This is the final installment in a series on the Iraqi Jewish Archive, a trove of items from Iraq’s exiled Jewish community currently in the United States. Previously, we examined the recent history of Iraqi Jews, the archive’s restoration and the complex argument over its ownership. Catch up with part one, “The Last Relics Of…
This is the second article in a series on the Iraqi Jewish Archive, a trove of items from Iraq’s exiled Jewish community. In “The Last Relics Of Iraq’s Jewish Past Are In America. Should They Be Returned?” we explored the tumultuous 20th-century history of Iraqi Jews and the fight to return the archive to its…
This is the first of three articles on the Iraqi Jewish Archive. Next, read part two, “In Exile, Iraqi Jews Are Desperate To Reclaim Their Artifacts — But So Is Iraq,” and part three, “The Iraqi Jewish Archive Could Reshape Foreign Policy. But Its Future Is Uncertain.” On a leafy parkway in the Jamaica section…
I just received a text from my guitarist, urging me to change our band name from “Iraqis in Pajamas” to something else — anything else, as long as it has no Middle Eastern connotation. A young Muslim woman at the local university was just attacked and hit in the head, he informed me, and the…
In 2003, I served as the U.S. Coalition official responsible for “administering” the province of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. At the time, I was struck by how the different communities intermarried, spoke each other’s languages, and loved each other’s cultures. In an attempt to defuse tensions emerging from the struggle for power after the overthrow…
Al Qosh — Back when they still lived in Iraq, Kurdish Jews had a famous saying about the ancient synagogue believed to house the tomb of a biblical prophet in this beleaguered town on the high northern plateau of Nineveh province. On Shavuot they said, “He who has not made the pilgrimage to Nahum’s tomb has…
Besides indulging in dairy and abstaining from sleep, Shavuot signifies the offering of the first fruits in the Land of Israel, the receiving of the Torah and the story of Ruth the Moabite. For Iraqi Jews, however, Shavuot also represents a time of personal commemoration of the Farhud, the “violent dispossession” that rocked the ancient…
It was ironic, to say the least, that it took coming to an oil-rich Arab emirate to get me to lead my first Rosh Hashanah service. Forty-five years ago I had earned Conservative rabbinic ordination from New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary. But this was the first time I had ever used it. I had turned,…
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