The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951

Moshe Gat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780714642239
• eBook ISBN: 9781135246617
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

In this study, Moshe Gat details how the immigration of the Jews from Iraq in effect marked the eradication of one of the oldest and most deeply-rooted Diaspora communities. He provides a background to these events and argues that both Iraqi discrimination and the actions of the Zionist underground in previous years played a part in the flight. The Denaturalization law of 1950 saw tens of thousands of Jews registering for emigration, and a bomb thrown at a synagogue in 1951 accelerated the exodus.

1

The Socio-economic Conditions of the Jewish Community

1. Modernization processes

In a 1910 report on the Jews of Iraq, Harun Da'ud Shohat, interpreter at the British Consulate in Baghdad, wrote:¹

The Jewish community at Baghdad is, after that of Salonica, the most numerous, important and prosperous in Turkey … The Jews are particularly interested in trade. They have literally monopolized the local trade, and neither Muhammadans nor Christians can compete with them. Even the few leading Muhammadan merchants owe their prosperity to the capable and industrious Jews whom they have for years employed as clerks. The Jews are very ambitious, hard-working, capable and economical. They are also very cunning, timid, and tactful … They are becoming richer day by day;… The Jews on the whole are practical people; their ideal is to work hard and make money.

The report was written several decades after the commencement of the process of modernization and revival within the Jewish community, which was to end with its dispersal in the 1950s. The report depicts a community which, after a long period of physical and spiritual decline, had recovered economic strength and become one of the most prosperous Jewish communities in the Middle East. It draws the portrait of a flourishing, dynamic and active community with extensive contacts abroad, playing a dominant role in imports and domestic commerce.

The economic renaissance of the Jewish community was accompanied from the 1830s by a spiritual revival. Until then, Jewish children had attended private ‘heders’. where the curriculum was limited and various age-groups were taught together. In 1840 Yeshivat Bet Zilcha, the first yeshiva (Talmudical College) in Iraq since the thirteenth century, was established by the wealthy Yehezkel ben Reuben Menashe. He appointed Hakham Abdallah Somech, a leading Baghdad rabbi, as its head. In 1908 the Meir Eliahu yeshiva was set up. The two institutions trained rabbis, who served Jewish congregations not only in Iraq, but also in Iran, India and the Far East.²

Shohat's report was confined to the Baghdad community. He noted that, according to an official census conducted two years previously (1908), there were 35,000 Jews in the city. Another estimate cites a figure of 50,000, while the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Anglo-Jewish Association refer to 45,000. There is, incidentally, no official record of a 1908 census. Throughout the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries there were various estimates of the number of Jews in Baghdad. Conflicting assessments were made by travellers, like Benjamin the Second or Kastilman, or by people who resided in Iraq or visited it.³ We can, however, safely deduce from the various estimates that there were 40,000–50,000 Jews in Baghdad on the eve of the First World War.

These figures, as noted, refer to Baghdad alone, and there are no data for other parts of Iraq. The historian Haim Cohen has estimated that on the eve of the First World War there were 80,000 Jews in Iraq – 50,000 in the capital and the remainder scattered in smaller communities. There were Jewish communities in southern Iraq in such towns as Basra, Hilla, Amara and Kalat Salih; in the centre, in Baghdad and its environs; and in the north, in Mosul, the largest northern town, and in Arbil and Kirkuk. The Jews of the north were unique in that they lived in smaller towns and villages, and made their living mainly by farming.⁴

Jewish settlement was not static, and Jews migrated from the north and centre to the south and vice versa. In the second half of the nineteenth century, after the opening of the Suez Canal and the diversion of international trade from the Aleppo–Mosul route to the Basra route, the Jewish population of Basra swelled. Jews began to settle in Amara, which had been founded in 1861, in Kalat Salih, founded in 1870 and in other towns in the south where they had not previously lived.⁵

In summary, most of the Jews of Iraq lived in three major cities: Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the centre and Basra in the south. Throughout the history of the Iraqi Jewish community, the largest number of Jews was always concentrated in Baghdad. Two censuses conducted about 30 years apart confirm this.

According to an official 1920 census, there were 87,488 Jews in the country out of a total population of 2,849,283, 3.1 per cent in all.⁶ In southern Iraq – Basra, Diwaniya, Amara and elsewhere – there were close to 17,700 Jews, and in Basra alone – 6,928. In the north – Arbil, Kirkuk, Mosul and other places – there were 13,835, 7,635 of them in Mosul. The remainder lived in central Iraq, the majority of them, close to 50,000, constituting almost 57 per cent of Iraq's Jews, in Baghdad. Thus, a total of some 65,000 Jews – close to 74 per cent of the community – were living in the three major cities – Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. This pattern was characteristic of Middle Eastern Jewish communities.

