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Article: Childhood Memories: Baghdad as a Jewish City.(Statistical Data Included)
- Article from:
- Midstream
- Article date:
- February 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Theodor Herzl Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time
-- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
It has often been said that New York is a Jewish city. I think one can safely say the same about Baghdad in the first half of the 20th century. At the time of writing, barely a hundred Jews, most of them elderly, live in my hometown. The one monument these Jews have left is a synagogue where they, like their ancestors from time immemorial, keep praying for "the welfare of the city," as Jews in the Babylonian diaspora were bidden to do by the Prophet Jeremiah some three millennia ...