In Baghdad’s bustling districts, workers are eager to restore the rabbinic temples of centuries-old rabbis, seeking to revive the long-standing legacy of the Jewish community in Iraq.
Just a few months ago, Rabbi Isaac Gaon’s grave was filled with trash. The doors were rusted, the windows were broken, and the walls were blacked out by decades of neglect.
Now the marble tile once covered a small tomb, in its center is the poem, the name of the rabbin, and the year of his death: 688. A large gravestone stands with silver glasses hanging from the wall behind them.
“It was a garbage dump and we weren’t allowed to restore it,” said Khalida Elyahu, 62, head of Iraq’s Jewish community.
Iraq’s Jewish community was once one of the largest communities in the Middle East, but today it has dipped to only a handful of members.
There is currently only one synagogue left in Baghdad, but there are no rabbis.
The shrine’s restoration is funded by the Jewish community for an estimated cost of $150,000.
The project will bring about a “revival of communities both in and out of Iraq,” Elyav said.
With the support of Iraqi officials, she expressed her hope to restore further ignored sites.
There is little information about Rabbi Isaac. When he visited the grave earlier this year, Iraqi national security adviser Kasim al-Alj said the rabbi was a financial figure.
Rabbi Isaac was a prominent figure in the Gaonic era, also known as the time of the Rabbi Babylonian Academy.
The title “Gaon” could potentially refer to his role as the head of such academy.
According to Professor Simcha Gross of the University of Pennsylvania, his name was quoted in the 10th century by another rabbis.
According to the account, Rabbi Isaac led 90,000 Jews to meet Ali Ibn Abi Talib, fourth Islamic caliph and relative of Prophet Muhammad.
“There is no other evidence for this event, and there is reason to be skeptical,” Gross noted.
It is not even his religious views about Rabbi Isaac.
According to biblical tradition, the Jews arrived in Iraq in 586 BC and were taken as prisoners by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II after destroying the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.
In Iraq, they compiled the Babylonian Talmud.
Thousands of years later, under the control of the Ottoman Empire, Jews made up 40% of Baghdad’s population.
Like other Arab countries, Iraqi Jewish history has changed dramatically after the Arabic “catastrophe” and the Palestinian Naqba, which means the establishment of Israel in 1948. Soon, almost all of Iraq’s 135,000 Jews were in exile.
Decades of conflict and instability — Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the US-led aggression in 2003, and subsequent violence — reduced the community even further.
According to Elyahu, 50 synagogues and Jewish sites remain in Iraq today. Most are in abandoned areas, some are reused as warehouses.
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