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May 16, 2003/Iyar 14 5763, Vol. 55, No. 38
Iraq's remaining Jews face loss, loneliness
MATTHEW GUTMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BAGHDAD, Iraq - It takes 15 minutes to cajole a grimacing Muhammed Fazi, literally the gatekeeper to Iraq's dying Jewish community, to let a reporter peek into the small compound that holds Baghdad's only remaining synagogue.
Finally, Fazi cracks open the synagogue's steel door. As if on cue, out of an adjacent cement block building, hobbles the 98-year-old Tawfiq Sofer, the oldest living member of Iraq's Jewish community.
Haltingly and without irony, the ailing Sofer says in fluent English, "I am the youngest of my family."
He is also the last of it.
Like 90 percent of Iraq's once thriving Jewish community of 100,000, all of Sofer's family fled Iraq, either for Israel, the United States or Europe after Israel's independence in 1948.
Only an estimated 35 Jews are left in the country.
Unmarried and alone, Sofer's sole company is Fazi, and Nidal Sa' aleh Ezra, a 28-year-old orphan the two "adopted" a few years ago.
Fazi, who serves as guard, gatekeeper, groundskeeper, nurse and shopper, says he has dedicated his life "to this Jewish community."
Reflecting on life under Saddam Hussein, Sofer says times were not easy, "but at least we had security."
After several attacks on Jewish community buildings throughout the 1990s, the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi Secret Police, which had already kept close tabs on Jews here, began to monitor the synagogue.
But now there is no one to call if the small, nondescript compound is besieged by looters.
While once a prosperous section of Baghdad, Ba'tawin, where the synagogue stands, has become a gang stronghold. The nights crackle with gunfire and the explosion of an occasional grenade, as looters fight each other and American troops over turf.
While poor, the community members look after their own.
According to Sofer, Naji Jebrail Ya'acob, the community's leader, helps supply the needy with food and clothing when necessary.
The Jews here, and their Muslim keepers, many possessed with a dash of Judeophilia, cling to their secrecy as if it were life itself.
Few of remaining, aging Jews' neighbors know their real identity, and that is the way many want to keep it.
By and large the fire of anti-Semitism has not singed most Iraqis.
The anti-Semitic chants heard round the Arab world have not marred popular demonstrations here. Only once during this reporter's three-week stay in Iraq were specifically anti-Jewish chants heard.
Once a thriving cultural and mercantile center for Jews, signs of Jewish life are few and far apart in Baghdad these days.
For his part, Sofer is lonely but destined to die here.
Asked why he never followed the rest of his family abroad, he pauses, inhales a short breath and says, "I just could never bring myself to leave my home, my country.''
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