We in Montreal are a community numbering 1500 people. When we arrived in Canada we had no synagogue, and we decided to hire a hall and worship in it on Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sabbaths. We had among us Rabbi Abdalla Hillel, of blessed memory, and I was his assistant. Several years ago we joined the Sephardi synagogue in Montreal, which has a branch in London, and today we manage it: the Director is a former Iraqi and I am his deputy. I also serve as the Secretary of the Iraqi community in Montreal on a voluntary basis. Just recently a well-known Muslim figure arrived in Montreal from Iraq.
He is a married man with two children, and he sent his wife and children to Amman, while he remained in Montreal, as he worked for the US television company NBC. The latter sent him to Baghdad as its correspondent there. In 1992 Saddam Hussein turned against him and he was subjected to a criminal investigation. He was asked, "There is a Jewish woman called Layla Susa: what is your connection with her?" He replied, "She is a Muslim, her father is Hajj Ahmad Susa who was Jew but converted to Islam in 1936 (he is still called a Jew to this day), I have done nothing". They interrogated him for three hours. He had a friend in the investigation department who telephoned that night and said, "You are in serious trouble. You must leave Baghdad at once". He gave him the keys to his father's house, hired a cab for $200, and reached Amman. Then he came to live in Montreal and met us. We told him of our origins and he told us about a tray made by a Jewish silversmith that he had bought in Baghdad. We told him that in Israel there was a unique place that documents the heritage of Babylonian Jewry and collects objects that belonged to the Jews of Iraq. He was very moved and decided to donate the tray to the Center, together with a heartfelt letter in which he narrates his story. I cite passages from the letter here:
In the middle of the month of Av in 1991 I went to a gift shop belonging to one of my acquaintances in the Karrada district. I was looking for something suitable to give to a friend from Jordan as a mark of thanks for his help to me and my family. He said, "Listen, my friend, I have something of value, a pure silver tray, the work of a known Iraqi Jewish silversmith called Joshua and I think it was made in 1920. I have heard that in Israel valuable objects of the Jews of Iraq are collected". He went down to the basement and came back with the tray. I bought it for $120. I contacted my wife to tell her that I had a gift, and she replied that the matter of the gift was already settled. In January 1992 troubles mounted in Baghdad, and I decided to leave Iraq as quickly as possible. In April 1992 I reached Montreal with my wife and children. All we possessed were our clothes and a few personal things, and Joshua's tray. In Montreal I met Jews from Iraq. On one occasion they gave me books about the Jews of Iraq, which I read, and I was enthralled by them. They aroused memories of my childhood and youth, when I used to hear my late grandmother, who raised me, saying, at a time when a crisis or calamity prevailed in the country, "This is the vengeance of the Jews". My grandmother spoke nostalgically of her Jewish women friends in the city, and lamented the lovely days when she used to meet them. I remember her saying, "When the Jews left, abundance and blessing departed from Iraq". One day I said to my wife, "Who knows if the tray, Joshua's tray, was not stolen from the house of an innocent Jew, or taken from one of the shops in the Farhud?" I imagined a Jewish lady serving tea to her Muslim guests or her husband and family off that tray. Then I decided that the tray would not remain with us, that I would present it as a gift to the Babylonian Jewry Museum at Or Yehuda. History will not forget the contribution of the Jews of Iraq to their homeland, the people who built Iraq and lent their strength to its consolidation. Names like Yehezkel Sassoon, Ezra Menahem Daniel, David Samara, Abraham Salih al-Kabir, Naim Zilkha, Reuben Battat, Shafik Adas, Salim Yitshak, Salih Kahtan, and hundreds of others. I present this tray to the Babylonian Jewry Museum and return to its owners a deposit that was in my care. By this act I feel proud and uplifted. For my brothers the Jews of Iraq uphold the legacy, which in fact is the legacy of Iraq, where shone the first gleam of human awareness, in the cradle of human civilization.