Month: November 2019

This Shabbat, 38 synagogues will recite prayers for dead in Arab lands

Update: the total is 44 plus one church*



This shabbat, prayers will be recited in synagogues around the world  for Jews killed in Arab lands and those buried in cemeteries inaccessible to relatives.


Baghdad Jewish cemetery

This is the second year running that this initiative is taking place. As at 9 am GMT the number of synagogues planning to take part in the mass kaddish, or Hashkaba, was 38, or about three times as many as took part last year.

 The man behind the initiative is Sass Peress, a Jew living in Montreal. It grew out of a  project to clean up Sass Peress’s grandfather’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Baghdad.

This year Shabbat falls on 30 November, the date designated as ‘Jewish Refugee Day’.

“The specific date for the commemoration was chosen as the day following the November 29th anniversary of the passage in 1947 of the UN Partition Plan, which recommended the establishment of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, in the territory of British Mandatory Palestine, because “the measures taken by the Arab League and its member states against their Jewish communities began then,” explains Ashley Perry, President of Reconectar and Director General of the Knesset Caucus for the Reconnection with the Descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Communities, who was involved in legislating the Knesset bill with then-MK Shimon Ohayon.

This year, the participating synagogues include Ashkenazi as well as Sephardi congregations, thus demonstrating solidarity across the diaspora and in Israel.

The Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, Montreal
Chabad NDG, Montreal
Montreal Open Shul, Montreal
OR Shalom, Montreal
OR Hahayim , Montreal 
Shaar Hashomayim , Montreal
Mile End Chavurah Group, Montreal
Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation, Montreal
Kehila Synagogue, Toronto
Melech Israel, Toronto 
Congregation Beth Hamidrash, Vancouver
Kehillat Beth Israel, Ottawa
Hillel Lodge, Ottawa
Temple Israel, Ottawa
S&;P Holland Park Synagogue, London
Wembley S&P Synagogue, London
Lauderdale Road S&P Synagogue, London
Bevis Marks S&P Synagogue, London
Neveh Shalom, David Ishag Congregation, London
Ohel David, London
Temple Buffault, Paris
Temple Rodef Shalom, Alexandria, Virginia
Magen David Sephardic Congregation, San Francisco
Khalal Joseph, Los Angeles
Temple Israel, Columbus, Ohio
Chavurah Shir Ha-Yam , San Diego 
Sherith Yisrael, New York
Babylonian Jewish Center, Great Neck, New York
Bene Neharayim, Iraqi Synagogue, New York
Bnei Israel, Boca Raton , Florida
Edmond Safra Synagogue, Aventura , Florida
Temple Shalom, Port Charlotte, Florida
Tifereth Israel, Des Moines, Iowa

Chabad, TMR

Beth Tikvah, Montreal

Congregation Chazin Ovadis, Lakewood, NJ, USA

Zayit Raanan, Efrat

Shirat David, Efrat

Shaare Ratzon, S&;P Synagogue, Old City of Jerusalem

Kehillat Lechu Neranena, Buchman, Modiin

New North London Masorti

Sephardic Minyan at Beth Sholom Congregation, Potomac, Maryland, USA

*Missione de L’Annunziata, Montreal, CA 

 

Rabbi Joseph Dweck, senior rabbi at the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation in the UK, has composed a special prayer for the occasion:

תפלת אזכרה על מגורשי ישראל מארצות ערב

ֱאלֵֹהינוֵּואלֵֹהי ֲאבוֵֹתינוּ ָכּתוּב ְבִּדְבֵריְיֶחְזֵקאלְנִביֲאךָ)כא:יאיב(:”ְוַאָתּה ֶבן ָאָדם
ֵהָאַנח ְבִּשְׁברוֹן ָמְתַנִיםוִּבְמִרירוּת ֵתָּאַנח ְלֵעיֵניֶהם
.ְוָהָיה ִכּייֹאְמרוּ ֵאֶליךָ ַעל ָמה
ַא ָתּה ֶנ ֱא ָנח ְו ָא ַמ ְר ָתּ ֶאל ְשׁמוּ ָעה ִכי ָב ָאה ְו ָנ ֵמס ָכּל ֵלב ְו ָרפוּ ָכל ָי ַד ִים ְו ֵכ ַהת ָכל רוּ ַח
ְו ָכל ִבּ ְר ַכּ ִים ֵתּ ַל ְכ ָנה ַמּ ִים ִה ֵנּה ָב ָאה ְו ִנ ְה ָי ָתה ְנ ֻאם ְי ָי ֱאלֹ ִהים

