Next Year, Anywhere But in Grim Baghdad (Last rabbi leaves Iraq)

[sabra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201317_2.html

Next Year, Anywhere But in Grim Baghdad
City's Last Rabbi Observes Yom Kippur

BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 -- As the sun set on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar Monday night, the last rabbi in Baghdad sat down for his last Yom Kippur dinner in Iraq: a piece of cake and two glasses of milk.

...

Today, barely a dozen members of the 2,600-year-old Jewish community in Baghdad remain to observe Yom Kippur. Most are afraid to gather for holidays, and besides, they figure, how can one rejoice in a place like this?

...

Levy knows his prayers for peace will not be fulfilled in Iraq. Although the bloodshed plunging this country into a civil war has mainly claimed the lives of Sunni Arabs and Shiite Muslims, no group is more terrified -- or a more vulnerable target -- than the tiny Jewish community.

The capital's only remaining synagogue, a pink and yellow building with no identifying marks, has been boarded up since it was denounced more than three years ago as "the place of the Zionists." Most Jews barely leave their homes at all for fear of being kidnapped or executed. And even Levy will not directly mention Israel on the telephone, just because he never knows who might be eavesdropping.

"It's like I'm living in a prison all the time," said Levy, who is 41. "I have no future here. I must go out to have a life for myself."

[Missy M]

1. I would think the barely dozen members of the Jewish.....

community should also leave. That is no way to have to live. The community was there for 2,600 years and Bush managed to destroy it. There is no end to the destruction madman Bush has caused.

[sabra]

2. things weren't good under Saddam either, however...

it seems like the in the not too long future the 2,600 years of histroy will end.

[Missy M]

3. They weren't good but at least they could go about their...

business, buy goods and according to one statement Saddam did not see them as a political threat. It is such a sad situation to have to leave your homeland because of the US invasion.