Unwitting Zionists Haya Gavish Wayne State University
Unwitting Zionists examines the Jewish community in the northern Kurdistan town of Zakho from the end of the Ottoman period until the disappearance of the community through aliyah by 1951. Because of its remote location, Zakho was far removed from the influence of the Jewish religious leadership in Iraq and preserved many of its religious traditions independently, becoming known as “Jerusalem of Kurdistan,” the most important Jewish community in the region. Author Haya Gavish argues that when the community was exposed to Zionism, it began to open up to external influences and activity. Originally published in Hebrew, Unwitting Zionists uses personal memoirs, historical records, and interviews to investigate the duality between Jewish tradition and Zionism among Zakho’s Jews. Gavish consults a variety of sources to examine the changes undergone by the Jewish community as a result of its religious affiliation with Eretz-Israel, its exposure to Zionist efforts, and its eventual immigration to Israel. Because relatively little written documentation about Zakho exists, Gavish relies heavily on folkloristic sources like personal recollections and traditional stories, including extensive material from her own fieldwork with an economically and demographically diverse group of men and women from Zakho. She analyzes this firsthand information within a historical framework to reconstruct a communal reality and lifestyle that was virtually unknown to anyone outside of the community. Gavish also addresses the relative merits of personal memoirs, optimal interviewer-interviewee relationships, and the problem of relying on the interviewees’ memories in her study. Biographical details of the interviewees are included for additional background. Folklore, oral history, anthropology, and Israeli studies scholars, as well as anyone wanting to learn more about religion, community, and nationality in the Middle East will appreciate Unwitting Zionists.
Haya Gavish is lecturer in Hebrew language and literature at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Jerusalem.
Contents
Preface vii Abbreviations / xi
1. Between Folklore and History / 1 2. Zakho, an Island in the River / 13 3. Religious Attachment to Eretz Israel / 51 4. Rabbinical Emissaries: A Bridge to Eretz Israel / 87 5. Aliyah in the Prestate Period: The Historical Context / 149 6. The British Mandate Period: Aliyah at All Costs / 194 7. Zionism in Zakho: Zionist Cell or Center for Illegal Immigration? / 236 8. Social Upheaval and National Emancipation, 1950—51 316 Epilogue / 337
Interviewees: Biographies of Members of the Zakho Community / 341 Interviewees: Emissaries to the Zionist Underground in Iraq / 355
Notes / 357
Bibliography / 417
Index / 431
PREFACE
Toward the end of 1948, the family of Abraham Zaqen hired Jewish raftsmen from Zakho to transport sawed trees down to the river and float them to Mosul, where they were to be sold. A heavy snowstorm delayed them up for a few days in one of the villages, and only on the Sabbath did the sun finally break through the clouds. They dearly wanted to warm themselves, but due to the Sabbath refrained from lighting a fire. And so, they began dancing, in traditional Kurdish fashion: the lead dancer sang “tee, tee, tee,” waving a kerchief in his free hand, and all the others replied, “Israel,” referring to the Jews, the People of Israel. That was the tradition among Zakho Jews. Some Kurds also gathered round the enthusiastic dancers, but one of them—a policeman, a soldier, or a drunk—complained to the authorities, accusing the Jews of “Zionism.” The dancers were arrested, brought to Zakho and from there to Mosul, where four of the oldest among them were freed. The other eleven were taken to Baghdad for trial in a military court and sentenced to imprisonment. From that day on, the Jews of Zakho had their own “Prisoners of Zion” (Heb. assirei tziyyon, persons who were persecuted because of their Zionist activity or aspirations).
I heard many versions of this story from former Zakho Jews, four of whom were among those imprisoned. Although there was a consensus among all my interviewees about the event itself, for many years they disagreed regarding details and interpretation. Did the raftsmen dance innocently to warm themselves or were they expressing their joy at the establishment of the State of Israel? Did the lead dancer wave a simple kerchief or was it intended to represent the Israeli flag? Was “tee, tee, tee, Israel” merely a traditional phrase, sung when dancing at weddings and other celebrations, referring to the People of Israel throughout its lengthy history? This episode was a traumatic event for the Jews of Zakho. When their community came to an end in 1951, with the mass immigration to Israel, the prisoners remained behind, in jail. They were released only later and came to Israel with the last emigrants from Iraq.
