![]() It was as a result of meeting these “Jonahs” that I decided to penetrate into the interior of Kurdistan and to visit their villages. Such Jews! Men virile and wild-looking women wearing embroidered turbans, earrings, bracelets, even nose-rings, and with symbols tattooed into their faces-our brethren and sisters! When I asked one of the bystanders for his name, he answered, “Jonah.” I replied, “Jonah ben Amitai,” alluding to the name of the Biblical Prophet, Jonah, and he excitedly exclaimed, “Wallah, Shema Yisrael!” Yet he remained incredulous, taking me for an “Inglesi,” until the words “Zion,” “Yerushalayim,” “Shema Yisrael,” convinced him. I had never seen a more picturesque or impressive mourning assembly. The victim was a “Yahudi,” I was told upon inquiry, and the people assembled there were all Jews from the neighboring villages. An automobile smash-up on a dangerous and almost impassable mountain road, which resulted in the death of a villager, brought men and women of the nearest villages together to the market-place to mourn. Yet the fact that there were Jews scattered all over the mountainous villages was brought to my knowledge by sheer accident, literally. When I set out to visit Kurdistan I was aware that Jewish communities existed in such towns as Kirkuk, Arbil, and Mosul. Fischel, an internationally known authority on the life and history of the Near and Middle East, is at present engaged in research and teaching at the University of California, where he is chairman of the department of Near Eastern languages formerly he was a member of the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. ![]()
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