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An Old World treasure. 89-year-old Israeli
Kurdish Jew Rabbi Haim Yeshurun
25.4.2008
By Ari Greenspan and Ari.Z.Zivotofsky |
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April
25, 2008
This is the tale of our encounter with an
anachronism, a living treasure from the past, and
the touching relationship we have developed with
89-year-old Rabbi Haim Yeshurun. As part of our
ongoing project to locate living links in the vital
chain of Jewish tradition we first met Rabbi
Yeshurun six years ago and have relished his
friendship ever since.
On Tisha Be'av in 1950, together with his children
and pregnant wife, he arrived at a tent camp in
Binyamina. They had escaped from Kurdistan to join
fleeing Iraqis in Iran at a transit camp known as
"the gate of aliya," from whence they would be flown
to Israel. With deep sadness and lingering
resentment, he relates that as he was boarding the
plane he was forced to surrender a cherished signed
family tree to a representative of the Jewish
Agency, and it was never returned. He is the 12th
generation of Jewish functionaries including
scribes, ritual slaughterers, 'mohalim' and
community leaders, and the document had the
signatures of ancestors from each of those previous
generations. |
Rabbi Yeshurun with a few prized possessions.
Photo: jpost com |
Haim was born in Turkey
in 1919 and originally named Hanukka, for the date
of his birth. His parents and their five children
fled through the mountains to Kurdistan, making
stops in more than a dozen villages, and eventually
"settling" in a small village of 23 Jewish families.
Because Jews were not permitted to own land, they
were peddlers rather than farmers and often wandered
about in pursuit of a livelihood.
On one of those treks through the mountain footpaths
when Haim was about two years old, his father
thought the boy had died and, although it was
Shabbat, dug a shallow grave in which to bury him.
While his mother wailed and the customary dust from
the Land of Israel was being placed on his eyelids,www.ekurd.net
she thought she saw them
flutter and refused to abandon him. His father grew
angry and hushed his wife lest the entire family be
discovered and killed. The mother in her grief took
her baby from his grave and carried him on her back
through the mountains. At a cold spring, she dunked
him in the water and he started crying, whereupon
his name was changed from Hanukka to Haim, "life."
The Jews of Kurdistan were only weakly connected
with the rest of the Jewish world for many
centuries. This remarkable community has its roots
in parts of northern Syria, Azerbaijan, Armenia,
parts of Iran, northern Iraq and southeastern
Turkey. The harsh topography and the oppressive
rulers made contact with them difficult. Many felt
their ancestry was part of the Ten Tribes, exiled to
Assyria after the destruction of the First Temple in
586 BCE. It is commonly held that they settled there
at the time of Ezra the scribe and did not return to
Israel with the returnees of Babylon.
Writing in about 1170, the traveler Benjamin of
Tudela records that about 20,000 Jews existed in
hundreds of small communities. One of the more
unusual personas in their history was Tanna'it
Asenath Barzani, who lived in Mosul from 1590 to
1670 and was famous for her knowledge of the Torah,
Talmud, Kabbala and Jewish law. After her husband's
death, she was the head of yeshiva at Amadiyah, and
eventually was recognized as the chief instructor of
Torah in Kurdistan.
In recent times, the first Kurdish Jews made their
way to Jerusalem in 1812 and by 1896 there were a
number of families from Urfa, Ur Kasdim of the
Bible, living in the Holy City. Rabbi Yisrael
Benjamin wrote that in the 1800s when word would
spread in Kurdistan that a messenger had arrived
from Jerusalem they would place him on their
shoulders and take him to the house of the head of
the community where they washed his feet, and then
drank the water which contained the dust of
Jerusalem. Their situation was one of terrible
oppression and attacks. Blood libels wiped out
entire communities and some even became Muslim to
save themselves. The local Muslims held that wet
items "are impure and make impure those who touch or
carry them" so they would not touch the Jews or
their wet items, because the Jews were considered to
be vile and impure.
By 1948 there were 25,000-50,000 souls and almost
all of them came to Israel, where there are today an
estimated 100,000-150,000 "Kurdim." Owing to the
terrible conditions in which they lived and the
oppressive treatment they received at the hands of
the locals, Rabbi Yeshurun, a bright, well-read man,
told us that he has no longing to ever return to the
land of his origins and does not express any
goodwill to the locals.
We first went to see him about six years ago in our
ongoing 11th-hour mission to record the oral
traditions of disappearing ancient communities
regarding bird species that they held to be kosher.
We arrived in Holon, where he is the rabbi of the
Kurdish community, to find high-rise buildings
surrounding his courtyard and modest, 1950s era
house, with the rabbi in a long galabia robe sitting
and studying and writing. We walked in with a
stuffed partridge. He looked at the bird and
immediately told us that he recognized it and that
"in Turkish it is called 'kiklic' and in Kurdish it
is called 'kakwanta' [writing out the word in Hebrew
letters in my book of kashrut laws], and in Hebrew
it is 'hogla'. We used to eat it in Kurdistan and
also in the transit camp in Binyamina. It is a
kosher bird and we have a tradition from our fathers
in our hand."
An expert slaughterer, he originally learned the
craft in Turkey, but his expertise is evident from
the document he showed us within less than a year
of arriving here, he had a letter from chief rabbi
Benzion Meir Hai Uziel attesting to his skill and
knowledge as a 'shohet'.
