ‘fleshpot’ is also to some extent a thorn in the side.”26 Salim Gabbay, Moshe’s son, also related to the economic aspects that delayed his family. He protested fiercely against the claim that his father was opposed to or hated Zionism and did not want to come on aliyah. Because 324

01 Chapters.indd 324

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

it owned much property, the Gabbay family needed much more time to prepare for emigration than did other families: “In the end, we decided to come on aliyah to Israel. We began to sell off our assets.” But the prospective buyers kept delaying the purchase: They said, “They are leaving, so we will buy them [the properties] from the government at half price.” . . . And that’s the story. We didn’t have enough time. We registered for aliyah. If we didn’t want to come on aliyah, we would not have registered. But we wanted to go on aliyah. We waited until we could also sell. In the end, it did not turn out that way; we didn’t have enough time. That was the problem, and I say again that, if we didn’t want to come on aliyah, we would have remained.27

In the end, the Gabbay family came to Israel in abject poverty, part of the last group that left Zakho for Israel. Moshe Gabbay passed away in Jerusalem in 1969. All that was related by my interviewees indicates that the confrontation between the younger generation and the communal leadership in Zakho was not the result of a conflict between young Zionists and anti-Zionist elders or wealthy members of the community. This terminology also does not apply to the conflict in Baghdad, where the Zionist movement had been active for many years. There was a political confrontation in Baghdad in 1949 between the younger members of the movement and the communal leadership led by Rabbi Sasson Kadduri. After a Jewish Communist informed to the authorities against some Zionists who were arrested, the community’s leaders hesitated to intervene on their behalf, fearing that the Iraqi government exact its revenge against them. As a result of this conflict, Rabbi Kadduri was deposed, and his replacement cooperated with the Zionist movement. Although there were no active Zionists in the communal leadership, its members did not take steps against the movement and should therefore not be termed antiZionists. The conflict in Baghdad and its results were an indication of the rising power of the younger Zionists who replaced the traditional leadership and organized everything necessary for aliyah.28 The narratives by Mazliah Kol and Meir Zaqen point to the early stages of the breakdown of the old social order in Zakho—one that had been controlled by a few individuals owing to their social and economic status. The younger generation now gained increasing importance in the traditional patriarchal society because of the winds of change engendered by the rumor 325

01 Chapters.indd 325

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

Moshe Gabbay (right) during a prayer of thanksgiving in the Qastel immigrant transit camp near Jerusalem, 1951. Courtesy of his grandson, David Gabbay.

about aliyah. The young people sought a pretext to change the social order, and this was provided by Zionism and aliyah. The social upheaval was completed when the aliyah operation came to an end—in Israel. Longing for social change was not restricted to younger people. It also reflected the feelings of the lower classes in the Jewish community. Zaki Levi expressed this very well: Aliyah came upon us suddenly. This was not something that had a process such as, first, consciousness and, then, individual deliberation, whether yes or no. It came like a bolt out of the blue, in one day! And the masses awakened . . . the masses awakened, the masses. Yes, these were truly masses, because in Zakho there were heads of “tribes,” heads of communities, and the head is generally one or two people. But the tribalism, the extended family, included many people. Perhaps these also wanted, among other things, to free 326

01 Chapters.indd 326

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

themselves from the yoke of this “monarchic” hierarchy in which there is always one who decides [for all] and all the others can’t say anything. It came about. I would describe it as a barrel that was on the verge of bursting, but the lid was lifted at the last moment. Very simply, instead of bursting, the lid was lifted.29

The desire to break out of existing social frameworks through the agency of aliyah to Israel also comes through in the stories by those who were children in Zakho—narratives that in part reflect the world of their parents. Yona Sabar, who came to Israel in April 1951 at the age of twelve as part of the second group of olim, told me, “When aliyah was imminent, Eretz Israel became part of the daily consciousness of the children. The children were very excited; they loved change. The children did not take an interest in Zionism, but very much wanted a change, to move to a new place. We would try to speed things up with legends. We sat in the home of Zvi Zaqen and began to dig a hole in the wall; we believed that Eretz Israel would appear behind that wall.”30 Their elders’ enthusiasm for aliyah rubbed off on the children, but in their own little world Eretz Israel assumed mystic proportions, like in the short story “Aftergrowth” by Hebrew poet and author Hayyim Nahman Bialik in which a child wanted to discover what existed beyond the wall.31 In more stories, Yona Sabar described additional aspirations and expectations that he and other children held: “In the days preceding our aliyah to Eretz Israel, when we already did not attend school, my aspiration was to become a pilot in Israel and then to fly and land in the middle of Zakho, so that the Gentiles would see [this] and remain open-mouthed, in shock.” The myth of the Israelis’ bravery and how they proudly held their heads high, no doubt repeated by the parents in Zakho, had its influence upon the children. In another story, Yona described the children’s desire to better their economic condition, a wish no doubt also held by their parents: “In the government school, not long before our aliyah, I heard from Gentiles about Zalman Barashi, a wealthy man who had immigrated to Eretz Israel and become a building contractor. We thought, ‘We shall go to Eretz Israel and become important people.’” Many years later, Sabar provided his own analysis of this story: “News of this reached Zakho. There were rumors and expectations that when the Jews would come to Eretz Israel their condition would improve economically. Zalman was from Barashi, not from Zakho, but the story got around.” Yona Sabar ended his narrative with another short story that reflects being freed of all restrictive social frameworks upon aliyah to Israel: “I remember the day when we threw our [school] bags in the air 327

01 Chapters.indd 327

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

and never returned to them. There was a feeling of emancipation, no more burdens—that, to a certain extent, was associated with Eretz Israel.”32 The sense of emancipation, the breaking through and out of constricting frameworks, and the social upheaval that was experienced by their parents, in addition to the last three groups setting out on aliyah close to Passover, the festival signifying the freeing of the Children of Israel, no doubt influenced the children and fired their imagination.

Leave-taking: “Your Soul Went with the Jews” Aliyah to Israel implied not only social, but also national, emancipation. Zakho’s Jews, a minority that was at the mercy of its Kurdish neighbors, were about to free themselves from dependence upon others and from inferior status; they would achieve their own national emancipation in Israel. On the whole, relations between Kurds and Jews were generally good despite some periods of decline, especially during Israel’s War of Independence or harassment by individual Muslims. The news that the Jews were to be deprived of Iraqi citizenship hit their Kurdish neighbors like a thunderbolt. When they realized that the Jews were about to leave, their attitude toward Jews took an extreme turn for the better as they realized the great loss to the city and its economy. There was cultural affinity between Jews and Kurds: both followed a similar lifestyle; held the same values in relation to marriage, the family, and honor; placed their faith in the same occult beliefs; and venerated the same sacred tombs.33 The collective memory of Zakho’s Jews reflects the great sorrow of the Kurds at the Jews’ departure not only because it came as such a surprise, but also because the Kurds felt that they could no longer bully and browbeat their Jewish neighbors. The Kurds did not want to rid themselves of the Jews. Meir Zaqen, who went on at length about the period prior to the Jewish exodus from Zakho, described a “Jewish leliyye,” a henna ceremony that Jews conducted for a young Muslim man about to be married. This fellow worked as a waiter in a café. Among those present during the ceremony was a Kurdish barber, who, despite his friendship with Jews, was capable of behaving violently toward them when inflamed by a Friday sermon in the mosque. Meir said, “We sat all night . . . embracing each other and they cried and embraced us because they knew that the entire matter was no longer under their control.”34 National pride exhibited by Jews at this time was a reflection of an innermost conviction that they were equals among equals. Meir told how he once had the audacity to provoke Haji Ahmed, one of his enemies: “I told 328

01 Chapters.indd 328

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

him things you won’t believe. . . : ‘We’ll finish you off, just wait and see what we will do to you when we reach Eretz Israel.’” He had this to tell about how they held their heads up high as Jews: We held a Sehrane celebration after we had registered as immigrants to Eretz Israel. We danced in the rain, and we also danced in the streets. We crossed a bridge, the Sa‘adon Bridge, and passed near the home of Haji Ahmed and past the cafés that Jews used to frequent. There we danced and cried out, “Long live Chaim Weizmann!” The person who yelled this was Avraham Bechavod, . . . he danced and we lifted him with our hands and he cried out, “Long live Chaim Weizmann!” . . . Who could have dared say this six months earlier?

As the date of departure drew near, “they were very keen on us when they heard we were emigrating,” related Meir Zaqen. “They regretted this. We were the tailors and shoemakers in the city. Commerce was in our hands . . . and they said, ‘The Jews are leaving already. Nothing is left.’” When I asked Meir, “But if they could get all of your property?” he replied, “What property did they get? ‘A plague’ is what they got! They got a desolate city whose commerce collapsed after we left.” In a sarcastic tone, he added, “They got our homes?”35 Meir told the following about taking leave from Zakho: “It so happened that our group [the second one] was very large. . . . On the eve of our aliyah, Muslims—men and women—came down to our neighborhood and cried. This was very moving.”36 Gurji Zaqen related, “During the evenings, a might before the departure, a delegation of Muslims visited the homes of the Jews and cried. There was a case in which one of them almost died as he knocked his head against a utility pole [while crying out]: ‘Ah, ah, where are my brothers going?’” They also wanted the Jews to leave happily. “And there were cases in which they rented a dola and a zirne 37 and went to the neighborhood [whose residents] were leaving tomorrow, went from house to house to make them merry.”38 Salih Hocha, who headed the third group of emigrants, told about the leave-taking from the Kurdish notables and the family of Shamdin Agha, the richest family in Zakho, which had placed the Jews under its protection. Salih was a close acquaintance of this family because he had been employed as an accountant by Hazim Bak: “They took their leave of us, Hazim Bak, Haji Agha, and additional notables. We went to them and begged their pardon. We would say goodbye to them, thank them. They said to us, ‘We worked together. It was pleasant to share your company.’ Truly, they wept.” That 329

01 Chapters.indd 329

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

is how the Kurds took leave of the Jews of Zakho, but the same congenial atmosphere was not present everywhere. Salih told me what he knew about the exodus from some villages: “According to what we heard, just as the Jews left there, stones were thrown at their bus. They fled.”39 Salim Gabbay, who left Zakho with the last group of emigrants, said, “We left with much rejoicing. . . . On both sides stood Gentiles and, as the convoys of our vehicles passed, they cried. This was the only city in Kurdistan from which the Jews departed in this manner.”40 The story that reflects more than any other the sorrow of the Kurds at the departure of their Jewish neighbors is that told about Abdul Karim Agha, Zakho’s chief of police, who ensured the safety of the emigrants and accompanied the first three groups as far as Mosul, but suddenly passed away before the fourth left. Many thought of him as a truly benign Gentile, though a few believed that he was not so altruistic and had received economic recompense.41 According to Gurji Zaqen, some of the olim in the third group even returned to Zakho for Abdul Karim’s funeral: “They saw how his wife mounted his horse and bore all his weapons: bandoliers full of bullets, a pistol here and a sword there, and a rifle on her shoulder. She donned his clothes and led the funeral procession, the convoy, and called out, ‘Your soul went with the Jews.’”42 The Kurds’ sorrowful reaction to the Jews’ departure from Zakho was sincere. The Kurds were themselves a minority society in Iraq, marked by conservative tribal fidelity, and on the whole maintained good relations with the Jews in contrast to the Iraqis, who considered themselves loyal to the state and to pan-Arabism and therefore treated the Jews roughly. Though the Kurds controlled the Jews, they saw them as an integral part of their society. It may be assumed that the Kurds, with a sixth sense, realized that the Jewish exodus from Zakho meant that they were about to lose an organic element of the economic, cultural, and human fabric that had existed for hundreds of years.

Torah Scrolls: A Bridge over the Abyss The absorption of Zakho’s Jews in Israel is outside the scope of this study. However, it is appropriate to round out the various issues we have discussed by noting that the hierarchical structure of Jewish society in Zakho collapsed completely in Israel. The social pyramid came apart at the seams, the patriarchal structure was severely shaken, and the status of women also changed. The Gabbay family, which had lost all its wealth, was also deprived of its spe330

01 Chapters.indd 330

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

cial social status while the fortunes of other families, such as Ela, took a turn for the better in Israel.43 In Zakho women were of a lowly status inside and outside their homes; received inferior education, if any; and were doomed to spend their entire lives at household chores. Once in Israel, their voices began to be heard, and their status rose both in family circles and in society.44 Yet, despite the collapse of traditional social patterns, Zakho’s Jews who emigrated in the 1950s sought to remain close one to another. They maintained social unity, residing together in their own quarters in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood, just as earlier olim from Kurdistan who arrived prior to the establishment of Israel had concentrated in neighborhoods around the Mahaneh Yehudah Quarter. This may be attributed to the religious and traditional leanings that Zakho Jews continued to express through their synagogues after arriving in Israel. Paradoxically, the standard bearers of religion and tradition were the two young “Zionists” Mazliah Kol and Meir Zaqen. Despite the turmoil that seized the community in Zakho as it prepared for aliyah, they gave some thought to the fate of the Torah scrolls and took steps to bring them to Israel. Mazliah, who came with the first group of emigrants, told me that the case of the Torah scroll he brought with him was made of solid silver. He believes that it was stolen at the airport when they arrived in Israel.45 Meir Zaqen managed to bring to Israel an old Torah scroll from the Midrash Synagogue in Zakho, his family’s synagogue and the largest in the community. To do so, he expended much effort and had to overcome last-minute obstacles. He related this episode in a lengthy personal memory narrative. Because of its importance, I shall reproduce it in its entirety: What happened to the Torah scroll that was in our synagogue? A few days or weeks earlier [i.e., prior to the date of departure], I talked to a cousin of my father, who [the cousin] during the final period collected the money [that was donated to the synagogue by those called to the reading of the Torah]. I am speaking of the synagogue of the Zaqen family. Hakham Avraham Zaqen, who is a cousin of my father, was responsible for monetary matters during the final years. I came to him and asked, “What shall we do with the Torah scroll of the ‘Midrash?’” And now, I shouldn’t say this, but it is thanks to me. No one in the community, from the great synagogue or the small synagogue, took any initiative in this matter. I think that there was one case, but it was not done formally as I did. No one said, “What shall we do with the Torah scrolls?” He [Avra-

331

01 Chapters.indd 331

10/8/09 1:34 PM

The Torah scroll brought from Zakho and placed in the Zekhut Avot Synagogue in Jerusalem. Photo courtesy of Dov Gavish.

01 Chapters.indd 332

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

ham Zaqen] told me, “Take a Torah scroll that in any case belongs to you—meaning to my father and grandfather—that is [in a case] of solid silver, take it! Take it with you.”46

Meir and other Jews from Zakho were staying in one of the larger synagogues in Baghdad. They spent their time in cafés or went to movies and squandered their money because they had been warned by movement members that, “prior to boarding the plane, you will be checked by a machine that will discover every grush 47 in your pockets and then they [the authorities] may leave you here.” Before leaving for the airport, Meir was told, “Sir, you cannot take the Torah scroll aboard [the plane]. You have to pay for its weight or leave it.” Meir replied, “We’re boarding in another hour. You tell me not to take it. I don’t have any money left,” for they had squandered it for fear that it would be found in their possession at the customs checkpoint. Here Meir’s story took a dramatic turn, owing to the short time left and his great aspiration to take the Torah scroll with him: “I had about ninety agorot.48 Ninety agorot were worth something there, and they were in my pocket. I kept them to buy ice cream or something else to eat, or to go to the movies, but this was not enough to pay twelve dinars.49 Twelve dinars was a very significant [sum] during that last hour. There were people who hid twelve or fifty dinars in the heel of their shoe, but that was not for that purpose.” At the last minute, Meir came up with a solution: “They told me what they told me, and I left the family and ran to a certain hotel that was called Hotel Shatt al-‘Arab. I knew that there was a Jew from our community there, a wealthy person from our community named Moshe Mehager; he passed away in Israel.” Mehager complied with Meir’s request for money and was even prepared to give him more “because a person who had money at that time sought out people who didn’t have money. Let him even go and buy himself suits, watches, nice coats, and return it [the money] here [i.e., in Israel], because you were not allowed to take out money.” Meir continued his story while heightening the drama: Let’s return to the story about the Torah scroll. I ran to that Moshe Mehager and said, “Moshe, I need twelve dinars. Suddenly, at the last minute, really minutes, they tell me that I need to pay for the Torah scroll.” He said, “Take!” and gave me [the money]. I began running. I left [the hotel]. He ran after me, and this actually was on the main thoroughfare of Baghdad, Bab al-‘Azam, which is like Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. So he came out after me and called, “Meir! 333

01 Chapters.indd 333

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

Meir!” I said, “Yes?” He asked, “Do you want more money?” I replied, “No, we are about to board the plane.”

Meir provided me with an explanation of why he did not accept more money: “I did not know what to do with the few grush that were left in my pocket, so I said, “There is no need.” This chapter in Meir Zaqen’s lengthy narrative ended with a few laconic sentences that left us hanging as we identified with the great tension he experienced at the time: “I came, gave, received a receipt, and we took the Torah scroll aboard [the plane]. We took it with our baggage, with our suitcases.” But Meir’s action-filled story had not yet come to an end: “I said to myself that now we are leaving Iraq, no one can do anything, the plane is on the way.” He was the last to board the plane, holding the Torah scroll in one hand and waving a red-and-blue handkerchief at a group of Jews in the second plane. This scene angered a Kurd who was an employee at the airport and had been born in Zakho. He expressed his anger, humiliation, and hurt at the departure of Zakho’s Jews in a sentence that was traumatically inscribed in Meir’s memory: “Shame on you! Isn’t it enough?” Meir said this in Kurdish, so that I would sense the full significance of the words: “Sharem bika” [Shame on you!], “Na wasa? ” [Isn’t it enough?]. Meir ended his story: “Why did I repeat this? In order to show how much it hurt them that we emigrated. Their hurt was real.” That was the final accord to a lengthy, multiepisode, personal memory narrative about the association of the Torah with Eretz Israel and Meir’s joy at leaving Iraq against the backdrop of economic problems, conflicts, and the unique relations between Jews and Kurds in Zakho. Meir not only expended great effort to bring the Torah scroll with him; once in Israel, he felt that he had to find a fitting home for it—one that would do it honor. A synagogue was established because of this specific Torah scroll; it bears a plaque noting that it is a direct continuator of the former Midrash Synagogue in Zakho. Due to its name, Zekhut Avot (lit. “the merits of our ancestors”), which symbolizes for Zakho Jews the connection to their past, Meir was able to raise the money needed to build the synagogue in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem and to place the Torah scroll in this repository.50 Though additional Torah scrolls were brought by the later groups of olim,51 it is important to try to fathom the particular significance of the Torah scrolls, symbols of religiosity and tradition, being brought to Israel with no small effort by Mazliah Kol and Meir Zaqen, two young men whom the spirit of Zionism motivated to revolt against tradition. It may be that with insight they understood that Zionism and aliyah were important agents for 334

01 Chapters.indd 334

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Social Upheaval and National Emancipation

setting in motion the social upheaval that they felt their community needed. At the same time, they realized that religious practices must be preserved as the basis for an organic personal and communal identity, because the community was in need of a link connecting its past and its future. Whereas in Zakho the Torah scrolls and the synagogues were symbolic of the community’s deep emotional attachment to Eretz Israel, the establishment of synagogues such as Zekhut Avot in Israel and the old Torah scroll that was placed there became symbols of attachment to the past in Zakho, on the one hand, and the community’s continued existence in Israel, on the other. Several former Zakho Jews established synagogues in Israel, including Shlomo Salman Attiya, whose Yakhel Shlomo Synagogue was dedicated in 1959.52 This they did so as to make it clear that Zionism in Zakho was not opposed to Jewish religious tradition, and that tradition did not negate their new life in Israel.

All Came on Aliyah The aspects of Zionism to which the Jews of Zakho were exposed were very significant for their community, bearing in mind the events in Iraq. It is to the credit of the younger people that they did not hesitate, but instead urged the communal leadership to set out on aliyah without waiting for instructions from any higher authority. The spirit of aliyah can also be credited with being the catalyst that led to social upheaval within the community and to the internalization of the idea of national independence. This was a kind of revolt against the communal elite, whose modus operandi was incompatible with the new circumstances. It was quite obvious that, in the new reality of Iraq, the Jews had no other option. The same holds true for Zakho’s Jews. Perhaps there were those who wanted to remain, but to remain in the small communities of Kurdistan was hopeless. The communal leaders in some villages and cities, such as Arbil, located girls who had been abducted and forced to convert to Islam, and took them along when they immigrated to Israel. Salih Nuriel, of Arbil, testified, “I was the very last. Up to the Turkish border [and] the Iranian [border] were Jews isolated in villages, four or five families in each village. They knew about aliyah but [the local rulers] did not let them [go].”53 There were Jews in Zakho who had converted to Islam and now wanted to come to Israel; some of them did indeed do so.54 There are no exact statistics regarding the number of Jews who remained in Iraq, only estimates provided by various publications. These range from 5,000 to 12,000, mostly in Baghdad rather than the peripheral cities.55 In remote Zakho, no one had a choice because all emigrated. Aliyah took them 335

01 Chapters.indd 335

10/8/09 1:34 PM

C hapte r 8

by surprise. The whole process was forced upon Zakho’s Jews without any relation to Zionist inclinations, and, between October 1950 and May 1951, all of them came to Israel. When my session with Mazliah Kol in 1987 drew to a close, he told me that the interview had stirred him so much that it caused him pain. When I asked, “Why? Because it was impossible to return to Zakho?” he replied, “No, I have seen nicer places than that.” “Then why?” “Because we didn’t know how to leave there sooner.”

336

01 Chapters.indd 336

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Epilogue

The objective of this study, as was set out in the preface, is an analysis of the changes in the Jewish community of Zakho resulting from its traditional emotional attachment to the Holy Land, exposure to Zionist activity, and immigration to Eretz Israel and the State of Israel until its aliyah en masse in 1951. Mazliah Kol’s summation of the aliyah process at the end of the previous chapter reflects the long mental and emotional distance come by members of the community and the social upheaval they experienced: from a remote, traditional community with an abstract emotional relationship to Eretz Israel and Jerusalem, through the development of Zionist consciousness, followed by aliyah and putting down roots in the State of Israel. Zakho’s Jews became conscious of Zionism at a late stage, during World War II. In fact, some of them admitted to developing Zionist consciousness ex post facto, after their aliyah to Israel in 1950–51. Many repeated over and over again, “We were Zionists without knowing that we were Zionists.” They were certainly correct, for if the meaning of Zionism lies in practical action, such as aliyah or manual labor, there is no doubt that Zakho Jews were Zionists when they came on aliyah prior to the establishment of Israel and before they even heard of the concept of Zionism. If the meaning of Zionism is social upheaval and a sense of national emancipation, then these were present in the community in anticipation of the wave of aliyah in the early 1950s. All this happened without the establishment of a local branch of the Zionist movement or Zionist ideological indoctrination. Zionism in Zakho did not arise as a revolt against tradition and long-standing values; on the contrary, it was their natural continuator. Though resting on the foundations of religious tradition, Zakho’s Zionism had additional elements such as Jewish national pride—itself influenced by 337

01 Chapters.indd 337

10/8/09 1:34 PM

epilogue

Kurdish national pride—that colored it in a religious-nationalist hue. Everything that happened in Zakho testifies to the ability of religious Zionism to stimulate a process of change in the community—a process that was influenced both by the non-Jewish environment in which they lived and by social upheavals in Iraq in general. The absorption of Zakho’s Jews in Israel is outside the scope of this study, but it is a general truth that they—like other Oriental Jewish ethnic communities—experienced momentous changes in their lifestyle after immigrating to Israel. They passed from a patriarchal to a democratic way of life; economically, many experienced a great reversal of fortune that impoverished the wealthy and enriched some of the poor by turning them into successful entrepreneurs; their women went to work and in time gained equal status with men; and children, who in Zakho studied primarily in the traditional heder, the religious school, were educated in the state system. Despite all this, former Zakho Jews in Israel have preserved certain traditional aspects of the communal life in their former home. It is this that made it easier for them to cope with the different reality of life in Israel and had a positive influence on their absorption. Each individual maintained his or her tribal loyalty, while the community, as a group, maintained its unity and traditional character. Moreover, olim from Zakho preferred to concentrate in Jerusalem, sticking together in specific neighborhoods and quarters. This held a great advantage, particularly for individuals who were encouraged by the community that backed them socially and culturally. Thus, they did not lose their self-identity and were more easily able to adapt to life in Israel, even if this did somewhat slow the advancement of those who were capable of escaping the communal framework to strike roots more quickly in the veteran Israeli society that absorbed them. Varda Shilo, who is actively engaged in preserving the folklore of Zakho Jewry, came to Israel with the third group of olim. She has published three books on this theme. In an interview, she told me of her last experience in Iraq and the first thing she experienced in Israel, of the excitement and sense of emancipation that enveloped her as she boarded the plane in Baghdad, even though she and others had to leave behind most of their belongings: What we left there was left there. We came with nothing. In short, when we boarded the plane we were so happy, joyful, we thought of nothing, nothing! Let [our belongings] be lost! In Eretz Israel, who knows if we will have any need of clothes or food? We are turning into angels! . . . I traveled with them to the Qastel.1 They brought us at night to a hill, all rocks, without anything. A large hill, in pitch 338

01 Chapters.indd 338

10/8/09 1:34 PM

epilogue

dark. There was no building, no house, nothing. Out in the open, and dark. Without water, without anything. They told us, “Stay here. Put up these beds; lie in them until tomorrow out in the open. Tomorrow we’ll see what we shall do.” Thus, out in the open, there. And we did not complain. We began to dance because we were cold. We began to dance until the first light of dawn and were happy that we had reached Eretz Israel. We said, “From this hill one can see the Western Wall, Jerusalem.” Wow! We’re near Jerusalem! Enough! That’s all the joy! That’s our life. No more! Nothing will anger us any more. We danced. We danced until the first light of dawn.2

339

01 Chapters.indd 339

10/8/09 1:34 PM

01 Chapters.indd 340

10/8/09 1:34 PM

Interviewees Biographies of Members of the Zakho Community Adika, Baruch

Born in Zakho. At the time I interviewed him, he was about ninety years old. A merchant in Zakho, he moved to Syria in 1932 and was a money changer in Qamishliye. He helped in the aliyah of Jews from Zakho who reached Syria, were stuck for a time in Qamishliye, and faced problems of language and becoming accustomed to their new surroundings. In 1937, he extended his help to David Salman, and two years later to David’s father Eliahu. Baruch came on aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1939 and settled down in Jerusalem. He first worked as a laborer on construction sites, advanced to foreman, and later established his own construction company. Interviewed on 26 October 1993. Passed away in 1996. ‘Alwan, Esther

Born in Jerusalem in 1921. Wife of Haviv ‘Alwan. Her father, Salih Zadok, was born in Zakho, and her mother in nearby Dohuk. Her father came on aliyah through Syria and took up residence in Jerusalem. Esther is a housewife. Interviewed on 23 July 1987. ‘Alwan, Haviv

Born in Zakho in 1911, the son of Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan. He was trained in various religious occupations such as ritual slaughtering, copying of Scripture, and circumcision, and also studied religious law. In 1927, he came on aliyah together with Rabbi Shmuel Baruch and Rabbi Ya‘akov Shalom, who returned to Eretz Israel after an eleven-month mission to Kurdistan. In Jerusalem, he stayed in the home of Netanel Cohen, one of the heads of the Kurdish community in that city. In 1933, he helped his father, a rabbi, come on aliyah. That same year, together with his cousin Rabbi Mordechai ‘Alwan, he established two religious study institutions for the Kurdish community in Jerusalem: a school for children and a yeshivah for older people. He was always active in educational efforts and had many pupils. When Kurdish Jewry arrived in Israel in the early 1950s, Haviv was very much involved in 341

02 Gavish BM.indd 341

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

their absorption; in fact, he told me it was said of him that he was “a oneman Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.” Together with public bodies, he did much to preserve the cultural heritage of Kurdish Jewry. He made his living by copying Torah scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzot (parchment scrolls, affixed to doorposts, containing passages from Deuteronomy), all of which were to be written by hand. For all his efforts on behalf of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem, he was awarded the title Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy of Jerusalem). Interviewed on 19 and 23 July 1987. Passed away in 2007. Azati [Zebariko], Noah

Born in Zakho in 1930. His family engaged in itinerant peddling while he, as a boy, was a raftsman. In 1948, he was arrested together with fourteen other Jews in the “Tee, tee, tee, Israel” episode described in the preface. After arriving in Israel and settling in Jerusalem, he was employed as an instructor in moshavim (smallholder settlements) by the Jewish Agency. Interviewed on 1 January and 3 May 1993. Passed away in 1997. Baruch, Eliahu

Born in Zakho in 1925. Son of Rabbi Shmuel Baruch. When he was about two weeks old, he was brought to Eretz Israel with a group of olim organized by his father. He was employed as an accountant in the Israeli Postal Service and then in the Treasury Department of the Jerusalem Municipality. Afterward, he became a building contractor, but in the last two decades has devoted himself to public affairs, especially as a member of the Kurdish Burial Society in Jerusalem, founded by his father. Interviewed on 31 December 1992. Baruch, Shmuel

Born in Zakho in 1898. Rabbi and leader of the Kurdish Jewish community in Jerusalem. His father headed a rabbinical court in Zakho. At the age of eighteen, he was ordained by his father as a ritual slaughterer, circumciser, and officiator at marriages. He also served as a cantor in the synagogue. He married in 1925, at the age of twenty-seven, and convinced his wife Devorah to go on aliyah to Eretz Israel together with another ten or so families from Zakho. In Jerusalem, he was again ordained in all three functions by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ya‘akov Meir. He was active in establishing the Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem in the early 1930s and served as its secretary and treasurer. With the help of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, he brought the families of sixteen rabbis from Kurdistan to Eretz Israel. When the Zakho Jewish community emigrated en 342

02 Gavish BM.indd 342

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

masse in the early 1950s, he helped bring them to Jerusalem and the nearby Qastel settlement, and to immigrant transit camps in the Talpiot and Mekor Hayyim neighborhoods of Jerusalem. For all these efforts, he was awarded the title Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy of Jerusalem). He was involved in the establishment of the Kurdish Burial Society in Jerusalem and directed it for many years. Interviewed on 2 and 9 August 1987, 7 January 1993, 22 November 1993, 11 January 1994, and 9 February 1994. Passed away in 1996. Ben-Aharon, Batya

Born in Zakho in 1925. That year, when she was a few months old, her father, Baruch Zaqen, joined the group of olim organized by Shmuel Baruch. The family settled in the Nahlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem, and her father became an excavation contractor. From the age of eight, Batya was employed as a maid. She was a member of the Betar youth movement and had contacts with members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) underground movements. She was employed by the Jerusalem Workers’ Council. Today she is a housewife. Interviewed on 21 October 1993. Cohen, Hayyo

Born in Zakho in 1930. He was a pupil in a heder for several years and then worked with his father floating rafts of trees downriver. In 1948, at the age of seventeen, he was arrested together with fourteen others on the charge of expressing Zionist inclinations (the “Tee, tee, tee Israel” episode; see the preface) and spent three and a half years in jail. Upon his release, he immigrated to Israel in 1952. Hayyo worked for Israel Military Industries. His son was killed in action in 1974 after the Yom Kippur War. Interviewed on 3 December 1987. Cohen, Na‘ima

Born in Zakho. Wife of Hayyo Cohen, she came on aliyah to Israel in 1951 at the age of fifteen. Interviewed on 3 December 1987. Cohen, Rahamim

Born in Zakho in 1902. His father was a merchant. Rahamim was a pupil in a heder under Hakham Eliah Yosef ben Binyamin. He engaged in weaving fabrics and in preparing sheep intestines that were inflated to serve as floats for rafts. He came on aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1923 together with his wife and two children, but returned shortly later to Zakho because he could not earn a livelihood. He remained in Zakho for eleven years, engaging in 343

02 Gavish BM.indd 343

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

various professions, including teaching Jewish subjects in the state school for two years (1928–29). Rahamim came to Eretz Israel a second time in 1934 with his wife and four children and settled down in the Nahlaot neighborhood in Jerusalem. He worked as a construction laborer, a store clerk, and at various other jobs. During his last years, he engaged in the study of Torah. Interviewed on 8 and 11 November 1987. Passed away in 1992. Dahlika, Esther

Born in Zakho. The Dahlikas were the oldest Jewish family in Zakho. Esther’s daughter, Varda Shilo, has devoted herself to the preservation of Kurdish Jewish folklore in Zakho and was herself interviewed for this study. Esther came to Israel in the third group of olim from Zakho in 1951. Interviewed on 16 December 1987. Passed away in 1999. Dekel, Julia

Born in Zakho in 1902, into the Dahlika family, Julia Dekel was about eighty-five years old when interviewed in 1987. A teller of folktales, she came on aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1923, after three months of marriage. She and her family went through a very difficult period of absorption in Jerusalem. Julia worked in other households to help support the family. Her eldest son, Siman-Tov Mizrahi, was killed in action during Israel’s War of Independence while defending the road to Jerusalem. Interviewed on 6 December 1987. Passed away in 1996. Duga, Shlomo

Born in Zakho in 1935. He was a pupil in a heder taught by Hakham Moshe ‘Alwan and Hakham Mordechai Zebariko. As a child, he would accompany his father, who traded in lumber. He learned Hebrew by means of materials he received from pupils who studied with Nehemiah Hocha, who had connections with members of the Zionist underground in Mosul. Shlomo immigrated to Israel in the second group of olim from Zakho in 1951. He was employed by the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor) and was active in public affairs. Interviewed on 15 November 1987. Passed away in 1991. Gabbay, Haya

Born in Zakho in 1923 into the Ela family, which traded in fabrics. One of the few girls in Zakho who studied in the local state school until grade seven, she left school upon her marriage to Daniel Gabbay, brother of Moshe Gabbay, the last head of the community. She and her husband lived with Moshe Gabbay and his family and until moving into a home of their own. She and 344

02 Gavish BM.indd 344

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

her family came on aliyah with the third group of emigrants in 1951. Since Jewish assets in Iraq were frozen, the Gabbay family lost all of its extensive property. When her husband took ill in Israel, she had to support the entire family, including eleven children, by working as a seamstress. Interviewed on 16 November 1987. Gabbay, Salim

Born in Zakho in 1912, the third son of Moshe Gabbay, head of the community. He was first a pupil in a heder under Rabbis Shabetai ‘Alwan and Yitzhak Cohen. Since his father’s business called for contacts with Muslims and Christians, he studied at and graduated from a public school in Zakho. He then graduated from a high school in Arbil and studied two additional years in Mosul to complete matriculation, with the intention of studying medicine. Encouraged by his father, he studied medicine and dentistry in Baghdad. He was a physician and dentist in Arbil from 1938 to 1945. In 1945, his father wielded influence to find him a medical position in Zakho. He came to Israel with the fourth group of olim in 1951. In Israel, he was employed as a male nurse by Kuppat Holim (Workers’ Sick Fund) and at times as a dental practitioner. Interviewed on 26 November 1987. Passed away in 2003. Givati, Baruch

Born in Zakho in 1938. His family was originally named Go’idka. His father Aziz was a tailor in Zakho. His maternal grandfather, Ya‘akov Nahum Babbika was the hakham bashi (chief rabbi) of Zakho. He studied in a heder where his teacher was Hakham Murdach (Mordechai) and then two years in a state school. He came on aliyah to Israel with the first group in 1950. Today he is a practicing lawyer and is active in affairs of the Kurdish community. Interviewed on 22 November 1992. Golan, Zeev

Born in Zakho in 1936. His father, an itinerant peddler, was murdered when Zeev was about four years old. Ilya Hetteh smuggled him together with his mother, Esther Ajamiya, and his brothers into Syria in 1943, from where they made their way to Eretz Israel. Today he is a real estate agent. Interviewed on 22 July 1993. Gershon, Avner and Micha

Both were born in Jerusalem, Avner in 1937 and Micha in 1950, and are the sons of Meir Gershon, who was the mukhtar of the Kurdish commu345

02 Gavish BM.indd 345

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

nity in Jerusalem from 1944 to 1948 and a leading member of the Association of Kurdish Immigrants. Both sons are employed by Gershon and Sons Tours, which their father established in Jerusalem. Interviewed on 14 January 1992. Gershon, Meir

Born in Zakho in 1909. His father was the mukhtar of the Jews of Zakho. He immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1926, engaged in the transport of building materials, and in 1950 founded Gershon and Sons Tours. In 1944 he was appointed mukhtar of the Kurdish community of Jerusalem, a post he held until the establishment of Israel in 1948. He was among the founders of the Kurdish Burial Society in Jerusalem and a leading member of the Association of Kurdish Immigrants. He was awarded the title Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy of Jerusalem). Meir passed away in 1988. He was interviewed in 1985 and 1986 by his granddaughter Eleanor Shenhud for a paper she wrote in school about her family. A copy of the taped interviews was graciously placed at my disposal by the family. Hafzadi, Avraham

Born in Zakho in 1920. He studied in the beit midrash (religious school) in Zakho under Shabetai ‘Alwan, Mordechai ‘Alwani, and Sasson ‘Alwani. His father made the rounds of villages as a peddler. In 1934, at the age of fourteen, Avraham crossed the border into Syria and reached the home of Baruch ‘Adika, a relative of his, in Qamishliye. There he met Eliahu Salman and his family, including his son David Salman, who awaited an opportunity to immigrate illegally into Eretz Israel. After a year’s stay in Syria, Avraham managed to reach Eretz Israel with the help of an Arab sent to him by his uncle, Nahum Hafzadi, who was already in Palestine. He took up residence in the Zikhron Yosef Quarter in Jerusalem and worked in construction and for the government’s Public Works Department. Interviewed on 28 October 1993. Haviv, Shoshana