וַּבֲעווֹנוֹתנו ָעָשׂהְיי ֲאֶשׁרָזָמם ִבַּצּעאְמָרתוֹ ֲאֶשׁר ִצָוּהְוָרִאינוּ ִבּדָאבוֹן ִלבינו ֲהִריַגת
ַא ֵחינוּ ְו ַא ַחיּו ֵתנוּ וּ ְשֵׂר ַפת ָבּ ֵתּי ְכֵּנ ִסיּוֹת ְו ִס ְפֵרי תּוָֹרה ִבּיֵדי ְשׁ ֵכֵננוּ ָה ַעְר ִבים ֶשׁשכננוּ
ָתִּמיד ְבִּקְרָבָתם
.

ְיתוֹ ִמים ָה ִיינוּ ְו ֵאין ָאב ִא ֹמּ ֵתינוּ ְכּ ַא ְל ָמנוֹת׃ ַא ָתּה ְיי ְלעוֹ ָלם ֵתּ ֵשׁב ִכּ ְס ֲאךָ ְלדֹר ָודוֹר׃
ֲה ִשׁי ֵבנוּ ְיי ֵא ֶליךָ ְו ָנשׁוּ ָבה ַח ֵדּשׁ ָי ֵמינוּ ְכּ ֶק ֶדם׃

ֵאל ָמ ֵלא ַר ֲח ִמים שׁוֹ ֵכן ַבּ ְמּרוֹ ִמים, ַה ְמ ֵצא ְמנוּ ָחה ְנכוֹ ָנה ַעל ַכּ ְנ ֵפי ַה ְשּׁ ִכי ָנה, ְבּ ַמ ֲעלוֹת
ְקדוִֹשׁיםוְּטהוִֹרים ַכּזַֹּהר ָהָרִקיַע ַמְזִהיִרים ֶאתְנָשׁמוֹת ַאֵחינוְּוַאְחיוֵֹתינוּ
,

ֶשֶׁנֶּהְרגוּ
ְוֶשִׁנְּרְצחוּ ַעלְיֵדי ַאְכָזִריםְואוְֹיִבים ָבֲּאָרצוֹת ַהַהגרים
.ֶנֶהְפכוּ ַאְרצוֹת ְמגוֵּריֶהם
ְלִכְבְשֵׁני ֵאשְׁוַאְנֵשׁי ְשׁלוָֹמם ַלֲעִריִצים
.ְיִהיָרצוֹן ִמְלָּפֶניךְָיָי ֱאלֵֹהינוּ, ַבַּעל ָהַרֲחִמים
ֶשַׁתְּסִתּיֵרםבֵּסֶּתר ְכָּנֶפיךָ ְלעוָֹלִמים
,וְּצרוֹר ִבְּצרוֹר ַהַחִיּים ֶאת ִנְשׁמוֵֹתיֶהם,ייהוּא
ַנֲחָלָתם
, ְבַּגן ֵעֶדן ְתֵּהא ְמנוָּחָתם, ַוַיַּעְמדוּ ְלגוָֹרָלם ְלֵקץ ַהָיִּמין, ִויֻקַיּםבּנו ִמְקָרא
ֶשָׁכּתוּבוָּבא ְלִציּוּןגּוֵֹאלָיֵגלַיֲעקֹבִיְשַׂמחִיְשָׂרֵאל ְבּשׁוּבְיָי ְשׁבוּת ַעמּוֹ
.ְוֵכןְיִהיָרצוֹן
ְונֹאַמר ָאֵמן
.

