A Senate resolution sponsored by four US senators will attempt to delay and even reverse the US government's commitment to returning the 'Iraqi-Jewish archive' to Baghdad. One reason is that there are no longer any Jews able to care for or see it. Report in the Tribune Review:
Dr Harold Rhode sifting through the waterlogged items of the Iraqi-Jewish archive in 2003. Dr Rhode was the first to identify the books and documents of the collection as Jewish.
The collection, known as the Iraqi Jewish
Archive, is scheduled to be returned to Iraqi next month. If that
happens, experts fear neglect could pose a new threat to the sensitive
materials.
“I really don’t think they’ll be safe in
Iraq,” said Carole Basri, an attorney and documentary filmmaker who has
deeply researched the archive and Iraq’s Jewish history.
Heading an effort to postpone the archive’s
return is U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Lehigh Valley, the prime sponsor of a
resolution urging the U.S. State Department to renegotiate the return.
“My concern is Iraq is really no longer a
good place to store this Jewish historical treasure since there are no
Jews to safeguard it, to see it, to care for this treasure,” Toomey told
the Tribune-Review.
Included in the archive is a 400-year-old
Hebrew Bible, a German rabbi’s sermons from 1692, a 200-year-old Talmud
and thousands of other books printed in Italy, Jerusalem, Turkey and
Lithuania. Among the books are the writings of the famous late
19th-century Baghdadi interpreter of Jewish law Rabbi Yosef Hayyim, who
is often referred to by the name of his most famous work, the Ben Ish
Hai.
New publications of the Ben Ish Hai’s work
stand to influence how Jews interpret law today, said Rabbi Raymond
Sultan, director of Sephardic Heritage Museum, which is about to publish
a third book of the Ben Ish Hai’s work from the archive.
“There is a lot of stuff people will definitely use to formulate law,” Sultan said.
Also included are school and financial
records, lists of residents, university applications and other community
records that document Jewish life in Iraq from the 1920s through 1953.
Toomey’s resolution, cosponsored by Sen.
Chuck Schumer, D-New York, cites the Iraq government’s anti-Semitic
policies from the 1930s onward — including making Zionism punishable by
death and confiscating Jewish artifacts — to make a case against
returning the archive.
it is so obvious that the archive will not be safe in Iraq that it hardly needs mentioning--- except that so many people, even those with university degrees, need to have the obvious explained to them.
ReplyDelete