Greetings to you all. I want to tell you the story of my father and mother. My father left Baghdad in 1959 with his mother. His father passed away in Baghdad, and they came to Israel. The stayed in Turkey…for a year and a half they were in Turkey. Then they went to Italy. They stayed in Italy for a year and (then) came to Israel. His brother…stayed in Baghdad. His name is Nadem. He came…he stayed in Baghdad, and died in Baghdad. He didn’t agree to leave Baghdad. In 1994 he passed away in Baghdad. His children left to London. One of them, Fawaz, the younger one, remains in Baghdad to this day. He’s a doctor there in Baghdad. He didn’t agree to leave Baghdad. My father’s older brother, the eldest in the family, left Baghdad in 1973 with his family. They left Baghdad and lived in the Netherlands for a year, and (then) came to Israel. He, his wife and his children. Both of my uncles passed away. And we…my mother left (Iraq) in 1951, her and her family (left) to Israel. She left as a little girl aged around nine or ten years old. And her whole family left Baghdad in 1951…and came to Israel. My father worked here in wholesale. He worked in wholesale. He used to sell fruit at the wholesale market. And he passed away - may G-d have  mercy on him. He had another brother here, Naim, who lives on a farm. He had two sisters. I had one aunt - aunt Ktorya, and (another) aunt Madlen. They came here…and in Baghdad they lived in the Karada neighbourhood. Their financial situation was very good. And their coming to Israel was difficult for them. They always reminisced on Baghdad, and their days in Baghdad…how it was there, how they lived there, the servants, and the (other type of) servants. And the parties in the houses. They had…like…they saw it as difficult, life here (in Israel), because they came here and…the financial situation of the Jews here was very difficult. Not like in Baghdad. Everything there was […] good. And everything was happy. My cousins…my cousins (from my uncle) Nadem left Baghdad in the 1980s. Some of them came before, some of them (came) after…and they got married and lived in London. We were…I travelled to London to meet them. We would sit and have fun there. Afterwards, they got married. Nearly all of them. They stayed in London. And their father, my uncle, may G-d have mercy on him, would come to London to see us all and then go back to Baghdad. He didn’t like (the idea) of leaving to London. May G-d have mercy on him. And my whole family…all of them left (Baghdad) and stayed here. That’s the…the Iraqi Jews don’t change.

On Shavuot, the Iraqi Jews like to…they don’t (just) like to, they have a custom of making kahi and qemar. And Shavuot in Baghdad, they would go to the Prophet Ezekiel and visit his tomb. And on the morning of the holiday, they eat cheeses…they eat kahi and qemar. That’s the custom of Shavuot in Baghdad. When the wake up on Shabbat, all of the Iraqi Jews eat eggs and eggplant. And we, at home, like to eat pita…hot bread…and eggs and eggplant, salads and amba. And that’s the custom of all Iraqi Jews on Shabbat morning. On the evening of Shabbat, when we do the Shabbat blessings, we say Iraqi Shbahot (Jewish songs of praise). We do it…in our house, we like the Iraqi customs.

Iraqis like sad songs. Without having a sad thing (song), they won’t be happy. Iraqi songs, most of them, are very sad. Like the original ones. And there are also very happy ones. But Iraqis like sad songs of our language. There is a song…”it isn’t fair of you, for your absence to go on so long. And if people ask me about you, what should I answer them? What should I say?”.

That is very, very nice…(it’s by) Salima Pasha. And there’s another song…”the rules of life are all injustice”. That’s also by Salima. 

And there are other songs…happy (ones). All of them are in beautiful Iraqi Arabic.

And we grew up…most of us grew up on the Iraqi shame (modesty). We really respect elders, us Iraqis. And basis in our family is…about shame (modesty) And respect for elders. That’s what we grew up on. This…all Iraqis give their children an education of Baghdad. Even if they came here to Israel, they still…their nature is about Baghdad. That’s how we are at home. I don’t know about others, but that’s how we are at home. And this…is our story.

