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 Excellent history of the Kurdish Jewish experience told through the story of the author's family August 30, 2008
Benjamin Lukoff (Seattle)
55 out of 55 found this review helpful
We've all heard of Kurdistan, of course--especially the Iraqi portion. And those like me who are either of Jewish descent, interested in languages, or both, have heard of Kurdish Jews and the fact that they were some of the last remaining speakers of Aramaic. But never before had I gotten such a deep insight into their culture and struggles to assimilate in the new state of Israel. They truly had more in common with their fellow Kurds than their Ashkenazi co-religionists in Israel, and this seems to have been a major reason the author's father elected to stay in the U.S. after receiving his Ph.D. at Yale. It's slightly mistitled in that, while Ariel Sabar's search and desire to reconcile with his family's past was the genesis of the book, it really reads more as a biography of his father Yona, now a UCLA professor, and of the entire Kurdish Jewish community. The son's own story, while touching, almost seemed an afterthought.
I understand from the introduction that some dialogue was made up and some composite characters were created, so while this isn't quite creative nonfiction, it's not journalism either. That makes for an excellent read, but it also makes me wonder if there's an accessible but more historiographic book on this subject out there.
At any rate, my thanks to Ariel Sabar for writing this and painting a vivid picture of a world I think few people know ever existed... one that was turned upside down in the space of his father's childhood and is now almost nonexistent. My thanks, too, to Yona Sabar for his important scholarship. I had no idea how important this man was to the study of Neo-Aramaic and am glad he didn't suffer the fate of too many of his fellow Mizrahi immigrants to Israel. Highly recommended.
Beautiful and beautifully written September 13, 2008
J. Fuchs (Los Angeles, CA United States)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
At heart this is about a Jewish man, born and raised in America, trying as a grown-up to find a connection to the immigrant father by whom he was baffled and embarrassed as a child. Ariel Sabar knows how to tell a story, however, and it's his writing and organization even more than the story itself that makes this book such a treasure. But the story is wonderful, too.
The book starts in the village of Zakho, in Kurdish Iraq, with the tale of its people, including the author's great-grandfather, Ephraim, the dyer, whom the locals believe talks to angels. Sabar makes the village and its inhabitants come alive and while I at times wished there were more photos included in the book, Sabar's writing is usually picture enough. Sabar's parents are married (arranged, of course), Sabar's father, Yona, and his siblings are born, and too many of them die. One goes tragically missing. Throughout the personal saga, Sabar presents a global context -- World Wars I & II, the relationship of his family's native language in Zakho (Aramaic) to the rest of Iraq, to the multi-culturalism and religious harmony of Kurdistan and how the area was divided in the wake of the first World War, to the changing attitudes toward Jews in Iraq and the Middle East and the foundation of Israel.
In the '50's Sabar's family relocates, not entirely willingly, to Israel, where they find not the holy land of their dreams, but a huge and unwelcoming city in which they are the lowest of the low. Most of the middle of the book follows Yona's tale as he works to make something of himself in this hostile environment, eventually earning a scholarship to Yale and becoming a respected professor of Neo-Aramaic at UCLA.
The final sections of the book recount the author's story and his attempts to reconnect with his roots in Iraq and reconcile himself with his father.
Wisely, Sabar distances himself from the earlier portions of the book and doesn't spend much time on his American upbringing and personal story, choosing only to interject himself into the tale as it relates to his family's past. The tale is about the people, but Sabar deftly weaves throught the book language, politics, religion, and poverty without letting any of them dominate.
Being from Los Angeles I find myself hoping one day that I will run into and recognize Ariel and Yona, so that I can smile at my fellow Angelino and the rumpled professor who has never felt like he truly belongs here. I know very little about my family before they emmigrated to New York, but somehow Sabar's book makes me feel as if I do. His family's story is that of everyone whose ancestors came here hoping for a better life for the people they loved, yet still missing that which was lost.
Thank you, Ariel Sabar for this beautiful and heartfelt book.
Reconciling Past and Present August 25, 2008
Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas)
15 out of 18 found this review helpful
Sabar, Ariel. "My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq", Algonquin, 2008.
Reconciling Past and Present
Amos Lassen
We really do not have a great deal of literature about Jewish life in Iraq so "My Father's Paradise" is extremely welcome. Ariel Sabar, a noted journalist gives us a look at past and present in the Arab country and it is all fascinating.
Kurdish Iraq can be described as "a remote and dusty corner of the world, long forgotten for nearly 3000 years." Here they still spoke Aramaic and most of the people had a degree of literacy. They believed in mysticism and they told stories and supported themselves by humble and honest work. The people of Kurdish Iraq lived peacefully with their neighbors who were Muslims and Christians.
The Jewish community of northern Iraq originated with the tribes of Israel and in this community Ariel Sabar's father, Yona, was born. Yona came to the States and in the 1980's was a professor at UCLA where he worked with the Aramaic language. At the same time, his son was experimenting with becoming a drummer in a rock band. When Ariel's son was born in 2002, he began to understand the meaning of fatherhood and became involved in the history of his family. As Sabar unearths information, he shares it with us and we learn of the daily life in the village of Zahko and then he moves onto the daily life of the Kurdish Jews when they came to Israel after having been expelled from Iraq in 1951. 120,000 Kurdish Jews, a large element of the Diaspora which was virtually unknown, went to Israel in the 50's where they were considered "backward and simple". It seemed that their heritage and life would never be known but when Yona came to America; he was determined to preserve the Kurdish traditions and dedicated his career to it. It took for Ariel to have a son of his own to understand his father's passion.
