Iraq’s Few Jews Struggle to Hold On to Faith

BAGHDAD — While Jews around the world joined with their families Wednesday night to celebrate the start of the Passover holiday, sisters Khalida and Nidal Saleh struggled with a fear that comes from being Jewish in a country that has made it national policy to vilify their faith.

“Baruch ata Adonai,” Khalida said with a slight smile and a full stop. That was it, that was all she said she remembered. The first three words of a prayer, but to her they were the markers of her faith, a connection to a past that has been all but erased from her life -- and from this city.

Khalida and her sister are among about 40 Jews in a city of about 5 million -- and most are elderly and frail.

They are survivors in a nation that sought to expel them from its borders, forbade them to display the Star of David and oversaw the confiscation of their synagogue’s century-old Torah.

While the rest of Baghdad is in a frenzy, with looters still ransacking stores, houses and government offices, and with alarmed citizens setting up their own vigilante patrols, the Jews who remain here have hunkered down. Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but they knew what to expect.

More Uncertainty

Now everything is uncertain, and the Jews are terrified that what little remains of their faith and culture will also be looted and stripped away. Families will not venture out to the synagogue to celebrate holiday prayers largely because the keepers of the house of worship are afraid to open the doors.

There is another fear too. One they won’t speak of, insisting through smiles that they are well loved by their Muslim neighbors, but through their actions suggesting otherwise. Khalida and Nidal insisted they did not have any Hebrew books in their home, until an Iraqi translator stepped out of their house. They then revealed some yellowing Haggadas, the Jewish prayer book used for Passover.

It is hard to know how much of what the sisters were saying is sincere, or the result of a lifetime of conditioning to be cautious and fearful. They said they don’t know any Passover songs, don’t have any desire to move away from Iraq and don’t know all of the words to any prayers.

But at certain moments, they seem to reveal a bit of truth -- like when they acknowledged they can read Hebrew.

“Don’t you think it is a wish of everybody to leave” Iraq? Nidal said, when asked why they had stayed behind.

Iraq’s Jewish community dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time when Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and sent by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon. Over the centuries, the Jews flourished in Iraq, blending in by adopting the Arab language, culinary tastes and traditions. More than 100,000 Jews lived in Iraq in 1948, but by the early 1950s, only 25,000 were left. Among those who fled were Maurice and Charles Saatchi, brothers who founded the successful advertising company Saatchi & Saatchi.

Targeted by Mobs

But like other Jewish communities that throughout history have found that assimilation does not guarantee permanent acceptance, the Jews were targets of mob violence and persecution in the 1940s. By 1950, Iraq was so eager to cast out its Jews that it passed a law allowing them to leave the country with all of their assets, if they agreed to relinquish their nationality. Many accepted the bargain and went to Israel, Europe or America.

The migration slowly whittled away at the Jewish community here.

Today, Baghdad has a functioning synagogue, a yellow-brick building in the residential neighborhood of Batawaen. It’s hidden behind a 15-foot-high concrete wall and a locked steel door. There is nothing to distinguish it from a factory, with a row of narrow, barred second-floor windows. The only hint of what is inside is a rectangular stone over the front door engraved with Hebrew letters giving the name of the synagogue. There is a mezuzah, or prayer scroll, on the front door, that is made of simple wood so as to blend into the doorjamb.

There is no rabbi; the last one left 30 years ago.

Tewfik Sofer is a withered 80-year-old man with three teeth in his mouth and a blank stare that washes over his face. He spends his days sitting on a bench outside the synagogue’s front doors. He knows well the story of Passover, the enslavement of the Jews, the warning Moses gave to the Pharaohs, the exodus from Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. But he said that it was too dangerous, and the people were too scared to organize a Passover meal, called a Seder.

Khalida and Nidal, who live a few blocks away, seemed disappointed that the synagogue wouldn’t open for the holidays. But that is not the reason they can’t celebrate Passover. When they were girls, their mother used to take them over to the houses of relatives, but they have no relatives here in Baghdad. They are all dead, or living abroad. They never married.

And they don’t have the money to buy the chicken they would like to stuff with rice, meat and spices for Passover. When the government was functioning, the Ministry of Religious Affairs gave them the equivalent of $20 a month, which they said was sufficient.

But there is no ministry now, so there is no income.

The sisters live in a run-down brick house. The inside walls are covered with black soot from a kerosene stove, and the paint is peeling in sheets off the walls. There are two metal beds, one with a flimsy mattress, the other a nest of boards. There are two Hebrew posters on the walls (though they said they can’t read them).

When they were growing up, the sisters lived in a community of about 200 Jews near the Shorja market, one of Baghdad’s central shopping districts. Back then, their mother used to observe the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday and did not work, cook, or turn on or off the lights.

“We live with the Muslims so we became like them,” said Khalida. “We have new habits now.”