Journal of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center
No.16, Spring  2008


 
CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN SEPHARDI FEDERATION AND THE SEPHARDIC HOUSE TO COMMEMORATE JEWISH LIFE IN IRAQ

 

The conference commemorating 2600 years of Jewish community life in Iraq was held in New York under the auspices of the American Sephardi Federation and the Sephardic House. The conference’s main theme was the literary, cultural and political activities of the late Mr. Meir Basri (1911-2006), the last President of the Iraqi Jewish community.

The conference was a great success. Among its participants were Iraqi Jewish scholars, intellectuals and public figures from Canada, England, France, the Netherlands and the United States. Some of the participants also attended a meeting of The World Union of Iraqi Jewry, held before the conference began. The meeting was chaired by the former Israeli ambassador, Mr. Zvi Gabay. The people present at the meeting then joined the conference with a mixed crowd from the United States, thus giving the conference an international tone. In addition to the conference itself there were a number of exhibitions, including one with photographs depicting Jewish life in Iraq from family collections, and another, entitled “By the Rivers of Babylon”, with items from the Jewish Museum in London and the Center for Jewish History in New York.

The conference began on Thursday evening, November 2, 2006. It was dedicated to the memory of the late Meir Basri, the last President of the Iraqi Jewish community. Mr. Basri’s four daughters arrived for the conference from England, Canada, Washington and New York. Another relative who attended was Prof. Carole Basri from New York.

The evening’s proceedings began with words of greeting by the President of the American Sephardi Federation, Mr. David Dangoor, and the former Managing Director of the Federation, Mr. Francesco Spaniolo. Prof. Shmuel Moreh from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the conference organizer and moderator, gave a lecture about the unique stature of the late Meir Basri, writer and scholar, and described the latter’s devoted service on behalf of the Iraqi state, in its Ministries of External Affairs, the Treasury and Communications, as well as in the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce, which he headed for a time and served as Editor-in-Chief of its official newspaper. The lecturer also spoke of Basri’s participation at international fairs as the representative of the Iraqi monarchy, his educational and cultural activities, his services on behalf of the Jewish community, and his defense of Jews who had been imprisoned, tortured and executed, in addition to his activities as poet, writer, historian and biographer of Iraq and its leading personalities. Upon his election to the post of what turned out to be the last President of the Iraqi Jewish community he was forced to undertake the very difficult task of representing and protecting the persecuted Jewish minority in Iraq. Basri managed to survive the Iraqi Ba'thist regime, which aimed at liquidating the Iraqi Jewish community, and succeeded in escaping to Western Europe, where he wrote most of his biographical works, on "one-thousand Iraqi personalities of the twentieth century".

Following Prof. Moreh’s lecture, Prof. Carole Basri’s film, “Meir Basri: A filmed interview with the late Meir Basri”, was then shown. In the film Basri spoke of his activities in Iraq and England. This was followed by an impressive documentary film on Iraqi Jewry made by the journalist and author Mr. Salim Fattal, entitled “The Jewish Community of Babylon". After the film Mr. Naim Kattan, a Jewish-Canadian author born in Baghdad, lectured on “The Farhud in Baghdad, 1941: background and consequences”. The last lecture of the evening was given by Prof. Carole Basri, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, on “Under Color of Law: The Ethnic Cleansing of Iraqi Jews”.

Mrs. Florence, a member of the Board of Directors, hosted the conference on midday of Friday, November 3, 2006, for a meeting devoted to the traditional Babylonian Sabbath. An Iraqi meal was served, followed by a lecture by Prof. Zvi Ben-Dor of New York University, on “My Little Baghdad: Growing up an  Iraqi in Israel”, in which he gave an entertaining and humorous description of his childhood in a traditional Iraqi Jewish family in Jerusalem.

At the end of the Sabbath the singers Yair Dalal and David Bukhbut gave a musical performance, during which they sang traditional Iraqi Jewish religious and secular songs. The songs swept the audience on an extended journey into the distant past, when Jewish influence in Baghdad was considerable and all the bazaars, big stores and banks were closed on the Sabbath.

Sunday, November 5, 2006, was devoted to scholarly lectures. The first one, by Prof. Shmuel Moreh, provided a concise historical survey of the Jewish presence in Iraq. He was followed by Prof. Yaakov Elman of Yeshiva University, who talked about “Iraqi Jewish Cosmopolitanism and the Compilation of the Babylonian Talmud”. Prof. Moreh, who moderated the session, spoke between lectures on the attitude of Islam to Jews from the beginnings of Islam until the founding of Baghdad and the establishment of yeshivas there. The session ended with a lecture by Prof. Norman Golb from the University of Chicago on “The Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Civilization: the social and cultural life of the Jews of Iraq”.

The last session began with a lecture by Prof. Lev Hakak of UCLA, on “The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Literature in Iraq in: 1735-1950”, in which he presented the latest important results of his researches. He was followed by Prof. Yona Sabar, also from UCLA, who talked about “Vestiges of the Jewish Past in Iraqi-Kurdistan: Impressions from Two Recent Visits" and a documentary film, the result of his risky journey to the north of Iraq. He documented the destruction which the local inhabitants wrought on the Jewish sites in Iraq and the government’s indifference. The session ended with a lecture by Prof. Shalom Sabar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the subject in which he specializes, “The Visual Arts of the Jews of Iraq”.

In the wake of the conference a number of universities and Jewish institutions expressed their aspiration to hold similar events.