Workers are diligently restoring the renowned rabbi’s temple in a busy district of Baghdad in an effort to revive the country’s long-faded Jewish community’s history.
The tomb of Rabbi Isaac Gaon was filled with garbage just a few months ago. Its windows and doors were rusted, and the walls had been neglected for a long time.
A large tombstone with a verse, the rabbi’s name, and the year of his death, 688, is now covered in marble tiles, and the former small grave has been adorned with one. The wall behind it has a silver menorah hung.
The 62-year-old head of Iraq’s Jewish community, Khalida Elyahu, remarked, “We were not allowed to restore it because it was a garbage dump.”
The Jewish community in Iraq once had one of the largest populations in the Middle East, but it has since slowed to a paltry ten.
There are no rabbis in Baghdad, but there is still only one synagogue left.
The Jewish community is providing the estimated $150, 000 for the restoration of the shrine.
Elyahu predicted that the project will “revive our community, both internally and internationally.”
She hoped to restore further neglected sites with the assistance of Iraqi officials.
Rabbi Isaac is not well known. Iraq’s National Security Advisor, Qasim al-Araji, claimed the rabbi was a financial official when he visited the tomb earlier this year.
During the Gaonic era, also known as the time of the Babylonian rabbis’ academies, Rabbi Isaac was a well-known figure.
His role as the head of one such academy is likely to be referenced by the title “Gaon.”
According to Professor Simcha Gross of the University of Pennsylvania, his name was quoted in the 10th century by another rabbi who told a tale that is unknown from any other sources.
During one of his conquests in central Iraq, Rabbi Isaac led 90,000 Jews to meet Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Islamic caliph and a relative of the Prophet Muhammad, who was revered as the first imam.
There are reasons to be skeptical about this event, according to Gross, who claims that we don’t have any other proof for it.
Rabbi Isaac has no other known religious beliefs, not even his.
Jews were imprisoned by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, in 586 BC after Solomon’s Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem, according to biblical tradition.
The Babylonian Talmud was compiling in Iraq.
Jews made up 40% of Baghdad’s population thousands of years later, under Ottoman rule.
After the founding of Israel in 1948 and the Palestinian Nakba, which means “catastrophe,” in other Arab countries, the Jewish population of Iraq changed dramatically. Nearly all of Iraq’s 135,000 Jews went into exile soon afterward.
The community was further diminished by decades of conflict and insecurities, including Saddam Hussein’s rule, the US-led invasion of 2003, and subsequent violence.
Source: Aljazeera
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