This episode is indicative of the duality between Jewish tradition and Zionism among the Jews of Zakho. Such duality in Jewish communities the world over, including those in Islamic countries, has been the subject of much research. It is not my intention to define Zionism, but rather to delineate the Zionist consciousness of Jews in this community, as understood and put forward by those whom I interviewed. Though the community of Zakho, a town in northern Iraqi Kurdistan, was geographically remote and far removed from the influence of the Jewish religious leadership in Iraq, it unswervingly preserved its traditional—that is, religious character. It generally wrestled with its problems by itself and, as the most important community in the region, was sometimes known as the Jerusalem of Kurdistan.”
Many articles and books have been devoted to the history of Zionism in Iraq and the immigration of Iraqi Jews to Israel, with special emphasis on Baghdad. I have therefore chosen to throw light on what happened in one community in Iraqi Kurdistan on the assumption that the history of a community reflects both its unique features as well as central developments in the surrounding area. Since almost no academic study has been written about local Jewish communities in Kurdistan, one purpose of this volume is to fill that lacuna. Its objective is to examine the changes undergone by the Jewish community of Zakho as a result of its religious affiliation with the Land of Israel, its exposure to Zionist efforts, and its immigration to Israel—from the late Ottoman period until the end of the community when it immigrated en masse to Israel in 1951. The volume is based on my doctoral dissertation submitted to Haifa University in 1999.
No such study has been conducted with relation to Zakho. I chose to examine these changes and developments in that community. I found that its remoteness was a deficiency that had some advantages because it preserved, in the twentieth century, traditional social patterns that had not undergone modernization or politicizing. It was therefore not difficult to trace the changes undergone by the community when it became exposed to Zionist activity from the moment it began to open up to external influences and outside information after World War I.
I chose to conduct a folkloric-historical study. While my academic approach is historical, the very choice of the Zakho community mandated the sources at my disposal. There is very little written documentation about Zakho; not much is known about the town and little has been written about its Jewish community. This is where the folkloric aspect came to my aid, filling the gap as much as possible. The folktale, in its various genres, is mistakenly considered to be no more than a means of entertainment and diversion. In my study, the folktale serves as part of the oral documentation that reconstructs the individual and collective memory of the community.
Whereas most of the sources I used are folkloric, my analysis of them is historical. The written documentation was studied and examined with an eye to what it could contribute to historical knowledge and insight, and served as the basis upon which I relied for the construction of the chronological continuity. Oral documentation supplied me with a rich mine of information, diverse and fascinating, that was grounded in the memory of former Zakho Jews and their children, and on their storytelling ability. In the Hebrew version of this book, I reproduced the stories told by my interviewees in their authentic vernacular language and have tried as much as possible to preserve their spirit and style when translated into English. By means of the oral documentation, I was able to uncover much of the recent history of the community, reconstruct events, reveal certain episodes, trace changes, and verify and countercheck the information provided by the written sources. Without it, much of this would have been lost forever. By means of the two types of sources of information, I believe that I have been able reconstruct a communal reality and lifestyle of which very little had been known.
This study is based on primary sources—interviews and archival material—and on secondary published works. Such works related to all aspects of Kurdish and Iraqi Jewry in general, including Zionist underground activities in Iraq and immigration to Israel. I also found published material that added somewhat to the information I gleaned from the stories related by my interviewees about the Zakho Jewish community and its lifestyle.
In 1988-89, I conducted an extensive field study during which I interviewed thirty men and women from Zakho of various ages. They included rabbis, secular communal leaders, persons who engaged in various crafts and having different economic status, and persons who emigrated from Zakho at different times. Thus was I able to put together a wide panorama of information and impressions. I have also availed myself of the interviews conducted in 1967 by the Oral History Division of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1993—94,1 conducted interviews with an additional twenty-nine persons who had emigrated from Zakho to Israel, and with seven emissaries from Israel to the Zionist underground movement in Iraq that also organized clandestine immigration to Israel. In addition, I was able to consult interviews conducted with former Zakho Jews in 1994 as part of a research seminar on Life Stories, in which I participated, conducted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
I found historical documents in public archives and private collections. I also found some documents outside of Israel, in the archives of the League of Nations in Geneva and the National Archives in London.