Born in Zakho. Wife of Tamar Haviv and the daughter of David Hocha, one of the important and wealthy families in Zakho. She came on aliyah to Israel at about the age of fifteen in 1951. She participated in the interview I conducted with her husband on 7 December 1987. Haviv, Tamar

Born in Zakho in 1929. Studied in a heder and in the state school until grade six. Because of the family’s financial condition, he left school and began to 346

02 Gavish BM.indd 346

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

work with his father, who floated rafts of trees downriver. He served for three months with the Iraqi army and then bought his discharge. He was one of the fifteen people imprisoned for professing Zionism in the episode I have called “Tee, tee, tee, Israel” (see the preface) and spent three and a half years in jail. Arrived in Israel on 24 February 1952. Interviewed on 7 December 1987. Hocha, Nehemiah

Born in Zakho in 1927. His father was engaged in cutting down trees, peddling, and the sale of gallnuts. At the age of four, Nehemiah contracted a serious eye disease and lost his sight. Hakham Meir Alfiya, who lived in Nehemiah’s home, advised his parents to teach him Torah so that he could make a living from his erudition in Jewish law. Nehemiah studied with Alfiya and with Hakham Mordechai and was considered a prodigy. He also studied Arabic in the state school and surprised all with his proficiency in the Koran. While yet in Zakho, he was renowned for his knowledge of songs and piyyutim (religious poems) in Kurdish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkish. In Zakho, he engaged in mysticism, charms, and healing. He joined the Zionist movement in 1948 and received materials from the Mosul branch for the study of modern Hebrew, as well as the texts of Hebrew songs. He taught these to a group of about twenty young boys, with the help of an Arabic-Hebrew dictionary and the assistance of Yona Sabar. Nehemiah came to Israel in 1951 in the third group of olim from Zakho and took up residence in Jerusalem, where he was an employee of the Jerusalem Municipality and engaged primarily in the study of Jewish law and as a cantor. He established a choir that appears on ceremonial occasions. Interviewed on 29 October 1987. Hocha, Rimziya

Born in Zakho in 1943, she is the daughter of Ilya Hetteh, who was active in the Zionist underground in Zakho. She came to Israel in 1951 and was employed by the Jerusalem Municipality. Interviewed on 1 November 1993. Hocha, Salih

Born in Zakho in 1918. His family engaged in commerce in fabrics, sheep, cedars of Lebanon, gallnuts, and more. He was a pupil in the heder of Hakham Ya‘akov and for about three years in the state school. From his father’s death until 1943, he engaged in various livelihoods while his mother, Zilpah, who was renowned for her wisdom and unique character, ran the home and the family. In 1943, he was appointed to the position of chief clerk and accountant for Hazim Bak, the head of the most important and 347

02 Gavish BM.indd 347

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

wealthiest Muslim Kurdish family that controlled Zakho. Salih worked for him until coming to Israel in 1951 at the head of the third group of olim. In Israel, he was at first employed by the Amidar housing company, but later bought a grocery store that he ran with the help of his children. Interviewed on 23 November 1987. Kol, Mazliah

Born in Zakho in 1926. His father and uncle, who lived in the same house, as was customary in Kurdistan, traded in fabrics and trees. He was a pupil in a heder under Hakham Levi and, after a few years, together with some other boys, transferred to the state school, where he studied for six years. After that, he completed his high-school studies in Mosul. He was recruited into the Iraqi army but discharged three months later after paying a ransom (bedel ). Together with Ephraim Ela, in 1950 he organized the first group of olim who went to Israel from Zakho. In Israel, he was employed as a construction worker and then as an employee of the Jerusalem Municipality. At the time of the interviews, he was an independent building contractor. Interviewed on 19 and 21 October 1987. Levi, ‘Amram

Born in Zakho. He was about ninety-five years old during the interview, and a leading member of the Zakho community. There he served as cantor and a teacher in a heder, with over eight hundred pupils from World War I to his aliyah in 1951. His father, Yosef Levi, was a judge on the religious court in Zakho. Interviewed on 15 January 1987. Passed away in 1989. Levi, Zaki

Born in Zakho in 1930 out in the field during the Sehrane festival conducted as part of the pilgrimage to the tomb of the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite in Alqōsh. His father, Yosef Shaul Levi, was a merchant who dealt in cloth, trees, and grain; a leader of the community; and a member of the Zakho Municipal Council. During World War I, the father was a supply officer in the Ottoman army and was able to help the community. Zaki studied in the heder of the great synagogue and was taught by Moshe ‘Alwan, Yitzhak Moshe Aharon, and Mordechai Davidov. He also learned ritual slaughtering from Avraham Zaqen and completed the full course of studies in the state public school. In 1947, he went to Baghdad to study in a high school. There he stayed with a family originally from Zakho and was employed as a shoemaker and a foreman on construction sites. In 1948, he was recruited

348

02 Gavish BM.indd 348

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

into the Iraqi army but discharged three months later after paying a ransom. When hostilities broke out in Eretz Israel, he helped Jews in Iraq evade military service and imprisonment and to reach Eretz Israel via Iran. He also helped olim from Zakho get to Baghdad. In Israel, he made a living working for contractor Zalman Barashi and in various other jobs. Zaki headed the committee of the Talpiot immigrant transit camp and was active in the Mapai political party and on the Jerusalem Municipal Council. He became a member of the executive of the Jerusalem District of the Kuppat Holim (Workers’ Sick Fund) and, after that, an insurance agent. Interviewed on 6 November 1987 and 17 August 1993. Levi, Zohara

Born in Tiberias, and a seamstress by profession, Zohara Levi is the daughter of the rabbinical emissary Ya‘akov Lubaton. She was about eighty years old during the interview. Interviewed on 8 March 1994. Miro, Yehoshua

Born in Zakho in 1927. A member of the Zaqen family and Meir Zaqen’s brother. He was the proprietor of a liquor store in Zakho and also helped his father, Miro Zaqen, who sold merchandise in villages around Zakho. As a young boy, he accompanied to Syria a refugee from the Rashīd ‘Alī pogrom in Baghdad who had fled to Zakho in order to make his way from there to Eretz Israel. Yehoshua then returned to Zakho. He built homemade bombs for community self-defense. In Israel, he served on the police force. Interviewed on 10 February 1987. Mizrahi, Salha

Born in Zakho in 1930. She married at the age of thirteen and moved to Baghdad. Salha is the daughter of Esther Ajamiya, whom Ilya Hetteh smuggled across the border into Syria in 1942. In 1945, Salha came to Eretz Israel illegally following the route taken three years earlier by her mother. Interviewed on 2 August 1993. Mizrahi, Simha

Born in Jerusalem in 1930. Her maternal grandparents, Yona and Geula, immigrated illegally to Eretz Israel in 1920–21 and settled in Jerusalem. Simha’s mother was three years old at the time. In 1934, her paternal grandparent also came to Eretz Israel and took up residence in Haifa. The other members of Simha’s large family came on aliyah in 1951, and she was very active in their absorption. Interviewed on 10 January 1987. 349

02 Gavish BM.indd 349

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

Mizrahi, Yehuda

Born in Jerusalem in 1920 and lived in the Nahlaot neighborhood. He is the brother of Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi (“Chuche”), who was head of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem. Yehuda was active in the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor) and in the Haganah (the paramilitary organization). He was employed by the Solel Boneh construction company. Interviewed on 27 July 1993. Mordechai [Darwish], Hananiah

Born in Zakho in 1930. At the age of three, his father passed away and Hananiah Mordechai, together with his brother, were brought up by their uncle, Ilya Hetteh. He was a pupil in the heder in Zakho under Hakham Levi. He helped his uncle smuggle olim from Zakho to Syria. In 1951, he immigrated to Eretz Israel, first living in the Qastel immigrant transit camp and then in the Mekor Haim transit camp. Mordechai served as secretary of the Printing Workers’ Union in Jerusalem. Interviewed on 5 and 19 August 1993. Sa‘ado, Mordechai

Born in Zakho in 1915. He worked as a raftsman and traded in lumber. He came on aliyah to Israel in 1951. Interviewed on 22 November 1987. Passed away in 2003. Sabar, Yona

Born in Zakho in 1938 to Miriam and Rahamin Sabbagh, and a grandson of Hakham Ephraim Sabbagh. Until the age of eight, he was a pupil in a heder and then continued his studies for five years in a state school. He came to Israel with the second group of olim from Zakho in April 1951 and spent the first difficult period of absorption with his family in the Talpiot immigrant transit camp in Jerusalem. Today he is a professor of semitic languages at UCLA. Interviewed on 27 July 1987 and 13 July 1993. Salman, David

Born in Zakho in 1921. In 1937, at the age of sixteen, he immigrated to Eretz Israel after his family had crossed the border from Iraq into Syria, but his father came only two years later in 1939. He worked in construction and later became a building contractor. David lived in the Nahlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem. He and his family received his uncle Shlomo Salman Attiya, who was active in underground activities in Iraq, and his family when they came on aliyah in the 1950s, and helped them settle. At first, David’s 350

02 Gavish BM.indd 350

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

family put the newcomers up in their own home until his uncle received accommodation in the Talpiot immigrant transit camp, and David’s family employed some of them for six years in the stone quarry that belonged to Eliahu Salman, David’s father. Interviewed on 28 July 1993. Salman, Mordechai

Born in Zakho in 1927, the son of Shlomo Salman Attiya. Mordechai came to Israel with the third group of olim from Zakho in 1951. For the first six years in Israel, he worked with other members of his family in the stone quarry of his uncle Eliahu Salman and later at various other jobs. His son was killed in action in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War. He continues the work of his father Shlomo Salman, who established the Yakhel Shlomo Synagogue, first in the Lifta Quarter of Jerusalem and, from 1959, in the Katamon neighborhood. Mordechai has built a new structure for the synagogue near its location in Katamon. Interviewed on 17 June 1999. Salman, Yona

Born in Zakho in 1938, the son of Shlomo Salman Attiya. He was one of eight children. His father and his uncle Eliahu Salman were active in smuggling illegal olim from Iraq to Syria. Yona studied in a heder under Moshe Aloni, Hakham Levi, Hakham Mordechai, and Hakham Menashe. His brother, Na‘im Salman, was among the fifteen arrested in the “Tee, tee, tee, Israel” episode (see the preface). Yona arrived in Israel in 1951. Interviewed on 23 December 1987 and 8 August and 17 November 1993. Shazo, Shabetai

Born in Zakho in 1923. Because of economic difficulties, his family moved to Baghdad when he was one year old. He attended Alliance Israélite Universelle public school and graduated from Mas‘udah Shem-Tov High School. Shabetai immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1938 by using a tourist visa to Syria, from where he continued with the help of smugglers. He was one of the initiators and founders of an organization whose objective was to help Zakho Jews engage in agriculture in Eretz Israel. Shabetai was one of the founders of the Kfar Azarya settlement in 1949, established with the help of government and Jewish Agency institutions and with the encouragement of Itzhak BenZvi. In 1952, he left Kfar Azarya together with several others and settled in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood. Interviewed on 8 December 1993. Shilo, Varda

Born in Zakho in 1933 into the Dahlika family. Her father traded in fabrics. 351

02 Gavish BM.indd 351

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

At an early age, she was sent to Baghdad because of the difficult economic circumstances of her family in Zakho, and worked in Jewish homes. She immigrated to Israel with her family in 1951 in the third group of olim from Zakho. The family went through the difficult process of acclimatization to Israel in the Talpiot immigrant transit camp in Jerusalem. Because of her parents’ ill health and their economic circumstances, she was forced to work during the day to support her family. In the evenings, despite her father’s objection, she attended night classes. Varda has devoted herself to preserving Kurdish-Jewish folklore and has published several books, including folktales of Zakho, a Kurdish recipe book, and a Hebrew–neo-Aramaic-Assyrian dictionary in the vernacular of the Jews of Zakho. In addition, she has prepared a video of wedding customs in Zakho. Interviewed on 4 October 1987. Shmuel, Murad

Born in Dohuk in 1928, Murad was the cousin of Na‘ima Shmuel, whom he married. He studied for two years in the state school. His family engaged in agriculture during the summer and weaving in the winter. He was recruited into the Iraqi army in 1946 and discharged three months later after paying a ransom. Murad and his family immigrated to Israel in 1951. Interviewed on 25 June 1987. Shmuel, Na‘ima

Born in Zakho in 1932. Her father and grandfather were weavers of cloth. In 1941–42, her family tried to immigrate illegally to Eretz Israel through Syria, but the attempt failed and they were forced to return to Zakho after suffering many hardships. As punishment for the family’s attempted emigration, her brother Zechariah had to serve a double term in the Iraqi army in Baghdad, five years in all. For that reason, the family moved to Baghdad when Na‘ima was fourteen years old. After the establishment of Israel and in the wake of harsh measures by the Iraqi authorities against Jews in Baghdad, the family moved to Dohuk, a city near Zakho, where her brother Zechariah passed away. Na‘ima married her cousin Murad and immigrated to Israel in 1951 with her family. Interviewed on 25 June 1987. Yona, Mordechai

Born in Zakho in 1938. His family name was originally Dahlika. His father used to cut down trees in the winter and sold haberdashery to villagers in the summer. Mordechai was a pupil in the heder in which Hakham Levi taught. In 1950, at the age of twelve, he came to Israel in the first group of olim from Zakho. Interviewed on 17 June 1987. 352

02 Gavish BM.indd 352

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

Zaqen, Aviva

Born in Haifa in 1933, Aviva is the daughter of ‘Aziz Parsi, one of the founders of the Kurdish Burial Society and the Association of Kurdish Immigrants in Jerusalem. She is a housewife. Interviewed on 26 July 1993. Zaqen, Avraham

Born in Zakho. Avraham was about 80 years old when interviewed in 1993. He was a rabbi, circumciser, ritual slaughterer, and cantor in Zakho. He came to Israel with the third group of olim from Zakho in 1951 and served as a teacher in the Mekor Hayyim immigrant transit camp in Jerusalem and later as principal of the school in Even Sappir, near Jerusalem. Employed for about twenty-five years in a clerical position with the Amidar housing company, he also served as the rabbi of the Mishkan Shilo Synagogue. Interviewed on 1 August 1993. Passed away in 2005. Zaqen, Gurji

Born in Zakho on 21 December 1937. Until the age of nine, he studied in the heder of the Midrash Synagogue under Hakham Levi. He assisted his father, who was an itinerant peddler in villages around Zakho. During visits to the villages, he remembered many stories that he heard and was able to retell them. He has an excellent knowledge of folk songs and dances prevalent among Zakho’s Jews. Gurji came to Israel in 1951 in the second group of olim from Zakho. He was active in a community center in the Katamon Quarter of Jerusalem, where he organized two troupes that performed Kurdish folk dances—one for children aged twelve, and the other for those aged fourteen to twenty—that appeared both in Israel and abroad. He would also tell stories to elderly people in the community center. Interviewed on 23 July 1987. Passed away in 1997. Zaqen, Meir

Born in Zakho in 1930 into a family that engaged in commerce in the city and peddling in the villages. Until the age of sixteen or seventeen, he was a pupil in the heder of the Midrash Synagogue under Hakham Levi and Hakham Moshe ‘Alwan, and for two years attended night classes in the state school. He was first introduced to efforts on behalf of the public in his father’s home, when as a child he was sent to distribute food cooked by his mother Sa‘adah to the homes of the poor. He served in the Iraqi army for three months but was discharged after paying a ransom. He came to Israel in 1951 with the second group of olim, bringing with him an ancient Torah scroll from the Zaqen family synagogue. In Israel, he served for five or 353

02 Gavish BM.indd 353

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

six years with the Israeli police, was then employed for twenty years by the Amidar housing company, and from 1977 was the neighborhood coordinator of the Jerusalem Workers’ Council. Over the years, Meir was involved in many public campaigns and helped members of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem. He established the Zekhut Avot Synagogue in the Katamon neighborhood as a direct continuation of the Midrash Synagogue in Zakho. Interviewed on 20 November and 4 December 1987 and 6 and 13 December 1992. Zaqen, Yehudit

Born in Zakho. Daughter of Shalom Hocha and married to Abraham Zaqen. A housewife, she participated in the interview I conducted with her husband on 1 August 1993. Zidkiyahu, Yona

Born in Zakho in 1919. His father, Sasson, and his brother, Yitzhak, traded in fabrics and sold their merchandise in villages. The Zidkiyahu family was one of the wealthiest in Zakho. Yona was a pupil in a heder from age three to age eight and also studied in the first two grades of the state school, where Hakham Rahamim Cohen taught Jewish subjects. In 1930, at the age of eleven, he came on aliyah to Eretz Israel with his family and that of his uncle, Yitzhak Zidkiyahu. He was employed at the Supreme Court. Interviewed on 3 November 1987. Passed away in 2004.

Interviewees from Zakho Interviewed in 1967 by Emanuel Mar-Haim Their testimonies are in Zakho File, no. 48, Oral History Department of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Shmuel Baruch, Shabetai Piro, Nahum Hafzadi, Moshe Nissim, Eliahu Eliahu, Tzvia Eliahu, Garib Shazo, and Shmuel Shurki.

Interviewees from Zakho Interviewed in 1994 The interviews were conducted in the framework of a seminar on life stories conducted by Prof. Yoram Bilu of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Hattun (Hannah) Ben-Abu, Fahima Parnasa, Salih Chuna, Hayyim Miryam, Batya Chuna, Salih Cohen, Ahuva Cohen (wife of Salih), and Eliahu Moshe.

354

02 Gavish BM.indd 354

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

Emissaries to the Zionist Underground in Iraq Aloni, Menahem

Born in Arbil in 1928. Recruited into the underground in 1946, he was especially active in organizing aliyah. He visited Zakho in 1949 to arrange for the illegal emigration of Zakho’s entire community through Turkey, which did not materialize. His contact in Zakho was Shlomo Salman Attiya. Interviewed on 3 August 1992. Baharav [Rabinovitz], Yehonatan

Born in Eretz Israel. Member of Kibbutz Sedot Yam. He was an aliyah emissary in Iraq from January 1946 to April 1947. He tried to develop routes for clandestine aliyah, but 1947 was a year with very few olim because, when Syria and Lebanon became independent, border crossings into Palestine were more strictly controlled and aliyah routes were blocked. His plan to open a route through Iran also proved unsuccessful. Interviewed on 30 August 1992. Passed away in 2002. Baharav [Rabinovitz], Yehoshua

Born in Eretz Israel. Member of Kibbutz Ginnosar. He was active as an aliyah emissary in Iraq from January to September 1945. One of his objectives was to open a route to smuggle Jews from Zakho to Qamishliye, in Syria. To that purpose, he was in contact with Shlomo Salman Attiya of Zakho. Interviewed on 29 July 1992. Passed away in 1994. Bibi, Mordechai

Born in Baghdad in 1923. Came to Eretz Israel in 1945. In that year, prior to his own aliyah, he was active in organizing aliyah from Mosul and the vicinity, and was in contact with Shlomo Salman Attiya of Zakho. In 1949–50, he was sent to Iran by the Mosad to organize the exodus of Jews from Iraq and Iran. Interviewed on 26 July 1992. Guttman, Shemariah

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1909. Member of Kibbutz Na‘an and an archaeologist. Arrived in Baghdad in March 1942 together with Enzo Sereni and Ezra Kadoorie in the aftermath of the pogrom against Jews in Baghdad on 1–2 June 1941 that was mounted after the pro-Nazi coup of Rashīd ‘Alī al-Jīlānī. Guttman, who was designated an aliyah emissary, was the first representative of the Zionist underground to reach Zakho, in late 1942, with the purpose of organizing a base from which Jews could be smuggled to Syria

355

02 Gavish BM.indd 355

10/8/09 1:36 PM

in t er v iewees

and from there continue to Eretz Israel. Interviewed on 13 September 1992. Passed away in 1996. Shneiur, Israel

Born in Kirkuk, Shneiur was a member of the Zionist underground from 1944 until his immigration to Israel in 1950. He was active alongside emissaries Yehoshua and Yehonatan Baharav (Rabinovitz) and Shlomo Hillel. He came to Zakho twice in the line of his duties. Interviewed on 7 September 1992. Passed away in 1993. Shweiki, Yitzhak

Born in Alexandretta, Turkey. Shweiki was sent to Syria in 1941 as a member of the Palmah unit of mista‘aravim, people from Eretz Israel who spoke Arabic and passed themselves off as Arabs. From 1942 to 1944 he was an underground emissary in Qamishliye, under the guise of a teacher in a heder. In November 1944 he was the second underground emissary to reach Zakho, following Shemariah Guttman by two years. He was in contact with two Zakho Jews who smuggled people across the border into Syria, from where they continued to Eretz Israel: Shlomo Salman Attiya and Ilya Hetteh. Interviewed on 22 July 1992.

356

02 Gavish BM.indd 356

10/8/09 1:36 PM

Notes

Chapter 1 1. In his Hebrew book on several Oriental Jewish communities, Nidhei yisrael, Ben-Zvi called the Jews of Kurdistan “those that were lost in the land of Assyria,” based on the phrase in Isa. 27:13. See the English version: Itzhak Ben-Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed, translated by Isaac A. Abbady (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1957), 40. The Hebrew title of this book, too, is adopted from the Bible, Isa. 11:12. Simha Assaf also used that connotation for the Jews of Kurdistan in his article “More on the History of the Jews in Kurdistan,” Kiryath Sefer 13 (1936–37): 266 (Hebrew). 2. The Sehrane is a traditional festival celebrated by the Jews of Kurdistan on the ninth day of spring, immediately following the eight-day festival of Passover, to mark the changing seasons, the end of winter, and the transition to spring. 3. Ronald J. Grele, “Whose Public? Whose History? What Is the Goal of a Public Historian?” Public Historian 3 (Winter 1981): 40–48. 4. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 1; see also Robert A. Georges and Michael O. Jones, People Studying People: The Human Element in Fieldwork (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 5. See Allan Nevins, “Oral History: How and Why It Was Born,” in Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, 2nd ed. (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996), 29–39. 6. Grele, “Whose Public? Whose History?” 7. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 186–201. 8. Kay Cothran, “The Truth as Lie—The Lie as Truth: A View of Oral History,” Journal of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington 8 (Summer 1972): 3–6. 9. Charles W. Joyner, “Oral History as Communicative Event: A Folkloristic Perspective,” in Dunaway and Baum, Oral History (see note 5), 292–97. 10. For a Finnish folklorist who studied the community of Sivakka from the internal perspective of its members, without any written documentation, see Seppo Knuuttila, “What the People of Sivakka Tell about Themselves,” in Studies in Oral Narrative, ed. Anna-Leena Siikala and trans. Susan Sinisalo (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1989), 111–23. 357

02 Gavish BM.indd 357

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 1

11. Larry Danielson, “The Folklorist, the Oral Historian and Local History,” in Dunaway and Baum, Oral History (see note 5), 187–98. 12. James Bennet, “Human Values in Oral History,” Oral History Review 11 (1983): 1–15. 13. Samuel Schrager, “What Is Social in Oral History?” International Journal of Oral History 4 (June 1983): 76–95. 14. The Hebrew term for Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) or the State of Israel is aliyah, literally “going up [to Eretz Israel].” I shall use both Hebrew and English terms throughout this study. 15. For personal or communal identity by means of personal narrative, see Donald E. Polkinghome, “Narrative and Self-concept,” Journal of Narrative and Life History 1, nos. 2–3 (1991): 135–54; Barbara Myerhoff, “Telling One’s Story,” Center Magazine 13 (1980): 22–24. 16. For transfer of values through personal narrative, see Bennet, “Human Values.” 17. For personal narratives as a means for the ordinary persons to express themselves, see Kristin M. Langellier, “Personal Narratives: Perspectives Theory and Research,” Text and Performance Quarterly 9 (1989): 243–76; Paul Thompson, “History and the Community,” in Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum (Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1984), 37–50; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “Documenting Diversity: The Southern Experience,” in Dunaway and Baum, Oral History (see note 5), 177–88. 18. Linda Dégh, “Beauty, Wealth and Power: Career Choices for Women in Modern Folktales and Modern Media,” in Life History as Cultural Construction/Performance: Proceedings of the IIIrd Hungarian-American Folklore Conference, ed. Támas Hofer and Péter Niedermüller (Budapest: Ethnographic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1988), 19–31; Langellier, “Personal Narratives,” 249–56; Sandra K. D. Stahl, “Personal Experience Stories,” in Handbook of American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana University Folklore Institute, 1983), 268–76. 19. John A. Robinson, “Personal Narratives Reconsidered,” Journal of American Folklore 94 (1981): 58–85; Nessa Wolfson, quoted by Langellier, “Personal Narratives,” 252. 20. Elliot G. Misher, “The Analysis of Interview-Narrative,” in Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, ed. Theodore R. Sarbin (New York: Praeger, 1986), 233–55; Gabriele Rosenthal, “Reconstruction of Life Stories: Principles of Selection in Generating Stories for Narrative Biographical Interviews,” in The Narrative Study of Lives, ed. Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich (London: Sage, 1993), 1:59–60. 21. Peter Friedlander, “Theory, Method and Oral History,” in Dunaway and Baum, Oral History (see note 5), 131–42. 22. Schrager, “What Is Social in Oral History?” 76–80; Dégh, “Beauty, Wealth and Power”; Victor Turner, “Social Dramas and Stories about Them,” in On Narrative, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), 137–64; Guy A. M. Widdershoven, “The Story of Life: Hermeneutic Perspectives on the Relation358

02 Gavish BM.indd 358

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

ship between Narrative and Life History,” in Josselson and Lieblich, Narrative Study of Lives (see note 20), 1:1–3; Kenneth Gergen and Mary M. Gergen, “Narratives of the Self,” in Studies in Social Identity, ed. Theodore R. Sarbin and Karl E. Scheibe (New York: Praeger, 1983), 261. 23. See the opinion of Nessa Wolfson, quoted by Langellier, “Personal Narratives,” 252; Robinson, “Personal Narratives,” 59–64. 24. Gary Okihoro, “Oral History and the Writing of Ethnic History,” in Dunaway and Baum, Oral History (see note 5), 199–214. 25. On the stages in the narration of stories by Jewish storytellers in Israel, see Galit Hasan-Rokem, “The Study of Processes of Change in the Folk Narrative,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 3 (1982): 136–37 (Hebrew); Shenhar-Alroy, The Story, the Storyteller and the Audience (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1994), 87 (Hebrew). On the transformation undergone by folklore genres of former Zakho Jews after their aliyah and their acculturation in Israel, see Donna Shai, “Transmission and Change: Folk Literature of the Jews of Zakho, Kurdistan, Following Their Immigration to Israel: A Collection and Analysis” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975). 26. For an example of the connection between cultural background and memory in oral history, see Mary E. Aubè, “Oral History and the Remembered World: Cultural Determinants from French Canada,” International Journal of Oral History 10 (February 1989): 31–47. 27. For the dramatic element that shapes memory and personal narratives, see William Labov, Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 354–55. On the connection between drama in real life and drama in the stories, see Turner, “Social Dramas.” 28. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, “Authoring Lives,” Journal of Folklore Research 26 (1989): 140–41. 29. This has been demonstrated in research on a rural community in Oregon. See Barbara Allen, “In the Thick of Things: Texture in Orally Communicated History,” International Journal of Oral History 6 (June 1985): 93–96. 30. Bertram J. Cohler, “Personal Narrative and the Life Course,” Life-Span Development and Behavior 4 (1982): 207. 31. Barbara Allen (“Re-creating the Past: The Narrator,” Oral History Review 12 [1984]: 1–12) notes that recreating the past by means of narrative is accompanied by associations that disrupt continuity (10–12). 32. On such problematic issues, see Trevor Lummis, “Oral History,” in International Encyclopedia of Communication, ed. Erik Barnouw et al., 4 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 3:229–31. 33. Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, “Authoring Lives,” 126; Cohler, “Personal Narrative,” 224. Chapter 2 1. Joseph Joel Rivlin, The Poetry of the “Targum” Jews: Chapters of Deeds and Heroism as Related by Kurdish Jews (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1959), 11 (Hebrew). 359

02 Gavish BM.indd 359

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

2. See Shai, “Transmission and Change.” For additional works, both before and after Rivlin’s, see the discussion that follows. 3. See Jacob Mann, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew College Press, 1931–35), 1:77–549; Assaf, “More on the History”; Walter J. Fischel, “Kurdistan Letters,” Sinai 7 (1940): 167–77 (Hebrew). On the Jews of Kurdistan, without specific mention of Zakho, see Ben-Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed, 40–49. 4. For the travel literature, see Walter J. Fischel, “The Jews in Kurdistan,” Moznaim 4 (June 1932): 5–8 (Hebrew); idem, “The Jews of Kurdistan a Hundred Years Ago: A Traveler’s Record,” Jewish Social Studies 6 (1944): 195–226; David D’Beth Hillel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands: The Travels of Rabbi David D’Beth Hillel (1824–1832), edited with an introduction and notes by Walter J. Fischel (New York: Ktav, 1973); Israel Joseph Benjamin, Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846– 1855 (Hanover, Germany: the author, 1863), 92–93; Ephraim Neimark, Travel in the East: Syria, Kurdistan, Babylonia, Persia, and Central Asia (Jerusalem: Lewin-Epstein, 1947), 58 (Hebrew); Yehiel Fishel Kestelmann, Travels of an Emissary from Safed in Eastern Countries, ed. Abraham Yaari (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1942) (Hebrew); Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob, The Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, with Supplemented Songs and Liturgical Poetry, 2nd rev. and aug. ed. (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sefer, 1981) (Hebrew), 58–62) (1st ed., Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1961); Bracha Habbas, Close Yet Distant Brothers (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1943), 124–25 (Hebrew); Abraham J. Brawer, Road Dust, 2 vols. (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1944–46), 1:268–69 (Hebrew). For Christian travelers, see Shai, “Transmission and Change,” 49–78. 5. Ephraim Neimark, who traveled in Kurdistan in 1884, wrote that he had been told that there were only thirty Jews in Zakho (see Travel in the East, 58). He was misled, no doubt, for this number is not compatible with information from other sources, including travelers who visited the city before and after him. Ben-Ya‘acob (Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 59 and nn. 13–14) quotes a source maintaining that Zakho’s Jews numbered 510 in that very same year. 6. Erich Brauer, The Jews of Kurdistan, completed and edited by Raphael Patai (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993); idem, The Jews of Kurdistan: An Ethnological Study (Jerusalem: Palestine Institute of Folklore and Ethnology, 1947) (Hebrew) (the English edition is an augmented version of the Hebrew). 7. For details of the two editions of his book, see note 4. 8. Yona Sabar, The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982). 9. Meir Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon (Jerusalem: the author, 1965), 1–41 (Hebrew). 10. Mordechai Yona, Those Who Perish in the Land of Assyria: The Jews of Kurdistan and Zakho (Jerusalem: the author, 1989) (Hebrew). 11. Hithadshut: A Journal of the Kurdish Jews in Israel 1–6 (1973–96), ed. Haviv Shim‘oni; 7 (2000), ed. Ya‘akov Ya‘akov (Hebrew). 12. Mazliah Kol, Israel Folktale Archives (hereafter, IFA), Zakho A, p. 26. All testimonies in the IFA Zakho files are in Hebrew. 13. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 14–15. 360

02 Gavish BM.indd 360

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

14. Yona Sabar, “Return to Kurdistan,” Yedioth Aharonoth, 30 October 1992, weekend supplement, 19–22 (Hebrew). 15. Walter J. Fischel, “The Jews of Kurdistan: A First-Hand Report on a Mountain Community,” Commentary 8 (1949): 554. For an earlier Hebrew version, see Fischel, “Jews in Kurdistan,” 5. 16. For Zakho’s geographic background, see Shai, “Transmission and Change,” 49–54; Yona, Those Who Perish, 36–40; Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 20–21; Mordechai Yona, ibid., 9. 17. Eliezer Tsafrir, I Am a Kurd (Or Yehuda: Hed Artzi, 1999), 30 (Hebrew). 18. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 8. For Mount Ararat and the remains of Noah’s Ark, see Benjamin, Eight Years, 92–93. 19. Fischel, “Jews of Kurdistan: A First-Hand Report,” 554; idem, “Jews in Kurdistan,” 5. 20. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 14. Hazim Bak was the head of the Kurdish Shamdin Agha clan that controlled Zakho. 21. W. C. F. Wilson, “Northern Iraq and Its Peoples,” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 24 (April 1937): 287–99. 22. Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 4. 23. Yitzhak Shweiki, ibid., 8. 24. Na‘ima Shmuel, IFA, Zakho A, 8. Rahamim Cohen related that “the city is really an island, . . . the whole area is one island, city and all” (ibid., 20). See also the following testimonies, all in IFA, Zakho A: Mordechai Yona, 9; Haya Gabbay, 14; Haviv Tamar, 2. 25. Mark Sykes, Dar-ul-Islam: A Record of a Journey through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey (London: Bickers & Son, 1904), 160. 26. See the following testimonies, all in IFA, Zakho A: Meir Zaqen, 7–8, 14; Esther Dahlika, 2–3; Rahamim Cohen, 20–21; Yona Zidkiyahu, 2; Mazliah Kol, 9–10. For the legend about Nemo Delale, see also Shai, “Transmission and Change,” 97, 335–37. 27. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, p. 10. 28. Testimonies of underground emissaries, all in IFA, Zakho B: Shemariah Guttman, 3–6; Yitzhak Shweiki, 5–9; Israel Shneiur, 1; Menahem Aloni, 1–3. See also Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 10; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 13. 29. For Mosul in aliyah narratives relating to the prestate period, see the following testimonies in IFA, Zakho A: Rahamim Cohen, 1–2, 4–6; Shmuel Baruch, 1; and Haviv ‘Alwan, “Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen,” testimony recorded by Dalia Sebag, IFA, File 12422. For Mosul in the information and testimonies relating to aliyah in the 1950s, see the following testimonies in IFA, Zakho A: Salih Hocha, 5; Gurji Zaqen, 12; Haya Gabbay, 10. 30. For Baghdad as a station for emigrating Zakho Jews, see Yona, Those Who Perish, 36; Varda Shilo, IFA, Zakho A, 2–5; Zaki Levi, ibid., 4–5. For Baghdad in narratives of aliyah in the 1950s, see Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 5–6; Yona Sabar, ibid., 11; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 10. 31. For Baghdad as a religious center for Kurdistan’s Jewish communities, see BenYa’acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 20–21. 361

02 Gavish BM.indd 361

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

32. The Tanzimat was a series of reforms enacted in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century in the spirit of Western values. For discrimination against Jews and their definition as dhimmis (protected minorities), see Bat Ye’or [Giselle Littman], The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, rev. and enl. English ed. (Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985); Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 3–66; Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 52–74. 33. For this process, see Lewis, Jews of Islam, 63–66, 184–91; Yosef Tobi, “Jewish Centers in Asia [B],” in History of the Jews in Islamic Countries, ed. Shmuel Ettinger, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1981–88), 2:52 (Hebrew). 34. For comparison with the condition of the Jews in Libyan Tripoli and among the Berber tribes in Jebel Nefusa, see Yaacov Haggiag-Liluf, The History of the Jews of Libya ([Beer-Sheba]: Center for Study and Research of Libyan Jewry, 2000), 18–19, 45–101 (Hebrew); Harvey Goldberg, “Ecologic and Demographic Aspects of Rural Tripolitanian Jewry, 1853–1949,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (July 1971): 245–65. For the Jews of Tripoli, see Mordechai Hacohen, The Book of Mordechai: A Study of the Jews of Libya—Selections from the Highid Mordekhai of Mordechai Hacohen, edited and translated with introduction and commentaries by Harvey E. Goldberg (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1980), 3–38, 77–193. On the Jews of Jebel Nefusa, see ibid., 40–77. See also Shalom Bar-Asher, “The Jews in North Africa and Egypt,” in Ettinger, History of the Jews in Islamic Countries (see note 33), 1:129–31; Haim Zeev Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb: The Jews of North Africa (Jerusalem: Youth and Hehalutz Department of the Jewish Agency, 1957), 146–49, 224–27 (Hebrew). For Moroccan coastal cities that underwent processes of Westernization, and Jews who lived among Berber tribes in southern Morocco, see Michel Abitbol, “Processes of Modernization and Development in the Modern Era,” in Ettinger, History of the Jews in Islamic Countries (see note 33), 2:375, 381–82. 35. Fischel, “Jews in Kurdistan,” 6; D’Beth Hillel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands, 75; Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 11; Ben-Ya’acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 11–12. English translations from the Bible will follow, on the whole, Tanakh—The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988). The name Khawora “River” is a reflex of the Aramaic Habor (2 Kings 17) and Arabic Khabur (River). 36. Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 17. 37. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 8–10. 38. Varda Shilo, ibid., 1; Esther Dahlika, ibid., 4; Yona, Those Who Perish, 56. 39. Assaf, “More on the History,” 266. For a certificate concerning levirate marriage, see Mann, Texts and Studies, 2: 448–49, 542–43; Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 59. 40. Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 18; Yona, Those Who Perish, 32. 41. Faishkhabur is a town and crossing on the Khabur River near the Iraqi-Syrian border. The unique language mentioned is neo-Aramaic. 42. D’Beth Hillel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands, 76. 362

