The Last Jews in Baghdad : : Remembering a Lost Homeland / / Nissim Rejwan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Rejwan, Nissim,
• MitwirkendeR: Beinin, Joel,
• TeilnehmendeR: Beinin, Joel.
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (268 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword. Jews as Native Iraqis: An Introduction -- Preface. On Taking Stock -- Chapter 1 In old Baghdad -- Chapter 2 The Rejwan tribe -- Chapter 3 Mother and the placebo effect -- Chapter 4 Na‘ima -- Chapter 5 Early initiations -- Chapter 6 Schooling -- Chapter 7 The great crash and us -- Chapter 8 Hesqail Abul ‘Alwa hires a helper -- Chapter 9 Living in sexual deprivation -- Chapter 10 Idle days -- Chapter 11 Distorted visions -- Chapter 12 Rashid ‘Ali’s coup and its aftermath -- Chapter 13 Bookshop days -- Chapter 14 A deepening friendship -- Chapter 15 The start: movies, book reviews -- Chapter 16 Out in the cold -- Chapter 17 Disposing of a library -- Chapter 18 End of a community -- Chapter 19 Farewells and reunions -- Appendix A The Jews of Iraq: a brief historical sketch -- Appendix B A selection of book reviews from the Iraq times -- Index of names of persons