It was a bit difficult, but they all got married and had children, and grandchildren. And we also came and arrived here. And we continued speaking Iraqi (the Jewish dialect of Iraq) at home because my mother’s grandmother lived with us in the house. She was…she never had (her own) house, and she lived with us and only spoke Arabic (the Jewish dialect of Iraq). So my sister and brother and I learned to speak Arabic (the Jewish dialect of Iraq). Later, I liked the language and started making tours for Iraqis, and parties, and singing in Iraqi. I really liked the dialect of the Iraqis, the speech and…the entire life of Iraqis in Israel remained as it was in Baghdad. And I really liked the songs, (and) being […] with Iraqis. And today I do for them…I work on events in Ramat Gan. I organise parties for Iraqis every week. They sing songs by Salima Murad, and they sing Egyptian (songs) by Umm Kulthum and Abdel Wahab…every Wednesday we organise parties for them. And that’s our story, of my family that came to Israel. And we’re all (here). Greetings to you all.

In…(19)62, the revolution happened, which was between…nationalists and Baathists. They were at the same time. And then…they were, in truth, the revolution happened…Abdul Salam Arif, who was Abdul Karim Qasim’s friend in (19)58 , but he flipped on (betrayed) him. They were…Nasserist nationalists.

A few months later he also, Abdul Salam Arif revolted against the Baathists and he became…on the side of the nationalists. But the period of persecution against the Jews had started.

What, for example? They made us all come and present ourselves…identity…which said our nationality was revoked. And they issued us with a yellow identity (document). Just the Jews. 

Jews then couldn’t travel between (19)63 and (19)64, they couldn’t travel. Travel was forbidden from them. And all the things that…the restrictions from before were reintroduced as they were.

But…nobody was killed. Just restrictions and many things, also in university and so on.

In (19)67, the Six Day War happened. The situation became very bad for Jews. They (the government) started arresting a lot, putting them in jail. They cut their phone lines from their homes. They revoked their rights to go to university. They expelled them from their jobs, expelled from the social clubs…things started becoming worse and worse.

In )19(68, the revolution of the Baathists happened and things started becoming much worse. From the start of (19)68 many from Basra were arrested. They did a trial in…January. And they threw them (in jail) on account of being spies for Israel and arrested them. They did a sham trial and arrested nine-ten of the Jews and hung their corpses in Tahrir Square.

After that many others were killed. They started taking them from houses and not returning them…corpses. Between (19)69 and (19)75/73 more than around fifty people were killed from among the Jews. Either executions or they killed them in their homes, or took them and didn’t bring them back. So that period was worse…the worst period for the Jews living in that time. 

But we didn’t have any opportunity to leave, to get away from this topic (persecution in Iraq). In (19)70, in the beginning of (19)70, there was…all the years beforehand, a war between the Kurds and the central sultanate, the government. A kind of […] happened, and…the war operations stopped, and northern Iraq opened.

So one, two started leaving by way of the north and escaping to Iran. And in this way, they started encouraging the masses to escape by way of the Kurds in the north, and from there to Iran. And from Iran, most came to Israel or went to other places like America, or Canada, England and such if they had, for example, a visa.

So during (19)70-71, about 70 percent of the remaining Jews, who were…we were about 3,000 people, if you go back in history…most of the Jews, 95%, left in (19)51 and (19)50. So about…125,000 of the 135,000 who were there, left in (19)51 and (19)50. So that 10,000…some of them say between 8,000 and 12(000)…let’s say approximately 9,000 or 8,000.

What we know is that bit by bit their number decreased. There were…we had statistics in (19)57, there were 5,000 people. Between (19)57 and (19)64, when the history was basically closed, […] 3,500. So we were between 3,000 and 3,500 in (19)70 when they started escaping by way of the north. In the beginning of (19)75, there remained about 400 people in Iraq. And bit by bit they also left. In 2003, there were approximately 50 people. Now there are only three Jews.