02 Gavish BM.indd 362

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

43. William Ainsworth, Researches in Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldaea, Forming Part of the Labours of the Euphrates Expedition (London: J. W. Parker, 1838); idem, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia, 2 vols. (London: J. W. Parker, 1842). 44. Asahel Grant, The Nestorians or the Lost Tribes, Containing Evidence of their Identity, an Account of their Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, together with Sketches of Travel in Ancient Assyria, Armenia, Media and Mesopotamia and Illustrations of Scripture Prophecy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1841), 164. 45. George P. Badger, The Nestorians and Their Rituals: With a Narrative of a Mission to Mesopotamia and Coordistan in 1842–1844, 2 vols. (London: J. Masters, 1852), 1:70. 46. Benjamin, Eight Years, 92. 47. Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 59–62, 209–11. 48. Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 13. 49. Sykes, Dar-ul-Islam, 229. 50. Harry C. Luke, Mosul and Its Minorities (London: Hopkinson, 1925), 13; Brawer, Road Dust, 268–69; Habbas, Close Yet Distant Brothers, 108–9; Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 31–33; Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 17–18. 51. A state of symbolic serfdom of Jews and patronage of the tribal leadership continued in Kurdistan even later. Zakho’s Jews, for example, were under the full protection of the Shamdin Agha clan and from time to time were summoned to perform zibara (work without compensation), which some believe was two days of forced labor, to help drain its lands. See Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 12; Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 8; Salih Hocha, ibid., 3–4. 52. For the local agha’s power within the tribe and his relations with the central government, see Derk Kinnane, The Kurds and Kurdistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 11–15; Yosef Tobi, “Jewish Centers in Asia [A],” in Ettinger, History of the Jews in Islamic Countries (see note 33), 1:26–27, 32–33; idem, “Jewish Centers in Asia [B],” 2:40–41. 53. For a comparison with Yemen, see Gershon Agronsky, “The Jews of Yemen and Aden during the Reign of Imam Yihya: Remarks on the Tour of Aden on Behalf of the Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, 26 March–12 April 1930,” in The Jews of Yemen in the Modern Period, edited by Yosef Tobi (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984), 163–64 (Hebrew); Yehuda Nini, Yemen and Zion: The Jews of Yemen 1800–1914 (Jerusalem: Hassifriya Haziyonit, 1982), 28, 62–63 (Hebrew); Tobi, “Jewish Centers in Asia [A],” 1:6–7, 16; idem, “Jewish Centers in Asia [B],” 2:40–41; Simon Shmueli, “The Motives for the Aliyah of Jews from South Yemen in 1912” (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997), 2–8 (Hebrew). For the Atlas Mountains, see Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb, 99–129, 158–59, 172–73; Moshe Shokeid, “Jewish Existence in a Berber Environment,” Pe‘amim 4 (Winter 1980): 60–71 (Hebrew). For the Atlas Mountains and southern Tunisia, see Moshe Shokeid and Shlomo Deshen, The Generation of Transition: Continuity and Change among North African Immigrants in Israel, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1999), 22–43 (Hebrew). For Jebel Nefusa in Libya, see Hacohen, Book of Mordechai, 40–77; Harvey Goldberg, Jewish Life in Muslim Libya: Rivals and Relatives (Chicago: 363

02 Gavish BM.indd 363

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

University of Chicago Press, 1990), 68–81; Rachel Simon, “Jewish-Muslim Relations in Libya in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century,” in Muslim Authors on Jews and Judaism, ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1996), 195–217 (Hebrew). 54. Brawer, Road Dust, 213–15; Habbas, Close Yet Distant Brothers, 108; Meir (“Munya”) Mardor, Secret Mission: Special Operations in the “Haganah” ([Tel Aviv]: Ma‘arachot, 1957), 86 (Hebrew); Shlomo Nakdimon, A Hopeless Hope: The Rise and Fall of the Israeli-Kurdish Alliance, 1963–1975 (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Aharonot, 1996), 25–26 (Hebrew). In North Africa, Jews were prohibited from bearing arms. 55. The duality in relations between Jews and Kurds was pointed out by a scholar in the field of educational research: see Dina Feitelson, “Jewish Society in Kurdistan,” in Jews of the Middle East: Anthropological Perspectives on Past and Present, ed. Shlomo Deshen and Moshe Shokeid (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1984), 214 (Hebrew). 56. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 12. Ben-Ya‘acob (Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 61) barely touched upon this period in the history of Kurdistan’s Jews. 57. Yitzhak Bezalel, Alone in the Final Stronghold: The Disappearance of Iraqi Jewry (Tel Aviv: Ma’ariv, 1976), 20–25 (Hebrew); Nissim Kazzaz, The Jews in Iraq in the Twentieth Century (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1991), 238–45 (Hebrew); Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country: Jews in Iraq in the 1940s (London: Routledge, 2004), 7–8, 13–63, 197–202. 58. Ben-Ya‘acob maintains that the situation in Zakho did not differ from that in the rest of Iraq, but this is not sustained by the testimony of the interviewees (Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 61). 59. The status and priority of Zakho’s leading families was established on the basis of the property they owned. They were listed in a document of the League of Nations (LON) when they appeared before the committee charged with delineating the border between Iraq and Turkey in 1925. At the top of the list were members of the Shamdin Agha family, and it also included the hakham bashi (chief rabbi) Ya‘acov Babbika and Shalom Hocha. See “Zakho Witnesses,” LON, S14, Zakho, no. 11. 60. For relations between Jews and Kurds in Zakho and the help provided by the Shamdin Agha clan, see the testimonies of Salih Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 3–8; Zaki Levi, ibid., 11–12, 17; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 3–4, 6, 11, 16–17; Gurji Zaqen, ibid., 6–7, 10; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 3, 5, 7–10, 22, 24. 61. Na‘ima Cohen, ibid., 1; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 3, 11; Murad Shmuel, ibid., 1–2. 62. Haya Gabbay, ibid., 3, 11. 63. Meir Zaqen, ibid., 7. 64. See the testimonies listed in note 60. See also Yehuda Atlas, Up to the Scaffold: The Deeds of the Underground in Iraq (Tel Aviv: Ma‘arachot, 1971) (Hebrew); Emil Murad, A Story of a Zionist Underground in Iraq (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1972) (Hebrew); Yitzhak Bar-Moshe, Exodus from Iraq: Recollections 1945–1950 (Jerusalem: Council of the Sephardi Community, 1977) (Hebrew); Zvi Yehuda, ed., From Babylon to Jerusalem: Studies and Sources on Zionism and Aliyah from Iraq (Tel Aviv: Iraqi Jews’ Traditional Cultural Center, 1980) (Hebrew); Shlomo Hillel, Operation Babylon (Jerusalem: Edanim, 1985) (Hebrew); Nissim Kazzaz, “The Iraqi Orientation 364

02 Gavish BM.indd 364

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

among the Iraqi Jewish Leadership and Its Failure” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1985) (Hebrew); idem, Jews in Iraq; Moshe Gat, The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948–1951 (London: Frank Cass, 1997); Dafna Zimhoni, “The Beginnings of Modernization among the Jews of Iraq in the Nineteenth Century until 1914,” Pe‘amim 36 (1988): 7–34 (Hebrew). 65. Tsafrir, I Am a Kurd, 30. 66. Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem (CZA), S/25 6636. 67. See the testimonies in note 60, especially that of Gurji Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 7. 68. The four groups organized along economic lines (see Mordechai Yona, IFA, Zakho A., 6–7; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 18; Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 26–27). 69. Gurji Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 10–11; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 19–20; Salih Hocha, ibid., 4–5; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 4; Mazliah Kol, ibid., 14. 70. Haviv Tamar, ibid., 2. 71. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 75; Mordechai Zaken, “Central Institutions and Commerce in the Jewish Community of Zakho,” Hithadshut 5 (1985): 17 (Hebrew). 72. Yona, Those Who Perish, 39–40. Rivlin describes the poverty and filth of Zakho (Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 17). 73. István Klinghammer, “Pál Teleki (1879–1941): A Politician, Diplomat and Mapmaker from Hungary,” paper presented at the 17th International Conference on the History of Cartography, Lisbon, 6–10 July 1997. Teleki’s field research for the Mosul Committee was of great importance. He recommended leaving the international border as it had been drawn in the Brussels Treaty in 1924, and in this he strengthened the committee’s attempts to withstand pressure on the part of Turkey and Britain, which sought to divide the area differently. Thus was additional suffering prevented for the minorities, primarily the Kurds, in northern Iraq. The influence of Teleki’s research and proposals was singular for his times, because they were founded on the principle that border disputes should not be settled solely on the basis of the military and economic balance of power of the countries involved but should also consider the population residing in the area. Teleki served once again as prime minister of Hungary in 1939–41. 74. “Census Statistics of Zakho Shuba,” LON, S14, Zakho, no. 11. Sykes estimated Zakho’s total population as four thousand (Dar-ul-Islam, 161). 75. Brawer, Road Dust, 269. 76. For the 1947 census, see Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, Table 2, on pp. 30–31. Yona, in Those Who Perish in the Land of Assyria, quotes Zaqen on p. 36 and publishes the list of Jewish families and Zaqen’s map on pp. 102–12. It may be assumed that the discrepancy between the figures of the 1947 census and those given by Zaqen stemmed from the fact that Jews who in the past had moved from Zakho to Baghdad returned to their home town and rejoined the community in anticipation of its aliyah in the early 1950s. Ben-Ya‘acob maintains that there were five thousand Jews in Zakho on the eve of aliyah, but supplies no source for this information, which seems to be highly unreliable (Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 62). 77. Yona, Those Who Perish, 36, 40. 365

02 Gavish BM.indd 365

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

78. Young girls aged thirteen or fourteen were forced to marry against their will because of the deterioration of economic conditions. See Haya Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 1, 16–17; Salha Mizrahi, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 79. Shai, “Transmission and Change,” 69–70. 80. The following is an example of rigid attitudes related to education by forcing a son to attend religious classes in the synagogue. Meir Zaqen told us of his desire to quit studying in such a traditional “school” and transfer to a government school, where the level of studies was higher. However, he was forced to back down by his father’s rigid refusal (see Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3). Gurji Zaqen supplied us with another example. When he and his friend Baruch Givati were nine years old, they were punished in the traditional religious school, the soles of their feet being whipped while they were hanging upside down, all because that had swum in the river on the Sabbath. The boys refused to continue their studies there, but Baruch’s father told him, “I don’t give a damn, you will learn even if all that remains of you is bones.” Gurji, for his part, was allowed to join his father, who was an itinerant peddler in villages (see Gurji Zaqen, ibid., 1). 81. Salih Hocha described his mother (ibid., 1), while Mordechai Sa‘do told us about Salih Hocha’s mother (ibid., 1). For Meir Zaqen’s testimony about his mother, see IFA, Zakho B, 31–32. See also Yona, Those Who Perish, 41; Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 4; Zaki Levi, ibid., 24. 82. For ties of kinship between Zakho Jews and living together in specific neighborhoods in Jerusalem and its vicinity and their influence upon the preservation of the Zakho community’s folklore genres, see Shai, “Transmission and Change,” 71–72. 83. Zaqen, “Central Institutions,” 17–18. 84. Yona, Those Who Perish, 37–38. 85. Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 4–5, 19–20; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 18–19. 86. Zaken, “Central Institutions,” 18. 87. Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 60. 88. David Salman, “From Zakho to Jerusalem,” Hithadshut 5 (1985): 50–52 (Hebrew); Na‘ima Shmuel, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2; Yehoshua Miro, ibid., 1–2, 4. 89. Hayyo Cohen, ibid., 7. 90. Zaki Levi, ibid., 11. 91. Yona, Those Who Perish, 53–55. 92. Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 62; compare with Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 212 n. 8. 93. Yona Zidkiyahu, “History of the Zidkiyahu Family and Its Aliyah to Israel,” Hithadshut 4 (1980): 28 (Hebrew); see also idem, IFA, Zakho A, 1; Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 6–7; Mordechai Yona, ibid., 5–6. On Jewish peddlers from Zakho, see letter of Rabbis Shabetai Alfiya and Eliahu Nissim, of Zakho, to Itzhak Ben-Zvi, 1931, CZA S25/9822. 94. Goldberg, Jewish Life in Muslim Libya, 73–75, 79–81; Shokeid, “Jewish Existence”; Shokeid and Deshen, Generation of Transition, 22–43; Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb, 126–27, 159, 173. 95. Yona, Those Who Perish, 53. 366

02 Gavish BM.indd 366

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 2

96. “Census Statistics of Zakho Shuba,” LON, S14, Zakho, no. 11. On the important families of Zakho, and particularly Moshe Gabbay, see Salih Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 1; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 1, 6, 16–18; Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 13; Zaki Levi, ibid., 12; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 1–2, 4, 14, 16; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 1–2; Mordechai Yona, ibid., 9. See also the testimonies of underground emissaries who visited Zakho: Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 4; Yitzhak Shweiki, ibid., 7–8. 97. Mordechai Yona, IFA, Zakho A, 3. 98. Meir Zaken, ibid., 8, 10, 12, 26. 99. Varda Shilo, ibid., 2–5. 100. For economic conditions as a motive for aliyah in the period before the establishment of Israel, see Simha Mizrahi, IFA, Zakho A, 5–6; Gurji Zaqen, ibid., Yona Zidkiyahu, ibid., 1; Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 24. 101. Zaken, “Central Institutions,” 18; Yona, Those Who Perish, 38. 102. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 220; Yona, Those Who Perish, 38. 103. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 2. He said that the family of Noah Zaqen engaged in the transport of goods on muleback. 104. Shlomo Duga, IFA, Zakho A, 1 Mordechai Sa‘do, ibid., 1; Hayyo Cohen, ibid., 1, Haviv Tamar, ibid., 1; Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 1. 105. Yona, Those Who Perish, 54; Salih Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 1; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 7; Varda Shilo, ibid., 6; Zaki Levi, ibid., 3–4, 6. 106. Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 1; Zaqen, “Central Institutions,” 18–19. Compare with Yona, Those Who Perish, 55. 107. Shabetai Piro, Oral History Division, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (OHD), Zakho, 48 108. For “Jerusalem of Kurdistan,” see, for example, Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 61; Sabar, Folk Literature, xxx. For “Jerusalem of the Diaspora,” see Mordechai Bibi, The Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement in Iraq, 4 vols. (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1988–2005), 2:449 (Hebrew). 109. Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 110. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 233–34; Shmuel Baruch, OHD, Zakho, 48; idem, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 111. Benjamin, Eight Years, 92. 112. Kestelmann, Travels of an Emissary, 44. 113. LON, R 607–8. 114. Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 18. 115. Zaken, “Central Institutions,” 14–16. Additional information was supplied in writing by the author to complement his article. 116. Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 12; idem, Folk Literature, xxi. Omer (lit. “sheaf ”) was an offering brought to the Temple in Jerusalem on the second day of Passover, from which date it was customary to count forty-nine days until the festival of Shavuot (Feast of Weeks, Pentecost), using this formulation: “Today is the ______ day of the omer.” 117. For illiteracy among many of Zakho’s Jews, see Sabar, Folk Literature, xxvi– xxviii; Yona, Those Who Perish, 76, 91. 118. The origin of the term heder (Torah school) lies in the European Jewish cul367

02 Gavish BM.indd 367

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

tural milieu and was adopted by Kurdish Jews in Israel instead of dana that was customary in Kurdistan. Dana comes from the Aramaic idana. 119. Zaken, “Central Institutions,” 15. 120. Gurji Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. On educational methods and punishment, see Zaken, “Central Institutions,” 15; Yona, Those Who Perish, 49–51. 121. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 76. For girls who studied in government schools, see Haya Gabbay IFA, Zakho A, 16–17; Hattun (Hanna) Ben-Abu, Sociology-anthropology seminar conducted by Prof. Yoram Bilu, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1994 (SAS). 122. Shmuel Baruch, OHD, Zakho, 48; Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3. 123. There were only a few such Jewish pupils (see Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 1). 124. Brauer maintained, “For the Kurdish Jews, . . . it is, to them, quite simply the place where they assemble for divine service” (Jews of Kurdistan [1993], 249), whereas Ben-Ya‘acob claimed that “all the spiritual life, everywhere, concentrated round the synagogue” (Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 20). 125. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 12; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 15–16. 126. Zaki Levi, ibid., 4. 127. Mazliah Kol, ibid., 2–3; Haviv Tamar, ibid., 2. 128. D’Beth Hillel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands, 76; Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 250–51; Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 61; Zaken, “Central Institutions,” 11–13; Yona, Those Who Perish, 48–49. 129. Contrary to Shai’s claim that there is no doubt that Zakho’s Jews were fluent in four languages (“Transmission and Change,” 74–78), Julia Dekel (IFA, Zakho A, 1–2) told us that the fact that she did not know Arabic almost ended in tragedy. On neo-Aramaic, the language most prominent among the Jews of Zakho, see Abraham Z. Idelson, “Stories in the Neo-Aramaic Language,” Hashiloah 29, nos. 169–74 (1913–14): 121 (Hebrew); Fischel, “Jews in Kurdistan,” 6; Joseph Joel Rivlin, “The Literature of the Jews of Zakho,” in Memorial Volume for Asher Gulak and Shmuel Klein (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1942), 171 (Hebrew); Yona, Those Who Perish, 88–90. 130. Yona Sabar, “Hebrew Elements in the Aramaic Dialect Spoken by the Jews of Zakho and Kurdistan,” Leshonenu 38 (1974): 206–19 (Hebrew). 131. An example is the testimony of Hattun (Hanna) Ben-Abu, SAS, in which she wove in the motif of the spies sent by Joshua to Eretz Israel. 132. Quoted in Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 61. 133. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 23–24. Chapter 3 1. Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 2. 2. Yosef Rivlin, “The Ziyāra in Alqōsh,” Hed Hamizrah 29 (19 May 1950): 8 (Hebrew). 3. Naftali Kadmon, An Introduction to Toponomy: Theory and Practice of Geographical Names (Pretoria: Department of Geography, University of Pretoria, 1993), 1–3; Adrian Room, Placenames of the World: Origins and Meanings for Over 5000 368

02 Gavish BM.indd 368

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

Natural Features, Countries, Capitals, Territories, Cities and Historic Sites (London: McFarland, 1997), 1–17. For a similar phenomenon in Morocco, see Eliezer Bashan, “Traditional Connections between Oriental Jewry and the Jewish Community in Eretz Israel,” Pe‘amim 1 (Spring 1979): 19 (Hebrew); Kenneth Brown, “Religion, Commerce, and the Mobility of Moroccan Jews,” Pe‘amim 38 (1989): 95–108 (Hebrew). 4. Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 2; idem, Sabar, Folk Literature, xxix–xxx. A similar tendency was also present elsewhere, particularly in Morocco, where several cities were called “Little Jerusalem.” See Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb, 57, 91, 97; Brown, “Religion, Commerce,” 96. 5. Salih Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 5. 6. Na‘ima Shmuel, ibid., 10; Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 18–19. 7. Seder is a ceremonial meal and reading of the Haggadah in the home on the eve of Passover. Haggadah, which is a text recited during the seder, is a narrative of the exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt. 8. The youngest son customarily asks the head of the household “Wherefore is this night distinguished from all other nights?” which leads the person conducting the seder to relate the narrative of the exodus. 9. Related to me by Menashe Zaqen. 10. Varda Shilo, IFA, Zakho A, 12. 11. On the Sehrane, see Jeff Halper and Henry H. Abramovitz, “The Sehrane Celebrations in Kurdistan and Israel,” in Jews of the Middle East: Anthropological Perspectives on Past and Present, ed. Shlomo Deshen and Moshe Shokeid (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1984), 260–70 (Hebrew); Nehemiah Hocha, “The Sehrane,” Hithadshut 1 (1972): 100–101 (Hebrew); Haviv Shim‘oni, ed., The Jews of Kurdistan: Issue of the Events Marking 170 Years of Aliyah and Settlement in Eretz Israel (Jerusalem: National Organization of Kurdish Jews in Israel, 1984), 17–20 (Hebrew); Yona, Those Who Perish, 95–96; Haya Gavish, “The Sehrane,” in Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore (forthcoming). 12. Nehemiah Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 5, 13. See also Shlomo Duga, ibid., 3; Yehoshua Miro, ibid., 5. 13. A similar state of affairs, in which “Jerusalem” stood for “Eretz Israel,” was common in other diasporas. For Morocco, see Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb, 12, 151; Ephraim Hazan, “The Emissaries of Eretz Israel in the Poetry of the Jews of North Africa,” Pe‘amim 24 (1985): 99 (Hebrew). For Yemen, see Nini, Yemen and Zion, 179. For Ethiopia, see Baruch Hameiri and Rahamim Elazar, Dream behind Bars: The Story of “Prisoners of Zion” in Ethiopia (Jerusalem: Gefen, 1998), 29 (Hebrew); Azreil Kamon, ed., The First Bridge: Testimony of Jewish Pupils from Ethiopia in Kefar Batya (Ramat Efal: Yad Tabenkin, 1996), 9 (Hebrew). 14. Shabetai Piro, OHD, Zakho no. 48, 31. 15. Gurji Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 2. 16. Salih Hocha, ibid., 5. 17. Hayyo Cohen, ibid., 7; Na‘ima Shmuel, ibid., 5–6; Mordechai Sa‘do, ibid., 2–3; Zaki Levi, ibid., 15. 18. Yona Zidkiyahu, ibid., 1; Yona Sabar, ibid., 12; Zaki Levi, ibid., 15; Shim‘oni, 369

02 Gavish BM.indd 369

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

Jews of Kurdistan, 9–10; Yona Sabar, “Affinity to Eretz Israel,” in ibid., 13–14 (Hebrew). 19. Shmuel Baruch, OHD, Zakho no. 48. In oral testimony given in 1967, Baruch said that Zakho’s Jews learned from the rabbinical emissaries of the British capture of Palestine and the appointment of Herbert Samuel, a Jew, as High Commissioner of Palestine. In a later testimony (1987) he did not specifically mention the emissaries: “There were rumors that the English had captured Eretz Israel from the Turks . . . and it was said that one man among them, Herbert Samuel . . .” See Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2; see also Shabetai Piro and Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho no. 48. 20. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 5. 21. Fischel, “Jews in Kurdistan,” 8. 22. Benjamin, Eight Years, 128–29. 23. Moshe Sharon, introduction to Muslim Religion, Ritual, and Tombs of Holy Men in Eretz Israel. Ariel, nos. 117–18 (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1997), 11 (Hebrew). 24. Journeys by the Roman educated classes to sites with an ancient and glorious history, such as ancient Egypt or the ruins of Troy, often aroused excitement and at times took on a religious nature. See Ora Limor, Holy Land Travels: Christian Pilgrims in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Press, 1998), 4–5 (Hebrew); Sabine MacCormack, “Loca Sancta: The Organization of Sacred Topography in Late Antiquity,” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. Robert G. Ousterhout (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 9–20; E. D. Hunt, “Travel, Tourism and Piety in the Roman Empire: A Context for the Beginnings of Christian Pilgrimage,” Echos du Monde Classique (Classical Views) 28 (1984): 391–417. 25. Yoram Bilu, “Veneration of Saints and Pilgrimage to Sacred Sites as a Universal Phenomenon,” in To the Tombs of the Righteous: Pilgrimage in Contemporary Israel [catalog], ed. Rivka Gonen (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1999), 11–25. 26. For studies on veneration of saints in Jewish communities, see Issachar BenAmi, Saint Veneration among the Jews in Morocco (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 183 n. 13. For the custom of praying at the graves of saints and holy men, see Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob, Sacred Graves in Iraq (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1973), 11–34 (Hebrew). For the religious aspect of Christian pilgrimage in the Middle Ages and Muslim pilgrimage, see Limor, Holy Land Travels, 4–19; Daniella Talmor-Heller, “The Funeral, Burial and Ziyāra in Syria during the Crusader and Ayyūbid Periods,” in The Intertwined Worlds of Islam: Essays in Memory of Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, ed. Nahem Ilan (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Zvi Institute, and Bialik Institute, 2002), 250–81 (Hebrew). 27. The sages counted 248 positive commandments (“Thou shalt . . .”) as opposed to 365 “prohibitive commandments” (“Thou shalt not . . .”). The commandment to make the three annual pilgrimages: “Three times a year—on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the Feast of Weeks, and on the Feast of Booths—all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose” (Deut. 16:16, JPS translation). 28. Estori Ha-Parhi (1280–1355?) wrote in the first decades of the fourteenth century that going up to Jerusalem, as conducted in his own day, was only due to grief and mourning; that is, a custom commemorating the original Temple and historical 370

02 Gavish BM.indd 370

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

pilgrimage to it. For the text, see Yom Tov Levinsky, Encyclopaedia of Jewish Manners and Customs (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1970), 544 (Hebrew). 29. Lag Ba-Omer, lit. “the thirty-third day of the counting of the omer” (see chap. 2, note 116). 30. For the controversy over these questions, see Ben-Ya‘acob, Sacred Graves in Iraq, 13–17. 31. For the evidence supplied by travelers, including David D’Beth Hillel, see ibid., 110–12. For the testimony of Zev Vilnay, who visited the grave, see ibid., 119. Legends indicating the tomb’s sanctity to Christians and Muslims are related in ibid., 117–18, and Rivlin, “Ziyāra in Alqōsh,” 8. 32. Benjamin, Eight Years, 103. 33. Habbas, Close Yet Distant Brothers, 72–73. 34. Rivlin, “Ziyāra in Alqōsh,” 8, 15. 35. Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 12. But compare this with the description left by Petahiah of Regensburg, who traveled in the Near East in 1185 and visited the tomb of the prophet Jonah in the Galilee: “And Rabbi Petahiah said that all of Eretz-Israel can be traversed on foot in three days—and he went from there to the site of the grave of Jonah ben Amittai. And a nice structure is built over it and there are many types of fruit there, and the overseer of the orchard is a Gentile” (Travels of Rabbi Petachya, of Ratisbon . . . , trans. Abraham Benisch, 2nd ed. [London: Longman, 1861], 59). 36. A contraction from the Hebrew phrase for “Our sages, of Blessed Memory.” 37. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan 26 (Hebrew); Ben-Ya‘acob, Sacred Graves in Iraq, 11– 34, esp. 23. 38. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 296–99; Rivlin, “Ziyāra in Alqōsh,” 8, 15; Ben-Ya‘acob, Sacred Graves in Iraq, 109–22. 39. Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob, “Id al-Ziyāra in Baghdad,” Edoth 1 (1946): 37 (Hebrew). I am grateful to Prof. Yona Sabar for his help with the various names of the festival. 40. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 296–99; Rivlin, “Ziyāra in Alqōsh,” 8. For pilgrimage to the tombs of other holy men, see Ben-Ya‘acob, “Id al-Ziyāra in Baghdad,” 40–77; idem, Sacred Graves in Iraq, 37–217. 41. About Nahum, see R. J. Coggins, Israel among the Nations: A Commentary on the Books of Nahum and Obadiah, International Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 5–15; Aron Pinker, “Nahum—the Prophet and His Message,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 33 (April–June 2005): 81–90. 42. One assumption maintains that it was an Assyrian city in the vicinity of ancient Nineveh, near present-day Mosul, and another that it was a city in the Galilee. Most scholars believe that it was located in Judea. 43. Nahum’s dissimilarity from other prophets aroused some controversy among scholars as to whether he was a true prophet and exactly what the nature was of a true prophet. There are some who believe that only part of his book has survived, so one cannot come to a firm conclusion. See Yehuda Elizur, “The Prophet Nahum, His Period and Mission,” in Studies in the Minor Prophets, Proceedings of the Bible Study Group in the President’s Residence (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1981), 285–300 (He371

02 Gavish BM.indd 371

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

brew). See also the article by Yitzhak Avishur on Nahum in The World of the Bible (Tel Aviv: Davidson-Iti, 1994), 13:66–85 (Hebrew). 44. Salih Cohen, in an interview conducted in 1994, SAS, 8; Yona Zidkiyahu, IFA, Zakho A, 3. Apparently, Rahamim Cohen taught biblical Hebrew (personal communication from Yona Sabar). 45. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 10. 46. Gurji Zaqen, ibid., 3. 47. Mordechai Sa‘do, ibid., 5. 48. Limor, in Holy Land Travels (5–6, 11), points to a similar phenomenon in Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. She describes theatrical ceremonies at holy places whose objective was to reenact events in Christian history so that pilgrims would experience and identify with them at the scene of their unfolding. 49. Benjamin, Eight Years, 99–100. 50. For the importance attached to swords, sword dances, and sword battles at festive celebrations, see the testimony of Gurji Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 4. A KurdishJewish legend connects the sword to redemption: Jews living in northern Kurdistan believed that the sword of Moses is buried in one of the nearby mountains, and that whoever discovers it will bring redemption to the People of Israel. Three Jews who set out to search for it encountered a hostile Kurdish sheikh who caused them to fail in their efforts. He buried parts of a broken sword in his land and, when they came to dig it up, he caught them. The sheikh accused the Jews of wanting to leave Kurdistan, claimed that they were ungrateful, and maintained that they intended to take revenge upon the Kurds. One of the Jews managed to deceive the sheikh, calm his anger, and thwart his intention to extort money from them. They escaped this experience unharmed but “in their hearts still burns the flame [of desire] to discover the sword of Moses.” For the legend “Sword of Redemption” as told by Zion Sayda, who was born in Arbil, see IFA, no. 6602. 51. For examples of stories about Christian and Muslim belief in the sanctity of Nahum the Elkoshite, see Rivlin, “Ziyāra in Alqōsh,” 8. Compare this with Ben-Ami (Saint Veneration, 147–70), who stresses the common veneration of holy men in Morocco by Jews and Muslims and notes that this is common throughout the Orient. 52. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 12; Zaki Levi, ibid., 16. 53. For such cases, see chap. 2 at note 92 in the text. 54. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 10. 55. For historical legends, see Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 40–46, 132–44, 297–321; Sara Zfatman, The Jewish Tale in the Middle Ages: Between Ashkenaz and Sepharad (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), 14, 100 (Hebrew); Ivan G. Marcus, “History, Story and Collective Memory: Narrativity in Early Ashkenazic Culture,” Prooftexts 10 (September 1990): 365–88; Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 101–20. 56. For conflicts between Jews and Muslims as reflected in folklore, see Dov Noy, “Blood Libels in Folktales of the Ethnic Communities,” Mahanaim 110 (September–October 1966): 32–51 (Hebrew); Eliezer Marcus, “The Confrontation between 372

02 Gavish BM.indd 372

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

Jews and Non-Jews in the Folktales of Jews of the Islamic Countries” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977) (Hebrew). 57. The biblical Book of Esther can be classified as a folk narrative, according to the unpublished IFA list of the modified or specific tale types unique to the Jewish narrative tradition. See the tale type AT 730*A: “wondrous rescue of a Jewish community.” The legend related by Salim Gabbay also bears some similarity to AT 730*C: “those who do mischief to Jews are punished.” See Marcus, “Confrontation between Jews and Non-Jews,” 31–97. 58. Shoshana Haviv and Tamar Haviv (IFA, Zakho A, 13) told of a woman in Zakho who was responsible for collecting funds for the charity box bearing the name of the prophet Nahum. 59. For various social aspects of pilgrimage to a holy site, see Yoram Bilu, “The Inner Limits of Communitas: A Covert Dimension of Pilgrimage Experience,” Ethos 16 (1998): 303–35; idem, “Veneration of Saints,” 17–20. 60. On truth and reality in legends, in contrast to tales, see Robert A. Georges, “The General Concept of Legend: Some Assumptions to be Reexamined and Reassessed,” in American Folk Legend: A Symposium, ed. Wayland D. Hand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 1–19; Alan Dundes, “On the Psychology of Legend,” in ibid., 21–36; Linda Dégh, “Folk Narrative,” in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 53–84. 61. For similar concepts about the saint and his powers among Moroccan Jews, see Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration, 23–33, 61–73, 195–96. 62. On healing by means of articles placed on the grave, see Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration, 96–97. On the attitude toward the saint and fear of impinging upon his honor, see ibid., 51. On the importance of oaths made to the saint, see ibid., 54; Bilu, “Veneration of Saints,” 11–25. For the role of the holy man in folktales, see Noy, “Blood Libels,” 32–51; Dov Noy, “The Death of Rabbi Shalom Shabazi in Yemenite Folk Tales,” in Legacy of the Jews of Yemen: Studies and Researches, ed. Joseph Tobi (Jerusalem: Bo’i Teiman, 1976), 132–49 (Hebrew); Haya Bar-Itzhak, “‘Saints Legend’ as Genre in Jewish Folk Literature: Sample of Oral Stories about Rabbi Israel Baal-Shem-Tov, Rabbi Chaim Pinto, and Rabbi Shalom Shabazi” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1987) (Hebrew). 63. On the difference between the memorate, related in the first person and containing beliefs and supernatural elements, as compared with the personal memory narrative, which also contains secular and personal elements of the narrator, see Langellier, “Personal Narratives,” 253. 64. Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 12. 65. For healing of the sick by saints in North Africa, compare Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration, 61–63. For the saint appearing in a dream, see ibid., 27–29. 66. Mordechai Sa‘do, IFA, Zakho A, 5. 67. Sivan–Elul corresponds roughly to May–August. 68. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 10–13. 69. Ibid. 70. “The great importance of progeny in Moroccan Jewry’s traditional society ex373

02 Gavish BM.indd 373

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

plains the frequent appeals to saints in cases of barren women or of families that were childless because of infant mortality. Because modern medical facilities were lacking, particularly in small villages, recourse to the saint and faith in his powers were often the only source of hope in such cases” (Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration, 62). The same can be said about Kurdish Jews, including those of Zakho. 71. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 10. 72. See, for example, what Rahamim Cohen related about his wife, whom he was forced to take with him even though she was in the final month of her pregnancy with her second child, who was born on the way (IFA, Zakho A, 11). Zaki Levi told us that he was born in Alqōsh during a pilgrimage to the grave of Nahum (ibid., 1). 73. For mention of the beadle in Alqōsh, see Rivlin, “Literature,” 172; idem, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 41; Habbas, Close Yet Distant Brothers, 72–73; Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 51. 74. See, for example, Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 10–11; Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 11–12. For the beadle as a mediator between Christians and the prophet Nahum, see Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 13–14. 75. Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 6. 76. Zaki Levi, ibid., 16. 77. Yona Zidkiyahu, ibid., 2. 78. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 9–10. 79. For education of the sons of the family, see Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 236–47; Mordechai Zaken, “Central Institutions and Trade in the Zakho Jewish Community,” Hithadshut 5 (1985): 15–16 (Hebrew); Yona, Those Who Perish, 49– 51. 80. Tefillin are phylacteries, two small black leather boxes containing scriptural passages. These boxes are bound by straps to the head and left hand of men (aged thirteen and up) during the morning services, except on Saturdays and holy days. 81. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 9–10. 82. Gurji Zaqen, ibid., 3. 83. Ibid. 84. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 10. 85. For the treatment by Moroccan Jews of saints and their “transfer” to Israel, see Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration, 171–80; Alex Weingrod, “Saints, Shrines, and Politics in Contemporary Israel,” in Religious Regimes and State Formation: Perspectives from European Ethnology, ed. Eric R. Wolf (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 73–83; Yoram Bilu and Henry H. Abramovitch, “In Search of the ‘Saddiq’: Visitational Dreams among Moroccan Jews in Israel,” Psychiatry 48 (February 1985): 83–92; Eyal Ben-Ari and Yoram Bilu, “Saints’ Sanctuaries in Israeli Development Towns: On a Mechanism of Urban Transformation,” Urban Anthropology 16, no. 2 (1987): 243–72; Yoram Bilu and Eyal Ben-Ari, “The Making of Modern Saints: Manufactured Charisma and the Abu-Hatseiras of Israel,” American Ethnologist 19, no. 4 (1992): 672–87; Yoram Bilu, “The Revival of Cults of Saints in Israel: The Contribution of the Moroccan Community,” in Gonen, To the Tombs of the Righteous (see note 25), 27–45. 86. Michael Ish-Shalom, Holy Tombs: A Study of Traditions Concerning Jewish Holy 374

02 Gavish BM.indd 374

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 3

Tombs in Palestine (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1948), 167–69 (Hebrew), who writes on the basis of the testimony of travelers and the passage in the Jerusalem Talmud (Hagiga 2:1), which states that Rabbi Meir used to deliver sermons in Tiberias. 87. BT Avodah Zarah 18a. 88. Encyclopaedia Hebraica, vol. 22, col. 69 (Hebrew); Meir Havazelet, “Meir Ba‘al Ha-Ness, Tomb of,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (CD version); Zev Vilnay, “Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes,” in idem, Encyclopedia Ariel (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1977), 4096–106 (Hebrew); idem, Sacred Tombs in Eretz Israel, 3rd ed. (Jerusalem: Achiever, 1986), 2:103–17 (Hebrew). 89. For Rabbi Meir the tanna, see Aharon Oppenheimer, “Meir,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (CD version); Isaac Broydé, “Meïr (Meïr Ba‘al ha-Nes),” Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–6), 8:432–35; Naomi Goldstein Cohen, “Rabbi Meir, a Descendant of Anatolian Proselytes,” Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (Spring 1972): 51–59. 90. Aliza Shenhar, “The Figure of Rabbi Meir and its Literary Characterization in the Legends,” in Heqer Veiyun: Studies in Judaism, ed. Efrat Carmon (Haifa: Haifa University, 1976), 259–66 (Hebrew); Shulamit Tov, Figures from the Talmud (Jerusalem: [s.n.], 1988), 35–59 (Hebrew). 91. BT Avodah Zarah 18a. 92. Tov, Figures from the Talmud, 43–44; Rachel Adler, “The Virgin in the Brothel and Other Anomalies: Character and Context in the Legend of Bruriah,” Tikkun 3 (November–December 1988): 28–32. 93. Tov, Figures from the Talmud, 56–59. 94. Vilnay, “Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes,” 4097–98. This is a medieval tradition first mentioned by Benjamin of Tudela and Petahiah of Regensburg. 95. Tov, Figures from the Talmud, 69. Compare this with our foregoing discussion of the prophet Nahum. Popular tradition removed his burial site to Alqōsh in Kurdistan. 96. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 9. 97. Abraham Rubinstein, “The Booklet ‘Katit Lamaor’ by Joseph Perl,” Alei Sefer 3 (October 1976): 140–57 (Hebrew); Vilnay, “Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes,” 4101–2. 98. David Sarid, “The Changes in Jewish Settlement Life in Tiberias during the First and Second Aliyah Movements (1882–1914)” (MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1984), 80–82 (Hebrew). 99. Abraham Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1951), 59 (Hebrew). 100. David Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister, Moshe Shertok (Sharett) the first foreign minister, and Chaim Herzog the sixth president of Israel. 101. Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 18–19. 102. Salim Gabbay, ibid., 9. 103. See that of Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 11. 104. For conversion to Islam in Zakho, see the testimonies of Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho 48; Shabetai Piro, ibid.; Shmuel Baruch, ibid. 105. For the inclusion of real elements together with supernatural motifs in the 375

