The
Jewish community in Iraq consisted of an Arab majority and a Kurdish minority. Geographically, Arab Jews lived in the central and southern area and Kurdish
Jews lived in the northern regions. Linguistically, Arab Jews spoke a Jewish-Arabic
dialect derived from the old Arabic vernacular combined with Aramaic and
Hebrew, while also incorporating some Persian and Turkish words. The Kurds
Jews, on the other hand, spoke an unwritten Jewish neo-Aramaic dialect regarded
as holy being mainly derived from the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible (targum-תרגום)
combined with Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and Hebrew expressions. However, the
Arabic and the neo-Aramaic vernaculars respectively spoken by Arab Jews and
Kurdish Jews differed from those spoken by the other speakers of these two languages
in vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation. As a result, most Iraqis could easily
recognize the ethnic identity and religious affiliation simply by conversing
with them. This ethnic and linguistic division within the Jewish community
hindered the social and economic communication between the Arab and Kurdish
Jews until well into the early 1900s. Although
later in the century, many Kurdish Jews began to migrate to Baghdad and
Basra, where they found employment in various occupations (1).
As children, we lived in a house owned by a Kurdish
family who moved to Baghdad from Kirkuk . The house was located in the “Torat
Street” in the old Jewish quarter in Baghdad. The house was built in the
typical Iraqi style with an open courtyard surrounded by the two stories and a
paved root. As the house had more rooms than the owners needed, they let the
vacant rooms, usually to more than one family. In this house my parents rented
two bedrooms, where we stayed for a number of years. There was no written
contract between the parties apart from a verbal agreement regarding the rent
and its duration.
An ancient
tradition relate that the Jews of Kurdistan (יהודי קורידסטאן) are the descendants of the Ten
Tribes from the time of the Assyrian exile. Jews of Kurdistan are the ancient
Eastern Jewish communities, inhabiting the region known as Kurdistan in
Northern Mesopotamia, roughly covering parts of Iran, North Iraq, Syria and
eastern Turkey. The Jews of Kurdistan lived as closed ethnic communities. Their
clothing and culture is similar to neighbouring Kurdish Muslims and Christian
Assyrians.
Since the early 20th century, some
Kurdish Jews had been active in the Zionist movement. One of the famous members
of Lehi לחי -(Freedom Fighters
of Israel) was Moshe Barazani (1928-1947), whose family immigrated from
Iraqi Kurdistan and settled in Jerusalem
in the late 1920s. Moshe Barazani joined Lehi while still very
young, first putting up posters as a member of the youth division and then
later, as a fighter, as part of the Lehi combat unit. He was arrested during
curfew, charged with conspiracy to murder British Brigadier and sentenced to
death by hanging, by a British military court on April 21, 1947. However,
before the execution, he and his comrade Meir Feinstein committed suicide in
their cells in the central prison in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem, with
improvised grenades which had been smuggled inside oranges.
The vast majority of Kurdish Jews were forced out of Iraq
and evacuated to Israel in the early 1950s together with Iraqi Jews community. However,
they live in their own neighbourhood in Israel and still celebrate Kurdish life
and culture, including Kurdish festivals, customs, and music in some of its
most original forms.
(1)Hisham Chreih, American University of Beirut, “Jews in Modern Iraq”,
2010, p. 5-7.
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