Posted on 04/08/2003 8:22:32 PM PDT by SJackson
Looking at images from today's war- torn, poverty-ravaged Iraq, it's difficult to believe that the nation was once the center of the Jewish world and home to a thriving and well- educated Jewish community. Harder still to believe that for centuries, Jews and Arabs lived peacefully together there. But two Chicago-area Jews with Iraqi roots have family connections that reach back to those long-gone days, and that still play a part in their lives and thoughts.
Dr. Moshe Zamir, an Elgin internist, was born in Baghdad and lived there with his family until he was 10 years old. Today he calls himself "a collector's item-a Baghdad Jew. There aren't too many of us around."
Up until the founding of Israel in 1948, he says, Jews lived peacefully in a community that numbered more than 130,000. Jews held important government and academic positions. "The best hospital in town was a Jewish hospital, and my father was on the board," he recalls.
But after 1948, relations between Jews and Arabs began to deteriorate, and all the property of the Jewish community, along with the assets of individual Jews, were seized and frozen on one Shabbat.
"Essentially the government seized everything (owned by Jews)," Zamir recalls today. Jews were allowed to leave for Israel-and all but 500 or so did-but each person was allowed to take only one package or piece of luggage, though some managed to bribe officials who let them leave with more.
"The government profited from the immigration of the Jews," Zamir says. Not only did they seize Jewish property, but they created the supposedly private "travel agencies" that arranged for the trips to Israel for 200 dinar per person-a large amount of money at the time.
"Homes were sold for nothing or were given away," Zamir says. "Property was sold for a very minor price" by Jews eager to get some money out of their assets and leave for Israel. The money "was supposed to go to support Palestinian refugees," he says, but instead "it ended up in the pockets of private individuals and government officials. The corruption was very high."
At 10 years old, he says he felt like "we turned around and we were in Israel three hours later."
His family was part of a large migration of more than 100,000 Jews who emigrated to Israel in 1950-51. In Israel he was taken to a kibbutz for refugee children, where he grew up. He came to the United States in 1971. All of his family members were able to leave Iraq and he has not been in contact with anyone there since he left.
Of the situation for Jews in Iraq today, Zamir says "the Jewish community is very small. (Some have estimated it at 50 or fewer.) So far the government hasn't harmed them, though it is difficult to know what will happen in the future."
Today, he believes, "the Jews left in the Arab world are suffering less than the Jews living in France."
"Saddam hasn't harassed Jews," he says. "That would have looked bad. He doesn't want to do anything that would make him look bad in that sense." Jews in Iraq today "are too non- significant," he says. "They are harmless. Officially (the government) is not anti-Jewish, they are anti- Israel."
That has not always been the case, Zamir says. He remembers hearing that three months before he was born, an uncle was killed in one of a series of anti-Jewish riots in 1941 during a short-lived pro-Nazi revolt. "A mob was incited by Nazi propaganda," he says. "They looted homes and killed 100 to 150 people. After this, the Jews kind of woke up and got organized in case that happened again."
The 1981 Israeli strike that destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor took place exactly 40 years after this pogrom, he says.
Zamir also remembers that in November 1947, when the U.N. Assembly was debating the fate of Palestine, "I was six years old and my brother was a little older. We were told to go to a nearby ruin and bring rocks to the roof to prepare in the event a mob came to our door. We got the weapons, but nothing happened."
Going much farther back, Zamir notes that "for most of history, Jews lived in Iraq quite well without conflict. It is an ancient community going back to the time of the First Temple-to Babylon, which is now Iraq.
"At one time it was the largest Jewish community in the world," he says. "It was the center of Jewish life, with academies, libraries and schools. Jews lived there for centuries and for most of the time, they were not harassed."
According to tradition, the patriarch Abraham was born in Ur, along the bank of the Euphrates River, in southern Iraq.
The Jewish community dates back at least to the First Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE. Some cite the even more ancient date of 732 BCE, when the Israelite tribes of Samaria were expelled by the Assyrians.
The community never assimilated, produced great scholars, rabbis and learned books, and for some 800 years, from 200-1038 C.E., represented the intellectual center of the Jewish world.
In the 19th century, Baghdad Jewry enjoyed an intellectual renaissance under the leadership of the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Yosef Hayyim.
Zamir believes that the current war in Iraq is a good thing. "I hope they will liquidate all of the Iraqi army," he says. "If I was the right age, I would volunteer to help, but I don't think they need a 60-year-old doctor."
He worries, though, about what will come after the war. "Iraq even before Saddam Hussein was not a normal country with institutions that you are going to restore," he says. "Since before the Ottoman Empire, it was a country that was very divided ethnically and had no democratic institutions. To start the whole thing from scratch is going to be very difficult. It is like what happened in Germany after World War II. If they gave me the job, I wouldn't know how to do it."
Norman Shamash, a Vernon Hills retiree, was born in New York, but both his parents were natives of Baghdad. They left the country for the United States much earlier than the major migration period-his father in 1928 and his mother around 1935 -- but he had many other relatives who left in 1949-50.
Other than for a brief period, he says, Jews "weren't persecuted that much. They lived among the Arabs and there wasn't much of a problem. There was not much anti-Semitism. I had a great- grandmother who died just about 15 years ago. She never left Iraq and she never wanted to leave." Other relatives also stayed in the country, he says. He is not in touch with any Jews in Iraq, but he has an uncle living in Israel who is.
"According to what he says, (Iraq is) against Israel, but there is not that much anti-Semitism there," Shamash says. "They're all against Israel, but the Jewish people they could care less about."
As for the current war in Iraq, Shamash says that "personally, I don't think it's a good thing. It's not the solution. I am worried that it will cause more terrorism. I don't feel this country should be telling everyone what to do and what not to do.
"But now that we're at war, they should finish what they started," he adds. "Saddam Hussein shouldn't be around, but I don't think this country should tell (Iraq) what to do."
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