02 Gavish BM.indd 375

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

legend genre, see Shenhar-Alroy, The Story, 95. 106. For legends as reflecting social, cultural, and national needs, see Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 2, 6–7. For the historical legend as reflecting social processes, see ibid., 309; see also Zfatman, Jewish Tale (100, 102), where she interprets “The Legend of Rabbi Meshullam” and her summary (129); Linda Dégh, “The Process of Legend Formation,” in Narratives in Society: A Performer-Centered Study of Narration, FF Communications No. 255 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1995), 226–35. 107. Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 1–7, quoted passage on p. 2. 108. See note 58, where two informants told about a woman who collected funds for the charity bearing the name of the prophet Nahum. 109. Vilnay, “Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes,” 4102. 110. For family ties between Zakho and Qamishliye, see Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 2–4. 111. Esther ‘Alwan, in the testimony of Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 14. 112. For the dynamics and changes undergone by legends, like any folk tradition that is related to contemporary social needs, see Zfatman, Jewish Tale, 103. 113. For the great importance attributed to vows, see Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration, 55–57. Chapter 4 1. Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 30–31. 2. For visits by travelers and shadarim during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 58–59. For rabbinical emissaries active in Kurdistan during the first decades of the twentieth century, see Fischel, “Kurdistan Letters.” 3. A major study of such missions and their diverse aspects is still Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel. For the most part, the following paragraphs are based on this work. 4. Rabbi David D’Beth Hillel, who was a member of the Perushim sect (disciples of Elijah b. Solomon Zalman, known as the “Vilna Gaon”), came to Kurdistan in 1867 searching for traces of the Ten Tribes (see D’Beth Hillel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands, 14). For additional emissaries who arrived with this purpose in mind, see Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 59. For emissaries who came to Yemen and other lands for the same purpose, see Abraham Yaari, “Emissaries from Eretz Israel in Yemen,” Sinai 4 (1939): 392–430 (Hebrew); idem, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 144–51. 5. Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 59. 6. Ibid., 60–61. For a similar case, see the fourth letter published by Assaf, “More on the History,” 269–70. Appointment of a deputy emissary from among the local Jews is also known in other countries. For Morocco, see Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 56. For Tripolitania, see Harvey Goldberg, “Between Tripolitania and Eretz Israel in the Nineteenth Century: Information about Emissaries and Immigrants,” Pe‘amim 24 (1985): 88 (Hebrew). 376

02 Gavish BM.indd 376

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

7. For such a description in Tunis in 1773–74, see Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, Ma‘gal Tov Hashalem, ed. Aron Freimann, rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Merkas Hasefer, 1983), 56 (Hebrew). For shadarim in Libya, see Hacohen, Book of Mordechai, 296; Nahum Slouschz, Travels in North Africa (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1927), 96–103. With the reservations of a European, Israel Joseph Benjamin described the reception he received in Kurdistan in 1848, when he passed himself off as an emissary from Jerusalem: When a Chacham from Jerusalem comes into these parts, which occurs but very seldom, they go out solemnly to meet him, kiss his shoulders, his beard, and even his feet, according to the rank of him by whom he is saluted; they then carry him in triumph to the house of the Nassi, bare his feet and wash them, and the water used for that purpose is collected for drinking. I do not exaggerate anything in this account. I do not speak of this ceremony with approbation; indeed I condemn it and made no scruple in letting the Jews here know my sentiments on the matter; they however insisted and I had to yield. The highest people of the place have the first right to partake of this water; the rest is divided among the women and children; and this unclean beverage is considered to be preventive of all illnesses. (Benjamin, Eight Years, 128–29) Walter Fischel, who visited Kurdistan in 1930 and once again in 1936, described the reception he received: “The extraordinary reception accorded me by these simple Jews, their joy at having among them a Jews from the Holy City, is a true sign of their attachment to Eretz Israel” (Fischel, “Jews in Kurdistan,” 8). 8. Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 34. 9. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 229. This was the custom in Zakho, Dohok, Amadiya, and Barashi (see Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 61). 10. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan (1993), 196; Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 61. 11. Israel Joseph Benjamin, passing himself off as a shadar from Jerusalem, tried to influence Rabbi Eliyahu not to allow an agunah (a married woman who for some reason is separated from her husband and cannot remarry either because she has not been given a divorce by him or it is unknown whether he is still alive) to remarry until it was known exactly what happened to her husband (see Eight Years, 92–93). See the cases mentioned by Brauer, in Jews of Kurdistan, of an emissary who arranged a writ of divorce for a woman who wanted to leave her husband (187), and ordination of ritual slaughterers by a shadar even though they had already received a diploma from local rabbis (234). For employment of an emissary to coerce a Jew to comply with Jewish religious law under threat of excommunication, see Assaf, “More on the History,” and Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 107. 12. For an emissary from Jerusalem, Rabbi Rahamim della Rosa, who came to the aid of the community in Amadiya in 1871 after it was the object of rioting, and the shadar Rabbi Benjamin Nehmad of Tiberias, who came to Arbil in 1871 and found the local community suffering at the hands of their Kurdish neighbors, see Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 131–32. A case of one aiding the Zakho community during 377

02 Gavish BM.indd 377

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

a natural disaster was that of the emissary Rabbi Yeshayah ben Aharon in 1892, when the river flooded (see Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 60, 211). 13. Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 28–29. 14. For this phenomenon in North Africa, see Slouschz, Travels in North Africa, 100–103; Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration, 41–45; Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb, 151–58. 15. Fischel, “Kurdistan Letters,” 172. 16. For World War I in Iraq, see Hayyim J. Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq (Jerusalem: Hassifriya Haziyonit and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1969), 17–18 (Hebrew); Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 40–41, 162. 17. Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 40–41. 18. Shabetai Piro, OHD, 1–2, 3, 5. 19. “Appendix: Brief Chronology of Important Dates of 1918–1919,” LON, R607, 11/44805/25888. 20. For reports about Jewish deserters from the Turkish army and descriptions of hunger in Zakho, see Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, 4–6; Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 15–16; Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 21. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3. 22. Zaki Levi, ibid., 1. After the British conquest of Iraq, the British gathered Iraqi officers who had served in the Turkish army, and others who had worked for the Ottoman authorities in camps in India and Egypt, and trained them to serve as leaders or officers in the service of the British, though not in their own country but rather in the Hejaz. Only a few years later did they return to Iraq (see Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 43). 23. See documents of the British Army and Air Force in Kurdistan, September– October 1923, in PRO, AIR 23/584. For the strategic importance of Zakho, see “Memorandum on the Frontier between Turkey and Irak, 1924,” PRO, AIR 5/637, I, p. 9, para. 4. 24. Shmuel Baruch, OHD, 26–27. On construction of roads, including one between Mosul and Zakho, see “Strategical Aspects of the Frontier Question,” 27 September 1924, PRO, AIR 5/637, II, p. 6. 25. Shmuel Shurki, OHD, 6. For the encounter with the English and with Jews serving in the British forces, see also Shmuel Baruch, ibid. 26. Sir John Evelyn Shuckburh to the Foreign Office, “Enclosure 2: Air Staff Memorandum on Proposed Strategical Line for a Frontier between Irak and Turkey, 22 March 1924, PRO, AIR 5/537. 27. For the Mosul Committee and Count Pál Teleki, see chapter 2, notes 73–74. 28. Bishop Toma Thaeus to the League of Nations, 1 June 1925, LON, R607, 11/44326/25888; “Frontière entre la Turquie et l’Irak,” 22 September 1925, LON, R608, 11/46529/25888 (C550, 1925, v11); British Delegation, Geneva, to Eric Drummond, League of Nations, 15 September 1925, LON, R608, 11/46383/25888. 29. Turkish foreign minister to the secretary of the League of Nations, Geneva, 23 June 1925, LON, R607, 11/45415/25888; Foreign Office (London) to the secretary of the League of Nations, Geneva, 24 August 1925, LON R607, 11/45888/25888. 30. Foreign Office to the Chief Secretariat, 24 August 1925, regarding air raids 378

02 Gavish BM.indd 378

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

by the Royal Air Force, LON, R607, 11/45965/25888. The anti-British uprising occurred after the League of Nations Border Committee had left the area. 31. Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 7–24. 32. There are many stories, for example, about the shadar Ya‘akov Lubaton, who reached Zakho in 1922, and many fewer testimonies that mention other emissaries. Most of the oral documentation is firsthand and only a little is hearsay evidence. Most of my interviewees were in their seventies when I interviewed them; the testimony of only three who were in their late fifties was based on hearsay. 33. Yehouda Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), chap. 2. 34. Ibid., chap. 3. 35. Shlomo Deshen, “Theories and Documents in the Study of Baghdad Jewry,” Katharsis: A Critical Review in the Humanities and Social Sciences, no. 2 (Autumn 2004): 7–17 (Hebrew). 36. For competition between shadarim and Zionist emissaries in the Levant, see Abraham Haim, “The Relations of the Jewish Sephardi Leadership with Other Jewish Communities of the Middle East between the Two World Wars,” Shevet Va‘am, 2nd ser., 3 (April 1978): 70–76 (Hebrew); Tobi, “Jewish Centers in Asia [B],” 167; idem, “New Information about Emissaries of Eretz Israel to the Yemen,” Shevet Va‘am, 2nd ser., 3 (8) (April 1978): 116 (Hebrew); Ya‘akov Yehoshua, “Sephardic Rabbis as Emissaries of Jerusalem to the Diaspora,” Bama‘arakhah 16 (December 1976): 21–22 (Hebrew). For the status of shadarim in Iraq, North Africa, and Yemen, see Shenhav, The Arab Jews, 92–110. 37. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 5; idem, IFA, Zakho B, 3; Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 8; Ezra Laniado, The Jews of Mosul: From Samarian Exile to “Operation Ezra and Nehemiah” (Tirat Hacarmel: Institute for the Study of Mosul Jewry, 1981), 342–44 (Hebrew). 38. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho B, 3; Haya Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 2. 39. Salim Gabbay, ibid., 5, 7. 40. Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 4. 41. The first was Yosef Hayyim Shrem, who was also active during the British Mandate over Iraq. I shall deal with him presently. 42. Oded Avisar, ed., The Book of Hebron: The City of the Patriarchs throughout the Ages (Jerusalem: Keter, 1970), 154–55, 514–15 (Hebrew); Yaron Avituv, “The Bajayo Family Legend,” Kol Ha-Ir, 21 December 1990, 36–37 (Hebrew). 43. Avituv, ibid. Issachar Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration among the Jews in Morocco (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), 29 (Hebrew), notes that Rabbi Yosef Bajayo, a cousin of Hayyim Bajayo, died while on a mission in Morocco, was buried there, and was included among the saints venerated by Moroccan Jewry. 44. One example is the plot of land on which the market in Hebron is situated today, which was “sold in 1870 to Rabbi Hayyim Yeshu‘a Hamitzri Bajayo for the price of twelve grush” (Avituv, “Bajayo Family Legend,” 36). 45. David Avisar, “Rabbi Hayyim Bajayo,” in Avisar, Book of Hebron (see note 42), 154–55. 46. Avituv, “Bajayo Family Legend,” 37. 379

02 Gavish BM.indd 379

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

47. Avisar, “Rabbi Hayyim Bajayo,” 154. 48. Avituv, “Bajayo Family Legend,” 37. 49. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho B, 1–3. Rabbi Baruch was born in 1898, and when I interviewed him on 9 February 1994 he was ninety-six years old. Bajayo’s visit to Zakho, as noted earlier, was during 1912–13. 50. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 8. 51. Salim Gabbay, ibid., 5. 52. Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 7–8. 53. For Shrem and Lubaton, see pp. 104, 117. 54. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 17. 55. Esther ‘Alwan, in the testimony of Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 14–15. 56. Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 16, 103, 755; Moshe David Gaon, Oriental Jews in Eretz Israel in Past and Present, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: the author, 1938), 682 (Hebrew); “In Memory of Rabbi Yosef ben Shalom Shrem of Blessed Memory,” Bama‘arakhah 169 (2 March 1975): 23 (Hebrew). 57. Abraham Ben-Ya‘acob, The Traveling Envoy (Jerusalem: Nuriel Shrem, 1982) (Hebrew). 58. Archives of the Committee of the Sephardic Community in Jerusalem (hereafter, ACSC), files ‘ayin dalet, shin dalet; Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, file 51, MS 29; National Library of Israel (formerly the Jewish National and University Library), Jerusalem, Department of Manuscripts and Archives, MS 80 1896, B388. 59. Ben-Ya‘acob, Traveling Envoy, 27–31. 60. Ibid., 36 n. 12. 61. Ibid., 31–34 and n. 9. 62. Ibid., 41–42. 63. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 9. 64. On 5 March 1921, the British High Commissioner of Iraq approved the establishment of the Zionist Society for Aram Naharaim. For its activity, also under the name of the Zionist Movement for Aram Naharaim, see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 41–45, 50–53. For Zionist activity in provincial Iraqi cities between 1920 and 1935, see ibid., 70–75. 65. Letter to the editor, Do’ar Hayom, 23 June 1921 (Hebrew). 66. Letter to the editor, Do’ar Hayom, 4 November 1921, 2 (Hebrew). For this episode, see also Ben-Ya‘acob, Traveling Envoy, 122–24. 67. Ben-Ya‘acob, Traveling Envoy, 124. 68. Ben-Ya‘acob (ibid., 122) gave this affair the title “Disproval of a Libel against a Jerusalem Emissary, Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem.” 69. Aharon Sasson, born in Baghdad in 1873, passed away in Jerusalem in 1962. He headed the Zionist society in Baghdad until his expulsion from Iraq in 1935 (see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 28–29, 36–52, 59–62). 70. Copy of a letter from the chief rabbi and the General Committee of the Sephardic Jews, Hebron, to Rabbi Ezra Dangoor, chief rabbi of Iraq, 20 Heshvan 5685 (17 November 1924), CZA, KKL5/554 (Hebrew). 71. Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, to the Committee of the World Union of Sephardic Jews, 24 February 1925 (L/A 3250), CZA, KKL5/554 (Hebrew). 380

02 Gavish BM.indd 380

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

72. This claim contradicts the letter sent by the Zionist society on 26 September 1921, quoted above, which cleared Shrem of these accusations. The present writer might be referring to the letter sent by Mekomi to Do’ar Hayom. 73. See note 71. 74. For this manner in which a personal narrative is created, see Langellier, “Personal Narratives,” 256–61. 75. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 4. 76. The writ was issued to Rabbi Yosef Hayyim Shrem by the hakham bashi (chief rabbi) of Jerusalem, Moïse Franco. He was sent to Beirut, Damascus, Diarbakir, Nisibin, Zakho [my emphasis—H.G.], Assyria, Arbil, Kirkuk, “Greater Persia,” and “Lesser Persia” (Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Library, file 51, MS 29). 77. ACSC, file shin dalet 42. Rupee: Indian currency that became legal tender in Iraq after it was occupied by the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force that began its advance from India. 78. Donations from Dohuk and Sondur, two Jewish communities that were smaller than that of Zakho, amounted together to 130 rupees. In contrast, donations from Arbil, a provincial city much larger than Zakho, amounted to 790 rupees. For the number of Jews in these communities, see Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan: Zakho, p. 62; Dohuk, pp. 56–57; Sondur, p. 71; Arbil, p. 94. 79. Nehemiah Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 3; ‘Amram Levi, ibid., 1. 80. ACSC, shin dalet 42. 81. I was unable to locate this “warning” in the newspaper. The son was probably referring to misgivings lest anyone coming from Palestine would come to harm after the 1929 riots. 82. Quoted in Ben-Ya‘acob, Traveling Envoy, 64. 83. ACSC, file shin dalet 42; Ben-Ya‘acob, Traveling Envoy, 70. 84. “Deed of Conditions,” ACSC, file shin dalet 42. 85. Letter to all communities in Iraq, 3 May 1933, ACSC, file shin dalet 42. For the dispute, see Ben-Ya‘acob, Traveling Envoy, 70–72. 86. On Rabbi Nahum Babbika, see Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 3; Baruch Givati, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 87. ACSC, file ‘ayin dalet 11. 88. ASCS, file shin dalet 41. 89. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 4; Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 4. 90. Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 9. 91. Salim Gabbay, ibid., 4; Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 4. Compare the foregoing testimony about relations between Rabbi Hayyim Bajayo and former Zakho Jews in the same Jerusalem neighborhood. 92. A community of persons in one of the holy cities of Eretz Israel who were former residents of a specific city or country in the Diaspora. 93. Actually, from Job 3:13. 94. Based on Ps. 26:12: “My feet are on level ground / In assemblies I will bless the Lord.” Rashi interprets the phrase as meaning “on the straight path,” and Shmuel L. Gordon as “I shall not falter.” Rashi is Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (1040–1105), a leading commentator on the Bible and the Talmud. 381

02 Gavish BM.indd 381

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

95. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 2, 7. 96. Ibid., 2–3, 6–7, 12–13. 97. His father, Yosef Binyamin Baruch, was a dayan (judge in a religious court), a ritual slaughterer, and a mohel (one who is authorized to perform a circumcision) in Zakho (see ibid., 1). 98. Ibid., 2, 7. 99. Ibid., 4. 100. Lubaton set out about three years after the war’s end. Since the war, the Committee of the Sephardic Community had received financial support from the Zionist Commission, organized in 1918 and consisting of representatives of several Western Zionist organizations to serve as a liaison between the British military authorities and the Jewish population in Palestine. Apparently, when this support began to dwindle, the committee had to renew the dispatch of shadarim. Avraham Haim (“Relations of the Jewish Sephardi Leadership,” 70) described the condition of the Sephardic community in Jerusalem, and it may be assumed that the situation was no better in other cities, including Tiberias. 101. For the list of shadarim, see Oded Avisar, ed., The Book of Tiberias (Jerusalem: Keter, 1973), 189–92 (Hebrew). For the Lubaton family in the list of Sephardic families, see ibid., 476. 102. As, for example, in the testimony of Nehemiah Hocha, who was born in 1927 (IFA, Zakho A, 2). 103. Interview with eighty-year-old Zohara Levi, 8 September 1994 (IFA, Zakho B). 104. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 11–12, 16–17; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 5. 105. Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 9. 106. Ibid., 9–10. 107. Ibid., 15–16. 108. Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 4. 109. Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 3. 110. Salim Gabbay, ibid., 5. 111. Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 16. 112. Ibid., 16–17. 113. Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 47–48. 114. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 5. 115. For shadarim as pious men, and also as imposters, see Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 33–43. For shadarim in Zakho, presented as pious men but without naming them, see Varda Shilo, Zakho Stories: A Collection of Stories from Kurdistan (Jerusalem: the author, 1986), 20–25, 44–45 (Hebrew); Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 5. For shadarim who visited Zakho and are described as imposters and cheats, see Salim Gabbay, ibid., 7; Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 9; Mordechai Yona, “Stories and Folktales about Holy Men of Kurdistan,” Hithadshut 5 (1985): 163 (Hebrew). 116. Julia Dekel, IFA, Zakho A, 4. 117. ‘Amram Levi, ibid., 1. 118. The stories by Julia Dekel and ‘Amram Levi have a parallel in the story I was told by Shlomo Rabi of Arbil: “A Fake Shadar—Rabbi Yoel of Haifa and the Carpet.” 382

02 Gavish BM.indd 382

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

The story centers round a carpet that had been donated for the yeshivah named after Rabbi Shim‘on Bar-Yohai. After Rabi immigrated to Eretz Israel, he visited the home of the shadar, saw the carpet there, and was hosted very stingily (IFA, no. 13936). 119. An expiatory sacrifice, usually a fowl, slaughtered on the eve of Yom Kippur. 120. Nehemiah Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 2. The motif of a swindler and his accomplice who exploit the ignorance of Jews who do not know when the Jewish festivals fall due also appears in other Jewish folktales. For example, see a parallel story: “Yom Kippur in Tammuz,” IFA, 4595, A-T C* 1831. 121. Makhlouf Edrei was a rabbinical envoy sent to North Africa, Greece, and Yugoslavia (see Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 645). 122. A festival celebrated in the middle of the month of Adar, generally February or early March. 123. Langellier, “Personal Narratives,” 256–61. 124. Zohara Levi, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 125. Ibid., 12–13. 126. Ibid., 15. 127. Ibid., 2. 128. Ibid., 9. 129. Ibid., 4. 130. Ibid., 22. 131. Ibid., 19. 132. The letter is in CZA, Z4/2101. 133. For the narrative in full, see pp. 128–29. 134. Zohara Levi, IFA, Zakho B, 5. 135. National Library of Israel, B388Heb. 4o199/265. 136. Shabetai Piro, interviewed by Emmanuel Bar-Haim, 31 December 1967, OHD, Zakho 48, 5–8. 137. Ibid., 31. 138. A British Jew, the first High Commissioner of Palestine, 1920–25. 139. Letter, signed by the shohet Elifaz Yehezkel and another twenty-six persons from Khānaqin, to the Central Bureau of the JNF, 3 Ellul 5685 (23 August 1925), CZA, KKL5/554. 140. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 5. 141. Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 20. 142. Ibid. Note the change in name when compared with the previous paragraph. The emissary had several sons, whom the Jews from Zakho met in Eretz Israel after their aliyah. 143. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 17. 144. Rabbi Shalom ben Shim‘on of Dohuk wrote to the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Eretz Israel, Ya‘akov Meir, in the month of Heshvan 5687 (October–November 1926) complaining of the large number of shadarim representing Eretz Israel institutions who came to his village, which was in a difficult economic condition and could not even contribute to the emissaries who came on a regular basis, such as Yosef Hayyim Shrem (see Ben-Ya‘acob, Traveling Envoy, 141–42). For a similar letter from the rabbis of Mosul to Rabbi Ya‘akov Meir, 17 Heshvan 5687 (25 October 1926), 383

02 Gavish BM.indd 383

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 4

see ibid., 135–36. 145. Salih Yosef Nuriel, head of the Zionist community in Arbil, filed a complaint in the rabbinical court against a shadar who spoke evil of Zionism and Eretz Israel and was fined (see OHD, file [11] 21, pp. 22, 30). 146. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 4–5. 147. Avraham Sasson Nissim, Khānaqin, to the Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, 1 April 1925, CZA, KKL5/554. 148. Avraham Sasson Nissim, Khānaqin, to the Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, 22 April 1925, CZA, KKL5/554. 149. CZA, KKL5/554. 150. JNF, Jerusalem, to the World Federation of Sephardic Jews, 17 May 1925 (Lamed/Aleph 3677), CZA, KKL5/554. 151. Avraham Sasson Nissim, Khānaqin, to the Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, 16 and 17 June 1925, CZA, KKL5/554. 152. “Building the land” (binyan ha-aretz) is a phrase referring to efforts to develop Eretz Israel as a homeland for the Jewish People. 153. Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, to Avraham Sasson Nissim, Khānaqin, 6 July 1925 (Lamed/Aleph 3973). For the position adopted by the JNF vis-à-vis the charitable funds collected by religious emissaries, see the letter of 20 July 1925 (Lamed/Aleph 4/4 4049), both in CZA, KKL5/554. 154. Letter, signed by Elifaz Yehezkel, Khānaqin, to the Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, 3 Ellul 5685 (23 August 1925), CZA, KKL5/554. 155. Representative of the JNF in Khānaqin [A. S. Nissim] to the Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, 14 Teveth 5686 (31 December 1925), CZA, KKL5/554. 156. Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, to the Committee of the World Federation of Sephardic Jews, Jerusalem, 8 January 1926 (Lamed/Aleph 5104), CZA, KKL5/554. 157. The pre-Zionist Jewish community in Eretz Israel, primarily comprised of the ultra-Orthodox. 158. World Federation of Sephardic Jews to the Central Bureau of the JNF, 16 February 1926 (letter 153). See also a previous letter (129), 10 Shevat 5686 (25 January 1926), both in CZA, KKL5/554. 159. Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem (Lamed/Aleph 5604), to A. S. Nissim, 17 March 1926 and 15 April 1926 (Lamed/Aleph 5604 and 5775, respectively), CZA, KKL5/554. JNF officials expressed their surprise that Nissim was still dealing with the issue of the Safed emissary after the latter had returned to Eretz Israel. 160. Central Bureau of the JNF, Jerusalem, to A. S. Nissim, Khānaqin, 13 March 1927 (Lamed/Aleph 1473); Committee of the Sephardic Community in Jerusalem to the Chief Bureau of the JNF, 20 First Adar 5687 (22 March 1927), both in CZA, KKL5/554. 161. The sums sent by Nissim accrued from religious levies. From 1924 onward, Nissim was appointed by the Khānaqin community to be the gabbay of the synagogue and collector of levies for ritual slaughtering. The agreement was that 75 percent of the income would go to the JNF and the rest would be his salary. See Yehezkel to JNF, 3 Ellul 5685 (23 August 1925) (note 154). 384

02 Gavish BM.indd 384

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

162. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 5. He said that his grandfather, who was head of the community, had a list of shadarim from Eretz Israel who visited Zakho, and he remembered that it included an emissary named Turjeman. 163. CZA, KKL5/2980. 164. Shmuel Baruch in his 1967 testimony (OHD, Zakho 48, 25) and in the interview I conducted with him in 1987 (IFA, Zakho A, 1–2). For Herbert Samuel and how the rumor of his appointment as high commissioner influenced aliyah to Eretz Israel, see Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho 48, 20; Shabetai Piro, ibid., 32. 165. “We heard that there was a Jew governing in Jerusalem whose name was Herbert Samuel . . . so we said the Messiah has come and we shall go up [to Eretz Israel]” (Nahum Hafzadi, 20–21). Hafzadi came on aliyah in 1923. See also Shabetai Piro, ibid., 31. Compare this with the rumor that spread among Jews in Yemen—a rumor most likely brought there by shadarim—that Baron Edmond de Rothschild had bought land in Eretz Israel for settlement by Jews, and this even before his involvement began there in 1883. This rumor gave impetus to the wave of immigration by Yemenite Jews in 1881–82 (see Nini, Yemen and Zion, 188–92). For similar rumors spread in North Africa with the same result, see Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb, 28; Ya‘akov Barnai, “The Maghrebite Community in Jerusalem (1830–1918)” (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971), 8–9 (Hebrew). 166. Meir Gershon, IFA, Zakho B, 3. He returned to this theme later during his oral testimony (p. 16) when he repeated the story of his immigration to Eretz Israel. 167. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 5. 168. “Hatikvah” (The hope), a poem by Naphtali Herz Imber, written in 1884, that was adopted as the anthem of the Zionist movement and later became the national anthem of Israel. Chapter 5 1. Simon Hopkins, “The Jews of Kurdistan in Eretz Israel and Their Language,” Pe‘amim 56 (Summer 1993): 51 (Hebrew). 2. Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 63; Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 61. 3. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Our Population in Eretz Israel (Warsaw: The Executive of “Brith Hano‘ar” and World Hehalutz, 1929), 1:67 (Hebrew). 4. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, The Exiled of Israel, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1969), 133 (Hebrew). Hibbat Zion (lit. “Love of Zion”) was a movement founded in the 1880s that preceded by over a decade the First Zionist Congress, convened in 1897. 5. Ben-Zvi, Exiled of Israel, 133–34. 6. Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 27–36. 7. Ibid., 35. 8. For the changes that affected the lives of Jews in Iraq from the mid-nineteenth century, see ibid., 17–24, especially Cohen‘s summary, in which he draws a comparison between Jews in Iraq and Kurdistan (24) (see also Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 25–39). 385

02 Gavish BM.indd 385

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

For the Iraqi orientation adopted by leaders of Iraqi Jewry after World War I, see ibid., 54. 9. Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 24. 10. The interview was conducted on 23 July 1987, which places the date of aliyah between 1897 and 1907. 11. Today the site of Jerusalem’s Khan Theater. 12. Esther ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 14–15. 13. Shekhunat Hapahim, near Mahaneh Yehudah, is the Shevet Tzedek Quarter founded in 1890. At first, it was a very poor neighborhood whose residents were Oriental Jews. The houses were constructed of metal containers in which kerosene was imported, from which it received its popular name: Tin Container Houses (Buyuth e[l]-Tanak) or Tin Containers Neighborhood (Hart [el]-Tanak) (Zev Vilnay, “Shevet Tzedek,” in Vilnay, Encyclopedia Ariel [Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1980], 7676 [Hebrew]). 14. This was discussed in detail by Prof. Dov Noy in a lecture about space and time in ethnic narratives that he delivered when receiving the Jerusalem Prize in 1988. 15. For the settlement of emigrants from Zakho in the quarters around Mahaneh Yehudah, see the story by Simha Mizrahi (IFA, Zakho A, 1), which concerns her parents, who came on aliyah in 1920–21 and settled in the Nahalat Ahim Quarter; Rahamim Cohen (ibid., 3), who immigrated in 1923; Shmuel Baruch (ibid., 2), who came in 1925 and settled in Shekhunat Hapahim; Yona Zidkiyahu (ibid., 3), who settled in Mahaneh Yehudah in 1930; David Salman (IFA, Zakho B, 10–11), who came to Jerusalem in 1937 and took up residence in the Zikhron Yosef Quarter; and Salha Mizrahi (ibid., 9–10), who told of her immigration in 1943 in the wake of her mother, who had come a year earlier. Both lived with relatives near the Mahaneh Yehudah market. 16. Julia Dekel, IFA, Zakho A, 2. 17. The Tribes of Israel in the President’s Home in Jerusalem (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1959), 159–81 (Hebrew). For the settlement of Kurdish Jews in Sejera and their joining members of the Hashomer (i.e., guards) organization, see Ben-Ya‘acob (Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 26): “About fifty-five years ago an attempt was made by the JCA [Jewish Colonization Association] to settle the Kurds on the land in the village of Sejera.” 18. Ben-Gurion was in Sejera intermittently in the years 1907–10. See Yehuda Slutsky, “Ben-Gurion, David,” Encyclopaedia Judaica [hereafter, EJ], 16 vols., 4:506– 14. 19. Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho 48, 20. 20. Yona Salman, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. David Salman testified that the burial site of his uncle, Yitzhak Salman, is unknown despite the efforts he made to locate it (IFA, Zakho B, 20). 21. Yona Salman, IFA, Zakho A, 7–8. 22. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 5. For the differences between Iraqi and Kurdish Jewry, see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 17–24. 23. Cohen discusses the Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim in Baghdad, under the leadership of Aharon Sasson, that handled the legal aliyah of Iraqi Jews (Zionist Activity in Iraq, 36–81, esp. 41–45). 386

02 Gavish BM.indd 386

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

24. Ibid., 118. Cohen bases his estimate on statistics from the Immigration Department of the Zionist Organization: 3,290 immigrants came in 1924–31, 2,937 in 1932–38, and the rest prior to 1924 or after 1938, until the end of 1941. These figures include both Iraqi and Kurdish Jews. 25. For the “Iraqi orientation,” see Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 54–110. Things were different in North Africa, where between the two world wars Jews of the Maghreb countries and Libya wanted to become Westernized and integrate only into the European economy and civilization (see Michel Abitbol, “Zionist Activity in North Africa Up to the End of the Second World War,” Pe‘amim 2 [Summer 1979]: 78–79 [Hebrew]; idem, “Processes of Modernization,” 411). For Morocco, see Michal Lis, “From Morocco to Eretz Israel: The Pre-state Immigration, 1830–1948,” in Tearful Pioneers: Studies in North African Jewry, ed. Shimon Shetreet (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991), 113–16 (Hebrew). For Tunisia, see Haïm Saadoun, “Zionism in Tunisia 1918–1948” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1992), 20–21, 72, 215 (Hebrew); Suzanne Levy, “Jews, Arabs, and Europeans in Tunisia in the Writings of Albert Memmi,” Pe‘amim 4 (Winter 1980): 72–83 (Hebrew). For Libya see Rachel Simon, “From ‘Zionist Circle’ to the Realization of Zionism: The Immigration of Libyan Jews,” Shorashim Bamizrah 3 (1991): 295–96 (Hebrew); Haggiag-Liluf, History of the Jews, 54–59. 26. Zvi Yehuda, “Moroccan Jewry and the Zionist Organization in the Years 1900–1948,” Zion 51 (1986): 341–55 (Hebrew). 27. This has been dealt with extensively by Esther Meir[-Glitzenstein], “The Policy of the Jewish Agency and the Government of Israel vis-à-vis the Immigration of Iraqi Jews, 1941–1950” (PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 1991) (Hebrew), idem, Zionism in an Arab Country. See especially page 21 of her dissertation for solutions to the Jewish problem in Iraq to which the Jewish educated youth turned in the 1940s: emigration, Zionism, and Communism. The first signs of all these were already evident in the late 1930s. 28. Reuven (Zaslany) Shiloah (1909–59) later headed the Department of Arab Affairs of the Executive of the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor) and afterward coordinated intelligence efforts for the Intelligence Services of the Haganah, the prestate defense force of the organized Jewish community in Eretz Israel. 29. Reuven Zaslany to unnamed recipient in Jerusalem, 7 June 1934, CZA Z4/3243. 30. The British Mandate authorities in Palestine set a quota of annual Jewish immigration by issuing certificates, which were allotted to various Zionist movements and organizations by the Jewish Agency. 31. Abitbol, “Zionist Activity,” 81; Shlomo Barad, “Missions and Emissaries to Islamic Countries,” Shorashim Bamizrah 1 (1986): 144–45 (Hebrew); Lis, “From Morocco to Eretz Israel,” 115–16; Simon, “From ‘Zionist Circle,’” 295–96; Yehuda, “Moroccan Jewry,” 337. 32. “Our enemies here have begun spreading lies against the Zionist Executive [such] that it places obstacles before the aliyah of Oriental Jews as a step meant to create a balance between Ashkenazi and Oriental Jews. For our part, we explain to the libelers that this is a groundless [charge] and that the government of Palestine 387

02 Gavish BM.indd 387

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

acts thus in relation to all countries” (Mesopotamian Zionist Committee, Baghdad, to Executive Department, Zionist Executive, Jerusalem, 21 Tishri 5687 [29 September] 1926, CZA Z4/2470). 33. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Policy of the Jewish Agency,” 21–31. Cohen accused the Zionist Organization of not being interested neither in attracting Iraqi Jews to Eretz Israel and Zionism nor in investing in Zionist education or encouraging aliyah, but only receiving donations from Diaspora Jews (Zionist Activity in Iraq, 134). 34. Moshe Mossek, Palestine Immigration Policy under Sir Herbert Samuel: British, Zionist, and Arab Attitudes (London: Frank Cass, 1978), 4–5, 35–40, 117–46. 35. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Policy of the Jewish Agency,” 24; idem, Zionism in an Arab Country, 41–42. 36. Ben-Zion Yisraeli, “On Iraqi Jewry and Its Aliyah to Eretz Israel,” in Ben-Zion: Writings and Speeches of Ben-Zion Yisraeli from Kinneret, ed. Shmuel Yavne’eli (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1956), 38 (Hebrew). 37. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Policy of the Jewish Agency,” 29. In response to a request by a youth group from Iraq (9 November 1936), Itzhak Ben-Zvi intervened with the Jewish Agency on behalf of Iraqi Jews, demanding that they be allocated one hundred immigration permits: “We believe that your executive will take this request into account in view of the latest events in Iraq and will try to fill it in order to encourage the suffering Iraqi [Jewish] population and in this manner indicate that the institutions of the Zionist movement are touched by its fate and are willing to do the maximum possible to ease their situation” (Ben-Zvi to Jewish Agency Executive, 11 November 1936, CZA S6/3783). 38. “Distribution of Aliyah Permits by Country for the Period October 1932 to March 1933” (Hebrew), CZA S6/2550. 39. Aharon Sasson to Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency, 20 November 1934, CZA S25/3527. 40. Ahiever, a society of pioneering Zionists, was given preferential treatment by the Zionist establishment in Eretz Israel during the 1930s. Ten of its members immigrated in 1934 with permits issued over the quota for Iraq through the intervention of Ben-Zion Yisraeli, who had been helped by them when he came to Iraq to acquire palm tree shoots for replanting in Palestine. The members of Ahiever who arrived in Eretz Israel at first settled as a group in an agricultural settlement but disbanded within two years, and its members found employment as teachers of Arabic or as intermediaries between Jewish and Arab settlements. See Meir-Glitzenstein, “Policy of the Jewish Agency,” 30–31; Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 64–66. 41. Yehoshua Batat to Eliahu Epstein, 2 December 1934, CZA S25/3527. 42. Yehoshua Batat to Eliahu Epstein, 23 December 1934, CZA S25/3527. 43. Yehoshua Batat to Yehoshua Behar, Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, 19 July 1934, CZA S6/2550. 44. Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 116; Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 42–43. 45. Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 24. 46. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Policy of the Jewish Agency,” 30. 47. Yehoshua Batat to Eliahu Epstein, 6 August 1935, CZA S25/3527. 388