I told you. I…the *dialect*. The Jewish Iraqi dialect and the dialect of the Muslims are different. Like here, one would say that…one person’s accent is of Jerusalem, and a Tel Aviv accent, are a bit different. But here, in that respect, everyone…is an immigrant, everyone comes with the accent of their country. For example Russian, and German and Polish and Iraqi and such…their speech differs a bit. One says “xā” and another says “ḥa”. One says “ṭa”, anther says “t”. One says “qaf”, the other says “k”. In Iraq too, it’s the same thing. So, for example, we…(the word) “I say”. “We say”. “He said to him”. This is the Jewish (dialect). “He said”. We say “ġāḥ”, “ášlon-ak?”…”kān…kān wu-mā kān”. The Muslims, or the Muslim dialect, say *“agǝl-l-ak”. “čān”*. Instead of “kān”, they say *“čān”. “šlōn-ak”, “šlõn-ǝč”*. We say, to a female, we say “ášlon-ǝk? ašlon-ǝk?”. And they say *“šlōn-ǝč?”*. So there’s a difference…as in, there’s a difference between the dialects. In truth, the Jewish Iraqi dialect is the original dialect of Iraq. The original dialect of Baghdad, and Iraq.. From the (period of the) Abassids, as in…from approximately a thousand years ago. In the […] seventh, tenth…eighth, tenth, approximately…there was a plague. A plague…is a plague. A plague…and floods. Floods. Okay? In Baghdad. And many of the people died. Baghdad was gone. But the Jews…less (of them) died. Why? Because (of their) health (practices). They washed their hands. They had…they understood (the concept of) quarantine. They left the city and went outside, to the country…to the country. So relatively, the proportion of Jews who died was less relatively than the proportion of…let’s say…the remainder of Muslims. Naturally they stayed with their dialect…the Jewish (dialect). Many years later, let’s say about twenty years, Baghdad started growing again. Where did the Muslim people come from? They came from…other places. *Not* from Baghdad. They came from the countryside, from the south, okay? They brought their dialect with them. So the two dialects began to differ. Our dialect resembles the dialect of Mosul. The Mosul dialect of all (inhabitants of) Mosul. It resembles it. Not too much, but it’s closer. So when someone comes, an Iraqi Jew and speaks how I’m speaking, (someone) will tell you “is that person Maslawi?”. In comparison to a Muslim, we are considered to be speaking the Mosul dialect. They don’t know…that this is the Jewish dialect. So…in relation to Iraq, it changed more. Because Baghdad…now the majority of them (Baghdadis) are from the south (of Iraq). I mean, I have to…let’s say like this. Fifty years ago, when I left Iraq, if someone spoke Iraqi…there was chaos and…I mean…many people were talking I could catch it. The speech. Now, I need to concentrate. I have to listen to what people are saying exactly. The dialect has changed. I mean, things have changed over time. So this is how I spoke. And there was also…my dad worked all the time with the press and with Muslims. We didn’t want to show that we were Jewish in the street. Because if I were to come talk to you on the street in our dialect, they would instantly know (I was) Jewish. So I could go about without people knowing that I were Jewish. When I were to talk to a friend, I could talk as though I were a Muslim. That’s the story. But when we grew up, I started…my identity, my identity. So I started talking more in (the) Jewish (dialect). And sometimes, from time to time, there are words I use which are not Iraqi Jewish words. More Jewish-Muslim. For example, I say…”ˁād”. As in “ˁād”, as in…after, afterwards. (Jews) didn’t use it (that word) very much. And for example…words that are a bit different. They’re different. I’ve partly gotten used to them. And there are also Hebrew […] if someone is smart, we say “this person is a bastard”. As in, he’s smart. Okay? And…there’s…for example […]…we’d say “the husband of a widow”. As in, the husband of a widow…[…] you’re dead (a curse). As in, husband of widows. We can say “a fork”. One says “šǝkkāxa” and the other says…something else, I mean a different word. For example. There are words that differ between the…for example, that…ḥanafi, the Muslims say it…*what’s it called*…tap. Words such as this.

In (19)58 (was) the revolution of Abdel Karim Qasem and Abdul Salam Arif. The king (Faisal II) and his family were killed. But in general, that period of Abdel Karim Qassem between 1958 and 1963 was…could be considered the second golden age for the Jews. He was a bit…didn’t distinguish. 

So in relation to…at that time, some of the restrictions Abdel Karim Qasem removed. For example, they could travel and stay abroad, so lots of students left. After finishing school, they studied abroad. Those who came back would go to Baghdad University. It was…okay. Business and such…all that was okay. 

The one thing that was, as they say, a black thing, in the history of that time, between (19)58 and (19)63…the old Jewish cemetery, Abdel Karim Qasem decided that he wanted to build a tower. Like the Cairo Tower. And they said to the rabbi that he wanted to remove all of the cemetery. And he (the rabbi) said to him, “that’s not okay to remove the cemetery.” But what happened to this situation…in the summer of…1961, it did happen. 

At that time they […] as in, this was a bad thing. A bit later on, a year or so later, Abdel Karim Qasim was killed.