“Our God and God of our fathers, it is written in the words of Ezekiel your prophet (21:11-12) :

“And you, O mortal, sigh; with tottering limbs and bitter grief, sigh before their eyes. And when

they ask you, ‘Why do you sigh?’ answer, ‘Because of the tidings that have come.’ Every heart

shall sink and all hands hang nerveless; every spirit shall grow faint and all knees turn to water

because of the tidings that have come. It is approaching, it shall come to pass—declares the Lord

God.”

And for our iniquities, the Lord has done what He purposed, has carried out the decree. We have

seen with pained hearts the murder of our brothers and sisters and the burning of our synagogues

and our torah scrolls by the hands of our Arab neighbours amongst whom we have dwelt for

generations. We have become orphans, fatherless; Our mothers are like widows. But You, O Lord,

are enthroned forever, Your throne endures through the ages. Take us back, O Lord, to Yourself,

And let us come back; Renew our days as of old!

Lord full of mercy Who dwells in the heights, give rest on the wings of the Divine Presence,

amongst the holy, pure and glorious who shine like the sky to the souls of our brothers and sisters

who died and who were murdered by the hands of cruel enemies in the Arab Lands. Our dwelling

places became fiery furnaces and our friends turned to foes.

May it be Your will, Our Lord, that their souls be bound up in eternal life. God is their allotment.

And may they rest peacefully in their lying place.

And may God’s promise be fulfilled that a redeemer shall come to Zion, O that the deliverance of

Israel might come from Zion! When the Lord restores the fortunes of His people, Jacob will exult,

Israel will rejoice. And let us say, Amen.”

Global kaddish planned (Jerusalem Post)

Let’s show communal solidarity on 30 November 

Charges likely to be dropped against Paris murderer

The family of Sarah Halimi suffered another setback when it looked likely at a hearing this week  that charges would be dropped against her murderer. The Jewish Chronicle reports:




Sarah Halimi, murdered in April 2017



Local prosecutors in Paris initially argued that Kobili Traoré should be put on trial for his actions.

 But they were opposed by the more senior procureur général, which argued Traoré should be hospitalised.

 The different opinions come after separate panels of psychiatrists concluded Mr Traoré had suffered a psychotic episode after a massive use of cannabis, but disagreed over whether he was partially aware of his actions.

 During an earlier hearing, Halimi family lawyer Gilles-William Goldnadel asked Traoré: “Do you think you should be tried? And get a sentence for what you have done?”

 Witnesses told Wednesday’s hearing that shortly before Ms Halimi was thrown from the balcony Traoré shouted “a woman is trying to kill herself”.

Her family’s lawyers said it proved Traoré was already planning his defence.

 Mr Bidnic said there were “no good solutions in the case”, adding: “This is Sarah Halimi’s tragedy, her family’s tragedy and this boy’s tragedy, although I’m not comparing the two. Sending him to hospital is not ideal nor sending him to prison.”

 He said Traoré, who remains in a psychiatric hospital but is receiving limited amounts of medication, is “still a threat”.

 Francis Szpiner, another Halimi family lawyer, said the case was setting a historic precedent: “You’re saying that people can walk free after carrying out criminal action just because they were allegedly not aware of the effects of drugs or other substances?

“Will this also apply to drunk drivers who kill children on the road?”

The court will rule on December 19 on whether Traoré should face trial.

Read article in full

More about the Halimi case

In the Middle East, there are only conquerors and conquered

The only way for a dhimmi people to survive in the Middle East is to defeat its foes, argues Nave Dromi in this must-read article in JNS News. Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries know this truth:

Nave Dromi



On Nov. 30, we will remember them on the Day of Commemoration for the Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries and Iran. We will remember their history, culture and tradition, maintained under difficult circumstances, and also their ethnic cleansing.

 However, there are also lessons we need to learn.

Those of us whose origins are in lands now known as Arab countries and whose families were dhimmis understand well this history of defeat.

 Perhaps this is why, according to numerous surveys, Jews whose origins are in the Middle East and North Africa are disproportionately more hawkish than others—they understand, better than most, that in this region there are only two types of people: the conquerors and the conquered.

