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Rahel Shahmoon School at Baghdad, Iraq
Rahel Shahmoon School in Baghdad (בגדד, بغدد), Iraq (עיראק, العراق).
Description
Founded in 1909 by the "Jamiyat al-Taawun" committee. The school was originally called Maktab al-Ta'awun, and was a kindergarten and elementary school for boys. In 1912 a building was purchased for the school, and in 1921 Eliyahu Shahmoon decided to build a new two-storey building for the school. The first floor of this building was a synagogue, while the second was the "Rachel Shahmoon School", named after his daughter Rachel. The community added additional wings to the school in 1924, 1925, and 1930. The building also briefly housed a medical clinic donated by Khaduri Shaya and named after his wife Leoni. Instruction at the school was mainly in Arabic. Shortly before mass immigration to Israel, in 1950 Rachel Shahmoon had 669 students, 16 teachers, and 11 classrooms.
Baghdad was home to the largest Jewish community in Iraq possibly from as early as its founding in the eighth century. By 1908, the Jews of Baghdad numbered around 53,000, about a third of Baghdad's total population, and lived in many quarters--including al-Tawrat, Tahat it-Takyah, Abu Saifan, and Suq Hannun. Although Jews were involved in local politics, new tensions began to rise between Jews and Muslims--leading to an anti-Jewish riot on October 15, 1908--and World War I forced many Jews to flee the city. In 1948, the Jewish community in Baghdad numbered around 77,000; however, the Jewish community began to fear life in Baghdad after the Farhūd, a pogrom which occured on June 1, 1941, left 130 Jews killed and millions lost in property damage. The Farhūd inspired the growth of Zionism and Communism among a minority of Jews in Baghdad who felt increasingly disconnected from the Iraqi state. Bombings throughout the 1950s further estranged the Jewish community, and by 1952 after mass immigration to Israel, Europe, the United States and Canada, only about 6,000 Jews remained in Iraq. The Jewish community endured further violence throughout Saddam Husayn's regime, and by 2003 the last synagogue in Baghdad had closed.
Sources
Golany p63, #9.
Dispersion & Liberation Album: Jewry of Iraq.
Jews of Iraq from the Time of Geonim until Our Days, pp. 242 and 295.
Yaron Ayalon; Ariel I. Ahram, "Baghdad," Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman, Brill Online, 2014, Reference, Wellesley College, 19 June 2014 <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/baghdad-SIM_000468>;.