The Bottom Line - 18 July 2003
The Ages Old Iraqi Jewish Community
Immad Ezra Salach Levy has an enormous responsibility. At the age of 35, single and childless, he is fulfilling all the religious functions for Iraq’s Jewish community, including that of Rabbi, shochet (ritual slaughterer) and gabbai of the synagogue. After an uninterrupted 2,600 years of Jewish presence in Iraq, Levy embodies the present state of the longest living Jewish community in history.
In its heyday in 1949, the Iraqi Jewish community numbered 137,000 people. Today there are 35 Jews left in Iraq, 32 of whom are over the age of 60. Levy’s tasks are not particularly demanding. There are no children to educate and the last Jewish marriage service was held in 1978. His job entails visiting the synagogue and keeping contact with other members of the community.
Last month, Levy told Jewish Agency emissary Jeff Kaye that up to now he hadn’t been practising ritual slaughtering for fear of being exposed as a Jew. “Levy told me that as the person responsible for the city’s remaining Jews, he fears greatly for their safety,” says Kaye, who returned from Bagdad recently. Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal is the financial arm of the Jewish Agency for Israel. The purpose of his visit, which was in co-operation with HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, was to renew contact with the Jewish community in Bagdad. His findings were that the elderly Jews in the community were living in extremely harsh conditions of abject poverty and in some cases require urgent medical attention.
Iraq’s Jewish community has survived in the recent past due to government protection and income from renting out some of its assets. This income has been used to hire the services of guards, for food and medication for the ailing and for the upkeep of the synagogue, which still holds Shabbat services. After the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the community remained without protection and, according to Kaye, is under the constant threat of impending physical harm due to the chaotic conditions and violent demonstrations in the capital. Kaye initiated contact between the Jews and the US forces in the city but as yet the Jews have not received any protection other than from the guards they themselves have hired.
Kaye also revealed that while searching Iraqi intelligence cellars, US forces discovered the archives of the Jewish community that were confiscated by the authorities in the 1970s. The cellars were flooded, but the US Forces collected the material and placed them in a freezer warehouse. He added that the US official responsible for the material raised the issue of transferring it to Israel. She claimed that the archives included documents from the 16th Century onwards.
These archives are incredibly valuable and detail the history of the Iraqi Jewish community. How sad it is that these documents and 35 elderly Jews are all that remains of a once thriving people. There is no doubt that the Jewish Agency and Keren Hayesod will do all that they can to assist our fellow Jews to preserve their history and contribution to our history.