 They lived as the conquered for far too long, and that is why they push harder for Israel to defeat its enemies and those who seek to turn us once again into a stateless people.

 We have seen in recent years how the stateless are treated, whether it is the Kurds in Turkey, Syria or Iraq, the Christians in Egypt or the Yazidis in Iraq, among others.

 This was the lot of the Jewish people for 1,300 years in the region.

When Islamist terrorist organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, and Islamist regimes like that of the Islamic Republic of Iran, talk about destroying Israel, their goal is to undo what they see as the unnatural emergence of Jewish sovereignty on territory previously conquered by Islam.

 They see Israel as dar al-harb (literally, “land of war”), territory ruled by non-Muslims that was previously governed by Muslims and which must be reclaimed in battle. A cursory examination of the Hamas Charter, or the comments of leaders like Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, prove that for them, this is a very real religious obligation.

 For Israel to survive in such a region, with such enemies, it unfortunately must prove itself on the battlefield by defeating its foes.

The only reason Islamist extremists do not try to reclaim Spain or parts of the Balkans that were also once under Islamic rule is that they do not believe they can.

 Sadly, for many regimes and Islamist organizations in the region this is not true of Israel; they believe Israel can and will be defeated.

Read article in full

Arab states are claiming the heritage of their expelled Jews

Update: US government urged to protect heritage of Jewish refugees in Arab world 

Arab states are legitimising the theft of their Jewish cultural heritage under cover of international law, instead of restoring Jewish property to their expelled Jews, argues Lyn Julius in JNS News. It is a worrying trend that Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey and Yemen are also queuing up to sign such legitimising agreements with the US.

 Please sign thisJIMENA petition asking the US to rethink its position regarding minority rights to their heritage.

On or around Nov. 30, Jewish communities around the world will be holding events to remember the mass exodus of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran.

Almost a million people were displaced in the past 50 years, leaving billions of dollars’ worth of property behind.

Not only have Arab governments never compensated Jews for their stolen homes and businesses, they are waging a pernicious campaign to claim communal property and Jewish heritage as their national patrimony.

 Synagogues can’t be moved and clearly, it is better for Arab states to preserve them as memorials to an extinct community than not at all. However, these states are also declaring Torah scrolls, communal archives and books to be part of their cultural heritage.

 For instance, the Egyptian government claims that all Torah scrolls and Jewish archives, libraries, communal registers and any movable property over 100 years old are “Egyptian antiquities.” However, Jews consider Torah scrolls their exclusive property. It is forbidden to buy or sell them. Fleeing Jews have often prioritized scrolls and books over their personal possessions.

 What does international law have to say? The Hague Convention of 1954 “protecting cultural property in conflict” was brought in to stop the massive looting that has always occurred in war and specifically during WWII. There is also the post-colonial understanding that the new states that emerged in the 20th century have ownership of their own cultural heritage; the days when Britain could ship the Elgin Marbles from Greece, or Napoleon could plunder ancient Egyptian obelisks as “war booty,” are over.

 In Egypt, registers of births, marriages and deaths of Jews from Alexandria and Cairo dating back to the middle of the 19th century were once kept in the two main synagogues in each city. But in 2016, government officials took away the registers to be stored in the Egyptian National Archives.

Egyptian Jews living abroad cannot even obtain photocopies of certificates, often the only formal Jewish identification Egyptian Jews have to prove lineage or identity for burial or marriage. Repeated efforts since 2005 to intercede with the Egyptian authorities have come to nothing.

 Egyptian government policy has been backed by the tiny remnant of the country’s Jewish community. Its leader, Magda Haroun, intends to leave the community’s assets to the government. She has even suggested that two paintings in the Louvre once owned by an Egyptian Jew should find their way back to Egypt.

 Under the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, thousands of books, manuscripts and other documents were seized from Jewish homes, schools and synagogues and stored at the headquarters of Iraq’s secret service in Baghdad. In 2003, the archive was discovered in the flooded basement after the building was bombed by the Americans.