Yona and Ariel went to Iraq to find what was left of Zahko and they learn the story of the Sabar family as well as an epic saga of hope and tolerance. The characters that father and son meet are a gallery of unforgettable people--linguists, Arab and Kurdish chieftains, nomads and Bedouins, religious believers. We get an eyewitness account of the history of a place that has vanished but remains in a place that monopolizes the attention of today's world.
Ancient Iraq and 21st century America are indeed worlds apart; "My Father's Paradise" brings them together through beautiful prose and intense storytelling. Several times my eyes filled with tears as I read, both from the depth of the tales and the beauty of the prose. It is so good to have this book! It fills a void which existed for too long and gives the Kurdish Jews their proper place. I remember spending an evening with a Kurdish family when I lived in Israel and although the details are fuzzy, the book reminded me of it and just that is enough for me.
A World Long Gone But Still With Us December 15, 2008
Christian Book Reviews (Philadelphia, PA United States)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The events of the Middle East that assault us each day from CNN and other sources seem to be motivated by an understanding of the world that is completely removed from what is taken for granted by the West. It is a world where one's religion is not only their faith but their tribal identification; where everything is conducted in the context of cultural assumptions more rooted in the world of medieval nomadic traders than the egalitarian ideas of modern nation-states. "Why do they act this way?" we often wonder as we witness their stubborn refusal to act like us.
Although not written for that purpose, Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise gives keen insight into this world that is at once both lost but still with us in today's headlines. Sabar's family line traces back to a time when the Jews of the Middle East were not centered in Israel but spread throughout the region. Most of these communities are now gone - leaving because of their dream of a Jewish state or their fear of remaining behind what is now enemy lines. Like the now firm divide between the Greece and Turkey, the current situation tells us nothing about the past - and everything.
Sabar was motivated to trace his roots and this led to an small area in what is now Kurdish Iraq. There his family was part of a small Jewish community that was so isolated they still spoke Aramaic - a language that once was the lingua franca of the Middle East but was thought to have died centuries earlier. In retracing his family's steps, Sabar's eyes were opened to a world we barely know existed, one where the strange mix of ethnic and religious identities worked with and often around the authorities to preserve some semblance of their traditions.
Despite an admitted aversion earlier in life to the traditions of his family, Sabar seems to have become a marvelous apologist for that lineage. He is an excellent storyteller and his rendering of the tale of his family is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It is in fact as complex as the world he describes - a world that has died but whose ghosts still haunt us.
It might be argued that the situation in the area of Zakho he describes was not typical of life as a whole but that is precisely the point - no one picture is "typical" of an area that has seen so much culture, conflict, and fervor. This is an area of the world that has been a battleground for many of the world's major religions, has been under the heel of Persian, Greek, Roman, Arabic, Turkish, Mongol, and British empires, and consequently been involved in many of the most important conflicts in world history. It is both the root of our common culture but has nothing at all common in it.
The most powerful thing in this book is that he relates key events not by a dispassionate laundry list of crises and dates but in the lives of ordinary people for whom the sudden outbreaks of violence were unfathomable. How could this outside world that had ignored them for centuries suddenly see them as a symbol of a conspiracy in a faraway land? How could their friends whom they had known for many years now turn on them and want them punished for deeds done by others?
One begins to understand also the conflicts within Israel itself between the Jews whose identity has been in this region for centuries and those who emigrated from the West that led to the state of Israel. These two groups may have shared a religion but the way Sabar's relatives saw the world had far more in common with their Kurdish Muslim neighbors than with their fellow religionists. In Israel they may have shared a religion, but in Zakho they shared a way of life.
Anyone wishing to understand the complexities of the region should read My Father's Paradise. In particular, the recent efforts at "exporting democracy" with expectations it would take on the same character as in the West seem even more hopeless than before. While Ariel Sabar's tale is not meant as a political statement, the realities of life in the region - based as it is on the lives and hopes of real people - gives us a window into the tragedy of that region and the triumph of one family over its obstacles.
Achingly Beautiful August 28, 2008
Daniel Bay Gibbons (Salt Lake City, USA)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Ariel Sabar's brilliant personal and family history is one of the most fascinating books I have read in a long time. Part history, part personal memoir, part logbook of a voyage of discovery, this book both enlightens and entertains. Set in Kurdish Iraq, in Israel, and in the academic environs of Yale University, this is narrative history at its best.
There is a lyrical quality about Sabar's prose which is almost Biblical. Steeped in the language and literature of the Aramaic, which Abrahanm ibn-Ezra called "the first of all languages," Sabar writes as a kind of Israelite wanderer, invoking the rhythms and passion and vision of the desert peoples. This book equals and perhaps surpasses Bruce Feiler's estimable Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses (P.S.) as a moving introduction to Judaica. It accomplishes what the best of historical writing brings to the table--a rich introduction to a profound subject.
I hope there are more books inside Ariel Sabar.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 82
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