The Last Jews in Baghdad: Remembering a Lost Homeland
by Nissim Rejwan, Joel Beinin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joel Beinin, Nissim RejwanEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-01
ISBN: 0292702930
Number of pages: 268
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Book Reviews of The Last Jews in Baghdad: Remembering a Lost Homeland
Book Review: What a marvelous Book!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is certainly one of the most amusing masterpiece books I have read in a while.
Rejwan is an Iraqi Jew who left his homeland heading to Tel Aviv, Israel in the 1950s. To write this book, he had to debrief his elder sister in Haifa, whom he thought retained better images of their days in Baghdad.
The end result is a marvelous book about a world that seems to belong to ancient times, yet it does not. The story of Jews of Iraq is still under covered. Who were they? Where they lived? How they lived? Why they left?
Rejwan articulates a wonderful account in this regard. He takes the reader to old time Baghdad of the 1920s and 1930s, Baghdad before plumbing or running water in houses or refrigerators. As you read this marvelous book, you can feel the smell and the taste of the dishes, most of them common Iraqi recipes, that mother Rejwan used to prepare.
Rejwan also delves on the feeling of community in Baghdad, how his family managed to pay its bills after his dad lost his sight. He recounts how his mom made half a chicken feed his big family, and last for more than one meal. He talks about the synagogue and how his family observed the Sabbath.
This book is worth every penny and every dollar. It is not only about the Jews of Iraq, but about one of the big Arab cities in the early decades of the past centuries.
Summary of The Last Jews in Baghdad: Remembering a Lost Homeland
Once upon a time, Baghdad was home to a flourishing Jewish community. More than a third of the city's people were Jews, and Jewish customs and holidays helped set the pattern of Baghdad's cultural and commercial life. On the city's streets and in the bazaars, Jews, Muslims, and Christians--all native-born Iraqis--intermingled, speaking virtually the same colloquial Arabic and sharing a common sense of national identity. And then, almost overnight it seemed, the state of Israel was born, and lines were drawn between Jews and Arabs. Over the next couple of years, nearly the entire Jewish population of Baghdad fled their Iraqi homeland, never to return. In this beautifully written memoir, Nissim Rejwan recalls the lost Jewish community of Baghdad, in which he was a child and young man from the 1920s through 1951. He paints a minutely detailed picture of growing up in a barely middle-class family, dealing with a motley assortment of neighbors and landlords, struggling through the local schools, and finally discovering the pleasures of self-education and sexual awakening. Rejwan intertwines his personal story with the story of the cultural renaissance that was flowering in Baghdad during the years of his young manhood, describing how his work as a bookshop manager and a staff writer for the Iraq Times brought him friendships with many of the country's leading intellectual and literary figures. He rounds off his story by remembering how the political and cultural upheavals that accompanied the founding of Israel, as well as broad hints sent back by the first arrivals in the new state, left him with a deep ambivalence as he bid a last farewell to a homeland that had become hostile to its native Jews.Jewish Books
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