 The Americans shipped the archive to Washington, D.C., for restoration and hastily signed a diplomatic agreement promising to return the material to the Iraqi government. The United States spent over $3 million to restore and digitize the archive, which has since been exhibited across the country. The collection includes a Hebrew Bible with commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793 and an 1815 version of the Jewish mystical text Zohar, as well as more mundane objects such school reports and a Baghdad telephone book.

 Although tens of thousands of Iraqi documents were shipped to the United States, the Iraqi government has only formalized its claim to the 2,700 books and 30,000 documents of the water-stained archive, which it claims are the country’s “precious cultural heritage,” a last emotional link with its ancient Jewish community and a reminder of Iraq’s former diversity.

 The Iraqi Jewish community in exile has been waging a bitter battle to recover the collection and prevent it being sent back to Iraq. They say that to return the archive, which was seized from Jewish community offices, schools and synagogues, would be like returning property looted by the Nazis to Germany.

 The Iraqi and Egyptian cases are symptomatic of a larger problem. Since 2004, the United States has been bound by law to impose import restrictions on archaeological and ethnological material that constitutes a country’s cultural heritage and has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) to this effect with Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Libya.

 In January 2018, the International Council of Museums released a “Red List” for Yemen aimed at protecting Hebrew manuscripts and Torah finials from leaving the country. All but 50 Jews have fled the country, taking what possessions they could, but even these ultimately could be returned to Yemen.

 “These MOUs claim to be about [stopping] looting, but their broad scope and limited evidence of success suggests their real impact is providing a legal vehicle to legitimize foreign confiscations and wrongful ownership claims. … The MOUs are based on a flawed premise. It is the heritage and patrimony of 850,000 indigenous Jews who fled their homes and property under duress,” said Sarah Levin of the California-based Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA).

 It is understandable that the international community should wish to prevent the looting and smuggling of ancient artifacts and their sale on the international art market. That is how Islamic State financed much of its conquest of northern Iraq and Syria. But there is a distinction between theft for financial gain, and legitimate salvage of Torah scrolls or books taken by fleeing Jews to be used for prayer.

 Eight Sumerian artifacts sold to the British Museum were recently sent back to Baghdad. But the Iraqi-Jewish archive does not belong to some long-extinct civilization—some of the owners are still alive.

 International law is based on the outmoded assumption of territorial sovereignty. It needs updating, specifically to resolve the tug-of-war between minority and national heritage, where the minority has been persecuted and displaced.

Read article in full

Also at The Algemeiner

How Iran discriminates against Jews and other minorities

Must-read by Karmel Melamed  in the Times of Israel detailing the built-in discrimination, both in civil and criminal law,  prevailing in Iran against Jews and other minorities. 


Every synagogue must contain a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, architect of the Islamic revolution

Since 1979, the Iranian regime has been ruling Iran by Shiite Islamic Sharia laws. As a result of these Sharia laws, non-Muslims can be subjected to mass punishment and exile, even in their own lands which have fallen under Islamic rule. Under the current Iranian regime’s constitution non-Muslims are identified as different “nations” even if they live within the boundaries of Iran.

While the constitution does recognize some individuals as second or third-class residents, there are also many “unrecognized” minorities in the document, referring to non-Muslims who do not have any human, legal or civil rights at all. According to these laws, non-Muslims are all “infidels” who are either the “tolerated infidels” with limited rights, or “enemy infidels” with no rights. Jews, traditional Christians such as Armenians, Chaldeans and Assyrians, as well as Zoroastrians, are considered as recognized minorities or tolerated infidels.

 However religious minorities who are Bahais’, Buddhists, Hindus, or atheists are unrecognized minorities with no rights.

Muslims who have converted to Christianity are considered as apostates and face the threat of the death penalty if they are discovered to have left the Islamic faith by the Iranian regime.

 While one may argue that the Iranian regime affords a limited number of minorities such as Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians some protection under the law, this is inaccurate because Iranian judges are allowed to directly rule on the validity of any law in the country based on the random authoritarian edicts of major Shiite Mullahs whenever the actual laws are deemed inadequate or “un-Islamic”.

