[Imc-miami] Next Year, Anywhere but in Grim Baghdad - City's Last Rabbi Observes Yom Kippur

[JollyJack at aol.com]

 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/?nav=pf)  
 


 
 

 




Next Year, Anywhere But  in Grim Baghdad
City's Last Rabbi Observes Yom Kippur
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday,  October 3, 2006; A12
BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 -- As the sun set on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar  
Monday night, the last rabbi in Baghdad sat down for his last Yom Kippur 
dinner  in _Iraq_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/iraq.html?nav=el) : a piece of cake and two glasses of milk. 
Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, begins with fasting and ends with a  
celebratory feast. But there was, Emad Levy confessed, very little to 
celebrate  this year. 
Today, barely a dozen members of the 2,600-year-old Jewish community in  
Baghdad remain to observe Yom Kippur. Most are afraid to gather for holidays,  and 
besides, they figure, how can one rejoice in a place like this? 
Emad Levy sat alone in his home on Monday night picking at a  
dessert-as-dinner, with vicious sectarian killings serving as the background  music to the 
holiday. He had just finished chanting the hopeful lines at the end  of the Yom 
Kippur service, he recalled in a phone interview. 
"May we be sealed," he sang plaintively in his bedroom, "for a good year in  
the book of life." 
Levy knows his prayers for peace will not be fulfilled in Iraq. Although the  
bloodshed plunging this country into a civil war has mainly claimed the lives 
of  Sunni Arabs and Shiite Muslims, no group is more terrified -- or a more  
vulnerable target -- than the tiny Jewish community. 
The capital's only remaining synagogue, a pink and yellow building with no  
identifying marks, has been boarded up since it was denounced more than three  
years ago as "the place of the Zionists." Most Jews barely leave their homes 
at  all for fear of being kidnapped or executed. And even Levy will not 
directly  mention _Israel_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/israel.html?nav=el)  on the telephone, just because he never knows who might be  
eavesdropping. 
"It's like I'm living in a prison all the time," said Levy, who is 41. "I  
have no future here. I must go out to have a life for myself." 
Even for the long-suffering Jewish people, exiled to Babylon in what is now  
central Iraq 26 centuries ago by Nebuchadnezzar, the current conflict here has 
 become unbearable. Levy's family survived the increasing anti-Semitic 
attacks  after the founding of Israel in 1948; the 1969 execution of about a dozen 
Jews  accused of spying for the Jewish state; and incessant spying by Saddam 
Hussein's  regime. 
After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, though, Levy's father fled to Israel. Levy  
planned to leave, too, but remained in Iraq to take care of an ailing Jewish  
octogenarian with diabetes. Now the sick man is staying with friendly Kurds, 
and  Levy plans to leave as soon as he can sell his house. He won't use a 
regular  broker, who might defraud him or worse, so he waits for a friend to 
return to  the country in the next few months to manage his affairs. 
"We must be careful, and then God will bless us," Levy said. 
In the meantime, he prays. 
On Sunday night, the eve of Yom Kippur, Levy prepared to begin his fast by  
nibbling on some cake and watermelon. After the ritual butcher left a few years 
 ago, Levy purchased lambs himself and slaughtered them according to Jewish 
law.  But now he can't buy the animals, because he fears for his life if the 
merchants  in the market spot him and tell others that he is a Jew. Wine is also 
 unobtainable, so on certain holidays he settles for grapes squeezed into  
water. 
Baghdad's power grid, Levy joked, also decided to fast. The electricity cut  
out on Sunday afternoon and still hadn't come back on more than 30 hours 
later.  On Monday night, after the holiday ended, he struggled to get his generator 
back  up. 
None of the city's problems could spoil his Yom Kippur, though. 
"I have my God and I have my prayers," Levy said. "This is all that is  
important to me." 
He cradled an old Hebrew prayer book in his arms, standing in his bedroom and 
 occasionally sitting on the light green sheets covering his bed, he 
recalled.  Ritual white fringes hung from his body, and a 25-year-old yarmulke adorned 
his  head. All the Jewish yarmulke makers have fled Iraq, so there is nowhere 
for him  to buy a new one. 
"What should I do?" he shrugged. "Of course this is not the way Yom Kippur  
should be. When you are alone, it is very different than when you do it in the  
synagogue or with a lot of people. It is sad." 
He paused. "This is why I must leave for the Holy Land." 
Not every Iraqi Jew feels that way. Sameer, 40, a construction contractor,  
said he could not quit his homeland, even though that might mean he never finds 
 a Jewish woman to marry. 
"This is my destiny. I am Iraqi. I am part of Iraq," he said. "It is okay for 
 me to stay without a wife." 
Sameer spoke on the condition that his last name not be printed because he  
fears for his life. His 33-year-old brother was kidnapped 10 months ago --  
although it was not clear whether his religion played a role in his targeting --  
and Sameer spends every day searching for him. He has fled his Baghdad home 
and  lives outside the capital in a location he will not disclose for security  
reasons. 
A tightly wound bundle of nerves, Sameer frantically fiddled with a pencil  
during a conversation with a reporter as his eyes darted around the room. He 
sat  balanced precariously on the edge of a dusty couch. 
"I must go now!" he said every few moments during a 20-minute interview. "It  
is very dangerous for me." 
Sameer refused to discuss life under Saddam's regime, saying the topic itself 
 was dangerous, but interviews with Levy and former Iraqi intelligence 
officials  make clear that life was not particularly easy for Jews before the 
American-led  invasion. 
Kawan al-Qaisi, a former member of the state intelligence service, known as  
the Mukhabarat, said he was assigned to follow Sameer for a month in 2002 to 
see  if he was a spy for Israel or involved in plots against the government. 
"There was a file on every Jew in Iraq," Qaisi said. "Every Jew had an  
intelligence officer assigned to him." 
Qaisi said the surveillance meant the Jews were protected, and by some  
accounts, they were largely spared from torture and execution because Hussein  did 
not consider the tiny community a political threat. But Levy, who said his  
phone was always tapped and intelligence reports were filed about him every  
week, did not feel particularly safe. "During the reign of Saddam, I was not  
free," he said. "They tried to do everything to get me in a trap." 
The Jews of Iraq -- whose population was estimated at about 140,000 in 1947  
-- had long dominated finance and trade throughout the country. During the 
early  1940s, for example, thirty-five of Iraq's 38 importers of cotton and silk 
were  Jewish, according to "Jewish and Iranian Schools in Iraq," a 1984 book 
by Fadhil  al-Barrak, the former chief of Iraqi intelligence. 
The book reveals the strong anti-Semitic attitudes that prevailed in the  
country. "The Jews played very menacing roles in Iraq's major problems," Barrak  
wrote. 
As Levy prepared to end his Yom Kippur prayers, he put special emphasis on  
the closing line of the service. It is supposed to be accompanied by the blow 
of  the shofar, a ram's horn, but Levy didn't have one. 
Still, he chanted: "Next year may we be in Jerusalem!" 
Levy said he'll settle for London or the Netherlands. Anywhere, really, as  
long as it's not Iraq. 
Special correspondent Salih Dehema contributed to this report.

 

 
Best  Regards,
Jack Lieberman
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-miami/attachments/20061004/5c38731e/attachment-0001.html