02 Gavish BM.indd 388

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

48. Association of the Youth of Aram Naharaim to Jewish Agency, 1 July 1936, CZA S6/3783. 49. “The issue of the Kurdish aliyah is a matter that stands on its own merits and needs special treatment. There is no logic in including the Kurds among the twenty-five permits you have allotted us! You are certainly aware that the Kurdish aliyah is made up of families and it is impossible to separate them so that one part will emigrate and the other remain in Aram Naharaim” (Baghdad Zionist Society to Immigration and Labor Department of the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, 9 December 1934, CZA S6/2550). “In the matter of arranging for the Kurdish aliyah, no little time is necessary, and even if you provide immigration permits for them it is uncertain that they will be able to arrange for passports in a period of less than three months” (chairman of the Eretz Israel Office, Baghdad, to Immigration Department, 30 December 1934, CZA S6/2550). 50. Yizhak Gruenbaum to Ben-Zion Yisraeli, 14 March 1934, CZA S6/2550. 51. Secretary of the Immigration Department to Aharon Sasson, 14 March 1934, CZA S6/2550. 52. Yisraeli also visited Kirkuk and Mosul and visited the communities of Aqra, Rawanduz, and Köi-Sanjaq about which he only heard that they “seemed to be awaiting the miracle of aliyah.” See Ben-Zion Yisraeli, “Report,” April 1934, CZA S6/2594 (Hebrew). 53. Ben-Zion Yisraeli to Eliahu Dobkin, 31 January 1936, S6/3782. He recommended that, of the fifteen immigration permits for Iraq, seven be allotted to Baghdad and eight to Kurdish Jews to be distributed to residents of Arbil. He appended the names of thirteen candidates for aliyah from Arbil. 54. Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 75–79; Zionist Organization Central Office, London, to Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency, in a letter dated 33.6.33 (apparently 3 June 1933), referring to Salih Yosef Nuriel’s request for ten immigration permits: “Mr. Nuriel has been corresponding with us for several years and is fulfilling his Zionist mission faithfully and with integrity. We therefore request that you contact him and provide him with sufficient information.” Haim Barlas, secretary of the Immigration and Labor Department, Jerusalem, to Nuriel, Arbil, 31 March 1933, in the matter of the latter’s request for immigration permits: “We shall always be pleased to be in contact with you and help you with the aliyah of Jews from the Arbil district as much as we will be able.” Both of these sources are in CZA S6/2594. 55. Meeting, with the participation of Eliahu Dobkin and Ben-Zion Yisraeli, about aliyah from Iraq and decisions regarding how permits for Iraqi and Kurdish Jews were to be allocated, 24 January 1936, CZA J1/1061; Yisraeli to Dobkin, 31 January 1936, regarding fifteen immigration permits, eight for the Kurds and seven for Baghdad (CZA S6/3782); Haim Barlas to Ben-Zion Yisraeli, 11 October 1936, on the condition of the Jews in Iraq (CZA S6/3783). 56. “Two more immigration permits should be added for the Kurds [i.e., Kurdish Jews]. Should Ben-Zion Yisraeli not use all the four earmarked for his people, we shall take from them, and, if Yisraeli will use all four, we shall take from the reserves” (E.D. [Eliahu Dobkin?] to Avraham Silberberg, 24 June 1936, CZA S6/3783). 389

02 Gavish BM.indd 389

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

57. P.R. [unidentified] Arbil, to Ben-Zvi, 10 September 1935, CZA S6/3782; see also Association of Youth of Aram Naharaim to Immigration Department, 23 November 1937, CZA S6/3784. 58. “I am writing this postcard in the home of the head of the Jewish community of Arbil, Mr. Salih Yosef Nuri [Nuriel]. . . . I cannot find the words to describe to you the great impression my visit here made upon me. I have discovered a new world, a world of strong Jews who show no fear. All of them desire with all their hearts to immigrate to Eretz Israel. In all synagogues in Arbil, there are JNF collection boxes, and also in twenty homes” (Reuven Zaslany to Moshe Shertok, 11 September 1932, CZA S25/3565). Brawer was similarly impressed: “Arbil is a Zionist city par excellence. Payment of the shekel [a fee paid for membership in the Zionist movement] is obligatory for every adult, and it [the community] also donates to the JNF and to Keren Hayessod a large sum when compared with the number of its souls, totaling 1,850 persons. Zionism is part of the religion here” (Abraham J. Brawer, “From the Episode of My Travels in Syria, Babylon, and Assyria,” in A Tribute to David: Jubilee Book in Honor of David Yellin, ed. Simha Assaf, Ben-Zion Dinaburg, and Shmuel Klein [Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1935], 246 [Hebrew]). Yehoshua Behar, interim secretary of the Immigration and Labor Department, to Abraham Brawer, 20 August 1933, asking for his opinion about allotting permits for the aliyah of Kurdish Jews (CZA S6/2611); Yehoshua Behar to Salih Yosef Nuriel, 20 September 1933, following information about him supplied by Brawer, wrote, “As one well versed in the matters of the Jews of Kurdistan,” he was requested to supply information about those wishing to immigrate to Eretz Israel (CZA S6/2611). 59. On 16 September 1935, Ben-Zvi noted in his diary a conversation with Nuriel, “the chairman of the Arbil community, about the settlement of Arbil Jews in Eretz Israel,” in which Zaslany and [Eliahu?] Agassi also participated. Two days later, he noted another conversation with Nuriel about the Jewish community of Arbil (CZA J1/2939). See also JNF to Committee of Settlements and Institutions, 3 September 1935, recommending that Nuriel receive a warm welcome during his visit (CZA, KKL5/5330). 60. Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 77–79. The interviews with Nuriel were conducted on 15, 23, and 31 July 1963 (ibid., 268). Cohen doubts that Zionist activity in Arbil, in the form of the collection of small sums for the JNF and the distribution of the Zionist shekel, was any different than the little Zionist activity in other Kurdish communities. In any event, it came to an end in 1935 when a stop was put to all Zionist efforts throughout Iraq. 61. Fischel, “Jews of Kurdistan,” 204 n. 46. 62. For Ahiever, see note 40. 63. Summary of a meeting of Fischel with Barlas, Dobkin, Shapira, and Silberschlag, in the presence of Dr. Werner Senator, 3 May 1936, CZA S6/3782. 64. Zvi Yehuda, “A Letter from the Jews of Zakho to the Zionist Organization (1922),” Neharde‘a 8 (1991): 34–35 (Hebrew). He stated that the letter was in the CZA but did not note the file number. All my efforts to locate this document have proven fruitless. 65. 1 Sam 2:8. 390

02 Gavish BM.indd 390

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

66. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho B, 1–5. He identified the tenth signature as his own. As was customary with religious personages at the time, it contained only his first name and the name of his father (no family name). Moreover, his first name was preceded by the word hatzevi (male gazelle), often used to denote a young man. Baruch was only twenty-two years old at the time. 67. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 1; “Shmuel Baruch,” in Who and What in Jerusalem, ed. Eli‘ezer Shmueli (Jerusalem: Who and What in Jerusalem, 1990), 132 (Hebrew). 68. Information about the mine is taken from a British map: Iraq, Sheet J-38/M, G.S.G.S. 3723, A(2), 1:1,000,000, 1925. The village and the mine are in the mountains, at a height of about 1,200 meters above sea level (PRO, CO 1047/470). 69. Meir Shabetai Alfiya and Elia Nissim to Itzhak Ben-Zvi, 29 July 1931, CZA S25/9822. 70. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, National Council, to Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Department of the Jewish Agency, 14 Elul 5691 (27 August 1931), CZA S25/9822. 71. Telegram from HIBAD (HQ Iraq, Baghdad) to Colonial Office, 7 July 1931, CZA S25/9822. 72. Itzhak Ben-Zvi to Chaim Arlosoroff, 27 August 1931, CZA S25/9822. 73. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3. 74. An undated letter (1920s) from Baruch Shmuel Mizrahi to two members of the Zionist Commission (a body of representatives, from Great Britain and other countries, that served as a liaison between the Zionists and the British Mandate authorities until 1921), requesting financial support for the Kurdish community “just as you support all the communities, yeshivot [Talmudic academies], and the elderly.” There are also letters from Mizrahi to the Va‘ad Ha‘ir Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Community Council): on 18 Sivan 5689 (26 June 1929), he requested that identity cards be issued to members of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem, this “on the basis of your recognition that I am the head of that community”; a letter of 15 Elul 5688 (31 August 1928) requesting that an ophthalmologist be sent to the Talmud Torah school of the Kurdish community in the Sha‘arei Rahamim Quarter, where there were forty-five sick children, “some of whom are unable to pay”; a letter of 10 Tammuz 5689 (18 July 1929) in the matter of persons from the Kurdish community who voted in the elections for the 16th Zionist Congress by using identity cards authorized by the Community Council but whose votes were invalidated by the Congress Election Committee (see Jerusalem Municipal Archives [JMA], Kurds, container 166). 75. Mossek, Palestine Immigration Policy, 117–46. 76. For elections in the Association of Kurdish Immigrants conducted on 24 July 1940, see the letter to the Jerusalem Workers Council, 31 July 1940, Labor Archives (hereafter, LA), IV-250-36-1-1922 B. 77. Association of Kurdish Immigrants to Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency, 23 Tammuz 5702 (7 July 1942), regarding immigration certificates to be sent to the British consul in Aleppo, Syria, with a list of those wishing to come on aliyah and their relatives in Palestine (CZA S6/1430). See also Association of Kurdish Immigrants to Immigration Department, 23 August 1944, in the matter 391

02 Gavish BM.indd 391

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

of immigration certificates for dozens of requests for permits for relatives, “and it is now more than a year and a half that we have not received any permits.” In an earlier letter of 31 August 1943, the secretary of the Immigration Department pointed out that the government was unwilling to issue immigration certificates to people who are not in an enemy country or have fled from such a country (CZA S6/3785). 78. After World War I, the name “Palestine Office” was used to designate Zionist “consulates” of a kind in other countries, who were charged with the organization, regulation, and implementation of aliyah. See Aharon Zwergbaum, “Palestine Office,” EJ 13:40–41. 79. See, for example, Yehoshua Behar, secretary of the Immigration Department, to Palestine Office, Baghdad, 26 June 1935, regarding the forwarding of a list of candidates for aliyah from among the Kurdish Jews approved by the Jewish Agency “on the basis of the immigration permits that we asked the government to forward to the British consul in Baghdad. Check matters related to arranging their aliyah” (CZA S6/2550). 80. See the following examples: Because of a dispute over control of the synagogue and the role of the neighborhood’s mukhtar (head man), residents of the Zikhron Yosef, Sha‘arei Rahamim, and Shevet Zedek neighborhoods wanted to depose Netanel Cohen and replace him as mukhtar with Noah Gershon in 1935 (YBZA, file 320); letter from David Adika, Committee of Zakho Jews, the Oriental Zionists, and the Committee of Dohuk Jews, to the rabbinate in Jerusalem, 5 November 1939, accusing Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, head of the Committee of the Kurdish Community, of unjust distribution of money received from the Committee of the Sephardic Community in Jerusalem prior to Sukkot to help the poor among the Kurdish community (LA IV-250-36-1-1916); an additional complaint on 5 March 1939 was sent to the Sephardic chief rabbi of Eretz Israel, Ben-Zion Meir Ouziel, charging Mizrahi with unjust distribution of mazzot for the Passover provided to the Kurdish community in Jerusalem by the Committee of the Sephardic Community (ibid.). 81. Election Committee to David Avisar, 14 Kislev 5692 (24 November 1931). For Avisar’s relations with the Kurdish community, see also Committee of the Young Kurds Club to Avisar, 21 May 1938, with good wishes on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday; head of the Committee of the Kurdish Community Mizrahi Ya‘akov (Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi) to Avisar, 19 Shevat 5698 (21 January 1938), informing him that the Kurdish community wishes to vote for him as a member of the Community of the Sephardic Community, “so that you will speak on our behalf and be an advocate for us in the committee of the [Sephardic] community.” All letters are in JMA, Avisar Files, 324/1/3. See also the testimony of Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 82. Committee of the Kurdish Community to Committee of the Jewish Community in Jerusalem, 4 July 1933, JMA, Municipal Committee files, Kurds, container 166. A similar letter was sent on that same day to the Chief Rabbinate, Israel State Archives (hereafter, ISA), RG 140, container 8549, vol. 1, file 6. 83. Haman, a courtier of Persian King Ahasuerus, plotted to exterminate all Jews in the kingdom (Scroll of Esther). 84. CKCJ to Jewish Agency, 27 Elul 5693 (18 September 1933), CZA S6/2611. See also letter of the same date to the National Council (letter 65, CZA S25/9822); 392

02 Gavish BM.indd 392

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

Itzhak Ben-Zvi to Jewish Agency, 26 September 1933 (CZA S25/9822), proposes turning “to the Executive [of the Zionist Organization] in London, that it take up the matter directly with the government of Iraq. . . . Efforts should be made that the British government, through its representative in Iraq, assure the security of the Jews in the district of Kurdistan, which is not yet free from the dangers resulting from disorders between the Assyrians and the Muslims.” 85. Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq: A Study of Iraqi Politics since 1932 (London: Oxford University Press, 1951), 44, 80–81; Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 58. 86. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3; Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 17–18. 87. CKCJ to Jewish Agency, 19 Tishri 5694 (9 October 1933), CZA S6/2611. 88. Yehoshua Behar to Haim Barlas, Immigration Department, 28 November 1933, S6/2611. 89. Lists of Kurdish candidates for aliyah contain names of persons from throughout Kurdistan. See Behar to Zionist Organization in Baghdad, 27 December 1934, for a list of twenty candidates from Kurdistan from which fifteen were to be chosen (S6/2550). See also a list of twenty-three names proposed by the committee on 15 September 1936; and Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, CKCJ, to Immigration Department, 7 March 1937, for a list of seven candidates for aliyah from Kurdistan, both in CZA S6/3783. 90. CKCJ to National Council, 6 June 1934, CZA J1/2390. 91. Agreement, 28 Adar 5694 (15 March 1934), CZA S6/2611. It was claimed that the second person accused used to pass himself off to the Jewish Agency as a representative of Kurdish Jewry and, as such, received certificates for those he recommended and was apparently paid ₤P5 per certificate (see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 117). 92. Itzhak Ben-Zvi to Yizhak Gruenbaum, 15 June 1934, CZA J1/2390. 93. Haim Barlas to Yehoshua Batat, Baghdad, 8 August 1934; Avraham Bino, Zionist Organization in Baghdad, to Yizhak Gruenbaum, Jerusalem, 25 November 1934, CZA S6/2550. 94. Immigration Committee of Jerusalem Workers Council to Yizhak Gruenbaum, Immigration Department, 30 November 1934, S6/2611. 95. Testimony related to the accusation against Levi Ben Michael (LA IV-250-361-1914). 96. Ya‘akov Shim‘oni, Jerusalem Workers Council, to Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency, 2 August 1935; Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, CKCJ, to Immigration Department, 13 August 1935, LA IV-250-36-1-1913. For testimony taken on 26 August 1935 about another charge leveled by two former residents of Dohuk, Shimon and Meir Levi, that the CKCJ had received payment for immigration certificates, see in the same file. 97. Minutes of the investigation, undated, LA IV-250-36-1-1914. 98. Head of the Palestine Office, Baghdad, to Immigration Department, 8 January 1935, CZA S6/2550. 99. CKCJ to the National Council and several other bodies, 27 March 1935, LA 393

02 Gavish BM.indd 393

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

IV-250-36-1-1914. 100. Minutes of the elections to the CKCJ, witnessed by two members of the Jerusalem Workers Council, 13 February 1935, LA IV-250-36-1-1914. For the agreement by all factions in the Kurdish community to give preferential representation on its General Council, see the minutes of the meeting about the election of the General Council and the Executive Committee of the Kurdish Community, 10 March 1935, in the same file. 101. No censuses of the Kurdish community in Jerusalem were conducted regarding cities and towns of origin from the 1920s to the 1940s. However, we can try to ascertain the relative size of the groups of Kurdish Jews on the basis of later studies, though we cannot vouch for the credibility of the statistics they provide (see Amnon Shiloah, Erik Cohen, and Issachar Ben-Ami, Jewish Communities from Central, Southern, and Eastern Asia in Israel: Collected Statistics [Jerusalem: Center for Study of Folklore, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976] [Hebrew]). The authors noted that Zakho Jews accounted for five hundred families in the Jerusalem Kurdish community until 1938, as compared with two hundred families of Arbil Jews (until 1932), sixty families from the village of Barashi, forty from Dohuk, seventy from Sondur, and so forth. For statistics of these communities in Kurdistan, see BenYa‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 55–56, 62, 71, 94. See also the interview conducted by anthropologist Jeff Halper in May 1978 with Arnon Ronen, born in Arbil and one of the leaders of the Association of Kurdish Immigrants: “The Zakhoites are the largest and dominant group in the area [the Nahlaot neighborhoods and the area around Mahaneh Yehudah]” and “The Zakhoites thought themselves superior to the other Kurds.” See also Halper’s unpublished article, dated 7 February 1974, on synagogues in the Nahlaot neighborhoods—of six, four were founded by Jews from Zakho. All of these sources are in Jeff Halper’s private files. 102. Notice of the establishment of the Association of Kurdish Immigrants to replace the CKCJ, sent by committees of several groups in the community to the Jerusalem Workers Council, 31 July 1940, LA IV-250-36-1-1922. 103. The following are examples of such involvement: Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi to Immigration Department, 30 January 1936, regarding certificates for Kurdish Jews on the basis of a list of fifteen candidates; and correspondence between the CKCJ and the Jewish Agency officials, 8 and 10 March 1936 (all in S3/3782); CKCJ to Immigration Department, 13 December 1937, requesting immigration permits for Kurdish Jews in view of their difficult situation in Kurdistan (CZA S6/3784); CKCJ to Jewish Agency, 27 December 1937, in which, in reply to the agency’s letter of 23 December, the committee states that it cannot accept the thirteen permits allotted for fear that the small number would lead to turmoil within the community, and requests an additional twenty certificates (CZA S6/3784). Haim Barlas, director of the Immigration Department, to CKCJ, 17 January 1938, informs them that “you have been given an extension until Thursday this week to provide us with a list of candidates for the thirteen immigration certificates we have allotted for this season for emigrants from Kurdistan for whom requests have been filed by their relatives in the country, members of your community.” Barlas notified them that, should noth-

394

02 Gavish BM.indd 394

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

ing be forthcoming from the committee, the department would allot the certificates as it saw fit (CZA S6/3784). The final accord in this case came when the CKCJ notified the Immigration Department on 19 January 1938 that it had decided not to accept the thirteen permits “as long as the [Jewish] Agency does not see fit to provide additional immigration permits, out of fear of turmoil within the community” (CZA S6/1394). 104. CKCJ to Jewish Agency Executive, 19 April 1935, CZA S6/2611. 105. Netanel Nahum Cohen and Asahel Eliahu to Jewish Agency Executive, 28 August 1935, CZA S6/2550. 106. Zechariah Moshe Mizrahi, Netanel Nahum Cohen, Asahel Eliahu, et al. to the Histadrut, 26.8.1935, LA IV-250-36-1-1914. 107. Letter by six members of the community to Hayarden, 27 August 1935, in LA IV-250-36-1-1914. 108. Jewish Communal Council to Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi, chairman of the CKCJ, 14 April 1936, JMA, Kurds, container 166. 109. Secretary of the Immigration Department to the Jerusalem Workers Council, 12 April 1936, CZA S6/1394; Yehoshua Behar, Immigration Department, to Jerusalem Workers Council, 12 December 1937, forwarded a suggestion by representatives of the CKCJ, the committee of the Club of Young Kurdish Jews, and Mapai as to how to distribute immigration certificates; Behar also asked that they look into a complaint lodged by the club against Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi (CZA S6/1394); two separate letters, sent by Aharon Matityahu and Shmuel Shurki of the Club of Young Kurdish Jews to the Immigration Department, 12 December 1937, in same file; P. Gamadi, Oriental Jewry Department of the Jerusalem Workers Council, to Immigration Department, 14 December 1937, CZA S6/1429. 110. In this case, Jews of “Assyrian origin.” Some Kurdish Jews believed themselves to be descendants of the Jews of ancient Assyria, whereas others claimed descent from the Jews of Babylonia. 111. Committee of Amadiya Jews, Committee of Barashi Jews, Committee of Emigrants from Zakho, Club of Young Kurdish Jews, and Committee of Sondur Jews to Cultural Committee of the Histadrut, 17 May 1938, LA IV-250-36-1-1920. An identical letter, bearing the same date, was sent from the Committee of the Zakho Jews to the Committee of the Sephardic Community, with copies marked to the Immigration Department, the National Council, the Jewish Communal Council, and the Cultural Committee of the Jerusalem Workers Council (ACSC, Zakho, ‘ayin dalet, 11). 112. Haim Barlas to National Council, 4 July 1938, CZA J1/6397. 113. David Adika, Committee of the Jews of Zakho, Oriental Zionists, Jerusalem, to Rabinowitz, Jerusalem Workers Council, 6 June 1938, LA IV-250-36-1-1920. 114. Executive of the National Council to Jewish Communal Council, 20 July 1938; Itzhak Ben-Zvi to Immigration Department, 27 July 1938; both in CZA J1/6397. 115. Haim Solomon, Jewish Communal Council, to Executive of the National Council, 15 August 1938, CZA J1/6397; Itzhak Ben-Zvi to Immigration Depart-

395

02 Gavish BM.indd 395

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

ment, 25 July 1938, CZA S6/3784. 116. Jewish Communal Council to Immigration Department, 22 December 1938 and 10 January 1939, CZA S6/1430. The first letter was signed by Yehoshua Farbstein. 117. Moshe Shapira, Jewish Agency, to Jewish Communal Council, 6 January 1939, CZA S6/1430. 118. Yehoshua Farbstein, Jewish Communal Council, to Executive of the National Council, 8 January 1939, demanding that the permits be distributed to those to whom they had been allotted because, in the meantime, people in Kurdistan “have left their homes. . . . [By] this treatment on the part of the Immigration Department and your suggestion, you are making a laughing stock of the Communal Council and we stand firmly behind our demand that the promised permits should be distributed without delay” (CZA J1/6397); Jewish Communal Council to Executive of the National Council, 10 January 1939, CZA S6/1430. 119. National Council to Jewish Communal Council, 6 November 1945, includes complaints against Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi during his tenure as head of the Association of Kurdish Immigrants from 1940 until he was deposed in 1945; Secretary of the Jewish Communal Council to Sasson Mordechai, Association of Kurdish Jews, 8 November 1945; Association of Kurdish Jews to Executive of Jewish Communal Council, letter 101/2/45 dated 5 Kislev 5706 (10 November 1945), demanding that the mukhtar Nahum Ya‘akov Mizrahi be deposed: “It has been decided by all members of the executive of our association to take steps against this man, the mukhtar of the area, until . . . he will not be considered a representative of our community . . . and also to depose him from the mukhtarship because he is no longer fit to continue filling this office of mukhtar and absolutely is unfit to fill public roles because of his bad deeds and ugly attributes” (all three sources in JMA, Kurds, container 166). 120. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho B, 2, 5. 121. CKCJ to Ya‘akov Shim‘oni, 29 May 1939; CKCJ to Cultural Committee of the Jerusalem Workers Council, 3 and 5 June 1939; Ya‘akov Shim‘oni, Oriental Jewry Department of the Jerusalem Workers Council, to CKCJ, 14 June 1939 (all in LA IV-250-36-1-1916). 122. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho B, 4. 123. Ibid., 6. 124. Ibid., 8. He said this after I showed him a letter of 14 March 1946, from the Association of Kurdish Immigrants to the Immigration Committee of the Jewish Agency, in which Garib, Nahum Mizrahi, and David Adika presented themselves as representatives of various committees that had united after eight years of conflict. In a letter from the Association of Kurdish Immigrants to the Jewish Agency, 25 March 1946, signed by Sasson Mordechai and Shabetai Piro, they protested against the former letter, calling it “worthless,” because—so they claimed—its signatories had faked the seal of the association and did not represent it. What emerges from this correspondence is that the squabbles within the Kurdish community had not yet come to an end. 125. Rivlin (Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 63) describes the enthusiasm of Kurdish Jewry after the Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917). This is contrary to what 396

02 Gavish BM.indd 396

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

can be understood from other testimonies. He also notes the assaults on Jews in Kurdistan that encouraged a wave of aliyah in 1920–26, as villages and towns, like Barashi, were emptied of their Jewish residents. See also Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 24–26; Habbas, Close Yet Distant Brothers, 124; Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 23–26. 126. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 15. In his testimony, Levi did not say exactly when the community numbered five thousand persons. For conflicting opinions about the size of the Zakho community prior to aliyah in the early 1950s, see note 76 in chapter 2. 127. Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho 48, 1. 128. Shabetai Piro, ibid., 31. 129. Na‘ima Shmuel, ibid., 1–2. 130. Murad Shmuel, ibid., 3. 131. Na‘ima Shmuel, ibid., 6. 132. Yona Sabar, ibid., 12. 133. See, however, the version provided by Mordechai Hananiah about that same “Esther from Moshav Revahah,” with the help of Ilya Hetteh. According to this version, her family came in 1942 (Mordechai Hananiah, IFA, Zakho B, 5–7). 134. Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 12. On the day before Yom Kippur, an “expiation cock” or hen (Heb. tarnegol kapparot) is swung three times above one’s head and the following formula pronounced: “This is my substitute, my vicarious offering, my atonement; this cock [or hen] shall meet death, but I shall find a long and pleasant life of peace.” 135. Shoshana Haviv, in a joint interview with her husband, Tamar Haviv, IFA, Zakho A, 11–12. 136. Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 8. 137. Zaki Levi, ibid., 17–18. 138. Yona Sabar, “The Affinity to Eretz Israel,” in The Jews of Kurdistan: Issue of the Events Marking 170 Years of Aliyah and Settlement in Eretz Israel, ed. Haviv Shim‘oni (Jerusalem: National Organization of Kurdish Jews in Israel, 1984), 14 (Hebrew). 139. For another brief description of aliyah during these years, see Rivlin, Poetry of the “Targum” Jews, 63. 140. Murad Shmuel, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2; Simha Mizrahi, ibid., 10–11. 141. Eight persons interviewed came on aliyah in this first wave. Three of them— Nahum Hafzadi, Shabetai Piro, and Meir Gershon—were interviewed by the Oral History Division of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University in 1967. Four others gave me their firsthand testimony in 1987: Shmuel Baruch, Haviv ‘Alwan, Julia Dekel, and Mordechai Cohen. Their interviews are deposited in the IFA Zakho files. In that same year, I also recorded the aliyah narrative of the Mizrahi family from a daughter of the family, Simha Mizrahi, but she was not a participant in the events and could provide only secondhand evidence on the basis of what she had been told. 142. In North Africa, however, news of the Balfour Declaration did encourage aliyah. See Abitbol, “Zionist Activity,” 76–77; Lis, “From Morocco to Eretz Israel,” 110, 114–15. 397

02 Gavish BM.indd 397

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 5

143. Hebrew, “Mi yihye be-Samuel,” a play on Num. 24:23: “Mi yihye mi-sumo el” (Who can survive except God has willed it). 144. Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho 48, 1, 20–21. 145. Shabetai Piro, ibid., 31. 146. Yaacov Shavit, “The Nature of the Period: Two Opposing National Societies under the British Mandate,” in The History of Eretz Israel, vol. 9: The British Mandate and the Jewish National Home, ed. Yehoshua Porat and Yaacov Shavit (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi and Keter, 1982), 11 (Hebrew). 147. Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho 48, 20; Shabetai Piro, ibid., 32. 148. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2, 12–14. 149. Ibid., 12. 150. Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 34; Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 16. For the aliyah of Rabbi Zechariya, see Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 3–4. 151. Ibid., 1. 152. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2, 23–25. 153. Ibid., 25. 154. Abdullah ibn Hussein, Emir of Transjordan under the British Mandate for Palestine (which included Transjordan), from 1921 to 1946, when the British granted him independence and he assumed the title of King Abdullah of Jordan. 155. Julia Dekel, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 156. Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 19. For his relationship with Shmuel Baruch, see ibid., 9. 157. Zidkiyahu, “History of the Zidkiyahu Family,” 26–29. 158. Yona Zidkiyahu, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 159. Gurji Zaqen, ibid., 5. 160. Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 24. 161. Simha Mizrahi, IFA, Zakho A, 5–6. 162. Ben-Ya‘acob, Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, 62 and n. 33. 163. See note 69. 164. Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 6–7. 165. Zidkiyahu, “History of the Zidkiyahu Family,” 28. 166. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 1. Jum‘a is Friday in Arabic. 167. Mordechai Yona, ibid., 5–6. 168. Compare this to the story of the illegal aliyah of Esther Ajamiya and her family after the murder of her husband, a peddler (Mordechai Hananiah, IFA, Zakho B, 5–7). 169. Shmuel Baruch, OHD, Zakho 48, 16. 170. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 14. 171. Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 24. 172. See the literature cited in note 124. 173. Shabetai Piro, OHD, Zakho 48, 32. 174. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 10. 175. Haviv ‘Alwan, OHD, Zakho 48, 1, 3, 9. 176. Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 4.

398

02 Gavish BM.indd 398

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 6

177. See note 139. 178. A phrase referring to the biblical episode of the Exodus from Egypt. 179. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 15. Chapter 6 1. Hayyo Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 7; Zaki Levi, ibid., 2–3. 2. For aliyah stories with supernatural elements, as a genre of legends, see Tamar Alexander, “Wondrous Aliyot to Eretz Israel as Reflected in Folktales,” Gilyonot Lamoreh, 1979, 16–33 (Hebrew); Dov Noy, “Aliyah Stories of the Moroccan Jews,” in Zev Vilnay’s Jubilee Volume: Essays on the History, Archaeology, and Lore of the Holy Land Presented to Zev Vilnay, 2 vols., ed. Ely Schiller (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1984–87), 1:408–10 (Hebrew); Aliza Shenhar, “Praising the Holy Land and Pilgrimages,” in Zev Vilnay’s Jubilee Volume: Essays on the History, Archaeology, and Lore of the Holy Land Presented to Zev Vilnay, 2 vols., ed. Ely Schiller (Jerusalem: Ariel Pub. House, 1984–87), 2:314–19 (Hebrew). 3. Realistic elements are conspicuous in the stories related by Haviv ‘Alwan (IFA, Zakho A, 1–27), and they also stand out in the testimony of Shmuel Baruch (ibid., 1–14). Exceptional cases are the stories told about Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan and Rabbi Meir Alfiya, which include supernatural elements and should therefore be classified as legends. For example, see what Haviv ‘Alwan related about the aliyah of his father (ibid., 3, 8, 10–11) and the legends regarding Meir Alfiya described in his Massa gai hizayon (28–41). 4. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2; Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 1–3; Julia Dekel, ibid., 1–3. 5. Salman, “From Zakho to Jerusalem,” 50–52. A few years after he published this memoir, in an interview Salman again described his lengthy stay in Syria but with slight changes in dates: he himself arrived in Eretz Israel in 1937, whereas his father Eliahu and the other members of the family did not arrive until 1939 (David Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 1–10). 6. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 10. 7. Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 7. 8. Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 13. 9. Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 1, 9. 10. For the use of photos and other objects to support personal memory narratives, see Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, “Authoring Lives,” 140–41. 11. Varda Shilo, IFA, Zakho A, 9–10. 12. Used to celebrate the Sukkot festival, on the basis of Lev. 23:40. 13. A booth, symbolizing the booths in which the Children of Israel lived in the Sinai Desert. 14. Varda Shilo, IFA, Zakho A, 9–10. 15. Ibid., 12. 16. Miro told us that when he came to Israel in 1951 he was mistakenly registered by the family name of Miro instead of Zaqen (Yehoshua Miro, IFA, Zakho, 4; Meir

399

02 Gavish BM.indd 399

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 6

Zaqen, ibid., 4). 17. A day of mourning and fasting to commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples, which tradition assigns to that date. 18. For the 1941 pogrom in Baghdad and attempts at aliyah made in its wake, see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 164–66; Yosef Meir, Beyond the Desert: Underground Activities in Iraq, 1941–1951 ([Tel Aviv]: Ministry of Defence, 1973), 29–36 (Hebrew); Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 238–44; Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 13–16, 84–86. 19. Yehoshua Miro, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. 20. Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 1. 21. The letter, dated 10 Sivan 5693 (4 June 1933), was published in Hithadshut 5 (April 1985): 302 (Hebrew). For the hakham bashi Ya‘akov Babbika, see chapter 2. 22. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 3. 23. The Immigration Department of Palestine limited aliyah to persons no older than thirty-five, but permitted the aliyah of religious personnel (rabbis, ritual slaughterers, etc.) even if they were older. Shmuel Baruch used this loophole to receive certificates for the elderly rabbis Shabetai ‘Alwan and Ya‘akov Babbika. In a short article, Baruch Givati claimed that Baruch was responsible for the aliyah of twentyfive rabbis from Kurdistan (“Rabbi Shmuel Baruch, Head of the Committee of the Community’s Rabbis,” Hithadshut 2 [August 1975]: 95–96 [Hebrew]). However, in an interview that I conducted with him in 1994, Baruch named only sixteen rabbis whom he helped come to Eretz Israel with the aid of Chief Rabbi Isaac Hacohen Kook (see Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 3–4; idem, IFA, Zakho B). For the immigration criteria set by the government of Palestine in May 1921 and the Immigration Order of 1925 that permits the entry of religious personnel who can present proof of their ability to support themselves economically, see Yaacov Shavit and Gideon Biger, “The British Mandate for Palestine: Rule, Administration, and Legislation,” in The History of Eretz Israel, vol. 9: The British Mandate and the Jewish National Home, ed. Yehoshua Porat and Yaacov Shavit (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi and Keter, 1982), 100–103 (Hebrew). 24. Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 3. 25. Ibid., 8–11. 26. The story’s realistic components are characteristic of a personal memory narrative, but it also has an unrealistic element that depends upon the interpretation and belief of the teller. The inhibiting events resulting from the community’s intervention turn the story into a legendary tale, and like the classic folktale it includes thematic elements such as confrontation, tension, a happy end, and triple repetition of certain situations and elements of form such as dialogue. For these elements, see Axel Olrik, “Epic Laws of Folk Narrative,” in The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 129–41. 27. Zidkiyahu, “History of the Zidkiyahu Family,” 26–29. When I interviewed him in 1987, he confirmed his story but refused to tell it again. He agreed only to answer a few questions of clarification (Yona Zidkiyahu, IFA, Zakho A, 1–3). 28. Zidkiyahu, “History of the Zidkiyahu Family,” 28–29. 29. Nahum Hafzadi, OHD, Zakho 48, 20–22. 400

02 Gavish BM.indd 400

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 6

30. Immigration to Palestine was suspended in 1936 during the deliberations of the Royal Commission for Palestine, but its implementation was deferred until the Arab Rebellion (1936–39) was put down (see Shavit and Biger, “British Mandate for Palestine,” 102). Even though the suspension of aliyah was not implemented, the number of olim declined that year. For the paralyzation of Zionist activity in Iraq in 1935–41, see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 118, 155–63. 31. The Mosad Le‘aliyah (Aliyah Organization) began its activities in Syria only in 1942, after a group of emigrants was caught, maltreated, and one of the girls raped. This delay is conspicuous when one takes into account that the Zionist pioneering movement had been active in Syria, particularly in Damascus, since 1929, and that some olim had passed from Syria and Lebanon through Palestine’s northern border since 1921. See Yehuda Slutsky, ed., History of the Haganah, vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence, 1972), 167–70 (Hebrew). 32. For the Zionist policy of selective emigration from Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s and the preference given to those who engaged in agriculture and similarly “productive” work, see Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 40–44. 33. Shabetai Piro, OHD, Zakho 48, 31. 34. Ibid., 32–33. 35. Rahamim Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 1–6. 36. For the condition of Jews in Iraq under British occupation in 1914–18 and under the British Mandate until 1932, see Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 1–7. The country was administered by officials who came to Iraq from India. 37. For the recurrence of the number three or the trinity in folktales, see Olrik, “Epic Laws.” 38. “Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen,” recorded by Dalia Sebag from Haviv ‘Alwan (IFA, folder 12422). 39. See the unpublished IFA list of the modified specific types unique to the Jewish narrative tradition: “Harassers of Jews are punished” (C*730 AT). 40. Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim, Baghdad, to Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, 15 June 1933, regarding the difficulties that the British consul in Baghdad causes Jewish tourists wishing to visit Palestine (CZA S6/2550). 41. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 42. Zidkiyahu, “History of the Zidkiyahu Family,” 29. 43. Salman, “From Zakho to Jerusalem,” 50–52. When I interviewed Salman in 1993, he repeated the major points of his story with slight changes (see David Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 1–10). The fact that two quite similar versions have been provided of the same narrative lends it historical validity. Because of the length of the oral testimony, my discussion will center on the published version but will note where the two differ. Cross-checking the two stories indicates that this was a lengthy episode stretching from 1933 to 1937, the year David came to Eretz Israel by himself. His father and the rest of the family finally arrived two years later, in 1939. 44. A moshav (smallholders cooperative settlement) founded in 1935 by emigrants from Kurdistan. 401

