For Jewish Iraqi archive, road to exhibition and return

A tip in May 2003 about a 7th-century Talmud volume in the basement of the Iraqi intelligence ministry (Mukhabarat) led a team from the Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraq’s transitional government, to a trove of materials from the Iraqi Jewish community that were floating in four feet of water. A decade later, what became known as the Iraqi Jewish Archive is set to return to its country of origin—along a road paved with questions about its rightful owner.

Before returning to Iraq’s government, the archive will be featured in the “Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage” display, opening Oct. 11 at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC and running until Jan. 5, 2014. The exhibition features 24 of the preserved items, including a Hebrew Bible with Commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793, a Torah scroll fragment from Genesis, and a 1902 Haggadah hand lettered and decorated by an Iraqi Jewish youth.

According to an agreement signed with Iraqi authorities in August 2003 to allow the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to take temporary physical custody of the Iraqi Jewish Archive for the purpose of preservation, conservation, restoration, and exhibition of the material, the collection will be returned to the Iraqi government when the project is completed.

But Stanley Urman, executive vice president of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), views that agreement as problematic.

“Our concern is that within the agreement is a clause that requires that these archives be returned to Iraq,” Urman told JNS.org. “We believe the agreement is based on a flawed premise, that premise being that the archives are the property of the Iraqi government. Our question is—how did they get into the basement of the Mukhabarat?”

Answering his own question, Urman said, “They were seized from Jewish institutions, schools, and the community.” He says JJAC believes Iraqi Jews, who had no say in the agreement to return the archives to Iraq, must “be involved in any decision pertaining to ultimate disposition of their own cultural heritage.”

What remains a mystery, however, is why the Iraqi government wants the archives returned.

Urman said, first, with the chaos in Iraq, the country has more important issues to deal with than the archives. Second, Iraq does not have a good track record on preserving important Jewish sites like the tomb of Ezekiel, which is now being used as a mosque.

Maurice Shohet—president of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq (WOJI)—said his organization’s priority was the preservation, conservation, and digitization of the material. “It is important for us and researchers worldwide to have access,” he said.

But for Iraqi Jews like Joseph Dabby—who escaped from Iraq with his wife in 1971 and is now chairman of the board of Kahal Joseph Congregation in Los Angeles, a synagogue that follows the Iraqi prayer rite—the idea of returning the archive to Iraq, a country that in recent memory has discriminated against Jews and even murdered them, is abhorrent. Today the Jewish population in Iraq is only five people, a sad remnant of a Jewish community that created the Babylonian Talmud.

Like Urman, Dabby expressed disbelief at the idea that Iraq wants the archive back out of any interest in keeping the Iraqi Jewish heritage alive.

“My personal appeal to the Iraqi government is to find a way to keep the archive available for the Jewish community from Iraq,” he added. “They took this from their synagogues; they should give it to them, wherever they are.”

“At this point, that small thing, the archives, was a trigger point for all the emotions kept inside for 40 or 60 years and have now poured out,” he said.

Those emotions are particularly strong for Dabby, who saw his family and friends tortured and executed in Iraq, and said he was imprisoned there three times himself “for being Jewish.”