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Analysis: Dwindling Jewsish Population in Iraq
All Things Considered: May 22, 2003
Baghdad's Dwindling Community of Jews
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Jews were originally brought to the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers more than 2,500 years ago. By the late 1940s, in what became modern Iraq, Jews numbered more than 250,000. Many were successful merchants, traders and bankers. Today in Baghdad, 35 Jews remain. NPR's Guy Raz reports.
SOUNDBITE OF BANGING ON METAL DOORS
Mr. MUHAMMED JASSIM: (Foreign language spoken)
GUY RAZ reporting:
It took four tries on four separate days before Muhammed Jassim finally agreed to open the metal doors that protect Mayer Taweigg Synagogue. Muhammed apologizes for appearing rude, but normally he won't let anyone in. For the past 10 years, the 37-year-old served as the groundskeeper and protector of the two elderly Jews who live here.
Mr. TAWFIQ SOFER: (Foreign language spoken)
RAZ: Tawfiq Sofer closes his wrinkled eyelids and smiles as he recites a prayer. Tawfiq is 90, the oldest living link to an ancient Baghdad community. As Tawfiq recalls, his family hails from a long line of distinguished Baghdad religious scholars, men known as hahams, `the wise ones.'
Mr. SOFER: (Foreign language spoken)
RAZ: The last wise man of Baghdad's Jewish community, Haham Sasune(ph), died more than a decade ago. It was then that Muhammed Jassim began to look after the synagogue, and in particular Tawfiq Sofer and another Jewish man, Youssef Salman.
Mr. YOUSSEF SALMAN: (Through Translator) My father worked with the Sofer family for many years and they were good to him. They took care of my father when he was a young man and they took care of me from the time I was a boy. Although I'm a Muslim, these two old men are more than fathers, and now it's my duty to look after them.
RAZ: During the 20 nights of aerial bombing in March, Muhammed never left the synagogue. In the days immediately after the fall of Baghdad, he fired several warning shots from his pistol to keep looters at bay.
Mr. JASSIM: (Foreign language spoken)
RAZ: About five minutes' walk from Mayer Taweigg Synagogue lives 82-year-old Ezra Levy. He proudly shows off a mural of Hebrew writing inside his modest home.
Mr. JASSIM: This man is God (foreign language spoken) Elohim.
RAZ: Ezra's son, Emad, stands in the corner of the room, wearing an orange skullcap, reading his midafternoon prayers from a tattered prayer book.
EMAD: (Reading in foreign language)
RAZ: At 38 years old, Emad is the youngest Jewish man in Baghdad. He's also the volunteer rabbi at Mayer Taweigg Synagogue.
EMAD: I love it. I'm very fearful in God. I'm really responsible, responsible for make rabbi, responsible for prepare a meat kosher. That's honor.
RAZ: Emad is also the synagogue's key holder. The synagogue's been locked for three months, but this afternoon he agrees to take a visitor inside.
SOUNDBITE OF DOOR OPENING
RAZ: The interior is simple--white walls, a balcony for women, three humble chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and at the far end an arched alcove holds the antique Torah scrolls.
When Emad was a young boy, he says Friday-evening services were always crowded.
EMAD: Yes, yes, yes. Many Jewish people--that's full.
RAZ: These days, Emad can't put together a minyan, the quorum of 10 Jewish men required to hold a prayer service. Most of Baghdad's Jews left in two massive waves, first in 1948 after the founding of the state of Israel, then in 1970, a year after several Jewish men were publicly hanged, accused by the Ba'athist government of spying for Israel.
EMAD: (Reading in foreign language)
RAZ: As Emad reads a prayer, it sounds almost like a requiem for a dying, ancient community. There is one thing on his mind these days.
EMAD: Escape, only escape from here now, because I have no future here.
RAZ: But it's unlikely Emad will leave without his father, Ezra. And at 82, Ezra is now too old to leave.
Mr. EZRA LEVY: I haven't that power to go now. I am empty because my life is very hard in these years ago, sometimes ...(unintelligible) very good and sometimes no. Now, very good. (Arabic and Hebrew spoken)
RAZ: `Thanks to God,' Ezra says in Arabic, `thanks to God,' he says in Hebrew, `life is just fine now.' Guy Raz, NPR News, Baghdad.
BLOCK: To see photos of the synagogue and the people who worship there, you can go to our Web site, npr.org.
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