02 Gavish BM.indd 401

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 6

45. Salman, “From Zakho to Jerusalem,” 51. 46. For the law related to compulsory military service for Jews in the Iraqi army, see note 55. 47. Rabbi Shim‘oni received one of the certificates that the British Mandate authorities set aside for rabbis. See Givati, “Rabbi Shmuel Baruch,” 95–96. 48. David Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 10. 49. Shabetai Piro, OHD, Zakho 48, 32–33. Apparently “we mounted the mules” refers to their belongings only. 50. Zidkiyahu, “History of the Zidkiyahu Family,” 29. 51. Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. 52. Murad Shmuel, ibid., 3. 53. See in chapter 1 for the characteristics of the personal memory narrative that connect the past to the present. 54. Na‘ima Shmuel, ibid., 1–2. 55. For the 1934 law regulating compulsory military service for Jews, see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 116. The regular term of compulsory service was two and a half years, but it was possible to pay an indemnity and receive a discharge after serving three months. See Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3. 56. Na‘ima Shmuel, ibid., 2–3. 57. See note 53. 58. Na‘ima Shmuel, IFA, Zakho A, 6. 59. Murad Shmuel, ibid., 3. 60. For example, see the story about how Ilya Hetteh and Hananiah Mordechai smuggled Esther Ajamiya into the country in 1942 (Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 6). 61. Yehoshua Miro, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. See at note 16 in the text. 62. Meir Zaqen, ibid., 2–4, 25. 63. Yehoshua Miro, ibid., 1–2. 64. Shmuel Shurqi, OHD, Zakho 48, 1. 65. Julia Dekel, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. 66. The first version was told to a seminar conducted for the elderly in the Kurdish community in Jerusalem on 23 January 1973, and sections of it were published in Hithadshut 2 (1975): 156 (Hebrew). A second, written version, of which Julia Dekel gave me a copy, was the one she told Dr. Issachar Ben-Ami, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on 31 October 1987. 67. For use of the present in personal memory narratives, see note 53. 68. One of the traits of a natural storyteller is that, during a personal memory narrative, he or she makes comments to the listener that disassociate the teller from the story, connect the past to the present, and produce a free text in both content and style. 69. For the Western Wall and its attributes, see Meir Ben-Dov, Mordechai Naor, and Zeev Aner, The Western Wall (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence, 1983), 81–97. 70. The other two versions were apparently told in Kurdish and translated into Hebrew. The written version (a transcript of what Julia told Issachar Ben-Ami) is in fluent, well-phrased Hebrew, which does not reflect Julia’s true style that includes 402

02 Gavish BM.indd 402

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

many words in Arabic mixed with faulty Hebrew and has a charm of its own and a unique cadence. 71. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. 72. Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 34. Haviv ‘Alwan spoke about Rabbi Meir Alfiya and the difficulties he encountered in order to make a living (IFA, Zakho A, 16). 73. Simha Mizrahi, ibid., 1. 74. Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim to Palestine Zionist Executive, 13 August 1925, CZA S6/383. 75. “Statistical List,” 15 September (or 24 September) 1925, CZA S6/679. 76. Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2, 9. 77. Rabbinical emissaries from Eretz Israel generally did not speak the language of the communities they visited so they conversed with them in Hebrew. In this way, they also helped spread knowledge of Hebrew (see Yaari, Emissaries from Eretz Israel, 126–27). 78. A legendary river, beyond which lived the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. 79. Perhaps the reference is to Yisrael Lishansky, who was a customs officer in Metulla in 1925–30 and helped emigrants from Iran, Iraq, and Kurdistan. See Aharon Even-Hen, Wedding in Sidon: Legends of the Past (Ramat Gan: Massada, 1972), 38–39 (Hebrew). 80. Julia Dekel, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. 81. A colony in Lower Galilee. 82. Shmuel Baruch, IFA, Zakho A, 13. 83. Ibid., 3–4. 84. Ibid., 13. 85. Brauer, Jews of Kurdistan, 341–34. 86. In 1927, Shmuel Baruch, who returned from Zakho to Jerusalem after a mission in Kurdistan, brought with him the young boy Haviv ‘Alwan, and from that time shared a great mutual affection. In 1933, he arranged for Haviv’s father, Rabbi Shabetai ‘Alwan, to immigrate to Eretz Israel with a group of rabbis from Kurdistan. Chapter 7 1. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3; Mordechai Sa‘ado, ibid., 8; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 17–18. 2. Yona Sabar, ibid., 9. 3. Salih Hocha, ibid., 7. 4. Zaki Levi, ibid., 10; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 13. 5. Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 13. See also Shlomo Duga, ibid., 3; Yehoshua Miro, ibid., 5. Interviewees confirmed that Nehemiah Hocha taught Hebrew, but they did not associate that with Zionist activity (see Haya Gabbay, ibid., 4–5). 6. Meir, Beyond the Desert, 221. 7. See what Salih Hocha (IFA, Zakho A, 6–7) related about the help given to an emissary named Mordechai who came to Zakho to meet with Shlomo Salman, and about Salman and his contacts with Zionist emissaries (ibid., 3). See also Meir 403

02 Gavish BM.indd 403

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

Zaqen (ibid., 13) about Menahem Aloni from Arbil. For information about help given to emissaries, without mentioning them by name, see Haviv Tamar and his wife Shoshana (ibid., 11). For how Meir Gabbay helped two emissaries leave Zakho without being noticed, see Salim Gabbay (ibid., 4). 8. Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 238–39; Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 13–16. 9. “Farhud” was the underground name of Yūnis al-Sab‘āwī, a Jew-hater and one of the leaders of the uprising, who appointed himself governor of Baghdad on 29 May. After Rashīd ‘Alī and his henchmen fled Baghdad, al-Sab‘āwī’s followers were actively involved in the murderous events of 1–2 June (Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 206–7 and n. 200). 10. Ibid., 178–222; Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 155–63; Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 18. 11. Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 165–66; Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 240. 12. For the effects of the rioting on Baghdad’s Jewish society; the crisis among the Jewish leadership that was Iraq oriented and opted for integration into local society; the sense of rejection and treachery felt by Jewish intellectuals after the riots; the attraction of Jewish youth in the 1940s to radical movements, whether Zionism or Communism, as an expression of their lack of faith in the local leadership; and for economic aid from the Va‘ad Leumi (the National Council of Jews in Palestine) and the Iraqi government, and donations from Baghdad’s wealthy Jews, relatives and former Iraqi Jews living abroad, see Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 13–16; Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 166–72; Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, chaps. 8–9; and Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 16–32. 13. Habbas, Close Yet Distant Brothers, 102–4. 14. Salih Yosef Nuriel, head of the Arbil community, OHD file 11/21, 33–34, 60; Chaim Weizmann, IFA, Arbil file, addendum, 62–63; Menashe Shoen, ibid., 100–101; Reuven ‘Adi, ibid., 146–47; Ya‘akov Uriel, ibid., 286–87. 15. Mordechai Sa‘ado, IFA, Zakho A, 8. 16. Haya Gabbay, ibid., 5–6. 17. Mazliah Kol uttered the first two words of a Hebrew curse: Yimah shemo (vezikhro)—“May his name (and memory) be blotted out.” 18. Jewish men used to frequent coffeehouses on the Sabbath, but the custom was that they paid on a weekday. See Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 19. 19. Ps. 125:6: “Shalom al Yisrael,” an idiomatic phrase meaning “All will end well” or “All ended well.” 20. Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 17–19. For additional variants of the story about this decree, see Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 8; Zaki Levi, ibid., 2. 21. Mordechai Zaken, “Tribal Chieftains and Their Jewish Subjects in Kurdistan: A Comparative Study in Survival” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003), 65–66. A similar “decree about gold” was levied in Djerba, Tunisia. After the island was captured by German troops in 1943, they levied a fine of fifty kilograms of gold on the Jewish community. Though the Germans managed to collect most of the gold, they did not achieve their ultimate goal because they were forced to retreat before the advancing British forces. See Hirschberg, Inside Maghreb, 169–70; 404

02 Gavish BM.indd 404

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

Itzhak Abrahami, “The Jewish Communities of Tunisia during the Nazi Conquest,” Pe‘amim 28 (1986): 117–19 (Hebrew). 22. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho B, 28–32. 23. Rashīd ‘Alī al-Jīlānī (1882–1965) fled Baghdad after being soundly defeated by the British at the end of May 1941, and reached Nazi Germany together with his advisers, where he collaborated with the Nazis and participated in their propaganda campaign. After the war, he lived in exile in Saudi Arabia until 1959. He then returned to Baghdad, hoping that the regime of ‘Abd al-Karim Qassem would achieve a union between Iraq and Egypt. When this turned out to be a false hope, he joined an unsuccessful plan to depose Qassem and was sentenced to death, but was reprieved. From then until his death, he was no longer involved in politics. See Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq 1932–1958: A Study in Iraqi Politics, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 212–43; Uriel Dann, Iraq under Qassem: A Political History, 1958–1963 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1969), 86, 93, 118, 128–35. 24. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3. 25. Robert Goralsky, World War II Almanac, 1931–1945: A Political and Military Record (London: Hamilton, 1981), 151–52, 158–59. Transfer of airfields by Vichy Syria to the control of the Axis forces also posed a threat from the north to Palestine, leading to an incursion into Syria and Lebanon by British forces on 7 June 1941. 26. Shlomo Duga, IFA, Zakho A, 4. For Zakho Jewry’s fear of an imminent German invasion and their attempt to seek protection from Kurdish Muslims, including payment of bribes, see Mordechai Yona, ibid., 6. 27. A paramilitary organization of the Jewish community in Eretz Israel prior to the establishment of Israel. 28. Shlomo Duga, ibid., 4. 29. See note 17. 30. Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 16. 31. Meir Zaqen, ibid., 4. See chap. 6, p. ??? 32. For example, in 1942 or early 1943, before the arrival of emissaries, Ilya Hetteh helped smuggle Esther Ajamiya and her family into Syria on their way to Eretz Israel. See Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 5–6. 33. Barad, “Missions and Emissaries,” 146, 154–55, 159–89; Abitbol, “Zionist Activity,” 96–81; Haïm Saadoun and Yoel Rappel, eds., Zionist Underground Activity in Muslim Countries: Self-Defense and Illegal Immigrations (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1997), 33–35 (Hebrew); Yaron Tsur, A Torn Community: The Jews of Morocco and Nationalism 1943–1954 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001), 22–23, 237–41 (Hebrew). 34. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 84. 35. Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 22–25; Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 166–69; Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 242; Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 84–85. For the renewed economic prosperity and its impact on Zionist efforts in Iraq, see Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 36. Quoted in Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 166. 37. Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 24–32; Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 177–98; Meir405

02 Gavish BM.indd 405

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 85–86. 38. For how the roles of the first three emissaries were defined, see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 171; Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 84. 39. Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 2–3. For Guttman’s trip to northern Iraq and mention of his visit to Zakho, see Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 65. 40. Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 3. 41. “Demolitions,” GHQ [General Headquarters] of the British forces in Iraq to the Eighth Division, 10 December 1941, PRO, WO 201/1472. 42. Solel Boneh (lit. “Paving and Building”) was a concern, established in Palestine, that engaged in construction, public works, and industry. During World War II, it built military installations for the British in various Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq. 43. Enzo Sereni wrote in one of his reports, dated 2 March 1943, “If we could enter and work in Iraq at all, this was thanks to the reliable help of the ‘Solel Boneh’ people, who have been working in Iraq and Iran for the past year and have given us their support all the time we have been here. Without the support of the ‘Solel Boneh’ directorate, we would have been unable to come and stay here” (CZA S25/5289). See also Shlomo Shva, A Path in the Desert: The Story of Solel Boneh (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976), 195–96 (Hebrew). 44. Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 3–7, 12. 45. “Sections of a Note on Iraqi Jewry,” 4 February 1943, in “First Reports by Emissaries on Iraqi Jewry, 1943,” United Kibbutz Movement Archives, Yad Tabenkin, Record Group 25 ayin, container 2. 46. For a discussion of the mutual impressions gained when underground emissaries came into contact with Iraqi Jewry, see Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 65–67. 47. Mordechai Bibi, born in Baghdad in 1923, was one of the first to join the Zionist underground in Iraq. He helped the first emissaries from Eretz Israel in matters relating to organization, security, and aliyah. He himself came on aliyah in 1945, and in 1949–50 was the coordinator of the aliyah transit camp in Iran. His books include From the Four Corners of Naharaim: Testimonies and Narratives about the Underground and Illegal Immigration in Iraq (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1983) (Hebrew); and Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement. An interview I conducted with him on 26 July 1992 is deposited in IFA, Zakho B. 48. Shlomo Hillel came to Iraq three times: in 1946 as an emissary of a movement to further Hebrew education, in 1947 during Operation Michaelberg, and in 1950 to organize that transfer, by airplanes, of Iraqi Jewry to Israel. See Bibi, Four Corners of Naharaim, 18–20, 29–30; and Hillel, Operation Babylon, passim. 49. Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever was associated with the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement. 50. Secondhand testimony was supplied by Haviv ‘Alwan, IFA, Zakho A, 25; and Shmuel Baruch, ibid., 12. Eyewitnesses were Mazliah Kol, ibid., 24–25; Yehoshua Miro, ibid., 5; David Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 1, 11; and Salman, “From Zakho to Jerusalem,” 51. 51. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Traveling the Byways of Eretz Israel and Its Neighbors: From 406

02 Gavish BM.indd 406

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

Travel Notes and Diaries (Jerusalem: Israel Publishing Institute, 1960), 150–52 (Hebrew). 52. Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 4. 53. OHD, file (11) 21, p. 32. 54. Ya‘akov Nuriel, IFA, Arbil, suppl., 271. 55. Brawer, Road Dust, 209–10. 56. See chapter 5. 57. Meir Zaqen reported that, in an outburst of joy upon learning of the plans for mass emigration from Iraq in the 1950s, Avraham Bechavod (Koka) cried out, “Long live Chaim Weizmann!” (Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 14). For a report that the name Chaim Weizmann was popular among Jews in Zakho and Qamishliye, see Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 8. 58. For Zionist activity in Baghdad from the early 1920s until it ended in 1935, and for Zionist-oriented Hebrew education there from 1919 to 1935, see Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 36–69 and 85–98, respectively. 59. For his travels throughout Iraq and his visits to Jewish communities there, see Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 2. For his visits to the Jewish village of Sondur and to Mosul, see ibid., 6–7. 60. Ibid., 6. 61. See the following testimonies regarding the confiscation of Moshe Gabbay’s property in the 1950s: Haya Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 4; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 14–15; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 19–22; Yona Sabar, ibid., 5. 62. The Torah scrolls are kept in the Holy Ark. 63. Parokhet pl. parokhot: a hanging curtain—generally richly embroidered—that covers the Holy Ark. 64. Aharon Zisling was a leading member of Hakibbutz Hameuchad and the labor Zionist movement in Eretz Israel, and a member of the Haganah (the prestate selfdefense organization). He filled many roles in the labor movement and was later a member of the First Knesset (Israel’s parliament), representing the Mapam political party (United Workers’ Party). 65. Guttman referred to such a comparison in his aforementioned lecture in 1988 at Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi. 66. Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 6. 67. For the cultural gap between shadarim with a European mentality and the Jews of Iraq, see Shenhav, The Arab Jews, 70–76. 68. Shemariah Guttman, ibid., 5–10. 69. One of the terms coined by the Zionist institutions, during the British Mandate in Palestine, to connote clandestine immigration. 70. Mardor, Secret Mission, 86–87. 71. The exact date is unknown, but it probably was in November 1944 because immediately following his visit to Zakho he set out for Mosul, which he in turn left on 19 November for Syria together with four young members of the underground movement in order to bring them clandestinely into Palestine. This effort failed because someone informed on them, leading to their arrest. See the report from Hilmi [Yitzhak Shweiki], 30 January 1945, Archives for the History of the Haganah (here407

02 Gavish BM.indd 407

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

after, AHA), 14/21. 72. For use of “Mu‘allem Zaki,” see Eldad [Enzo Sereni] to Shimshon [Shemariah Guttman], 7 January 1944, AHA, 14/19; Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 1:241 n. 3. For the use of “Hilmi” and “Manzili,” see ibid., 309 n. 2 and 2:432, respectively. 73. For Shweiki’s efforts to organize illegal immigration to Eretz Israel through Syrian territory, see documents dated 21 April 1944 and 8 and 25 June 1944, AHA 14/20. For his arrest in Mosul, see P. [for Pnini, aka Yehoshua Giv‘oni] to Hofshi [David Nimri], 23 November 1944, AHA 14/20; Y.A. [Yehoshua Aloni, aka Yehoshua Giv‘oni] to secretariat of Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 25 November 1944; “Report on the Situation in the Movement and among the Jews,” quoted in Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 1:385–86; M. [Moshe Kliger] to Y. [Yehoshua Giv‘oni], 1 December 1944, in ibid., 2:396; documents dated 22 and 26 December 1944, both in AHA 14/20. 74. See, in extenso, Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 45–61. 75. Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 1–2. 76. Ibid., 7. 77. Guttman, a member of Kibbutz Na‘an, was in later years a renowned archaeologist, best known for his excavations at the ancient city of Gamla in the Golan Heights. 78. Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 7–8. 79. Report from Hilmi [Yitzhak Shweiki], 30 January 1945, AHA, 14/21. 80. Zakho Jews had relatives in Qamishliye. 81. Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 8. 82. Ibid., 5. 83. Yona Salman also heard about Yitzhak Shweiki’s arrest in Mosul and mistakenly claimed that it was his father who had freed him, a fact that Shweiki refuted in his own testimony. See Yona Salman, IFA, Zakho A, 1–2. 84. Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 8. 85. Baghdadi Jews also related to Zionist emissaries as shadarim. See Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 63–65. 86. Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 8. 87. Ibid., 10. 88. Ibid., 11. 89. Report from Hilmi [Yitzhak Shweiki], 30 January 1945, AHA, 14/21. 90. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 13; Salih Hocha, ibid., 6. 91. Yona Salman, ibid., 8. 92. Ibid., 7. 93. David Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 8–9. The attempt to acquire French papers while still in Iraq is discussed in chapter 6. 94. Yona Salman, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 95. Ibid., 8. 96. Mordechai Sa‘ado, ibid., 6. 97. Yehoshua Miro, ibid., 2. 98. Ibid., 4. 408

02 Gavish BM.indd 408

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

99. Yitzhak Shweiki, IFA, Zakho B, 8. 100. Mordechai Bibi, ibid., 2. 101. Menahem Aloni, ibid., 1. 102. Mordechai Bibi, ibid., 1–2. 103. Salih Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 6. 104. Yona Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 1. 105. For smuggling activities originating in Zakho, see chapter 2. 106. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 3; Mordechai Sa‘ado, ibid., 6–7; Salih Hocha, ibid., 6; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 13. 107. Yona Salman, ibid., 2. 108. Ibid., 8. 109. Ibid., 3–4. 110. David Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 14–15. 111. On complicating action and its result, see Labov, Language in the Inner City, 363. 112. Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 1:349, document 181. 113. Shlomo Salman Attiya was sometimes called Shalom Attiya. See ibid., 2:592 n. 3: “The reference is to Salman Attiya, but there are those who in correspondence called him Shlomo or Shalom; in Israel, he was called Salman.” 114. Mordechai Bibi, IFA, Zakho B, 1–2. 115. See note 31 in chapter 6. 116. Committee of the Kurdish Community in Jerusalem to Immigration Department, Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, 1 Heshvan 5705 (18 October 1944), AHA, 14/20. 117. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 3. 118. Interview with Hananiah Mordechai, 5 August 1993, IFA, Zakho B, esp. 1–8. 119. See especially [Uri Sheffer], “Recorded from Four Olim Who Came from Berman [Iraq] to Na‘an,” 16 May 1945, AHA, 14/22. 120. Mordechai Bibi, IFA, Zakho B, 1. 121. See at note 105 in the text of chapter 3. 122. Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 123. Ibid. The uncles’ names are mentioned in a letter sent on 10 October 1993 by Hananiah Mordechai to Nisan Harpaz, chairman of the street-naming committee of the Jerusalem Municipality, requesting that a street be named after Ilya Hetteh. 124. Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 125. Ibid., 2, 5. 126. Ibid., 5–7. 127. See the stories by Zeev Golan and Salha Mizrahi, Esther’s son and eldest daughter (IFA, Zakho B, 2, 4–9). For testimony by other Jews from Zakho, see Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 12; Baruch Givati, IFA, Zakho B, 5. 128. Mention has been made earlier, on several occasions, of the narrative by Yehoshua Miro about his father, Mordechai Zaqen, who recruited a Christian smuggler in 1941 to spirit a refugee from Baghdad across the border into Syria on his way to Eretz Israel. See Yehoshua Miro, IFA, Zakho A, 1. 409

02 Gavish BM.indd 409

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

129. Abramovsky was active in Iraq during 1944. See Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 149, 163–64. 130. Hagshamah is a Hebrew term meaning “realization,” which, in Zionist usage, means self-implementation of Zionist ideals. 131. Yehoshua Baharav, IFA, Zakho B, 1. 132. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 100. 133. Ibid., 164–66. 134. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.G. [the Mosad], 18 March 1945, AHA 14/21; minutes of a meeting of the Tel Aviv [i.e., Baghdad] branch [of the Zionist movement], 30 May 1945, in Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 2:604. 135. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to Hofshi [David Nimri], 6 March 1945, AHA, 14/21. 136. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.M. [the Mosad], 8 March 1945, AHA, 14/21. 137. Yehoshua Baharav, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 138. Ibid., 3. 139. Mordechai Bibi, ibid., 1. 140. Metonymy is a figure of speech in which an attribute or a thing is substituted for the thing itself, such as “sword” for “military power.” See Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 503–7. 141. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.M. [the Mosad], 15 May 1945, AHA 14/22. For reference to Shlomo Salman as Shalom Attiya by members of the underground, see note 112. 142. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.M. [the Mosad], 17 May 1945 [received 25 May 1945], AHA 14/22. 143. Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 2:591 n. 2. 144. For example, Yitzhak Shweiki’s detailed, undated report (early November, for he reached Zakho in November 1944 but was arrested in Mosul on 19 November) was sent on to Baghdad, returned to Qamishliye on 26 December, and then sent to Eretz Israel on 30 January 1945, with the conclusion of his tour of duty in Syria. See note 71. 145. See [Sheffer], “Recorded from Four Olim.” See also Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 2:588 n. 1. 146. There is a discrepancy in the dates noted by the two written sources: whereas Yehoshua Baharav, in his letter, gave 22 April as the day on which the operation began, Uri Sheffer’s report maintains that this happened on 29 April. I found no explanation for the difference of a week between them, but one thing is certain: both sources are referring to the same operation. 147. Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 2:588 n. 2. 148. Ibid., 2:589 n. 4. 149. This probably refers to Kamik, a village in Syrian territory near the town of Pesh Khabur. 150. Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 3–4. 151. The different context and purpose of the two sources influenced their character. Uri Sheffer’s report is richer in plot and detail than the first section of Hananiah’s 410

02 Gavish BM.indd 410

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

narrative because its objective was to gain from experience. In contrast, the first part of Hananiah’s testimony, delivered in an interview, was intended to document the personality and efforts of Ilya Hetteh as but one example among many. 152. The Khabur River crossing Pesh Khabur, or Faishkhabur on the British map of Iraq, sheet J-38/M, G.S.G.S. [Geographic Section, General Staff] 3732, A(2). 153. Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 3. 154. Also known as Tusen, about five kilometers south of Pesh Khabur, according to the map in note 152. 155. The motif of observing the Sabbath also appears in aliyah stories of the legend type. See, for example, “Ariel,” in Alexander, “Wondrous Aliyot,” 17–19. In that story, the hero does not desecrate the Sabbath; he does not continue on his way to Eretz Israel, despite the danger he faces from wild animals and highway robbers, until the Sabbath is over. In contrast, in Hananiah’s narrative, the motif of observing the Sabbath appears only outwardly, for he did continue his journey on Friday, the eve of the Sabbath, but refrained from desecrating the Sabbath publicly in Zakho itself. Another difference between the two is that Hananiah did this while advancing toward Zakho, whereas in legend-type aliyah stories the heroes refrain from desecrating the Sabbath on their way to Eretz Israel. In both types, the heroes succeed in their aliyah efforts, whether their own or assisting in the aliyah of others. 156. For descriptions of the murder of ‘Aziza Cohen’s peddler husband and the efforts of Shlomo Salman to find his body, see notes 109, 110, 111, 113, and 115 in the text. 157. Hananiah Mordechai, IFA, Zakho B, 4. 158. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.M. [the Mosad], 5 May 1945, AHA, 14/22. 159. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.M. [the Mosad], 22 May 1945, AHA, 14/22. 160. Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 2:592 n. 5. 161. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to Moshe K [Kliger], 30 May 1945, in ibid., 2:606–7. 162. In an unsigned letter to Ben-Yehudah [Shaul Avigur], 29 May 1945, regarding the proposal to transfer Gideon Golani to the north “to organize a pioneering group in Shilgiya,” the point was also made that, on the whole, there was much excitement about aliyah among the Jews of Zakho (AHA 14/22). 163. See Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 107–8. 164. For impressions by the first Zionist emissaries to Iraq who reported the difference between Baghdadi Jews and the “Jewish herders and farmers in the hills of Kurdistan,” see “Excerpts from Reports about Iraqi Jewry,” United Kibbutz Movement Archives, Yad Tabenkin 4.2.1943, Record Group 25 ayin, container 2. For admiration of the Jews of Sondur, see Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 5; Enzo Sereni, in minutes of a meeting of the Committee for Aliyah Bet, 2 July 1942, Yisrael Galili files, AHA. The secretary of the Kirkuk branch of the movement and coordinator of branches in northern Iraq said about Sondur and its Jews, “[Sondur] is a Jewish village in the north . . . a Jewish village comprised only of farmers. This very much attracted us” (Israel Shneiur, IFA, Zakho B, 1). 411

02 Gavish BM.indd 411

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

165. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 107–11. 166. Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 2:592, n. 5. 167. Shemariah Guttman, IFA, Zakho B, 6. 168. Mordechai Bibi, IFA, Zakho B, 8. 169. For Zakho’s importance because of its proximity to Turkey, see Yehoshua Baharav, ibid., 2. Mordechai Bibi claimed that there was an opposite intention: to smuggle Iraqi Jews into Syria through Turkish territory (ibid., 8–9). 170. Mordechai Bibi describes this scene: “When the door was opened, I saw that it was them, but that they did not come alone. They brought along with them the smuggler himself, dressed in full Arab garb. . . . For his part, Shlomo Attiya was dressed in the Kurdish clothes typical of the mountainous residents of Zakho. Salim wore a European suit. The three made a colorful group, pleasing to the eye” (Four Corners of Naharaim, 37). 171. Mordechai Bibi, IFA, Zakho B, 3–4. 172. Ibid., 8. 173. Yehoshua Baharav is using a biblical phrase (e.g., see Jer. 49:16). 174. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.M. [the Mosad], 5 July 1945, AHA, 14/22. For this episode, see also Bibi, Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement, 2:642 nn. 12–14. In the last note, Bibi identifies the Jewish smuggler from the north as Salman Attiya of Zakho. 175. Bin Nun [Yehoshua Baharav] to H.M. [the Mosad], 5 and 14 July 1945, AHA 14/22. 176. See Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 175; Bibi, Four Corners of Naharaim, 19–20; Mordechai Bibi, IFA, Zakho B, 7; Yehonatan Baharav (Rabinovitz), ibid., 6. 177. Yona Salman, IFA, Zakho A, 1–3. 178. On 30 December 1987, I received further information from Leah Varon, Mrs. Arbeli-Almoslino’s secretary, to whom I am very grateful. 179. Menahem Aloni, IFA, Zakho B, 1. 180. Ibid. 181. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 195–236. 182. See the beginning of this book’s preface. 183. Yona Salman, IFA, Zakho A, 6. 184. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 241–44; Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 207–9; Hillel, Operation Babylon, 232–33. 185. Menahem Aloni, IFA, Zakho B, 1–2. 186. Ibid., 2. For Salim Gabbay as pharmacist and physician in Arbil, see Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 11–12. 187. Menahem Aloni, IFA, Zakho B, 1–2. 188. This is more than likely a slip of the tongue. Though Aloni spoke of smugglers from Syria, the intention was to bring the Zakho community to Turkey. It is unreasonable to assume that after the War of Independence the members of the Zionist underground movement gave any thought to transferring the Jews of Zakho to Turkey through Syrian territory. 189. Menahem Aloni, IFA, Zakho B, 1–3. 190. The Mosad to Berman [Iraq], 3 February 1949, AHA, 14/28. 412

02 Gavish BM.indd 412

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 7

191. There are different estimates of the Jewish population of Zakho at the time: in this telegram, the number was ca. 2,000 whereas in a later communication “more than 1,000.” For discrepancies in estimates of the number of Jews in Zakho in an earlier decade, see chapter 2 at notes 74–76 in the text. 192. Berman [Iraq] to the Mosad, 10 February 1949, no. 15, AHA 14/28. 193. Ibid., 3 March 1949, no. 8, AHA 14/28. 194. Nisibin and Qamishliye are cities facing each other on both sides of the border, the former in Turkey and the latter in Syria. 195. The Mosad to Berman [Iraq], 3 March 1949, no. 3, AHA, 14/28. 196. Berman [Iraq] to the Mosad, 4 March 1949, no. 10, ibid. 197. Shlomo Salman was mentioned by name, together with the fact that he owned a store in Zakho, in a later telegram (Berman [Iraq] to the Mosad, 8 June 1950, no. 16, AHA, 14/426). 198. Slop is a mountainous area along the border between Turkey and Iraq. 199. Jezireh, or Jezireh-Ibn-Omar, on the Euphrates in Turkish territory. 200. Berman [Iraq] to the Mosad, 14 March 1949, no. 26, AHA, 14/28. 201. Ibid., 3 April 1949, AHA, 14/426. 202. Ibid., 9 April 1949, no. 23, AHA, 14/426. 203. The Mosad to Berman [Iraq], “in reply to your no. 23,” 26 April 1949, ibid. 204. Unsigned report, “My Journey from Izmir to Diarbakir,” 17 May 1949, AHA, 14/426. 205. Berman [Iraq] to the Mosad, 11 June 1949, no. 24, ibid. 206. Berman [Iraq] to the Mosad, 22 June 1949, no. 45, ibid. 207. Yuval Berman to Michael [Mordechai Bibi], 22 June 1949, ibid. 208. Two telegrams from Berman [Iraq] to the Mosad, 3 and 17 July 1949, respectively, ibid. 209. Mosad Goldman [Iran] to the Mosad, 25 January 1950, AHA 14/427. 210. The Mosad to Emil Dror [Berman-Iraq], 14 May 1950, no. 23, AHA 14/429. 211. According to Menahem Aloni’s oral testimony, he spent about a month in Zakho, but the written documentation shows that he was there from 3 April 1949 to at least 22 June. 212. Reproduced in Yona, Those Who Perish, 110–11 and 33 in this book. 213. Menahem Aloni, IFA, Zakho B, 2. 214. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 67–76, 107–11; Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 11–12, 54–73. 215. Sung toward the end of the seder meal on the eve of Passover, it advances from “Who knows one, I know one” (one God in heaven and on earth) to “Who knows thirteen, I know thirteen” (the thirteen attributes of God). 216. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 13. 217. Ibid., 13–14. 218. Menahem Aloni, in a telephone conversation with the author, 4 August 1992, one day after the interview, to clarify some matters. 219. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 10. See also Salim Gabbay, ibid., 13. 220. For recognition in Israel of Salman’s efforts on behalf of Zionism, see Shmuel 413

02 Gavish BM.indd 413

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 8

Baruch, ibid., 12; Yona Salman, ibid., 12; David Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 17. For the support he received in Israel from former Zionist underground emissaries, see Yitzhak Shweiki, ibid., 10; Yehoshua Baharav, ibid., 9–10; Mordechai Bibi, ibid., 2; Menahem Aloni, ibid., 4. 221. For nonacknowledgment of Ilya Hetteh’s Zionist activity, see Gurji Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 9–10. For an attempt to rectify this many years later, see note 122. 222. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 13. 223. Salih Hocha (ibid., 6–7) told of an emissary by the name of Mordechai who came with two others. Shlomo Salman’s son was able to tell me about his father’s connections with the emissaries (see Yona Salman, ibid., 1). For information about Menahem Aloni of Arbil, see Meir Zaqen, ibid., 13. Stories about help extended to emissaries without mentioning them by name are in the testimonies by Haviv Tamar and his wife (ibid., 11). For how Meir Gabbay helped two emissaries leave Zakho secretly, see the testimony of his son (Salim Gabbay, ibid., 4). 224. For Jews serving in the Iraqi armed forces, see Meir Zaqen, ibid., 28–31; Cohen, Zionist Activity in Iraq, 116. 225. See note 48. 226. Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 2–3. Chapter 8 1. See the discussion of what motivated this aliyah, in Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, “The Riddle of the Mass Aliyah from Iraq: Causes, Contexts, and Results,” Pe‘amim 71 (Spring 1997): 25–53 (Hebrew). 2. The numerous studies dealing with the aliyah from Iraq in the 1950s and its background include Shlomo Hillel, “Developments Leading to the Mass Aliyah from Iraq,” in From Babylon to Jerusalem: Studies and Sources on Zionism and Aliyah from Iraq, ed. Zvi Yehuda (Tel Aviv: Iraqi Jews’ Traditional Cultural Center, 1980), 34–52 (Hebrew); idem, Operation Babylon, 143–233; Gat, Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 32–143; Dafna Zimhoni, “The Government of Iraq and the Mass Aliyah of Jews to Eretz Israel,” Pe‘amim 39 (1989): 64–103 (Hebrew); idem, “The Political Background to the Emigration Operation of the Jews of Iraq, 1950–1951,” in Studies in the History and Culture of Iraqi Jewry, vol. 6, ed. Yitzhak Avishur (Or Yehuda: Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, 1991), 89–113 (Hebrew); Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 270–305; Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 195–258; Mordechai Ben-Porat, To Baghdad and Back: The Story of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah (Or Yehuda: Sifriat Ma‘ariv, 1996), 41–94 (Hebrew). 3. Hayyim J. Cohen writes that 124,646 Jews emigrated from Iraq from the establishment of Israel to 1953 (Zionist Activity in Iraq, 212). For the number of those remaining, see Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 305; Nissim Kazzaz, The End of a Diaspora: The Jews in Iraq after the Mass Immigration, 1951–2000 (Or Yehuda: Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, 2002), 33 (Hebrew). 4. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Policy of the Jewish Agency,” 389; Zimhoni, “Government of Iraq,” 71. 5. Sa‘ado Mordechai, IFA, Zakho A, 10; Mazliah Kol, ibid., 4–5; Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 23–24. 414

02 Gavish BM.indd 414

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o chap t er 8

6. Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 4–5. 7. For additional versions, see Salim Gabbay (IFA, Zakho A, 15), who stresses the role of his father Moshe Gabbay in preparing the community for aliyah; and Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 23–24. For testimony about Mazliah Kol and Ephraim Ela as the organizers of the first group, see Haya Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 4; Zaki Levi, ibid., 6; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 17, 26–27. 8. Meir Zaqen, ibid., 17–18; Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 26–27. 9. Mordechai Yona, IFA, Zakho A, 6–7; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 18; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 14. 10. Yona Sabar, ibid., 11. For a member of the second group who told of how his home was sold, see Meir Zaqen, ibid., 19–22. For persons in the third group who were unable to sell their property, see Salih Hocha, ibid., 7–8. Moshe Gabbay lost all his property when he came with the fourth group (see Haya Gabbay, ibid., 4; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 5–14). 11. Haya Gabbay, ibid., 14; Alfiya, Massa gai hizayon, 26–27. 12. Bezalel, Alone in the Final Stronghold, 24–25; Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 424– 27. 13. IFA, no. 279, 16468; Salim Gabbay, IFA, Zakho A, 14–15. 14. Haya Gabbay, ibid., 4. See also Salim Gabbay, ibid., 14–15. 15. Henna night is a joyous ceremony conducted one day before the wedding in the home of the bride and groom. 16. Na‘ima Cohen, IFA, Zakho A, 2. 17. Yona Sabar, ibid., 10–11. See also Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 7; Rahamim Cohen, ibid., 1–4, 24; Haviv ‘Alwan, ibid., 16–17, 19. 18. Meir Zaqen, ibid., 17–18. 19. Atlas, Up to the Scaffold, 287–92. 20. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Policy of the Jewish Agency,” 395–96, 407; Zimhoni, “Government of Iraq,” 84. 21. On the role and status of Meir Zaqen’s home within the community, see Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 6, 10, 18–19; Nehemiah Hocha, “The Home of Miro Zaqen,” Hithadshut 4 (September 1980): 29–30 (Hebrew). 22. Minhah, the afternoon prayer service, may be recited until sunset; and Ma‘ariv is the evening prayer service. 23. Meir Zaqen, ibid., 17–18. 24. Nehemiah Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 13. 25. Shlomo Duga, ibid., 5. 26. Zaki Levi, ibid., 11. 27. Salim Gabbay, ibid., 14. 28. Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country, 224–30. 29. Zaki Levi, IFA, Zakho A, 11. 30. Yona Sabar, ibid., 11. 31. Hayyim Nahman Bialik, “Aftergrowth,” in Aftergrowth and Other Stories, translated by Israel M. Lask (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1939), 39–140. 32. Yona Sabar, IFA, Zakho A, 11. 33. Feitelson, “Jewish Society in Kurdistan”; Stephen Sharot, “Judaism in Pre415