This factor, in essence, means even recognized religious minorities have no rights at all, including the right to life, marriage, education, work or even burial in “Islamic land” if an Iranian judge or mullahs randomly considers the law or situation to be “un-Islamic”.

Perhaps one of the worst discriminatory aspects of the Iranian regime’s jurisprudence is its asinine constitution when it comes to the country’s religious minorities.

Sadly in the constitution, every time a certain right is expressly given to “Muslims” as it pertains to civil and criminal laws, it clearly means that those rights are being withheld from the country’s religious minorities. The following are just a few of the major discriminatory aspects of the Iranian regime’s constitution with regards to non-Muslims living in the country:

Read article in full

A forgotten pogrom agains the Jews of Tetuan, Morocco

With thanks: Yoel

 Nineteenth century Morocco was a volatile country, and the Jews were often on the receiving end of violence from warring armies and tribes. European travellers have testified to their miserable and degraded existence.  Now the estimable blogger Elder of Ziyon has discovered evidence of a forgotten pogrom against the Jews of Tetuan in 1860. 


Tetuan today

“In 1790, a pogrom happened, started by Sultan Yazid. The mellah was pillaged and many women raped. The Jews lived in a mellah, which is located inside the old medina.

I cannot find any account that  corresponds to the horrors narrated in this article in The Occident, Thursday, April 05, 1860.

On February 6, 1860, Spanish soldiers who were then fighting in Morocco entered Tétouan, a town very close to the Straits of Gibraltar. Apparently the Sultan’s soldiers got wind of an impending surrender and took the opportunity to attack the Jews of the city – stealing and breaking anything of value and raping the women, as happened 70 years earlier.”

 Here is an extract from a report by the Honorary Consul, Mr Nahon:

 “In the night between Saturday and Sunday, the Moroccan soldiers and the Arabs entered the Jews’ quarters, plundered all that was composed of gold and silver, broke every article of pottery and glass, burnt all that they could not carry away, destroyed the Sepharim and committed all sorts of horrors upon the women and children. On entering the city, the Spaniards found the women almost naked and half dead.”

 Read post in full

UN event to mark exodus of Jews from Arab countries

As part of this year’s ’30 November ‘ commemorations, an event to highlight the plight of Jews expelled from Arab countries will take place at the UN Headquarters in New York on 4 December. The former Miss Iraq, Sarah Idan, and the US ‘antisemitism tsar, Elan Carr, will take part in the  event, arranged by Israel’s UN Mission and JIMENA. (With thanks: Imre)


Former Miss Iraq Sarah Idan will be a keynote speaker at the gathering, which is being organized by Israel’s UN Mission and the Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) organization.
Idan now lives in exile in the US after controversy erupted in her home country in 2017 when she posted a selfie with Miss Israel Adar Gandelsman.

 Other speakers will include Israel’s UN envoy, Danny Danon, and the Trump administration’s special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, Elan Carr.

 Danon said in a statement on Monday, “The story of nearly a million Jews who were brutally expelled from their homes has so far received no UN attention, and has even been deliberately downplayed to focus solely on the Palestinian narrative. The State of Israel must voice support for Jewish refugees and correct this historical injustice.” To book your place, click here.

Read article in full

Palestinians reprint ‘truthful’ account of Jew’s exodus from Iraq

President Abbas’s decision to reprint the memoir of an Iraqi Jew – Yitzhak Bar Moshe –  is a significant departure: instead of blaming the flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel on the Zionists, he is acknowledging that Arab regimes were responsible for creating Jewish refugees. This is a good thing. However, it is clear he also wants to draw an equivalence between Palestinian refugees, who were fleeing a war zone, and Jewish citizens of Arab countries, who were non-combatants far way from the conflict with Israel. Abbas might also wish to  use Bar Moshe’s book as a tool to attack the Zionist establishment for discriminating against the incoming refugees, and disrespecting Bar Moshe’s work. He makes the mistake, common on the far left,  of assuming that Arabic-speaking Jews are a bridge to peace because they shared a common language and culture with Muslims. In fact it is their bitter experience of persecution which makes them more mistrustful of peace initiatives. 



