The last Jews in Baghdad : remembering a lost homeland / Nissim Rejwan ; foreword by Joel Beinin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rejwan, Nissim.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rejwan, Nissim.

Jews--Iraq--Baghdad--Biography.

Jews.

Jews--Iraq--Baghdad--Social life and customs.

Jews--Iraq--Baghdad--Social conditions--20th century.

Social conditions.

Manners and customs.

Baghdad (Iraq)--Ethnic relations.

Baghdad (Iraq).

Iraq--Baghdad.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxii, 242 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2004.

Summary:

Once upon a time, Baghdad was home to a flourishing Jewish community. More than a third of the city's people were Jews, and Jewish customs and holidays helped set the pattern of Baghdad's cultural and commercial life. On the city's streets and in the bazaars, Jews, Muslims, and Christians-all native-born Iraqis-intermingled, speaking virtually the same colloquial Arabic and sharing a common sense of national identity. And then, almost overnight it seemed, the state of Israel was born, and lines were drawn between Jews and Arabs. Over the next couple of years, nearly the entire Jewish population of Baghdad fled their Iraqi homeland, never to return. In this beautifully written memoir, Nissim Rejwan recalls the lost Jewish community of Baghdad, in which he was a child and young man from the 1920s through 1951. He paints a minutely detailed picture of growing up in a barely middle-class family, dealing with a motley assortment of neighbors and landlords, struggling through the local schools, and finally discovering the pleasures of self-education and sexual awakening. Rejwan intertwines his personal story with the story of the cultural renaissance that was flowering in Baghdad during the years of his young manhood, describing how his work as a bookshop manager and a staff writer for the Iraq Times brought him friendships with many of the country's leading intellectual and literary figures. He rounds off his story by remembering how the political and cultural upheavals that accompanied the founding of Israel, as well as broad hints sent back by the first arrivals in the new state, left him with a deep ambivalence as he bid a last farewell to a homeland that had become hostile to its native Jews.

Contents:

In old Baghdad

The Rejwan tribe

Mother and the placebo effect

Naiʻima

Early initiations

Schooling

The great crash and US

Hesqail Abul ʻAlwa hires a helper

Living in sexual deprivation

Idle days

Distorted visions

Rashid ʻAli's coup and its aftermath

Bookshop days

A deepening friendship

The start : movies, book reviews

Out in the cold

Disposing of a library

End of a community

Farewells and reunions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages xxi-xxii) and index.

ISBN:

0292702930

OCLC:

54500052