02 Gavish BM.indd 415

10/8/09 1:36 PM

no t es t o epilogue

modern Societies,” in Judaism: A Sociology (Newton Abbot, UK: David & Charles, 1976), 5–36. 34. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 23–24. 35. Ibid., 14–15. 36. Ibid., 23–24. 37. Dola is a large wooden cylinder-shaped drum on which one beats with a thick wooden stick on its front and a thin one on its back; zirne is a wooden reed flute or sort of mountain oboe. 38. Gurji Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 10–11. 39. Salih Hocha, ibid., 4. 40. Salim Gabbay, ibid., 19. 41. Salih Hocha, ibid., 5; Meir Zaqen, ibid., 19–21; Zaki Levi, ibid., 11–12. 42. Gurji Zaqen, ibid., 10–11. For additional versions and interpretations of this episode, see Salim Gabbay, ibid., 19–20; Salih Hocha, ibid., 4–5; Haya Gabbay, ibid., 4; Mazliah Kol, ibid., 14. 43. Haya Gabbay, ibid., 13–14; Salim Gabbay, ibid., 1–2; Yona Sabar, ibid., 5–6; Nehemiah Hocha, ibid., 13; Hayyo Cohen, ibid., 13. 44. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho B, 25–35; Zaki Levi, ibid., 23–25. 45. Mazliah Kol, IFA, Zakho A, 22–23. 46. For the entire episode, see Meir Zaqen, ibid., 19–24. 47. The grush is the smallest unit of Ottoman currency. 48. The agora (pl. agorot) is the smallest unit of Israeli currency. 49. For monetary problems associated with bringing Torah scrolls from Iraq in the 1950s, see “Selected Documents,” introduced and annotated by Zvi Yehuda, in From Babylon to Jerusalem: Studies and Sources on Zionism and Aliyah from Iraq, ed. Zvi Yehuda (Tel Aviv: Iraqi Jews’ Traditional Cultural Center, 1980), 222 (Hebrew). 50. Meir Zaqen, IFA, Zakho A, 32–36; Zaken, “Central Institutions,” 12–13. 51. Mordechai Salman, IFA, Zakho B, 4. 52. Yakhel Shlomo (lit. “Solomon assembled”), based on “David assembled all Israel in Jerusalem” (1 Chron. 15:3). 53. OHD, file (11), 21, pp. 5, 13. In an interview conducted in 1981, Sasson Siman-Tov told the following about Salih Yosef Nuriel: “He came on aliyah to Israel only after all had left the city, even Jews who had been for years in the custody of Muslims; girls who had been abducted by Muslims and borne children to Muslims, he managed to extricate them from the villages. He made the rounds of many villages.” See Haya Gavish, “Arbil as Reflected in the Eyes of Former Jewish Residents” (MA seminar paper, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1982), 337 (suppl.) (Hebrew). A copy is in IFA, Arbil file. 54. Salih Hocha, IFA, Zakho A, 10. 55. Kazzaz, End of a Diaspora, 33. Epilogue

1. Qastel was an immigrant transit camp just to the west of Jerusalem. 2. Varda Shilo, IFA, Zakho A, 20–21. 416

02 Gavish BM.indd 416

10/8/09 1:36 PM

Bibliography

Aarne, Antti. The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Edited and translated by Stith Thompson. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1961. Abitbol, Michel. “Processes of Modernization and Development in the Modern Era.” In History of the Jews in Islamic Countries, edited by Shmuel Ettinger, 2:363–468. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1981–86 (Hebrew). ———. “Zionist Activity in North Africa Up to the End of the Second World War.” Pe‘amim 2 (Summer 1979): 65–91 (Hebrew). Abrahami, Itzhak. “The Jewish Communities of Tunisia during the Nazi Conquest.” Pe‘amim 28 (1986): 107–25 (Hebrew). Adler, Rachel. “The Virgin in the Brothel and Other Anomalies: Character and Context in the Legend of Bruriah.” Tikkun 3 (November–December 1988): 28–32. Agronsky, Gershon. “The Jews of Yemen and Aden during the Reign of Imam Yihya: Remarks on the Tour of Aden on Behalf of the Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, 26 March–12 April 1930.” In The Jews of Yemen in the Modern Period, edited by Yosef Tobi, 163–64. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984 (Hebrew). Ainsworth, William. Researches in Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldaea, Forming Part of the Labours of the Euphrates Expedition. London: J. W. Parker, 1838. ———. Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia. 2 vols. London: J. W. Parker, 1842. Alexander, Tamar. “Wondrous Aliyot to Eretz Israel as Reflected in Folktales.” Gilyonot Lamoreh, 1979, 16–33 (Hebrew). Alfiya, Meir. Massa gai hizayon. Jerusalem: the author, 1965 (Hebrew). Allen, Barbara. “In the Thick of Things: Texture in Orally Communicated History.” International Journal of Oral History 6 (June 1985): 92–103. ———. “Re-creating the Past: The Narrator’s Perspective in Oral History.” Oral History Review 12 (1984): 1–12. Assaf, Simha. “More on the History of the Jews in Kurdistan.” Kiryath Sefer 13 (1936–37): 266–71 (Hebrew). Atlas, Yehuda. Up to the Scaffold: The Deeds of the Underground in Iraq. Tel Aviv: Ma‘arachot, 1971 (Hebrew). Aubè, Mary E. “Oral History and the Remembered World: Cultural Determinants from French Canada.” International Journal of Oral History 10 (February 1989): 31–47. 417

02 Gavish BM.indd 417

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

Avisar, David. “Rabbi Hayyim Bajayo.” In The Book of Hebron: The City of the Patriarchs throughout the Ages, edited by Oded Avisar, 242–43. Jerusalem: Keter, 1970 (Hebrew). Avisar, Oded, ed. The Book of Hebron: The City of the Patriarchs throughout the Ages. Jerusalem: Keter, 1970 (Hebrew). ———. The Book of Tiberias. Jerusalem: Keter, 1973 (Hebrew). Avishur, Yitzhak. “Nahum.” In The World of the Bible, 13:66–85. Tel Aviv: DavidsonIti, 1994 (Hebrew). Avituv, Yaron. “The Bajayo Family Legend.” Kol Ha-Ir, 21 December 1990, 36–37 (Hebrew). Azulai, Hayyim Yosef David. Ma‘gal Tov Hashalem. Edited by Aron Freimann. Rev. ed. Jerusalem: Merkas Hasefer, 1983 (Hebrew). Badger, George P. The Nestorians and Their Rituals: With a Narrative of a Mission to Mesopotamia and Coordistan in 1842–1844. 2 vols. London: J. Masters, 1852. Bar-Asher, Shalom. “The Jews in North Africa and Egypt.” In History of the Jews in Islamic Countries, edited by Shmuel Ettinger, 1:129–31. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1981–88 (Hebrew). Bar-Itzhak, Haya. “‘Saints Legend’ as Genre in Jewish Folk Literature: Sample of Oral Stories about Rabbi Israel Baal-Shem-Tov, Rabbi Chaim Pinto, and Rabbi Shalom Shabazi.” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1987 (Hebrew). Bar-Moshe, Yitzhak. Exodus from Iraq: Recollections 1945–1950. Jerusalem: Council of the Sephardi Community, 1977 (Hebrew). Barad, Shlomo. “Missions and Emissaries to Islamic Countries.” Shorashim Bamizrah 1 (1986): 145–89 (Hebrew). Barnai, Ya‘akov. “The Maghrebite Community in Jerusalem (1830–1918).” MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971 (Hebrew). Bashan, Eliezer. “Traditional Connections between Oriental Jewry and the Jewish Community in Eretz Israel.” Pe‘amim 1 (Spring 1979): 14–22 (Hebrew). Bat Ye’or [Giselle Littman]. The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam. Rev. and enl. English ed. Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985. Ben-Ami, Issachar. Saint Veneration among the Jews in Morocco. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984 (Hebrew). ———. Saint Veneration among the Jews in Morocco. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Ben-Ari, Eyal, and Yoram Bilu. “Saints’ Sanctuaries in Israeli Development Towns: On a Mechanism of Urban Transformation.” Urban Anthropology 16, no. 2 (1987): 243–72. Ben-Dov, Meir, Mordechai Naor, and Zeev Aner. The Western Wall. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence, 1983. Ben-Porat, Mordechai. To Baghdad and Back: The Story of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Or Yehuda: Sifriat Ma‘ariv, 1996 (Hebrew). Ben-Ya‘acob, Abraham. “Id al-Ziyāra in Baghdad.” Edoth 1 (1946): 37–40 (Hebrew). ———. The Jewish Communities of Kurdistan, with Supplemented Songs and Liturgical Poetry. 2nd rev. and aug. ed. Jerusalem: Kiryath Sefer, 1981 (Hebrew). 418

02 Gavish BM.indd 418

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

———. Sacred Graves in Iraq. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1973 (Hebrew). ———. The Traveling Envoy. Jerusalem: Nuriel Shrem, 1982 (Hebrew). Ben-Zvi, Itzhak. The Exiled and the Redeemed. Translated by Isaac A. Abbady. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1957. ———. The Exiled of Israel. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1969 (Hebrew). ———. Our Population in Eretz Israel. Vol. 1. Warsaw: The Executive of “Brith Hano‘ar” and World Hehalutz, 1929 (Hebrew). ———. Studies and Sources. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1967 (Hebrew). ———. Traveling the Byways of Eretz Israel and Its Neighbors: From Travel Notes and Diaries. Jerusalem: Israeli Publishing Institute, 1960 (Hebrew). Benjamin, Israel Joseph. Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846–1855. Hanover, Germany: the author, 1863. Bennet, James. “Human Values in Oral History.” Oral History Review 11 (1983): 1–15. Bezalel, Yitzhak. Alone in the Final Stronghold: The Disappearance of Iraqi Jewry. Tel Aviv: Ma‘ariv, 1976 (Hebrew). Bialik, Hayyim Nahman. “Aftergrowth.” In Aftergrowth and Other Stories, translated by Israel M. Lask, 39–140. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1939. Bibi, Mordechai. From the Four Corners of Naharaim: Testimonies and Narratives about the Underground and Illegal Immigration in Iraq. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1983 (Hebrew). ———. The Underground Zionist Pioneer Movement in Iraq. 4 vols. Jerusalem: BenZvi Institute, 1988–2005 (Hebrew). Bilu, Yoram. “The Inner Limits of Communitas: A Covert Dimension of Pilgrimage Experience.” Ethos 16 (1998): 302–35. ———. “The Revival of Cults of Saints in Israel: The Contribution of the Moroccan Community.” In To the Tombs of the Righteous: Pilgrimage in Contemporary Israel [catalog], edited by Rivka Gonen, 27–45. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1999. ———. “Veneration of Saints and Pilgrimage to Sacred Sites as a Universal Phenomenon.” In To the Tombs of the Righteous: Pilgrimage in Contemporary Israel [catalog], edited by Rivka Gonen, 11–25. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1999. Bilu, Yoram, and Henry H. Abramovitch. “In Search of the ‘Saddiq’: Visitational Dreams among Moroccan Jews in Israel.” Psychiatry 48 (February 1985): 83–92. Bilu, Yoram, and Eyal Ben-Ari. “The Making of Modern Saints: Manufactured Charisma and the Abu-Hatseiras of Israel.” American Ethnologist 19, no. 4 (1992): 672–87. Brauer, Erich. The Jews of Kurdistan. Completed and edited by Raphael Patai. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. ———. The Jews of Kurdistan: An Ethnological Study. Jerusalem: Palestine Institute of Folklore and Ethnology, 1947 (Hebrew) Brawer, Abraham J. “From the Episode of My Travels in Syria, Babylon, and Assyria.” In A Tribute to David: Jubilee Book in Honor of David Yellin, edited by Simha Assaf, Ben-Zion Dinaburg, and Shmuel Klein, 238–51. Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1935 (Hebrew). 419

02 Gavish BM.indd 419

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

———. Road Dust. 2 vols. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1944–46 (Hebrew). Brown, Kenneth. “Religion, Commerce, and the Mobility of Moroccan Jews.” Pe‘amim 38 (1989): 95–108 (Hebrew). Broydé, Isaac. “Meïr (Meïr Ba‘al ha-Nes).” Jewish Encyclopedia, 8:432–35. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–6. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Coggins, R. J. Israel among the Nations: A Commentary on the Books of Nahum and Obadiah. International Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985. Cohen, Hayyim J. Zionist Activity in Iraq. Jerusalem: Hassifriya Haziyonit and Hebrew University of Jerusalem—Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1969 (Hebrew). Cohen, Mark R. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Cohler, Bertram J. “Personal Narrative and the Life Course.” Life-Span Development and Behavior 4 (1982): 205–41. Cothran, Kay. “The Truth as Lie—The Lie as Truth: A View of Oral History.” Journal of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington 8 (Summer 1972): 3–6. Danielson, Larry. “The Folklorist, the Oral Historian and Local History.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, 187–98. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996. Dann, Uriel. Iraq under Qassem: A Political History, 1958–1963. Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1969. D’Beth Hillel, David. Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands: The Travels of Rabbi David D’Beth Hillel (1824–1832). Edited with an introduction and notes by Walter J. Fischel. New York: Ktav, 1973. Dégh, Linda. “Beauty, Wealth and Power: Career Choices for Women in Modern Folktales and Modern Media.” In Life History as Cultural Construction/Performance: Proceedings of the IIIrd Hungarian-American Folklore Conference, edited by Támas Hofer and Péter Niedermüller, 19–31. Budapest: Ethnographic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1988. ———. “Folk Narrative.” In Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, edited by Richard M. Dorson, 53–84. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. ———. “The Process of Legend Formation.” In Narratives in Society: A PerformerCentered Study of Narration, 226–35. FF Communications No. 255. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1995. Deshen, Shlomo. “Theories and Documents in the Study of Baghdad Jewry.” Katharsis: A Critical Review in the Humanities and Social Sciences, no. 2 (Autumn 2004): 7–17 (Hebrew). Deshen, Shlomo, and Moshe Shokeid, eds. Jews of the Middle East: Anthropological Perspectives on Past and Present. Jerusalem: Schocken, 1984 (Hebrew). Dunaway, David K., and Willa K. Baum, eds. Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1984. Dundes, Alan. “On the Psychology of Legend.” In American Folk Legend: A Sym420

02 Gavish BM.indd 420

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

posium, edited by Wayland D. Hand, 21–36. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Elizur, Yehuda. “The Prophet Nahum, His Period and Mission.” In Studies in the Minor Prophets, 285–300. Proceedings of the Bible Study Group in the President’s Residence. Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1981 (Hebrew). Ettinger, Shmuel, ed. History of the Jews in Islamic Countries. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1981–86 (Hebrew). Even-Hen, Aharon. Wedding in Sidon: Legends of the Past. Ramat Gan: Massada, 1972 (Hebrew). Feitelson, Dina. “Jewish Society in Kurdistan.” In Jews of the Middle East: Anthropological Perspectives on Past and Present, edited by Shlomo Deshen and Moshe Shokeid, 239–50. Jerusalem: Schocken, 1984 (Hebrew). Fischel, Walter J. “The Jews in Kurdistan.” Moznaim 4 (June 1932): 5–8 (Hebrew). ———. “The Jews of Kurdistan: A First-Hand Report on a Mountain Community.” Commentary 8 (1949): 554–59. ———. “The Jews of Kurdistan a Hundred Years Ago: A Traveler’s Record.” Jewish Social Studies 6 (1944): 195–226. ———. “Kurdistan Letters.” Sinai 7 (1940): 167–77 (Hebrew). Friedlander, Peter. “Theory, Method, and Oral History.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, 131–42. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996. Gaon, Moshe David. Oriental Jews in Eretz Israel in Past and Present. 2 vols. Jerusalem: the author, 1928–38 (Hebrew). Gat, Moshe. The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948–1951. London: Frank Cass, 1997. Gavish, Haya. “Arbil as Reflected in the Eyes of Former Jewish Residents.” MA seminar paper, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1982 (Hebrew). ——— “Changes in the Status of Women between Diaspora and Homeland as Reflected in Personal Narratives of Jews from Zakho.” Narodna tvorchist’ ta etnohrafia 4 (2008): 70–74 (Ukranian). ———. “Patterns of Feminine Initiative, Strength and Resourcefulness as Reflected in Personal Narratives of Jews from Zakho.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 24–25 (2006–7): 175–94 (Hebrew). ———. “Pilgrimage to the Tomb of Nahum Elkoshi in the Folk Narratives of the Jews of Zakho.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 22 (2003): 25–46 (Hebrew). ———. “Rescue of the Jews of Arbil during the Rashīd ‘Alī Riots, 1941.” In The Power of a Tale: The Jubilee Book of IFA, edited by Haya Bar-Itzhak and Idit PintelGinsberg, 259–66. Haifa: Haifa University, 2008 (Hebrew). ———. “The Sehrane.” In Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Forthcoming. Georges, Robert A. “The General Concept of Legend: Some Assumptions to be Reexamined and Reassessed.” In American Folk Legend: A Symposium, edited by Wayland D. Hand, 1–19. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Georges, Robert A., and Michael O. Jones. People Studying People: The Human Element in Fieldwork. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Gergen, Kenneth, and Mary M. Gergen. “Narratives of the Self.” In Studies in Social 421

02 Gavish BM.indd 421

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

Identity, edited by Theodore R. Sarbin and Karl E. Scheibe, 254–73. New York: Praeger, 1983. Givati, Baruch. “Rabbi Shmuel Baruch, Head of the Committee of the Community’s Rabbis.” Hithadshut 2 (August 1975): 95–96 (Hebrew). Goldberg, Harvey. “Between Tripolitania and Eretz Israel in the Nineteenth Century: Information about Emissaries and Immigrants.” Pe‘amim 24 (1985): 87–92 (Hebrew). ———. “Ecologic and Demographic Aspects of Rural Tripolitanian Jewry, 1853– 1949.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (July 1971): 245–65. ———. Jewish Life in Muslim Libya: Rivals and Relatives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Goldstein Cohen, Naomi. “Rabbi Meir, a Descendant of Anatolian Proselytes.” Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (Spring 1972): 51–59. Goralsky, Robert. World War II Almanac, 1931–1945: A Political and Military Record. London: Hamilton, 1981. Grant, Asahel. The Nestorians or the Lost Tribes, Containing Evidence of Their Identity, an Account of their Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Together with Sketches of Travel in Ancient Assyria, Armenia, Media and Mesopotamia and Illustrations of Scripture Prophecy. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1841. Grele, Ronald J. “Whose Public? Whose History? What Is the Goal of a Public Historian?” Public Historian 3 (Winter 1981): 40–48. Habbas, Bracha. Close Yet Distant Brothers. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1943 (Hebrew). Hacohen, Mordechai. The Book of Mordechai: A Study of the Jews of Libya—Selections from the Highid Mordekhai of Mordechai Hacohen. Edited and translated with introduction and commentaries by Harvey E. Goldberg. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1980. Haggiag-Liluf, Yaacov. The History of the Jews of Libya. [Beer-Sheba]: Center for Study and Research of Libyan Jewry, 2000 (Hebrew). Haim, Abraham. “The Relations of the Jewish Sephardi Leadership with Other Jewish Communities of the Middle East between the Two World Wars” Shevet Va‘am, 2nd ser., 3 (April 1978): 68–88 (Hebrew). Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. “Documenting Diversity: The Southern Experience.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, 177–88. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996. Halper, Jeff, and Henry H. Abramovitz. “The Sehrane Celebrations in Kurdistan and Israel.” In Jews of the Middle East: Anthropological Perspectives on Past and Present, edited by Shlomo Deshen and Moshe Shokeid, 260–70. Jerusalem: Schocken, 1984 (Hebrew). Hameiri, Baruch, and Rahamim Elazar. Dream behind Bars: The Story of “Prisoners of Zion” in Ethiopia. Jerusalem: Gefen, 1998 (Hebrew). Hasan-Rokem, Galit. “The Study of Processes of Change in the Folk Narrative.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 3 (1982): 129–37 (Hebrew). Havazelet, Meir. “Meir Ba‘al Ha-Ness, Tomb of.” Encyclopaedia Judaica (CD version). Hazan, Ephraim. “The Emissaries of Eretz Israel in the Poetry of the Jews of North 422

02 Gavish BM.indd 422

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

Africa.” Pe‘amim 24 (1985): 99–116 (Hebrew). Hillel, Shlomo. “Developments Leading to the Mass Aliyah from Iraq.” In From Babylon to Jerusalem: Studies and Sources on Zionism and Aliyah from Iraq, edited by Zvi Yehuda, 34–52. Tel Aviv: Iraqi Jews’ Traditional Cultural Center, 1980 (Hebrew). ———. Operation Babylon. Jerusalem: Edanim, 1985 (Hebrew). Hirschberg, Haim Zeev. Inside Maghreb: The Jews of North Africa. Jerusalem: Youth and Hehalutz Department of the Jewish Agency, 1957 (Hebrew). Hithadshut: A Journal of the Kurdish Jews in Israel 1–7 (1973–2000) (Hebrew). Hocha, Nehemiah. “The Home of Miro Zaqen.” Hithadshut 4 (September 1980): 29–30 (Hebrew). ———. “The Sehrane.” Hithadshut 1 (1972): 100–101 (Hebrew). Hopkins, Simon. “The Jews of Kurdistan in Eretz Israel and Their Language.” Pe‘amim 56 (Summer 1993): 51 (Hebrew). Hunt, E. D. “Travel, Tourism and Piety in the Roman Empire: A Context for the Beginnings of Christian Pilgrimage.” Echos du Monde Classique (Classical Views) 28 (1984): 391–417. Idelson, Abraham Z. “Stories in the Neo-Aramaic Language.” Hashiloah 29, nos. 169–74 (1913–14) (Hebrew). “In Memory of Rabbi Yosef ben Shalom Shrem of Blessed Memory.” Bama‘arakhah 169 (2 March 1975): 23 (Hebrew). Ish-Shalom, Michael. Holy Tombs: A Study of Traditions Concerning Jewish Holy Tombs in Palestine. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1948. Joyner, Charles W. “Oral History as Communicative Event: A Folkloristic Perspective.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, 292–97. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996. Kadmon, Naftali. An Introduction to Toponomy: Theory and Practice of Geographical Names. Pretoria: Department of Geography, University of Pretoria, 1993. Kamon, Azreil, ed. The First Bridge: Testimony of Jewish Pupils from Ethiopia in Kefar Batya. Ramat Efal: Yad Tabenkin, 1996 (Hebrew). Kazzaz, Nissim. The End of a Diaspora: The Jews in Iraq after the Mass Immigration, 1951–2000. Or Yehuda: Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, 2002 (Hebrew). ———. “The Iraqi Orientation among the Iraqi Jewish Leadership and Its Failure.” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1985 (Hebrew). ———. The Jews in Iraq in the Twentieth Century. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1991 (Hebrew). Kestelmann, Yehiel Fishel. Travels of an Emissary from Safed in Eastern Countries. Edited by Abraham Yaari. Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1942 (Hebrew). Khadduri, Majid. Independent Iraq: A Study of Iraqi Politics since 1932. London: Oxford University Press, 1951. ———. Independent Iraq 1932–1958: A Study in Iraqi Politics. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1960. Kinnane, Derk. The Kurds and Kurdistan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, Barbara. “Authoring Lives.” Journal of Folklore Research 26 423

02 Gavish BM.indd 423

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

(1989): 123–49. Knuuttila, Seppo. “What the People of Sivakka Tell about Themselves.” In Studies in Oral Narrative, edited by Anna-Leena Siikala and translated by Susan Sinisalo, 111–23. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1989. Labov, William. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972. Langellier, Kristin M. “Personal Narratives: Perspectives Theory and Research.” Text and Performance Quarterly 9 (1989): 243–76. Laniado, Ezra. The Jews of Mosul: From Samarian Exile to “Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.” Tirat Hacarmel: Institute for the Study of Mosul Jewry, 1981 (Hebrew). Levinsky, Yom Tov. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Manners and Customs. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1970, 544 (Hebrew). Levy, Suzanne. “Jews, Arabs, and Europeans in Tunisia in the Writings of Albert Memmi.” Pe‘amim 4 (Winter 1980): 72–83 (Hebrew). Lewis, Bernard. The Jews of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Limor, Ora. Holy Land Travels: Christian Pilgrims in Late Antiquity. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Press, 1998 (Hebrew). Lis, Michal. “From Morocco to Eretz Israel: The Pre-state Immigration, 1830–1948.” In Tearful Pioneers: Studies in North African Jewry, edited by Shimon Shetreet, 110–22. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991 (Hebrew). Luke, Harry C. Mosul and Its Minorities. London: Hopkinson, 1925. Lummis, Trevor. “Oral History.” In International Encyclopedia of Communication, edited by Erik Barnouw et al., 3:229–31. 4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. MacCormack, Sabine. “Loca Sancta: The Organization of Sacred Topography in Late Antiquity.” In The Blessings of Pilgrimage, edited by Robert G. Ousterhout, 9–20. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Mann, Jacob. Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature. 2 vols. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew College Press, 1931–35. Marcus, Eliezer. “The Confrontation between Jews and Non-Jews in the Folktales of Jews of the Islamic Countries.” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977 (Hebrew). Marcus, Ivan G. “History, Story and Collective Memory: Narrativity in Early Ashkenazic Culture.” Prooftexts 10 (September 1990): 365–88. Mardor, Meir (“Munya”). Secret Mission: Special Operations in the “Haganah.” [Tel Aviv]: Ma‘arachot, 1957 (Hebrew). Marr, Phebe. The Modern History of Iraq. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985. Meir, Esther. “The Policy of the Jewish Agency and the Government of Israel vis-àvis the Immigration of Iraqi Jews, 1941–1950.” PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 1991 (Hebrew). See also Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther. Meir, Yosef. Beyond the Desert: Underground Activities in Iraq, 1941–1951. [Tel Aviv]: Ministry of Defence, 1973 (Hebrew). Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther. “The Riddle of the Mass Aliyah from Iraq: Causes, Contexts, and Results.” Pe‘amim 71 (Spring 1997): 25–53 (Hebrew). See also Meir, Esther. 424

02 Gavish BM.indd 424

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

———. Zionism in an Arab Country: Jews in Iraq in the 1940s. London: Routledge, 2004. See also Meir, Esther. Misher, Elliot G. “The Analysis of Interview-Narrative.” In Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, edited by Theodore R. Sarbin, 233–55. New York: Praeger, 1986. Mossek, Moshe. Palestine Immigration Policy under Sir Herbert Samuel: British, Zionist, and Arab Attitudes. London: Frank Cass, 1978. Murad, Emil. A Story of a Zionist Underground in Iraq. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1972 (Hebrew). Myerhoff, Barbara. “Telling One’s Story.” Center Magazine 13 (1980): 22–40. Nakdimon, Shlomo. A Hopeless Hope: The Rise and Fall of the Israeli-Kurdish Alliance, 1963–1975. Tel Aviv: Yedioth Aharonot, 1996 (Hebrew). Neimark, Ephraim. Travel in the East: Syria, Kurdistan, Babylonia, Persia, and Central Asia. Jerusalem: Lewin-Epstein, 1947 (Hebrew). Nevins, Allan. “Oral History: How and Why It Was Born.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, , 29–39. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1996. Nini, Yehuda. Yemen and Zion: The Jews of Yemen 1800–1914. Jerusalem: Hassifriya Haziyonit, 1982 (Hebrew). Noy, Dov. “Aliyah Stories of the Moroccan Jews.” In Zev Vilnay’s Jubilee Volume: Essays on the History, Archaeology, and Lore of the Holy Land Presented to Zev Vilnay, edited by Ely Schiller, 1:408–10. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Ariel, 1984–87 (Hebrew). ———. “Blood Libels in Folktales of the Ethnic Communities.” Mahanaim 110 (September–October 1966): 32–51 (Hebrew). ———. “The Death of Rabbi Shalom Shabazi in Yemenite Folk Tales.” In Legacy of the Jews of Yemen: Studies and Researches, edited by Joseph Tobi, 132–49. Jerusalem: Bo’i Teiman, 1976 (Hebrew). Okihoro, Gary. “Oral History and the Writing of Ethnic History.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, 199–214. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996. Olrik, Axel. “Epic Laws of Folk Narrative.” In The Study of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes, 129–41. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965. Oppenheimer, Aharon. “Meir.” Encyclopaedia Judaica (CD version). Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, eds. The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge, 1998. Petahiah of Regensburg. Travels of Rabbi Petachya, of Ratisbon . . . , translated by Abraham Benisch. 2nd ed. London: Longman, 1861. Pinker, Aron. “Nahum—the Prophet and His Message.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 33 (April–June 2005): 81–90. Polkinghome, Donald E. “Narrative and Self-concept.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 1, nos. 2–3 (1991): 135–54. Rivlin, Joseph Joel. “The Literature of the Jews of Zakho.” In Memorial Volume for Asher Gulak and Shmuel Klein, 171–86. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1942 (Hebrew). ———. The Poetry of the “Targum” Jews: Chapters of Deeds and Heroism as Related by 425

02 Gavish BM.indd 425

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

Kurdish Jews. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1959 (Hebrew). ———. “The Ziyāra in Alqōsh.” Hed Hamizrah 29 (19 May 1950): 8 (Hebrew). Robinson, John A. “Personal Narratives Reconsidered.” Journal of American Folklore 94 (1981): 58–85. Room, Adrian. Placenames of the World: Origins and Meanings for Over 5000 Natural Features, Countries, Capitals, Territories, Cities and Historic Sites. London: McFarland, 1997. Rosenthal, Gabriele. “Reconstruction of Life Stories: Principles of Selection in Generating Stories for Narrative Biographical Interviews.” In Narrative Study of Lives, edited by Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich, 1:59–91. London: Sage, 1993. Rubinstein, Abraham. “The Booklet ‘Katit Lamaor’ by Joseph Perl.” Alei Sefer 3 (October 1976): 140–57 (Hebrew). Saadoun, Haïm. “Zionism in Tunisia 1918–1948.” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1992 (Hebrew). Saadoun, Haïm, and Yoel Rappel, eds. Zionist Underground Activity in Muslim Countries: Self-Defense and Illegal Immigrations. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1997 (Hebrew). Sabar, Yona. “The Affinity to Eretz Israel.” In The Jews of Kurdistan: Issue of the Events Marking 170 Years of Aliyah and Settlement in Eretz Israel, edited by Haviv Shim‘oni, 12–14. Jerusalem: National Organization of Kurdish Jews in Israel, 1984 (Hebrew). ———, trans. The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. ———. “Hebrew Elements in the Aramaic Dialect Spoken by the Jews of Zakho and Kurdistan.” Leshonenu 38 (1974): 206–19 (Hebrew). ———. “Return to Kurdistan.” Yedioth Aharonoth, 30 October 1992, weekend supplement 19–22 (Hebrew). Salman, David. “From Zakho to Jerusalem.” Hithadshut 5 (1985): 50–52 (Hebrew). Sarid, David. “The Changes in Jewish Settlement Life in Tiberias during the First and Second Aliyah Movements (1882–1914).” MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1984 (Hebrew). Schrager, Samuel. “What Is Social in Oral History?” International Journal of Oral History 4 (June 1983): 76–95. “Selected Documents,” introduced and annotated by Zvi Yehuda. In From Babylon to Jerusalem: Studies and Sources on Zionism and Aliyah from Iraq, edited by Zvi Yehuda, 105–222. Tel Aviv: Iraqi Jews’ Traditional Cultural Center, 1980 (Hebrew). Shai, Donna. “Transmission and Change: Folk Literature of the Jews of Zakho, Kurdistan, Following Their Immigration to Israel: A Collection and Analysis.” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975. Sharon, Moshe. Introduction to Muslim Religion, Ritual, and Tombs of Holy Men in Eretz Israel. Ariel Series, Vols. 117–18. Jerusalem: Ariel, 1997, 11–13 (Hebrew). Sharot, Stephen. “Judaism in Pre-modern Societies.” In Judaism: A Sociology, 5–36. Newton Abbot, UK: David & Charles, 1976. 426

02 Gavish BM.indd 426

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

Shavit, Yaacov. “The Nature of the Period: Two Opposing National Societies under the British Mandate.” In The History of Eretz Israel. Vol. 9, The British Mandate and the Jewish National Home, edited by Yehoshua Porat and Yaacov Shavit, 11– 12. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi and Keter, 1982. Shavit, Yaacov, and Gideon Biger. “The British Mandate for Palestine: Rule, Administration, and Legislation.” In The History of Eretz Israel. Vol. 9, The British Mandate and the Jewish National Home, edited by Yehoshua Porat and Yaacov Shavit, 86–106. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi and Keter, 1982 (Hebrew). Shenhar, Aliza. “The Figure of Rabbi Meir and Its Literary Characterization in the Legends.” In Heqer Veiyun: Studies in Judaism, edited by Efrat Carmon, 259–66. Haifa: Haifa University, 1976 (Hebrew). See also Shenhar-Alroy, Aliza. ———. “Praising the Holy Land and Pilgrimages.” In Zev Vilnay’s Jubilee Volume: Essays on the History, Archaeology and Lore of the Holy Land Presented to Zev Vilnay. Vol. 2, edited by Ely Schiller, 314–19. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Ariel, 1984–87 (Hebrew). See also Shenhar-Alroy, Aliza. Shenhar-Alroy, Aliza. The Story, the Storyteller and the Audience. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1994 (Hebrew). See also Shenhar, Aliza. Shenhav, Yehouda. The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Shilo, Varda. Zakho Stories: A Collection of Stories from Kurdistan. Jerusalem: the author, 1986 (Hebrew). Shiloah, Amnon, Erik Cohen, and Issachar Ben-Ami. Jewish Communities from Central, Southern, and Eastern Asia in Israel: Collected Statistics. Jerusalem: Center for the Study of Folklore, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976 (Hebrew). Shim‘oni, Haviv, ed. The Jews of Kurdistan: Issue of the Events Marking 170 Years of Aliyah and Settlement in Eretz Israel. Jerusalem: National Organization of Kurdish Jews in Israel, 1984 (Hebrew). “Shmuel Baruch,” in Who and What in Jerusalem, edited by Eli‘ezer Shmueli. Jerusalem: Who and What in Jerusalem, 1990, 132 (Hebrew). Shmueli, Simon. “The Motives for the Aliyah of Jews from South Yemen in 1912.” MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997 (Hebrew). Shokeid, Moshe. “Jewish Existence in a Berber Environment.” Pe‘amim 4 (Winter 1980): 60–71 (Hebrew). Shokeid, Moshe, and Shlomo Deshen, The Generation of Transition: Continuity and Change among North African Immigrants in Israel. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1999 (Hebrew). Shva, Shlomo. A Path in the Desert: The Story of Solel Boneh. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976 (Hebrew). Simon, Rachel. “From ‘Zionist Circle’ to the Realization of Zionism: The Immigration of Libyan Jews.” Shorashim Bamizrah 3 (1991): 295–351 (Hebrew). ———. “Jewish-Muslim Relations in Libya in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” In Muslim Authors on Jews and Judaism, edited by Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, 195–217. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1996 (Hebrew). Slouschz, Nahum. Travels in North Africa. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1927. 427

02 Gavish BM.indd 427

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

Slutsky, Yehuda, ed. History of the Haganah. Vol. 3. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence, 1972. (Hebrew). Stahl, Sandra K. D. “Personal Experience Stories.” In Handbook of American Folklore, edited by Richard M. Dorson, 268–76. Bloomington: Indiana University Folklore Institute, 1983. Sykes, Mark. Dar-ul-Islam: A Record of a Journey through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey. London: Bickers & Son, 1904. Talmor-Heller, Daniella. “The Funeral, Burial and Ziyāra in Syria during the Crusader and Ayyūbid Periods.” In The Intertwined Worlds of Islam: Essays in Memory of Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, edited by Nahem Ilan, 250–81. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Zvi Institute, and Bialik Institute, 2002 (Hebrew). Thompson, Paul. “History and the Community.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, 37–50. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1984. Tobi, Yosef. “Jewish Centers in Asia [A].” In History of the Jews in Islamic Countries, edited by Shmuel Ettinger, 1:3–70. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1981–86 (Hebrew). ———. “Jewish Centers in Asia [B].” In History of the Jews in Islamic Countries, edited by Shmuel Ettinger, 2:15–180. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1981–86 (Hebrew). ———. “New Information about Emissaries of Eretz Israel to the Yemen.” Shevet Va‘am, 2nd ser., 3 (April 1978): 105–20 (Hebrew). Tov, Shulamit. Figures from the Talmud. Jerusalem: [s.n.], 1988 (Hebrew). The Tribes of Israel in the President’s Home in Jerusalem. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1959 (Hebrew). Tsafrir, Eliezer. I Am a Kurd. Or Yehuda: Hed Artzi, 1999 (Hebrew). Tsur, Yaron. A Torn Community: The Jews of Morocco and Nationalism 1943–1954. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001 (Hebrew). Turner, Victor. “Social Dramas and Stories about Them.” In On Narrative, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell, 137–64. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981. Vansina, Jan. “Oral Tradition Assessed.” In Oral Tradition as History, 186–201. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Vilnay, Zev. “Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes.” In Vilnay, Zev, Encyclopedia Ariel, 4096–4106. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1977 (Hebrew). ———. Sacred Tombs in Eretz Israel. 3rd ed. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Achiever, 1986 (Hebrew). ———. “Shevet Tzedek.” In Vilnay, Zev, Encyclopedia Ariel, 7676. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1980 (Hebrew). Weingrod, Alex. “Saints, Shrines, and Politics in Contemporary Israel.” In Religious Regimes and State Formation: Perspectives from European Ethnology, edited by Eric R. Wolf, 73–83. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Widdershoven, Guy A. M. “The Story of Life: Hermeneutic Perspectives on the Relationship between Narrative and Life History.” Narrative Study of Lives 1 (1993): 428

02 Gavish BM.indd 428

10/8/09 1:36 PM

bibliography

1–20. Wilson, W. C. F. “Northern Iraq and Its Peoples.” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 24 (April 1937): 287–99. Yaari, Abraham. Emissaries from Eretz Israel. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1951 (Hebrew). ———. “Emissaries from Eretz Israel in Yemen.” Sinai 4 (1939): 392–430 (Hebrew). Yassif, Eli. The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Yehoshua, Ya‘akov. “Sephardic Rabbis as Emissaries of Jerusalem to the Diaspora.” Bama‘arakhah 16 (December 1976): 21–22 (Hebrew). Yehuda, Zvi, ed. From Babylon to Jerusalem: Studies and Sources on Zionism and Aliyah from Iraq. Tel Aviv: Iraqi Jews’ Traditional Cultural Center, 1980 (Hebrew). Yehuda, Zvi. “A Letter from the Jews of Zakho to the Zionist Organization (1922).” Neharde‘a 8 (1991): 34–35 (Hebrew). ———. “Moroccan Jewry and the Zionist Organization in the Years 1900–1948.” Zion 51 (1986): 333–55 (Hebrew). Yisraeli, Ben-Zion. “On Iraqi Jewry and Its Aliyah to Eretz Israel.” In Ben-Zion: Writings and Speeches of Ben-Zion Yisraeli from Kinneret, edited by Shmuel Yavne’eli, 36–42. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1956 (Hebrew). Yona, Mordechai. “Stories and Folktales about Holy Men of Kurdistan.” Hithadshut 5 (1985): 157–67 (Hebrew). ———. Those Who Perish in the Land of Assyria: The Jews of Kurdistan and Zakho. Jerusalem: the author, 1989 (Hebrew). Zaken, Mordechai. “Central Institutions and Commerce in the Jewish Community of Zakho.” Hithadshut 5 (1985): 11–22 (Hebrew). ———. “Tribal Chieftains and Their Jewish Subjects in Kurdistan: A Comparative Study in Survival.” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003. Zfatman, Sara. The Jewish Tale in the Middle Ages: Between Ashkenaz and Sepharad. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993 (Hebrew). Zidkiyahu, Yona. “History of the Zidkiyahu Family and Its Aliyah to Israel.” Hithadshut 4 (1980): 26–29 (Hebrew). Zimhoni, Dafna. “The Beginnings of Modernization among the Jews of Iraq in the Nineteenth Century until 1914.” Pe‘amim 36 (1988): 7–34 (Hebrew). ———. “The Government of Iraq and the Mass Aliyah of Jews to Eretz Israel.” Pe‘amim 39 (1989): 64–103 (Hebrew). ———. “The Political Background to the Emigration Operation of the Jews of Iraq, 1950–1951.” In Studies in the History and Culture of Iraqi Jewry, vol. 6, ed. Yitzhak Avishur, 89–113. Or Yehuda: Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, 1991 (Hebrew).

