History of the Jews in Kurdistan

Kurdish Jews

, Moshe Barazani, Yitzhak Mordechai, Yona Sabar, Asenath BarzaniMassoud Barzani
Total population
150,000 (Israel)
Regions with significant populations
Israel	150,000 in Israel (? outside)
Languages
Jewish and local dialects of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic were their native tongues in Kurdistan and are the native tongues of older generation today. Younger generations today speak the languages of their countries of residence, plus Mizrahi Hebrew (liturgical use) and traditional Kurdish, and Azeri (in Iran) dialects.
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Other Jewish groups (Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, etc.) Kurds

Illuminated plaque on paper with calligraphy and decorative elements. Includes four liturgical poems for Purim customary among Kurdish Jews; mid-19th century, Kurdistan.

Kurdish Jews or Assyrian Jews (Hebrew: יהודי כורדיסתאן; Yehudei Kurdistan Template:Lang-ku; are the ancient Jewish communities inhabiting the region known as Mesopotamia, roughly covering parts of Iran, northern Iraq, Syria and eastern Turkey. Their clothing and culture is similar to neighbouring Christian Assyrians, especially due to their Assyrian Aramaic language. Until their immigration to Israel in the 1940s and early 1950s, the Jews of Mesopotamia lived as closed ethnic communities.

History

Jews in Rawanduz, northern Iraq, 1905.

Tradition holds that Jews first arrived in the area of modern Kurdistan after the Assyrian conquest of the Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC; they were subsequently relocated to the Assyrian capital. During the first century BC, the royal house of Adiabene, whose capital was Arbil (Aramaic: Arbala; Template:Lang-ku), was converted to Judaism. King Monobazes, his queen Helena, and his son and successor Izates are recorded as the first proselytes.

According to the memoirs of Benjamin of Tudela and Pethahiah of Regensburg, there were about 100 Jewish settlements and substantial Jewish population in Kurdistan in 12th century. Benjamin of Tudela also gives the account of David Alroi, the messianic leader from central Kurdistan, who rebelled against the king of Persia and had plans to lead the Jews back to Jerusalem. These travellers also report of well-established and wealthy Jewish communities in Mosul, which was the commercial and spiritual center of Kurdistan. Many Jews fearful of approaching crusaders, had fled from Syria and Palestine to Babylonia and Kurdistan. The Jews of Mosul enjoyed some degree of autonomy over managing their own community.

Tanna'it Asenath Barzani, who lived in Mosul from 1590 to 1670, was the daughter of Rabbi Samuel Barzani of Kurdistan. She later married Jacob Mizrahi Rabbi of Amadiyah (in Iraqi Kurdistan) who lectured at a yeshiva. She was famous for her knowledge of the Torah, Talmud, Kabbalah and Jewish law. After the early death of her husband, she became the head of the yeshiva at Amadiyah, and eventually was recognized as the chief instructor of Torah in Kurdistan. She was called tanna'it (female Talmudic scholar), practiced mysticism, and was reputed to have known the secret names of God. Asenath is also well known for her poetry and excellent command of the Hebrew language. She wrote a long poem of lament and petition in the traditional rhymed metrical form. Her poems are among the few examples of the early modern Hebrew texts written by women.

Among the most important Jewish shrines in Kurdistan are the tombs of Biblical prophets, such as that of Nahum in Alikush, Jonah in Nabi Yunis (ancient Nineveh), and Daniel in Kirkuk. There are also several caves supposedly visited by Elijah. All are venerated by Jews today.

Kurdish Jews have also been active in the Zionist movement. One of the most famous members of Lehi (Freedom Fighters of Israel) was Moshe Barazani, whose family immigrated from Iraqi Kurdistan and settled in Jerusalem in the late 1920s. Important in the preservation of their traditions and especially their language, Aramaic, after migration was the work of Yona Sabar.

History and Historiography

One of the main problems in the history and historiography of the Jews of Kurdistan was the lack of written history and the lack of documents and historical records.

