Why a Booktrail?
1940s – Israel has just been created and many Jews are fleeing from far and wide to this new future. Three women take us on their own personal journey of a remarkable time
Daughters of Iraq
What you need to know before your trail
Three women emigrate from Iraq to Israel but all have very different stories to tell.
All three women are Jewish and living as a Jew in Iraq. In the 1940s this was a dangerous and unstable place to be as the Jewish community became vilified during the war leading many Jews to move to Israel, the new state created at the time.
So many immigrants and so many displaced Jews returning to their ‘homeland’ but at the same time leaving their old homes far behind. Their Jewish identity and sense of belonging has been changed beyond anything they have ever known and settling into a new life is not going to be easy.
The voice of the 3 women rings loud – Violet and Farida are sisters, travel with Violet’s daughter Noa. All searching for meaning and a new future.
Travel Guide
Iraq, 1940s
What must it have been like to have been Jewish in 1940s Iraq? Violet is a young child growing up and writing a diary of what she sees and experiences. As she grows into a woman and becomes a mother, her diary entries narrate what is going on, what she sees every day and how she feels about her illness. Despite all of this, she records events as they happen as a record for her daughter. A birth reunites people –
“Once word got out, the women – relatives, servants, Arab and Jewish neighbours alike, began to trill loudly celebrating the happy event.”
Noa, the daughter is studying Jewish philosophy, trying to understand the bigger issue of the events of the time and trying to make sense of her mother’s death.
The bigger picture is the struggle of the Iraqi Jews and the culture they were ripped from in order to be transplanted in another place. Now this is the story that Noa must find out for herself but with her mother’s help.
Memories from Baghad are happy ones – swimming in the Chidekel river, swimming in the cool waters, hitching rides through the streets of Baghdad. The celebration of a birth with a chalri – a traditional party with belly dancing, the way women rallied round one another.
Culture shock hits hard – from a life of luxury in nice area in Baghdad to a kibbutz in Israel, the never ending sense of having to adapt, do the best you can, whilst trying to deal with your past.
A unique view of a unique community and society.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Twitter: @RevitalHorowitz
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