429

02 Gavish BM.indd 429

10/8/09 1:36 PM

02 Gavish BM.indd 430

10/8/09 1:36 PM

Index The index does not include the terms Eretz Israel, Kurdistan, and Palestine, all of which appear very frequently throughout the volume. Abdul Karim Agha, 29–32, 276, 289, 305–6, 330 Abu Salim (Yosef Najolla), 273, 289, 296; Salim, 296 Acre, 187 Adas, Shafik, 317 Adika: Baruch, 212; David, 172, 177, 179–80; Moshe ben Haim, 212; Yosef, 190 Agha (tribal chief ), 28–32, 37, 63, 241–42, 289, 305–6, 329, 331 Ahad Ha‘am, 254 Ahiever (group), 159, 388n40 Ahim nidahim, 1 Ainsworth, William, 25 Ajamiya: Esther, 181, 281–82; Zeev 282 Ajamiya-Parsi, Yehuda and Rahamim, 281 Akiva, Rabbi, 76, 121 Aleppo, 26, 104, 120, 195, 206–7, 212–14, 220, 223, 226, 228, 232–33, 271, 280–81, 286, 298 Alfiya: Meir: 43, 185, 227; Shabetai, 166, 189–91, 227, 320 Algeria, 49 Aliyah (immigration), 358n14; as tourists, 205, 207–10, 222, 227, 229, 284; from oriental countries, 158; illegal, 22, 38, 43, 81, 84, 175, 193, 205–6, 213–15, 217–18, 221, 228, 230–32, 236, 248, 260–61, 265, 268, 270, 278, 287, 289, 293–95, 298, 300, 302–3, 305, 313; legal, 22, 156, 180–81, 192, 195, 205–6, 259, 262; Mandate period, 194–235, 389n49,

400n23, 400n30; mass, 31, 34, 57, 74, 181, 271, 310, 312, 316, 320, 337; narratives and stories, 5, 31, 84, 153, 169, 181, 186–87, 194–95, 205–6, 210, 214–15, 219, 228–29, 232–33; of rabbis, 185, 200; Ottoman period, 150–55; pre-state period, 149–193, 194–95, 205; rescue, 323; selective, 295; semi-legal, 180; underground, 293, 317 Aliyah in 1950–51, 27, 31, 34, 73–74, 150, 183, 193, 198, 221, 271, 306, 312, 316–36, 337 Aloni, Menahem, 237, 273, 298–310, 322, 412n188; Nahum (Nevo), 298, 305 Alqōsh, 52, 57–61, 63, 65–72. See also prophets: Nahum the Elkoshite Alroi (settlement) 151, 211 Alroi, David, 151 Alwan: Ben-Yosef, 26; Esther, 83, 85, 152; Rabbi Haviv, 26, 44–45, 52, 59, 67, 84, 101–4, 123, 126, 138–39, 141, 152, 185, 187–88, 190, 192, 196, 201, 209, 230; Moshe, 309; Rabbi Shabetai, 44, 102–3, 192, 197, 200–201, 203, 230, 234–35 Amadi, Sasson, 227 Amadiya, 24, 45, 59, 64, 90–91, 94–95, 151, 167–69, 176, 227, 311 Amar, Haghib (shadar), 97, 141; Moshe (shadar), 97 America, 25, 196, 233 Amulet, 9–10, 71, 130 Anatolia, 34, 94

431

02 Gavish BM.indd 431

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Aqra, 52 Arabic, 48–49, 53, 62, 98, 105, 163, 186, 224, 226, 231, 250, 260 Aram Naharaim (Mesopotamia). See Iraq Aramaic, 48. See also Neo-Aramaic Ararat (mountains), 18–19, 24 Arbeli-Almoslino, Shoshana, 298 Arbil, 1, 4, 18, 45, 52, 90, 111, 116, 146, 161–62, 177, 240, 253–54, 256, 273, 294, 298–99, 302, 307–9, 311–12, 335, 390n58 Arlosoroff, Chaim, 168 Armenia, 18 Assaf, Simha, 1, 15 Assyrian exile, 24 Attiya: family, 270, 309; Na‘im, 309; Shlomo. See Salman, Attiya Shlomo Avisar, David, 99, 171, 392n81 Ba‘al Shem-Tov, Rabbi Israel, 195 Babbika, Rabbi Ya‘akov Nahum. See hakham bashi Babylon, 59–60, 76–78, 106–7, 113, 155, 252–53; Babylonian exile, 24; Talmud, 76–77 Badger, George Percy, 26 Baghdad, 4, 26, 29, 31–32, 46, 59, 73, 106–13, 115, 134–35, 138, 143, 152, 155–65, 170, 173–75, 199, 204–8, 215, 219–36, 239–42, 247–48, 254–55, 261, 263, 265, 267, 272–73, 278, 287, 289–91, 293–94, 298, 300–301, 303, 308, 311, 313–14, 317–18, 322–24, 326, 332–33, 335, 338; administrative center, 18, 22; immigration center, 39, 40, 181, 193, 314; Jewish community, 92, 161, 163, 252, 255, 257–58; Jewish-Muslim relations, 29, 31; Jewish quarter 22, 40; Jews, 40, 92, 158, 174, 239, 252; pogrom (see Farhud); religious center, 18; World War I, 92, 95, 155; Zionism, 107, 156–58, 205; Zionist society, 108–9 Baharav (Rabinovitz), Yehoshua, 237, 268, 282–88, 292–97 Bajayo: Hattun, 101, 103; [Rabbi]

Hayyim (shadar), 97–104; Yosef (shadar), 97–98 Balfour Declaration, 164, 183–84, 254 Balila, Nahum, 211 Barashi (village) 328 Barashi, Zalman, 176, 187, 192, 328 Barazan (village), 1 Barazani, Eliahu, 208 Barazani, Mula Mustafa, 1, 17, 31 Bar-Giora, 216 Barlas, Haim, 163, 177 Baruch: Ahuva, 47,166, 178, 197; Devora, 196–97, 230, 234; Rabbi Shmuel, 44, 46–47, 69–74, 97, 100–101, 115–17, 119, 122–24, 126, 129, 139, 141, 147–48, 165, 169–71, 174, 178, 179–80, 184–85, 187–88, 191–92, 195–96, 200, 209, 226, 229–30, 233–35; Yosef Binyamin, 165, 230 Baruch-Krupnik, Carmela, 47, 197 Basra, 59, 92, 95, 152, 155, 265, 308, 314 Batat, Yehoshua, 159–60 Bechavod, Avraham, 329 Beirut, 195, 206, 213, 229–30, 232–33, 239 Beit She’an, 151 Bēkhēr Ridge, 18 Ben-Aharon, Batya, 10 Ben-Aharon, Isaiah, 26 Ben-Attar, Haim, 195 Ben Darwish, Hayyo, 189 Ben David, Shabetai, 189 Ben-Gurion, David, 79–80, 154, 313 Benjamin, Israel Joseph (Benjamin II), 26, 44, 55, 57, 62, 371n11, 377n7, 377n11 Benjamin of Tudela, 57 Ben-Nahum: family, 211; Ovadiah, 212–13 Ben-Ya‘acov, Abraham, 15, 59, 104–5, 151 Ben Yosef, Mordechai, 174 Ben-Zvi, Itzhak, 1, 151, 158, 162, 166–69, 173, 177–78, 189, 213, 252, 254–56, 261 432

02 Gavish BM.indd 432

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Communities: Committee of the Babylonian Community, 113; Kurdish Community, Jerusalem (CKCJ), 169–80, 189, 205; Sephardic Communities, 79, 83, 105–6, 108–9, 111–13, 117, 382n100; World Union of Sephardic Jews, 108 Conversion to Islam, 81

Beruriah, 77 Bialik, Hayyim Nahman, 253, 327 Bibi, Mordechai, 237, 252–53, 273, 277, 279, 285, 287–89, 293, 295–97, 306, 406n47, 412n170 Blood vengeance, 81 Book of Esther, 65, 208, 243, 373n57 Brauer, Erich, 15–16, 44, 59 British Army, 94, 181, 218, 250, 284 British Mandate (Palestine), 22, 84, 88, 150, 155, 167, 170, 180–81, 183, 185, 192, 194–235 Brussels Treaty, 94 Castiel, Meir Shmuel, 137 Charity boxes, 55, 65, 75–83, 88, 100, 108, 110, 112, 138, 143–46, 279, 381n78; Hebron, 78, 90, 102; Jerusalem, 78; Nahum the Elkoshite, 65; Rabbi Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes (Tiberias), 75, 78–79, 81–83, 100, 146, 279; Rabbi Shim‘on Bar-Yohai (Safed), 141, 153 China, 98, 112 Christian Knowledge Society, 25 Christians, 14, 15, 25, 32, 34, 57, 61, 63, 70, 92, 95, 133, 214; Armenians, 18, 38, 43,45, 57; Assyrians, 1, 23–24, 33, 59, 60, 171–72, 176–77; Nestorians, 24–25 Citizenship: Iraqi, 289, 316–17, 320, 328; Syrian, 210–11 Club of Young Kurdish Jews, 176, 295 Cohen, Aharon, 192 Cohen, Avraham ben Pinhas, 199, 219 Cohen, Aziza, 292 Cohen, Hayyim J. 162 Cohen, Hayyo, 43, 189 Cohen, Nahum and Avraham, 275–76 Cohen, Na‘ima, 321 Cohen, Netanel Nahum, 171–72, 174–76, 178–79 Cohen, Pinhas Katom, 212 Cohen, Salih, 60 Cohen, Rabbi Yitzhak, 123–24, 208–9 Communal Council (Va‘ad Hakehillah) of Jerusalem, 177–78

Dahlika family, 24 Damascus, 120, 195, 213, 217, 220, 229, 233, 256, 264, 280; Shams, 217–18 Daud, Salih, 322 David, Rabbi Moshe Hayyim, 107 David D’Beth Hillel, 24, 57 Deir Yassin, 31 Dekel, Julia, 130, 154, 186–87, 223–26, 232, 402n70 Deshet, Yehezkel, 290 Diarbakir, 304–5 Do’ar Hayom (daily), 107–9, 112–13 Dobkin, Eliahu, 163 Dohuk, 18, 44, 124, 161, 163, 167–69, 181, 187, 204, 212, 215, 311 Duga, Shlomo, 42, 245, 324 Edrei, Meir, 131 Egypt, 53, 59, 137, 238 Ein Haemek, 211 Ela, Ephraim, 241, 318–20, 331 Eliahu, Asahel, 175–76 Elkosh (biblical village), 52, 60–61 Elmaleh, Abraham, 79 Emissaries. See shadarim; Zionist emissaries Epstein, Eliahu, 159–60 Eshel, Aryeh, 262 Ethiopia, 196, 234 Euphrates, 39, 212, 214, 220, 273, 296; Expedition, 25 Ezekiel (prophet), 59 Ezra Na‘im ben Meir, 290 Ezra the Scribe, 59, 295 Faishkhabur (Peshkhabur), 25, 290, 362n41 Falashi, Rabbi Yehoshua, 139

433

02 Gavish BM.indd 433

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Farhud (pogrom), 239, 241, 248, 404n9, 404n12. See also Jīlānī, Rashīd ‘Alī alFestivals and holidays: Hanukkah, 281; Lag Ba-Omer, 57; Ninth of Av, 198, 219–20, 222; Passover, 29, 52–53, 72, 94, 103, 120–22, 127, 135, 163, 171, 189, 212–13, 240, 244, 309, 320, 328; Passover seder 52–53, 127, 135; Purim, 54, 92, 131, 212–13; Rosh Hashanah, 213, 229; Shavuot, 56, 59, 61–63, 66; Sukkot, 137, 320; Tu biShevat (15 Shevat), 135, 138, 234–35; Yom Kippur, 80, 101, 130–31 Fischel, Walter, 15, 18–19, 55, 162 Franco, Rabbi Meir, 98, 100, 137 Frankel, Moshe Ya‘akov (shadar), 91 Gabbay: Haya, 29–30, 48, 97, 240, 243, 321; Moshe, 29, 32–33, 40–41, 57, 82, 93, 101, 114, 128–29, 237, 240–43, 250–51, 254–58, 261, 264, 267–68, 287, 292, 320–22, 325, 326, 331, 335; Salim, 18, 24, 64, 78, 80, 93, 97, 101, 110, 115, 127, 242, 302, 324, 330 Gali (village), 289 Gershon, Meir, 147, 177 Ghani, Abdul, 207–9 Giv‘oni, Yehoshua, 262, 283 Golan, Zeev, 282 Golani, Gideon, 293–95, 297 Grant, Asahel, 25 Gruenbaum, Yizhak, 161, 173 Gush Halav (Galilean village), 76 Guttman, Shemariah, 20, 237, 248–59, 261, 265, 267–68, 294–95 Hacohen, Ezra David. See Hakham bashi Hafzadi, Nahum, 154, 181, 183, 205 Haifa, 92, 155, 195–96, 233–34, 270– 71, 302, 320; Sha‘ar Ha-Aliyah, 320 Hāji, Agha, 241 Hāji, Ahmed, 328–29 Hājj Amin, See Husseini, Hājj Amin alHakari (mountains), 18 Hakham bashi (Chief Rabbi), 26; Babbika, Ya‘akov Nahum (Zakho),

113–14, 200–202; Hacohen, Ezra David (Aleppo), 26, 142, 166, 189, 199–200, 202, 206; Yitzhak, Avraham Shlomo (Baghdad), 26 Hakibbutz Hameuchad (movement), 251, 294 Halafta, Rabbi Yose b., 76 Halutzim (pioneer immigrants), 150, 183–85, 194, 232 Hamdan (Persia), 109 Hassamo, Hassan (mukhtar), 204 Hasson, Rabbi Hanoch, 98, 137 Hatikvah (Israel’s national anthem), 55, 146, 148–49 Haviv: Shoshana, 182; Tamar, 32, 43 Hayuka, Zvi, 323 Hazim Bak, 20, 29, 191, 329 Hebrew, 9, 23, 25, 29, 46, 48, 52, 60, 105, 111, 117, 151, 163–64, 167, 207, 215, 231–32, 237–39, 251–53, 265, 283, 288, 294, 307–8, 327 Hebron, 55, 78, 80, 90, 98, 100, 102–3, 106, 108–9, 115, 135, 137–39, 151; Avot Olam Yeshiva, 97–98, 100, 102; Avraham Avinu Synagogue, 98. See also charity boxes Heder (dana), 5, 7, 46, 52, 72, 130, 245, 260, 309, 338 Hehalutz (pioneer movement), 248, 251, 265, 268, 283, 367n118 Herzl, Theodor, 254 Herzog, Chaim, 79 Hetteh, Ilya, 81–83, 210, 219, 221, 237– 38, 261–64, 266–68, 270, 272–73, 275, 278–82, 284, 288–89, 292, 312, 314; grandmother, 81–83, 279–80 Hibbat Zion (movement), 151, 156 Hilla (in Babylon), 78, 254 Hillel, Shlomo, 253, 258, 313, 406n48 Histadrut (workers council), 169, 171, 173, 175–76, 179, 290 Hithadshut (periodical), 15–16 Hocha: David, 182; Nehemiah, 53, 71, 111, 130, 182, 237, 324; Salih, 52–53, 237, 273, 275, 330 Holocaust, 193, 236, 246–47, 261 Holy cities, 55, 78, 80, 108 434

02 Gavish BM.indd 434

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Homs, 227 Hovevei Zion (movement), 253–54, 256 Husseini, Hājj Amin al-, 239 India, 26, 90, 94, 98, 112–13, 207, 239 Indochina, 113 Iran, 16, 239, 254, 301, 306, 309–10, 317, 335. See also Persia Iraq: Aram Naharaim (Mesopotamia), 107–8, 112–13, 135, 138, 160, 164– 65; Berman (code name), 301, 304–6; British Mandate (Iraq), 13, 28, 87–88, 96, 104, 156, 171; confiscation of property, 244, 257; deprival of citizenship, 316–17, 320, 328; Iraqi government, 27, 31, 34, 171, 202, 205, 257, 306, 316, 321, 326; Iraqi Jews, 155–56, 159, 160–61, 171, 248, 301, 317; Jews with Iraqi orientation, 156; law freezing of assets, 321; service in the Iraqi Army, 48, 212, 217, 309– 10, 313. See also Zionist movement; Zionist underground Istanbul (Constantinople), 25–26, 94, 106, 304–5 Jaffa, 151, 153, 186–87, 333 Jerusalem: Kurdish community, 165, 169–71, 173, 175–76, 179–80, 205, 212, 270, 277; Old City, 105, 151, 169, 197; religious attachment to, 52– 55, 232–35; Sephardic community, 79, 83, 105–9, 111–13. See also Zakho: Jerusalem of Kurdistan Jerusalem neighborhoods: Beit Hakerem, 234–35, 290; Beit Yosef [Abu Tor], 104; Bukharan, 169; Geulah, 169; Katamon, 291, 331, 334; Mahaneh Yehudah, 101, 103–4, 115, 153–54, 331, 386n 15; Nahalat Shiv‘ah, 106; Nahalat Zion, 169; Nahlaot, 39; Ohel Shlomo, 101, 103; Sha‘arei Rahamim, 172; Shekhunat Hapahim, 153, 386n13; Talpiot (transit camp), 198 Jerusalem synagogues: Yakhel Shlomo, 335; Zekhut Avot, 332, 334–35;

Zikhron Yosef, 101,171; Western Wall, 29, 90, 222, 224, 339 Jewish Agency, 110, 156, 159–61, 163, 168–75, 177,180,212, 261, 265, 277, 306 Jewish National Fund (JNF), 107–9, 135, 137–38, 142–46, 156, 161 Jezira, Jezireh, 44, 305 Jīlānī, Rashīd ‘Alī al-. See Rashid Ali Jonah ben Amittai. See prophets Joshua the High Priest, 59 Judi Range, 18 Jum‘a ben Yeshaya, 189 Kadduri, Rabbi Sasson, 326 Kadoorie, Ezra, 248, 252 Karmiel, 155, 271 Katzutz, Ya‘akov, 97 Kazin, Rabbi Meir, 76 Keren Hayessod, 109, 156 Kestelmann (emissary), 44 Kfar Barukh (settlement), 151 Khabur River, 18–19, 23, 25, 34, 37–38, 211, 223, 290 Khanaqeh, 290–91 Khānaqin, 135, 137–38, 141–46, 294 Kirkuk, 18, 59, 64, 106, 155, 240, 254, 294, 300, 309–12 Kol, Mazliah, 17, 35, 79–80, 214, 241–43, 246, 313–14, 318–20, 323, 326, 331, 334, 336–37 Kurmanji, 48 Languages. See Arabic; Aramaic; NeoAramaic; Hebrew; Kurmanji League of Nations, 34, 94–95 Lebanon, 160, 205, 210, 228–30, 281, 284, 297–98 Legend, 3, 16, 21, 64–67, 69–71, 74, 76, 79–81, 85, 89, 99–100, 154, 195, 201, 203, 208–9, 222, 225–26, 228–29, 243, 321, 327, 373n60, 399n1; historical legend, 65; sacred legend, 66–67, 69–71, 74, 80, 85; Talmudic aggadah (legend), 85 Levi, ‘Amram, 43, 111, 130 Levi, Shaul, 93, 203, 241

435

02 Gavish BM.indd 435

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Levi, Zaki, 19, 29, 35, 39, 43, 48, 63, 71, 93, 181–82, 191, 193, 244–45, 275, 278, 311, 324, 326 Levi, Zohara (Lubaton), 119, 132–34, 136 Libya, 40 Life story (life history). See narrative Lubaton: Ma‘atuka, 119–20, 133; Ya‘akov (shadar), 97, 117–39, 141, 146, 148 Mani (family), 151 Mann, Jacob, 15 Mardor, Munya, 259 Matityahu, Moshe, 174–75 Mecca, 167 Medina, 187 Mehager, Moshe, 333 Meir, Abba. See Yair, Avraham Abba Meir, Ya‘akov (Chief Rabbi), 200 Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes, Rabbi, 75–87, 119, 122, 124, 126, 130–32, 146, 149, 279; tomb of, 76–78, 84, 86, 130. See also charity boxes Memorate. See narrative Memory narrative. See narrative Menashe, Eliahu Mordechai. See Hetteh, Ilya Mesopotamia, 27, 88, 92, 107, 112 Metulla (colony), 232 Miro, Yehoshua, 198, 219, 220–21, 272 Mishael, Hananiah, and Azariah. See prophets Mizrahi, Baruch Shmuel, 170 Mizrahi, Nahum Ya‘akov (Chuche), 171, 175–79 Mizrahi, Simha, 188–89, 228 Mizrahi, Rabbi Zechariya Moshe, 185 Mohilever, Rabbi Shmuel, 253–54, 256 Mordechai (Darwish), Hananiah, 81–82, 278–82, 290–92 Morocco, 40, 134 Mosad Le’aliyah Bet, 261, 278, 283–84, 288, 292–93, 301, 304–6, 401n31 Moshe ben Rahamim, 189–90 Mosul, 18, 20, 22–23, 25–26, 32, 34–35, 38, 40, 42–43, 46, 53, 56–57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 70–71, 73, 92, 94–95,

128–29, 134, 155, 168, 172, 181, 186, 192–93, 195–96, 201–2, 204, 206–10, 213, 215, 223, 226, 229–30, 232–33, 238, 245, 248–51, 255, 257–63, 265, 268, 271, 273, 284–85, 289, 291, 293, 295–98, 300–301, 311, 313, 330 Mosul committee, 34, 94, 95. See also Teleki, Pál Muhammad Agha, 93 Muhammad Agha Bridge, 21, 37 Murdukh, Moshe, 189 Na‘an (kibbutz), 255, 261, 288 Na‘im, Avraham (shadar), 97, 139, 141–46 Nameri, David, 284 Narrative: life story (life history), 4, 78, 226; memorate, 67, 373n63; personal memory, 4–6; personal narrative, 4–5 Nasser, Daud, 305 National Council (Va‘ad Le’ummi), 158, 166, 173, 177, 189–90 Nemo Delale, 21, 23 Neo-Aramaic (Targum), 34, 48 Nerwa, 90 Nes Harim (settlement), 211, 215–16 Nidhei yisrael, 1, 151 Nineveh, 59–61, 70–71, 210 Nisibin, 304–5 Nissim, Avraham Sasson, 135, 138, 142, 144 Noah’s Ark, 18–19 North Africa, 4, 27, 79, 87, 91, 98, 238 Noy, Dov, 1 Nuri Said, 248 Nuriel, Salih Yosef, 161–62, 254, 308, 335, 389n54, 390n58, 416n53 Oral documentation, 2, 4, 97, 141, 150, 180, 183, 225, 275, 278, 319 Oral history, 2–3, 7–8, 11, 154 Ottoman Empire, 13, 26–27, 34 Ottoman Period, 96, 104, 106, 137, 150–52 Palmah, 260 436

02 Gavish BM.indd 436

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Persia, 90, 98, 109, 128, 164. See also Iran Persian empires, 27 Personal memory. See narrative Personal narrative. See narrative Petahiah of Regensburg, 57 Petito, Joseph, 211 Pilgrimage, 56–57, 59, 61–66, 69–71, 75, 86, 149, 187, 208–9, 222, 374n72. See also Ziyāra Piro, Shabetai, 43, 53, 92–93, 137–38, 181, 184, 192, 206, 213 Population census, 34, 151, 395n76, 394n101 Prophets: Daniel, 59; Elijah, 70; Jonah ben Amittai, 59, 64; Mishael, Hananiah, and Azariah, 64; Nahum the Elkoshite, 52, 56–63, 65–74, 79, 85, 87, 146, 149; Obadiah, 59 Qamishliye, 20, 84, 152–53, 195, 199, 212, 219–21, 247, 256, 259–61, 263, 265, 268, 272, 280–82, 284–85, 290–91, 293, 295–96, 298, 303, 312 Qastel: hill, 55; transit camp, 198, 326, 338, 416n1 Ralib (emissary), 53, 182 Ram, Dan, 283 Ransom (badl, bedel), 92, 242, 309 Rashīd ‘Alī, 199, 219, 236, 238–45, 266–67, 405n23; gold decree, 236, 240, 242–43, 404n21 Rawanduz, 25 Religious attachment to Eretz-Israel, 51, 53, 55–57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 183, 185–88, 192, 234, 266, 279 Rivlin, Joseph Joel, 14, 59, 151 Romania, 323 Rommel, Erwin (field marshal), 238 Rosh Haniqrah, 195, 229, 233 Royal Geographical Society, 25 Sabar, Yona, 16, 43, 48–49, 51, 181–83, 236, 238, 320–22, 327 Sabbath, 37–38, 77, 125, 142, 176, 182, 186–87, 189, 241–42, 265, 291–92,

321, 411n155 Sa‘do, Mordechai, 67 Safed, 44, 55, 73, 78, 80, 106, 135, 137–39, 141–45, 151, 206, 213. See also charity boxes Saidoff (family), 211, 212 Salman, Attiya Shlomo, 210, 221, 237, 263–80, 282, 284–89, 291–97, 300– 306, 309, 312, 314, 335, 412n170 Salman, David, 195, 210, 212, 299, 271, 275–76, 278 Salman, Eliahu, 211, 213, 265, 270–71, 275 Salman, Yizhak, 271 Salman, Yona, 38, 154, 266, 271, 274, 298 Sambation River, 232 Samuel, Sir Herbert (high commissioner, Palestine), 135, 138, 147, 183–84, 252, 254–55, 385n165 Sasson, Aharon, 108, 156–57, 159, 161 Sehrane festival, 2, 53, 63, 329, 357n2 Sejera (settlement), 151, 154, 233 Sephardic community. See communities Sereni, Enzo, 248, 259, 261, 294, 406n43 Serf, 27; serfdom, 363n51 Sèvres Treaty, 34, 94 Shabab al-Inkaz (“Rescue Youth”), 248 Shabo ben Elia, 189 Shadarim (rabbinical emissaries), 4, 14, 55–56, 75,79, 87–93, 95–99, 101–6, 107, 109–11, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125–33, 135, 138–39, 141–45, 147, 193, 232, 254, 265, 383n144; deputies, 90; imposters, 89, 130–31; regular (shadar), 106 Shai, Donna, 14 Shamdin Agha, 29, 31, 329 Shams. See Damascus Shapiro, Moshe, 300 Shar‘abi, Eliahu, 190 Shar‘abi, Mordechai, 323 Sheffer, Uri, 288–89 Shengeloff, Rivka, 197–98 Shenhav, Yehouda, 96 Shertok (Sharett), Moshe, 79–80, 245, 313

437

02 Gavish BM.indd 437

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Shilikiya (village), 281, 291 Shilo, Varda, 24, 40, 53, 197–98, 338 Shilon (Shlank), Meir, 283 Shim‘on Bar-Yohai. See charity boxes Shimon ben Shimon, 189 Shim‘oni, Rabbi Shalom, 44, 212 Shim‘oni, Ya‘akov, 174 Shiranis-Islam (mines), 44, 95, 166 Shmuel, Murad, 181, 215, 217–18 Shmuel, Na‘ima, 52, 181, 215–18 Shrem, Yosef Hayyim (shadar), 97, 103–17, 135, 137, 146 Shrem, Yom Tov, 111–12 Shu‘a, Yosef, 290 Shurqi, Shmuel, 222–23, 225–26 Shweiki, Yitzhak, 20, 237, 258–68, 272, 278–79, 284, 287, 293, 407n71 Sidon, 195, 206, 213, 229, 233 Silberberg, Avraham, 163 Silopi, Mt., 305 Siman-Tov, Zion, 288, 290–92 Sinai, Mount, 52, 57, 61–63 Slavery, 27, 85 Smugglers and smuggling, 43–44, 84–85, 137, 178, 181, 198–99, 206, 211–21, 230–38, 247–49, 255–58, 260–63, 266–68, 271–74, 279–280, 282, 285–90, 292–98, 300–303, 306, 309–10, 314 Solel Boneh, 247, 255, 283 Sondur, 44,151, 161–62, 176, 240, 294–95 Sulaymānīyah, 294, 311–12 Swords, 62–63, 190, 224, 273, 330; Sword of redemption, 372n50 Sykes, Mark, 26, 28 Synagogues, 32, 46, 48, 55, 108, 138, 151, 163, 240, 258, 264, 319, 323, 331, 333–35. See also Jerusalem; Zakho Syria, 13, 18–20, 22, 26, 38, 43–44, 48, 81, 84, 104, 112–13, 122, 152, 160, 167, 181, 195–96, 199, 205–6, 210–21, 227–29, 237–39, 244–45, 247–49, 251, 256, 260–61, 264, 268, 270–75, 278, 280–82, 284–86, 288–91, 293–95, 297–98, 302–3,

309, 312 Tanzimat, 22, 362n32 Tchernihovsky, Shaul, 253 Tee, tee, tee case, Prisoners of Zion (assirei tziyyon), 301 Teleki, Pál (Count), 34, 40, 94, 365n73 Ten Tribes of Israel (the lost Ten Tribes of Israel), 1, 23–24, 90 Teradyon, Hananiah b., 77 Tiberias, 55, 59, 75–79, 81, 83–84, 86, 97, 100, 106, 115, 117, 119–20, 122, 126–28, 130–35, 138, 141, 151, 154–55, 214, 230, 233, 271, 280; Achva quarter, 271; Committee of the Sephardic Jews, 79, 83, 117. See also Meir Ba‘al Ha-Nes, Rabbi Tigris (river), 18, 26, 211 Tov, Shulamit, 77 Tripoli (Lybia), 79 Turjeman, Israel (shadar), 97, 141, 146 Turkey, 13, 16–18, 22, 34, 43–45, 94, 137, 167, 188, 211–12, 214, 237, 244, 247, 256, 262, 278, 285, 298– 99, 301–6, 312, 412n188; service in the Turkish army, 25, 92–95, 101, 155, 275 Tusneh (village), 291 Uziel, Rahamim, 122 War of Independence, Israel, 29, 31, 74, 182, 197, 301, 328 Weizmann, Chaim, 251–54, 256, 329 World War I, 91–95 World War II, 2, 20, 29, 31, 48, 52, 149, 181–83, 193, 214, 218–19, 222, 236, 238, 244–46, 282, 284, 293, 298, 314, 337 Yaari, Abraham, 79, 88, 91 Yahuda (family), 151 Yair, Avraham Abba (shadar), 55, 97, 135, 137, 138, 141, 146 Yair, Ezra (Eliyahu), 139–40 Yazidi (tribes), 249–50 Yehezkel, Elifaz, 144 438

02 Gavish BM.indd 438

10/8/09 1:36 PM

inde x

Yehuda, Zvi, 163, 165 Yemen, 27, 97, 152, 178 Yisraeli, Ben-Zion, 158, 161–62 Yitzhak, Avraham Shlomo. See hakham bashi Yona, Mordechai, 16, 30, 33, 39, 83, 191, 225 Yosef ben Nahum, 189 Yusuf Agha, 28 Zakho: as a religious center, 44, 46; bridges, 20–21, 23, 30, 34, 37, 39, 289, 307, 329; coffeehouses, 37–38, 42, 50, 241; education, 5, 7, 46, 60, 207, 327, 338, 366n80; extended family, 35, 37, 196, 200, 203, 326; Hevrah Kadishah (burial society), 43; Island, 18, 20–21, 32; Jerusalem in Babylon, 253; Jerusalem of Kurdistan, 44, 46, 48, 51–52, 264; Jerusalem of the Diaspora, 44, 263–64; Jewish cemetery 146–48, 241, 243; Jewish quarter, 17, 21, 32–34, 65, 357–58; languages, 368n129 (see also languages; marketplace); 13, 18, 39–43, 319; neighborhoods, 32–33; Shilgiya (Snow White) (code name), 294 Zakho craftsmen: carpenters, 39, 42, 307; cobblers, 39, 164; dyers, 307; shoemakers, 40, 42, 50, 329; tailors, 39–40, 42–43, 50, 329; weavers, 43 Zakho synagogues: Knishta Rabta (the Great Synagogue), 48, 163, 319, 331; Knishta Zutra (the Small Synagogue, Midrash), 48, 331, 334 Zakho trades: peddling, 22, 39, 40, 44, 64, 158, 166–67, 172, 189, 191, 277, 281; rafts and raftsmen, 39, 42–43, 92, 186, 191, 211, 263, 272, 274, 300, 303, 311; selling oak apples, 39, 42–43; smuggling, 38, 43–44, 137; trade in trees, 42; transportation by mules, 42

Zaqen, Avraham, 189, 331 Zaqen, Eliezer Jum‘a, 191 Zaqen, Ephraim and Sabaria Adu, 39 Zaqen, Gurji, 46, 53, 61, 73, 188, 329–30 Zaqen, Mazliah, 223, 226 Zaqen, Meir, 16–17, 31–35, 40, 43, 49, 198, 219, 243, 247, 275, 307–10, 312, 320, 322–25, 320, 322–25, 328–29, 331, 334 Zaqen, Mordechai, 199, 219, 221, 247 Zaqen, Rabbi Yihyeh Rahamim, 164 Zaqen, Zvi, 327 Zaslany (Shiloah), Reuven, 157, 162 Zebariko, Mordechai, 245 Ze’evi, Hayyim Abraham Israel (shadar), 90 Zellem, Moshe, 57 Zemah, Ya‘akob, 57 Zemah (village), 214 Zidkiyahu: family, 203–4, 244; Sasson, 177, 203; Yona, 60, 71, 187–91, 203, 207, 210, 213 Zionist emissaries, 7, 14, 16, 20, 22, 31, 96, 160, 162, 183, 187, 236–39, 246–48, 253–54, 259–62, 268, 270, 272, 275, 277–79, 281–82, 285, 294, 298, 301, 305–6, 310–13, 318, 324 Zionist movement, 29, 53, 55, 80, 96, 117, 135, 141–42, 156–57, 205–6, 237–38, 247–48, 261, 282–84, 291–95, 307–12, 314, 317, 322–23, 325, 337 Zionist Organization (London), 164 Zionist Society of Aram Naharaim, Baghdad, 107–9, 111, 135, 138, 164–65 Zionist underground, 7, 16, 20, 22, 29, 81–82, 157, 160, 219, 237, 247, 259–60, 264, 267–68, 270, 272–73, 275, 277, 280–82, 287–89, 298–99, 308, 314, 324 Ziyāra, 59, 62–63, 66, 72. See also pilgrimage

439

02 Gavish BM.indd 439

10/8/09 1:36 PM

02 Gavish BM.indd 440

10/8/09 1:36 PM