The Times of Israel reports (with thanks: Lily)



“The president plans to re-print Bar Moshe’s book Exodus from Iraq in Arabic soon because he wants to inform Palestinians, Arabs and everyone else about the Jews of the Arab world.

 He wants them to know what happened to them in Iraq but also in the transit camps in Israel,” Darwish, a cousin of famous Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish who was friends with Bar Moshe, told The Times of Israel in a phone call.


Yitzhak Bar Moshe, who  died in 2003 (Photo by his daughter, Idit Shemer)

“He told Bar Moshe’s family yesterday that he first read the book when he was living in Syria and that it made him cry. He said he thinks it is so important because it shows how the suffering of Iraqi Jews is not different from that of the Palestinian people,” Darwish added, noting he plans to give it to “many of the people he will meet after he receives the new copies.”

Darwish said both the Bar Moshe family and the Sephardic Community Committee, which originally printed the book, granted Abbas permission to commission the re-printing of the book.

Read article in full

+972 Magazine reports (with thanks: Stan):

“Leaving Iraq,” the book that made Abbas weep with recognition 40 years ago, describes how Iraqi Jews — who were, in Baghdad, an integrated and respected elite — ended up being persecuted and losing their rights.

 The governments forced them into exile, but they never stopped loving their place of birth.

‘It’s sad that my father was never respected in Israel’

 This is not the first time Abbas has expressed his admiration for Iraqi Jews. “The behavior of Arab regimes toward their Jewish citizens is indescribably saddening and painful, and must be repudiated,” he wrote in 1977, not long after reading Bar-Moshe’s book.

“We turned them into enemies and made them stand against us without giving them another choice. We forced them to choose between emigrating to Israel and imprisonment or death,” he continued.


Photo-op in Ramallah: Idit Shemer, Bar Moshe’s daughter,  met President Abbas recently

 Abbas has also written about discrimination against Mizrahim in Israel, labeling Zionism “an Ashkenazi movement” whose “crazy obsession” with Arab Jews has embittered their lives.

 He once called on the Arab states to offer financial aid to Arab Jews as an enticement to bring them back from exile.

 Given that the return of Jews to Lebanon, Iraq or Syria is now impossible, why is Abbas so interested in distributing “Leaving Iraq” to Arab leaders?

 “I want them to read it, because it tells the truth,” he says. “And also because they don’t know that there is a large, peace-seeking Arab-Jewish public — Jews who listen to Umm Kulthum at home and who write in Arabic.”

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Jewish refugees from Arab lands meet Palestinian leader

Let’s show communal solidarity on 30 November

The proposed mass kaddish for Jews buried in Arab lands should be recited by Ashkenazi synagogues as well as congregations from the Middle East and North Africa. It is an opportunity to end the perception that the history and culture of Mizrahi Jews is ‘other’, argues David A Dangoor in the Jerusalem Post:


 Baghdad Jewish cemetery: prayers will be positive and cathartic

As a result of the majority’s attitudes, culture and history, little is known of the Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa. Its history, culture and traditions are rarely studied at Jewish schools or other educational institutions, even in Israel.

 Some, like Prof. Daniel Elazar, who contributed much to the academic study of Sephardim, described these communities as “The Other Jews.” Elazar, writing in 1989, meant this term as an implicit dig against those who saw these communities as the “others,” stressing how the Ashkenazi Jews were the main protagonists of Jewish history and culture.

Three decades later, it is time to end this othering of Middle Eastern and North African Jews and place their history, culture and tradition on an even keel.

 On November 30, for the second year running, prayers will be recited in synagogues across the world in remembrance of Jews buried in inaccessible cemeteries in Arab lands. A mass hashkaba (kaddish), at the initiative of a Montreal resident of Iraqi origin, Sass Peress, will be said. For decades, families have been prevented from reciting prayers at the gravestones of their loved ones buried in Arab lands.

