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Tomb of Ovadiah, Dohuk, Kurdistan, Iraq

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Kurdistan:

The Kurdistan Region is an autonomous region of Iraq. It is generally considered one part of the greater region of Kurdistan, which includes parts of Turkey, Syria, and Iran. The process of the region gaining autonomy has been long and bloody, featuring a genocide against the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War in the mid-late 1980s. It has been estimated that before the reestablishment of the State of Israel there were between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews living there
(6). Their ancestors, the Israelities, were exiled from Samaria by the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III. (The other Jews of Iraq came from Judeah and were sent to urban centers of Babylon.) The Israelites “lived in villages scattered across remote mountains, largely cut off from one another and from the crosswinds of civilization... the Bible reserves no poetry for their exile. The Israelites, says Isaiah 27:13, were simply “lost” in Assyria” (7).The regional capital of this area is Erbil (Irbil, Arbil). At the time of mass emigration approximately 2,000 Jewish families lived here (8). The next three largest cities in today’s population are Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah, and Dohuk. Even in the cities life was less cosmopolitan than in Baghdad, where many Jews found success in government in banking.

Most Jews in Iraqi Kurdistan made their living through agrarian work or as merchants. In the city of Zahko, where less than 2,000 Jews lived in 1950, few Jews heard of the rise in anti-Semitism in places like Baghdad. Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully, respecting each other’s traditions. Life was far less cosmopolitan—boys did not stay in school very long, usually beginning to work with their families as soon as they were physically capable of it. Literacy among girls was unheard of.

This isolation, both within small towns, and of Kurdistan within Iraq, changed the path of Jewish exile. Its distance from the government center in Baghdad and harsh winters kept it a refuge for ethnic-religious minorities past the rise of anti-Semitism in cities like Baghdad. However, there were trickles of Jewish migration to Palestine as early as the 16th century, preceding the mass emigration to take place after the creation of the State of Israel (9). Eventually,
the region’s comparative isolation did not exempt it from the increasing number of anti-Semitic government policies in the 1930s and 40s and often exacerbated Jews’ feelings of being unwanted. Living in Israel seemed to many a much better alternative than continuing to exist as the persecuted minority religion in a minority ethnic group. The small class of merchants was more reluctant to leave their businesses, but in the end, 95% of the Jewish Kurds in Iraq emigrated to Israel during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, the mass airlifts of Jews out of Iraq.

Kurdistan was a popular location for smuggling Jews into Iran, where they were able to leave for Israel. Immigration of Iraqi citizens to Israel had
been banned in 1947. By 1950, the law was changed so that they could emigrate if they gave up their Iraqi citizenship. In Israel, the class lines between Kurdish Jews and those from Baghdad were blurred, as they were often treated as a singular, crude mass by those with European heritage.

The Jews of Kurdistan largely spoke dialects of Aramaic until their mass emigration to Israel in 1951 and 1952. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Assyrian Empire and the exiled Israelites are assumed to have adapted quickly to it (10). After the Islamic conquest of the Middle East in the seventh century, Arabic replaced Aramaic in urban and accessible areas, but not in Kurdistan (11). The remaining speakers in Israel find their language is quickly being replaced by
modern Hebrew. It is possible that Aramaic is at risk of extinction within the next few decades.

In 2013, Gil Shefler wrote that exiled Iraqi Jews are returning most frequently to Kurdistan, whether to visit, do business, or stay. Kurdish-Israeli journalist Dino Danil claimed that there was “nothing to fear” in speaking Hebrew on the streets of Erbil. Businessman Nur Ben Schlomo, whose parents were of mixed Jewish origin, has achieved remarkable success in business in Erbil, and said that the conditions allow for him to freely speak about his Jewish heritage now that the regime of Saddam Hussein is over. However, he still asked for the reporter to use his Hebrew rather than legal name as a precaution. His private observance of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur reflect the lack of a Jewish community in any part of Iraq (12). Those who remain in Kurdistan still do not feel safe making public demonstrations of their faith. Yet Kurds are less likely than the Arab majority of central and southern Iraq to view Jews or Israel as their enemies. It is illegal for Israeli citizens to visit Iraq, and those who travel to Kurdistan must do so discreetly. The region continues to dispute territory with the rest of Iraq. It is also threatened by the advance of ISIS (13).

Dohuk, Kurdistan, Iraq

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