"This study would have been impossible without the wonderful cooperation of former Zakho Jews. I am grateful to members of the community who accompanied my research with painstaking interest. Above all, my thanks go out to all the interviewees who consented to be interviewed and lent me their cooperation for several years, and to the members of the Zionist underground movement who were active in Zakho and contributed an important stratum to my study. I have provided some biographical details about the interviewees in the text or at the end of the book. My thanks to Prof. Yona Sabar and Prof. Shalom Sabar for their help in translating some Kurdish words and phrases into English, and thanks to Mr. Ariel Sabar for finding the draft map of unknown origin in the Library of Congress. I am grateful to Dr. Don Rush for his valuable comments and to all those who gave me good advice or tendered other help and whom I have not mentioned by name.
The Hebrew version of this book was published in 2004 by the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, Jerusalem. I thank the institute for permission to publish a revised English edition. Finally, I am especially grateful to the translator, Mr. Yohai Goell, who produced a text that is faithful to the spirit of the Hebrew volume and has helped me create an improved and updated version for readers in English.
Chapter I
Between Folklore and History
The Jews of Kurdistan, who were believed to be descendants of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, were the object of much empathy. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, second president of the State of Israel, and Prof. Simha Assaf, a prominent Jewish historian, and others called them “those that were lost in the land of Assyria,” “ahim nidahim' (remote brothers), and “nidheiyisrael” (the remote of Israel).1 Kurdistan’s Jews were isolated from other Jewish communities for many centuries, the earliest mention of them dating from the twelfth century. Zakho’s Jews were probably even more cut off from any tangible connections with the outside world, for they are barely mentioned in travel itineraries, and even such mentions are primarily in the nineteenth century. I began research on Kurdish Jews in 1978 as part of my studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem after being approached by Prof. Dov Noy, who wanted to conduct field research among the Oriental Jewish communities. Noy pointed to the paucity of folktales of these communities as compared with the abundance of similar folkloric materials whose origin was European Jewry. I was especially attracted to members of the Kurdish ethnic group because in Jerusalem, where I lived, I had Kurdish neighbors and friends. They belonged to an ethnic group so different from my own. My first assignment was with former members of the Jewish community of Arbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. This undertaking prepared me above all to meet the first methodological challenge in this type of research: how to find interviewees among an ethnic group so different from that of the interviewer.
My curiosity whetted by the first study, I set out on another undertaking: to interview a Kurdish storyteller from Barazan, who was about ninety years old and had been the childhood friend of Kurdish revolutionary leader Mula Mustafa Barazani, and to study the stories he told me. This I did at a gathering …
Haya Gavish
Unwitting Zionists
Wayne State University
Wayne State University Press Jewish studies - Folklore studies Unwitting Zionists The Jewish Community of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan I Haya Gavish
Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology
General Editor Dan Ben-Amos University of Pennsylvania
Advisory Editors Jane S. Gerber City University of New York
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett New York University
Aliza Shenhar University of Haifa
Amnon Shiloah Hebrew University
Harvey E. Goldberg Hebrew University
Samuel G. Armistead University of California, Davis
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gavish, Haya. [Hayinu Tsiyonim. English] Unwitting Zionists : the Jewish community of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan / Haya Gavish. p. cm. — (Raphael Patai series in Jewish folklore and anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8143-3366-2 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Jews—Iraq—Zakhu—History—20th century. 2. Zionism—Iraq—Zakhu—History. 3. Zakhu (Iraq)—Ethnic relations. I. Title. DS135.I712Z353513 2010 305.892’405672—dc22 2009028350
The Hebrew edition of this book, Hayyinu Zionim, was published by the Ben-Zvi Institute of Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The English edition was translated from the Hebrew by Yohai Goell.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Werner Weinberg Fund of the Hebrew Union College Press and the Ben-Eli Honig Fund at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for support of this book.
Typeset by Maya Rhodes Composed in Adobe Garamond Pro and Walbaum
Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology
On jacket: Delale Bridge-Ruah Bridge. Courtesy of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, M57.9. Jacket design by Maya Rhodes
Wayne State University Press Detroit, Michigan
“In a study both painstaking and creative, Haya Gavish brings the story of a community in Iraqi Kurdistan as it evolved from ‘remembering Zion’ through actual migration to modern Israel. Combining personal narratives and archival sources, she conveys the complexity of the transformation as experienced by its participants.”
—Harvey E. Goldberg, Professor Emeritus and Sarah Allen Shaine Chair in Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University
“Gavish has done remarkable work, collecting data from a large number of informants then studying it carefully and very ably reworking it from the point of view of three different disciplines: folklore, history, and anthropology.”
- Yona Sabar, professor of Hebrew at University of California, Los Angeles