 Peress said that the hashkaba and prayers help “to create a positive and cathartic event for all.”
Last year, only 12 synagogues in the world took part in this historic event; four times that number are expected to join this year.

Nonetheless, most, if not all of these synagogues and communities are from the Middle Eastern and North African tradition.

 To make this a truly positive and cathartic event, it would be extremely gratifying to witness other communities without these origins stand shoulder to shoulder in Jewish solidarity to remember the Jewish communities that were decimated in that part of the world.

 In February, the Exilarch’s Foundation sponsored a special event at the historic Bevis Mark Synagogue to mark 50 years since the infamous Baghdad hangings, when nine Jews and others were publicly hanged, an event that spurred the remaining Jews of Iraq to flee.

 Bevis Marks is the oldest synagogue in the United Kingdom. Its Spanish and Portuguese founders had no immediate roots in the region, so it was deeply heartwarming that such a Jewish community joined in the occasion to make it a shared point of commonality.

For those of us whose roots are in in Iraq and the Middle East but live in an Ashkenazi majority community, it is vital that the barriers between our different communities are broken down.

This will only happen if there is a greater sense of awareness of the history, culture and tradition of other communities.

With knowledge comes understanding, and the lines that separate us will begin to blur and disappear. We need literacy in the history and culture of each and every Jewish community to be passed down as the previous generations leave us.

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Mazzig: Zionism was not a political decision, it saved Jewish lives

Anti-Zionists in America assume that because they do not personally need a haven in Israel, the family of Hen Mazzig, who survived the Farhud massacre, did not either. Writing in Jewish Journal, Mazzig, who recently completed a tour of US campuses, was shouted down at Vassar College. The College has since said that the protesters had violated its values. 

Mazzig’s speech at Vassar College was disrupted for 15 minutes

As soon as I arrived at the on-campus venue, I was greeted by protesters. As a staunch supporter of free speech, I invited them to join the talk and ask me the hard questions.

Instead of discussing their concerns with me, they decided to scream over me.

One said she decided to oppose me telling my story because she’s a “white queer Jew.” Another claimed they were protesting me telling the story of Mizrahi refugees as a means of fighting white supremacy. It’s ironic because I was there to speak about how my grandmother narrowly survived the Farhud, a catastrophic event in which the Iraqi government collaborated with Hitler’s white supremacist regime and killed around 180 Jews in two days.

 To put this in perspective, British newspaper The Guardian reported in August that more than 175 people have been killed worldwide by white nationalists in the past eight years.

 My talk was titled “forgotten refugees” for a reason. Too often Mizrahi history is excluded from Jewish memory. But anti-Zionists, whose narratives of white saviorism are disrupted by our mere existence, actively work to keep us forgotten.”  In their quest to “fight white supremacy,” these students at Vassar chose to shout over me during my presentation about the anti-Semitic supremacy that my family has endured.

It’s not lost on me that they chose to chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a slogan often employed by members of Hamas when they call to ethnically cleanse Jews with the same fervor as white nationalists.

 As I tried to honor the memory of my great-grandfather, who was hanged by anti-Zionists in Baghdad, anti-Zionist students called for the murder of the world’s largest Jewish population.

Yes, I do say murder, which is what the destruction of Israel means for Middle Eastern Jews. When my grandparents sought asylum in the United States in 1951, America declined to provide them sanctuary. Their only refuge was Israel.

To Iraqi Jews, being Zionists wasn’t a political decision — it was either that or death.

People often claim these incidents are not anti-Semitic, especially when Jewish people participate in them.

One Jew involved in the protest was an American Jew with European roots. Like most with her background, I’m sure she’s never even heard of the Farhud.

She and other anti-Israel Jews seem to assume that because they personally do not need Israel to survive, my family should not either.

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More from Hen Mazzig

The Edinburgh haters

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This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, of the Middle East and North Africa, documenting the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution.

Point of No Return

Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries

One-stop blog on the Middle East's
forgotten Jewish refugees - updated daily.