My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Ariel Sabar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2008

In a remote and dusty corner of the world, forgotten for nearly three thousand years, lived an ancient community of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic—the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers, humble peddlers and rugged loggers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.

In the 1950s, after the founding of the state of Israel, Yona and his family emigrated there with the mass exodus of 120,000 Jews from Iraq—one of the world's largest and least-known diasporas. Almost overnight, the Kurdish Jews' exotic culture and language were doomed to extinction. Yona, who became an esteemed professor at UCLA, dedicated his career to preserving his people's traditions. But to his first-generation American son Ariel, Yona was a reminder of a strange immigrant heritage on which he had turned his back—until he had a son of his own.

My Father's Paradise is Ariel Sabar's quest to reconcile present and past. As father and son travel together to today's postwar Iraq to find what's left of Yona's birthplace, Ariel brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, telling his family's story and discovering his own role in this sweeping saga. What he finds in the Sephardic Jews' millennia-long survival in Islamic lands is an improbable story of tolerance and hope.

Populated by Kurdish chieftains, trailblazing linguists, Arab nomads, devout believers—marvelous characters all— this intimate yet powerful book uncovers the vanished history of a place that is now at the very center of the world's attention.

Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise is the Winner of the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. For his first 31 years Sabar considered his father, Yona, an embarrassing anachronism. Ours was a clash of civilizations, writ small. He was ancient Kurdistan. I was 1980s L.A. Yona was a UCLA professor whose passion was his native language, Aramaic. Ariel was an aspiring rock-and-roll drummer. The birth of Sabar's own son in 2002 was a turning point, prompting Sabar to try to understand his father on his own terms. Readers can only be grateful to him for unearthing the history of a family, a people and a very different image of Iraq. Sabar vividly depicts daily life in the remote village of Zahko, where Muslims, Jews and Christians banded together to ensure prosperity and survival, and in Israel (after the Jews' 1951 expulsion from Iraq), where Kurdish Jews were stereotyped as backward and simple. Sabar's career as an investigative reporter at the Baltimore Sun and elsewhere serves him well, particularly in his attempt to track down his father's oldest sister, who was kidnapped as an infant. Sabar offers something rare and precious—a tale of hope and continuity that can be passed on for generations. Photos. (Sept. 16)
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From Booklist

For almost 3,000 years, a tiny Jewish enclave existed in what is now the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. The Jews and their Christian and Muslim neighbors spoke the ancient tongue of Aramaic, which had once been the lingua franca of the Middle East and was spoken by Jesus. Sabar’s father, Yona, was born in that enclave but immigrated to the U.S. when the creation of the state of Israel created hostile conditions for Iraqi Jews in the 1950s. Yona, however, maintained strong emotional ties to his native language and culture even as he ascended to a prominent academic position at UCLA. Meanwhile, Sabar showed virtually no interest in his father’s background; however, after the birth of his own son, he felt a desire to reconnect with his father and their shared cultural heritage. Their joint visit to their ancestral town of Zakho rekindles memories of the ancient community while strengthening the ties between father and son. An involving memoir that works as both a family saga and an examination of a lost but treasured community. --Jay Freeman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 325 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; First Edition. states edition (August 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565124901
• ISBN-13: 978-1565124905
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #218,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ariel Sabar's first book, My Father's Paradise, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and the Rodda Book Award and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His second book, Heart of the City, was called a "beguiling romp" (The New York Times) and an "engaging, moving, and lively read" (Toronto Star).

Sabar is an award-winning former newspaper reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Monthly, and many other publications.

In addition to winning the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award, My Father's Paradise was a Philadelphia Inquirer "staff pick," a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, a Christian Science Monitor "Best Nonfiction Book of 2008," and an Elle magazine Readers Prize Selection. It also won the Rodda Book Award, given by the Church and Synagogue Library Association once every three years to the adult book that best "exhibits excellence in writing and has contributed significantly to congregational libraries through promotion of spiritual growth." The book was a nonfiction finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which honors works of high literary quality that help promote global understanding.

For tour info, book club resources, and other details, please visit www.arielsabar.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent history of the Kurdish Jewish experience told through the story of the author's family, August 29, 2008

By 

Benjamin Lukoff (Seattle) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

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.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and beautifully written, September 13, 2008

By 

J. Fuchs "jax76" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

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.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A World Long Gone But Still With Us, December 15, 2008

By 

Labarum (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

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.