This remarkable man, whose life has been spent in
formal teaching and as an informal Jewish communal
functionary both here and in Kurdistan, is as sharp
as a tack as he approaches 90. When asked about
personal events, whether from three or 60 years ago,
he instinctively responds that he does not remember,
then after a moment's pause, he quickly says, "Yes,
I remember," and proceeds to relate the information
complete with names and dates.
His only teachers were his father, whom he
references often, and his older brother. When Rav
Haim was about five years old his father decided it
was time for him to commence his education and
started him near the beginning of the book of
Exodus. Impressed by his apparent ability, his
father told him to memorize the chapter for the next
day and thenceforth to appear each day with a new
chapter committed to memory. With only a sense of
gratitude, he relates with a smile that his father
would tolerate one grammatical mistake; two would
result in a slap. He quickly learned the entire
Bible, which he still knows inside and out, and also
has an unrivaled command of Hebrew grammar. He
several times instinctively corrected our Hebrew,
but, being a gentleman, he then sheepishly
apologized.
Hebrew is not the only language he has mastered. The
Kurdish Jews spoke what many consider a dead
language, Aramaic. Not quite the Aramaic of the
Talmud, but sort of a pidgin Aramaic. Speaking
Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew and the two dialects of
Aramaic spoken by the Kurdish Jews,www.ekurd.net
Rabbi Yeshurun has
translated the Bible into their Aramaic. In 1950,
Aramaic speakers were rare among the staff at the
transit camp and nobody else on the flight spoke
Hebrew, so he quickly became the translator and
representative of the group. His Hebrew was of
course not modern, but biblical. While describing
audio tapes that had been made years ago he referred
to them as "the taking of his voice," and
while they had seen things occasionally flying high
in the sky while in Kurdistan, they did not know
what an airplane was until the Israelis appeared to
bring them here.
Among his many skills, he is a ritual scribe. He
told us with pride of the seven Torahs he has
written, as well as the dozens of megillot and
mezuzot. When we visited him most recently, in
January, we were amazed to find him seated in a
wheelchair, dressed in a robe, an oxygen tank
against the wall by his hospital bed and visitors
still requesting that he check their mezuzot or
adjust the knots on their tefillin. He unrolled one
of the mezuzot, peered for a second and smiled at us
proudly "This is one of mine; I wrote it about seven
years ago."
When we asked him about who made the parchment on
which to write the Torahs in Kurdistan, he was
genuinely offended as he responded that he did of
course. He would ritually slaughter the animal,
remove the skin, work it into 'klaf', prepare the
ink and quill and write the Torah. He similarly took
offense when we asked about who performed marriages,
and he responded that he would then and there write
out for us by heart a ketuba.
Because Rabbi Yeshurun and we share interests in
many Jewish skills and arts, we tried to debrief him
on all of their traditional techniques from ink
making to matza baking, from parchment manufacture
to how he removed the forbidden fats from animals he
slaughtered. They rarely had etrogim in Kurdistan.
Once in a while, one might appear from Iraq and the
word would go out and all would hurry to make the
blessing on the four species. They were unable to
manufacture tefillin and the ones they had came from
Baghdad. Smuggling them across the border was a
risky business and thus tefillin were a rare and
treasured commodity. When he became bar mitzva, he
did not have his
own pair but had to use his father's.
As a testament to the tenacity with which the
Kurdish Jewish community preserved our laws, he
related how he was an expert in 'halitza', the
rare ritual in which a childless widow is released
from marrying her deceased husband's brother.
When we discussed his circumcision technique, he
paused, smiled and asked if we would like to hear a
good story. Knowing this was going to be a keeper,
we sat back and waited. His father, the local 'mohel',
was out of town and a man came and told him that his
son needed a 'brit' that day. The baby's father was
insistent that the boy would have it done that day
despite the protestations of the young Haim
Yeshurun. Having trained under his father, and
observed circumcisions, he had no choice but to do
his first brit. He had everything he needed except
for the protective shield used by mohalim to avoid
cutting too much. Smiling at us, he related how he
went to a vine and cut down a gourd. From the gourd
he whittled a piece into the proper shape and with
that he went on to do the first of many
circumcisions.
In Kurdistan everything was homemade. The matzot,
from the cutting of the grain, were supervised by
him. The construction of the mikve, which he
insisted was used by all in the observance of family
purity laws despite the fact that most of the
townsfolk were uneducated, was constructed by him,
and the shofar was fashioned by his father. In fact
when he arrived in Binyamina, one of his first acts
was to build a mikve.
Rabbi Yeshurun spent his working years in a variety
of occupations including teacher, school principal
and kashrut supervisor. In addition, he served his
community in numerous ritual capacities. Today, well
into his retirement he continues to serve his
community albeit in a reduced capacity. The majority
of his time is now taken up with writing. He has
published one book that is part autobiography and
part his thoughts on a variety of topics, including
comparative
religion. In addition to being steeped in Jewish
knowledge, he is well versed in both New Testament
and Koranic literature and his bookshelves have
literature in all of the languages he speaks.
His desk is piled high with filled notebooks and he
continues to write, by hand of course, during all
his free time. When queried as to their content, he
would only smile and say, "Things I want my family
to know when I am gone."
We asked him about the day he arrived in Israel.
Starting to get emotional 57 years after the fact,
he told us that they disembarked from the plane and
immediately got down on their knees and kissed the
ground. He started to cry as he related this story
and again relived the emotions of that moment.
As we parted, we clutched his hand and wished him
many more years of health, happiness and the ability
to continue serving his community. Not to be
outdone, he put his hand on our heads and with tears
in his eyes, blessed us with all that and much more.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
Jerusalem Post | jpost com
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