During the 1930s a Jewish Ethnographer from Germany named Erich Brauer made an important contribution by placing the foundations for the social and ethnographic history of the Jews of Kurdistan. One of the methods he used was oral history while interviewing informants from the Jewish Kurdish community. Unfortunately, he did not complete his work, and it was his assistant, Raphael Patai, who prepared his book for publication in Hebrew, Yehude Kurditan: mehqar ethnographi (Jerusalem, 1940). Fifty years later, while in the United States, Patai published an English version of this book and exposed the subject of the Jews of Kurdistan to the world's English readers.

Recently, an important book came out by the Israeli scholar Mordechai Zaken, who used written, archival and oral sources in his work to bring to life the relations between the Jews and their Kurdish masters or chieftains(Aghas)through hundreds of vivid accounts and stories that are spread along the book, of the fifty-six oral sources from 6 Kurdish towns:

• Zahko
• Aqrah
• Amadia/Amadiya
• Dohuk
• Sulaimaniya and
• Shinno/Ushno/Ushnoviyya

as well as dozens villages, mostly in southern Kurdistan or in the region of Bahdinan. Zaken's Book, Jewish Subjects and their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan, is based strongly on oral history sources, and it unveils the personal experience of urban and rural Jews during the first half of the 20th century.

Professor Joce Blau,one of the world's leading scholars in the Kurdish languages, culture and history, referred to the works of these two scholars: "This part of Mr. Zaken’s thesis, concerning Jewish life in Bahdinan, well complements the impressive work of the pioneer ethnologist Erich Brauer.

Methodology and Oral-History

It appears that where no written documents are available, there is no alternative for oral sources, who are well chosen and carefully used. The analysis of the Oral sources is then very important. Oral history was the main source for the written history of the Jews of Kurdistan, as had been used in both works of Eric Brauer and Mordechai Zaken and to a degree by the historian of the Iraqi Jews Abraham Ben-Yaacob (The Jewish communities of Kurdistan, 2nd and rev. ed. Jerusalem)

See also

• Jewish ethnic divisions
• Mizrahi Jews
• Iraqi Jews
• Turkish Jews
• Persian Jews
• Kurdish people
• Kurdish Christians
• Israeli–Kurdish relations
• Northeastern Neo-Aramaic
• Seharane

External links

• IKN - Israel Kurdistan Network

References

• Mordechai Zaken, "Jewish Subjects and their tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan: A study in Survival," Jewish Identities in a Changing World, 9 (Boston: Brill Publishers, 2007)
• Brauer, Erich; Patai, Raphael, The Jews of Kurdistan. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993).
• Asenath, Barzani, "Asenath's Petition", First published in Hebrew by Jacob Mann, ed., in Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature, vol.1, Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, 1931. Translation by Peter Cole.
• Yona Sabar, The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
• Ariel Sabar, My Father's Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. Illustrated. 332 pp. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Biography & study of Yona Beh Sabagha = Yona Sabar, native scholar of this community and its language. Reviewed in The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2008 and The Washington Post, Oct. 26, 2008.
• Mahir Ünsal Eriş, Kürt Yahudileri - Din, Dil, Tarih , (Kurdish Jews) In Turkish, Kalan Publishing, Ankara, 2006
• Hasan-Rokem, G. , Hess, T. and Kaufman, S., Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity: A Bilingual Anthology, Publisher: Feminist Press, 1999, ISBN 1-55861-223-8. (see page 65, 16th century/Kurdistan and Asenath's Petition)
• Berkovic, S., Straight Talk: My Dilemma as an Orthodox Jewish Woman, Ktav Publishing House, 1999, ISBN 0-88125-661-7.
• Rabbi Asenath Barzani in Jewish Storytelling Newsletter, Vol.15, No.3, Summer 2000
• Kurdish Jewry (יהדות כורדיסתאן) An Israeli site on Kurdish Jewry. Template:He icon
• The Jews of Kurdistan Yale Israel Journal, No. 6 (Spr. 2005).
• Hadassah Magazine, Nov. 2003
• Towards a Sephardic Jewish Renaissance
• Judaism in Encyclopaedia Kurdistanica
• Schwartz, Howard. The Day the Rabbi Disappeared. Jewish Holiday Tales of Magic. Illustrated by Monique Passicot. Viking, 2000. ISBN 0-67-088733-1. $15.99. 80 pp.
• Sabar, Ariel. My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq