THE LAST JEWS IN BAGHDAD by Nissim Rejwan, Joel Beinin (Foreword) ( 9780292726888 )

Item Details

Title:

THE LAST JEWS IN BAGHDAD
REMEMBERING A LOST HOMELAND

By:

Format:

Paperback

List price:	£19.99
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ISBN 10:

0292726880

ISBN 13:

9780292726888

Publisher:

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

Pub. date:

1 October, 2004

Pages:

268

Description:

Recalls the lost Jewish community of Baghdad, in which the author was a child and young man from the 1920s to 1951

Synopsis:

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.

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Texas Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

ARABS FACE THE MODERN WORLD (HB)

ARABS IN THE MIRROR (PB)

CULTURAL PROCESSES IN MUSLIM AND ARAB SOCIETIES (PB)

DISPERSION OF EGYPTIAN JEWRY (PB)

EGYPT