Three decades later, no significant changes were recorded in the population dispersal. According to the 1947 census, there were 118,000 Jews in a total population of 4.5 million, namely 2.6 per cent. Most of them were still concentrated in the three major cities, whose joint populations totalled 98,000 or 83 per cent of the Jewish population. The number of Jews in Baghdad had risen by more than 50 per cent and now totalled 77,542. In Basra there were now 10,537 Jews and in Mosul 10,345. Examining the change by region, we see that in the north there had been a 50 per cent increase, from 13,835 to 19,755. In the south, in contrast, the number had dropped, despite a 4,000 increase in the Basra Jewish population. In southern Iraq there were 16,000, a decline from 17,700 in 1920, evident primarily in such places as Amara, Hilla and Diwaniya. The number living in the south, excluding Basra, dropped from 10,750 to 5,473 between the censuses, as a result of emigration.⁷

Historians are unanimous in the view that modernization of the community began in the first half of the nineteenth century.⁸ The process occurred concomitantly with the Ottoman Empire's application of a policy of westernization and modernization, reflected in the Tanzimet. Two decrees issued by the Ottoman Sultan – Hatt-i-Serif Gulhane in 1839 and Hatt-i-Serif Humayun in 1856 – proclaimed the principles of security of life and property and guaranteed equal rights to all subjects of the Empire irrespective of religion. Religious minorities, including Jews, were declared ‘millet’ namely communities with religious and educational autonomy. The poll tax was abolished, but a tax known as ‘bedel-i askeri’ was levied in return for the exemption of religious minorities from military service.⁹

The proclamation of the Jewish community as a ‘millet’ had an impact on its reorganization. Until then, it had been headed by a ‘Nasi’, usually a wealthy member of the community, who also served as chief treasurer. The chief religious authority was the hakham (rabbi), who was appointed by the Nasi and was subject to him. In 1849 the two positions were combined into the post of Hakham Bashi. He was appointed by the central authorities on the recommendation of the Hakham Bashi of the Ottoman Empire. He served as head of the entire Jewish community, answerable to the ruling power, represented the community in dealings with the authority and brought government decrees to the knowledge of the community. Two councils functioned alongside the Hakham Bashi:

a. The spiritual committee (al-majlis al-ruhani) of seven rabbis, which dealt with religious affairs, such as synagogues and matters of personal status;

b. The secular committee (al-majlis al-jismani), consisting of a chair man and eight community notables, dealing with organizational and financial matters, community institutions and areas such as education, tax collection, social welfare, and so on.

In 1864 the Ottoman Empire promulgated the Rabbinical Law, according to which the Hakham Bashi was elected by a general council (majlis umumi) – a representative body of 80 members. His election took effect after ratification by the Sultan. It was specified that the general council would elect the two committees – spiritual and secular.

The community's running expenses were not funded by the central government. Consequently, the community leaders were obliged to seek sources of financing for expenditure such as the salaries of the Hakham Bashi, religious judges (dayanim) and ritual slaughterers, maintenance of charitable institutions, assistance to the poor in paying the military exemption tax, and later also upkeep of hospitals. The main source of income was the levy on kosher meat (gabille), first imposed in 1830.¹⁰ Other sources were philanthropy, whether from local residents or emigrants, and payments of various fees. The community also owned property – houses, shops and land donated as religious trusts.¹¹

The organizational structure of the community was ostensibly democratic, and, in fact, the general council selected the Hakham Bashi and the two executive committees. But ordinary members of the community had no impact whatsoever on public life and on the election of their representatives. Communal affairs were entirely under the control of the wealthy – a narrow stratum of merchants, bankers and prosperous landowners. All affairs were determined by them, and later also by the upper middle class, whose influence was decisive within the community.¹² The Hakham Bashi was subject to them and hence they were the real leaders of the community. Harun Da'ud Shohat did not exaggerate when he wrote in his report that the Hakham Bashi was ‘a mere puppet in their hands’. This organizational pattern endured for 67 years, until 1931, when the Iraqi monarchy enacted a law reorganizing the community.

The wealthy and influential class was relatively small. At the turn of this century, merchants and bankers comprised five per cent of the Jewish population. Beneath them were several other strata: a middle class composed of petty wholesale and retail traders (some 30 per cent), the poor (60 per cent) and beggars (five per cent). This latter group came mainly from the northern towns, such as Kirkuk and Mosul. We find the same social stratification throughout the history of Iraqi Jewry, although upward mobility increased, shrinking the lower strata and swelling the upper echelons.

The upper class engaged mainly in foreign and domestic trade and in banking, spheres which gradually came to be dominated by Jews during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jewish commercial activity began in the late eighteenth century with transit trading between Europe and the Far East. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the growth of Basra port enhanced Iraq's importance in international trade.¹³ Concurrently, postal and telegraphic services were established, which helped expand import and export trade in textiles, precious stones, foodstuffs, household items, and pharmaceuticals. Two factors helped them to gain a monopoly over trade and to expand it: their fluency in European languages and the founding of communities of expatriate Iraqi Jews in the countries with which they traded. Such communities were founded in Bombay and Calcutta in India, Manchester and London in England, Rangoon in Burma, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. In fact, wealthy merchants encouraged members of their families to emigrate to those countries.¹⁴ Prime examples were the Sassoons, with branches in India and England, the Kadoories and the Gabbais. By the beginning of the present century, almost every Jewish merchant in Baghdad owned concerns in India, England and Iran.

Between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War, the Jews succeeded in supplanting Moslem and Christian merchants and even European traders, including the British. On the eve of the war, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire the Jews completely dominated Iraqi trade, foreign as well as domestic. According to accounts of ninet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Socio-economic Conditions of the Jewish Community
• 2. The Jewish Community in the Independent Iraqi State
• 3. Iraq Changes its Official Policy towards the Jewish Community
• 4. The Crisis of October-November 1949: A Turning Point for the Jewish Community
• 5. The Legislation on Jewish Emigration
• 6. Organizing the Exodus
• 7. Iraq, Israel and the Jewish Emigration Question
• 8. The Property Freezing Law – March 1951
• 9. Was Terror Employed to Accelerate the Exodus?
• 10. Conclusion
• Abbreviations and Bibliography
• Index