Guide to the Tamar Morad, Dennis and Robert Shasha Collection of Iraqi Jewish Oral Histories

The History of the Jews in Iraq (in brief outline)

The Iraqi Jewish community is one of the oldest in the world. The region of modern-day Iraq was known by the Greeks as Mesopotamia and is identified with biblical Babylonia. The community traces its roots back to the episodes of captivity brought about by Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 BCE, and, again, in 586 BCE, with the destruction of the First Temple. The site was subsequently a great center of Jewish learning, where the Babylonian Talmud was compiled. After the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of the region in the 7th century CE the land became known as Iraq. The city of Baghdad, founded in 762, eventually became the home of the greatest concentration of Iraqi Jews. In 1258 the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols precipitated a long period of general economic decline.

From 1534 until World War I Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire, except for a brief interlude under the Persians in the early 17th century. Under Ottoman rule, just as under the earlier caliphates, Jews, as well as Christians, as non-Muslims professing a monotheistic faith, held the protected legal status of 'dhimmi,' which gave them the right to worship, and a certain amount of self-administration, but also entailed certain restrictions that reflected subordination to the Muslim majority. The well-being of the community depended on the attitudes of particular rulers, with some periods of persecution.

The Jewish population of Baghdad in 1824 was estimated at 1,500 families. According to one source in 1848, the city had 3,000 Jewish families, and nine synagogues. By 1860 the number of Jewish residents had risen to 20,000, amounting to slightly more than one quarter of the population. There were also many smaller Jewish communities scattered throughout northern Iraq, the largest being at Mosul. Due to shifting economic factors in the late 19th century, following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1862, many Jews, like others in the country, moved to the south. From that time through World War I, the Jewish community at the southern port city of Basra grew significantly.

Traditionally Iraqi Jews spoke Judeo-Arabic, which was based on Arabic but written in Hebrew characters, with the incorporation of Hebrew vocabulary, as well as words from Turkish, Persian, and Aramaic. They also spoke Arabic and participated in Arabic culture, including literature and music. Significant developments in the 19th century included the establishment in Baghdad of the Alliance Israélite Universelle school for boys, in 1864, the first modern Jewish elementary school, as well as a similar school for girls, in 1893. This trend within the Jewish community toward secular education, including instruction in European languages, led to greater occupational opportunity in business, finance, and government.

In the early 20th century the Young Turks movement spurred reforms including the declaration of equal rights for non-Muslim minorities under the Ottoman constitution of 1908. World War I brought the occupation of the region by the British and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The borders of the modern state of Iraq were determined in the postwar treaties, with the proposal of a British Mandate for Mesopotamia (i.e. Iraq) leading eventually to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under King Faisal I, in 1921.

According to British figures, there were 87,488 Iraqi Jews in 1919, making up approximately 3% of the total population (2.85 million). At that time approximately 50,000 Jews lived in Baghdad, constituting 20% of the city's population. Thanks to the modernizing influence of the British and Faisal's tolerant policies, the Jewish community in Iraq enjoyed prosperity and relative security in the 1920s and early 1930s, a period remembered by some Iraqi Jews as a 'golden age.' Sir Sassoon Eskell served as the first minister of finance under Faisal, from 1921 to 1925, the only Jew ever to hold a cabinet-rank position in the Iraqi government.

Iraq achieved independence in 1932. The situation of Jews in the country deteriorated in the course of the 1930s. Faisal's son Ghazi, who ascended to the throne in 1933, was less tolerant than his father, and there was infiltration of Nazi influence through propagandistic undertakings of the German ambassador. Some Jews were dismissed from government posts in 1934 and an unofficial quota system began to prevail in the civil service. The Arab revolt in Palestine in 1936 fueled pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, as well as anti-Jewish sentiment in Iraq, as elsewhere in the Arab world.

After a pro-Nazi coup in April 1941, the British occupied the country, and the brief Anglo-Iraqi war ensued, in May 1941. In the vacuum of leadership and security following the British victory, violent anti-Jewish riots broke out in Baghdad. This pogrom, known by the Arabic term 'Farhud,' meaning 'violent dispossession,' resulted in the murder of 179 Jews, the injury of many more, and the looting or destruction of hundreds of businesses and homes.

Following the Farhud the Jewish community recovered; the majority still saw their future as loyal Iraqi citizens. However, in the following years some young Iraqi Jews became engaged in the Zionist underground, and others in the Communist underground.

In the wake of the United Nations resolution on the partition of Palestine, the establishment of the state of Israel, and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war (Israeli War of Independence) there was a charged anti-Jewish atmosphere in Iraq, with Jews increasingly experiencing abuses and subject to restrictions. In September 1948, the public hanging, after a brief trial, of a wealthy Iraqi Jewish businessman, Shafiq Adas, of Basra, who was charged with selling military equipment to Israel, shocked the Jewish community.

In 1949 some Iraqi Jews fled Iraq illegally over the Iranian border, aided by Zionist emissaries. In response to the situation, in March 1950 the Iraqi government passed the Citizen Revocation Law, which enabled Jews to emigrate by revoking their citizenship. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews registered for this right – 105,000 Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel by July 1951. The Iraqi government froze the assets of many Jews attempting to leave after March 1951. Around that time Israel mounted an airlift to assist the emigration. The airlift, or the mass emigration in general, later came to be known as "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah," after the biblical figures who led the Jewish people out of the Babylonian exile back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple in the 5th century BCE.

According to estimates based on the official Iraqi census, there were approximately 118,000 Jews in Iraq in 1947, comprising 2.5% of the total population (some sources speculate that the number was closer to 135,000, or even higher). After the mass emigration approximately 6,000 remained.

Jews continued to flee the country over the next decades. In 1968, when the Ba'ath Party came to power for the second time after a period of political turbulence, there were approximately 3,000 Jews still living in Iraq. Under the Ba'athist regime discriminatory and oppressive measures that had affected Jews since the Six Day (Arab-Israeli) War of 1967 intensified, including detentions, firings from jobs in the public and private sector, expulsions from social clubs, revocations of business licenses, being restricted in travel within Iraq, having telephone service cut off, and having bank accounts frozen. In January 1969, nine Jews (as well as several Muslims and Christians), falsely accused of being spies for Israel, were publicly hanged in Baghdad. In the period from then until April 1973 a total of 46 Iraqi Jews were killed, or kidnapped, or simply disappeared; and many were imprisoned. The number of Jews remaining in Iraq was approximately 350 in 1975, and 120 in 1996. As of 2007, fewer than a dozen Jews were believed to be living in the country.

References

Ben-Yaacob, Abraham, et al. "Iraq." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 10. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 14-24.

Moreh, Shmuel. "Introduction: The historical context." In Tamar Morad, Dennis Shasha, and Robert Shasha (Eds.), Iraq's Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylon (pp. 1-12). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.