All About Jewish Theatre - Samir Naqqash (Baghdad 1938

SHMUEL MOREH is Emeritus Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, Institute of Asian and African Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar-Ilan University of Ramat-Gan. Fellow, Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA, Visiting Professor of Arabic Literature at UC Berkeley, Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA, and the Universities of Bonn (Germany), London University (SOAS), Manchester (UK), Life Member of Clare Hall (Cambridge-England), Helsinki University (Finland), Leiden University (The Neitherlands), Oxford-Yarnton (England), Maryland (USA). He was Israel Prize Laureate in 1999, and has received fellwships and grants from the Israel Acedemy for Scientific Research (Jerusalem), The British Council, The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), The German Israeli Foundation (GIF), The National Center for Scienticic Research (CNRS), France), and Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Yarnton-Oxford (England). As Chairman of the Israel-Findland Friendship Association, Prof. Moreh was awarded the Insignia of the Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland in 1986. He is the founder and Chairman of the Association of Jewish Academics from Iraq in Israel, Chairman of the Academic Committee of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or-Yehuda- Israel; Chairman of the International Advicory Committee of al-Jabarti's Project, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem He is the author of Modern Arabic Poetry 1800-1970 (Leiden, Brill, 1975), Studies in Modern Arabic Prose and Poetry (Leiden, 1988), The Jewish Contributio to Nineteenth-Century Arabic Theatre (with P.C. Sadgrove, Manchester-Oxford, 1996), Hatred of Jews and the Farhud in Iraq (eds. S. Moreh and Z. Yehuda)(The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, 1992). Author of several article in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, Brill) and Encyclopadia of Arabic Literature (England), including Arab and Jewish playwrights and theatre. Prof. Moreh is the translator and editor of Al-Jabarti's Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt (1975), Napoleon in Egypt (1993); The Book of Strangers: Medieval Arabic Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia (With Prof. Patricia Crone, 2000).
He published several articles in English, Hebrew and Arabic on Arabic Theatre in the Arab World.Prof Moreh is Israel's Prize Laureate (1999). and Member of All About Jewish Theatre Editorial Board .Email Address: samimoreh@yahoo.com and Moreh@h2.hum.huji.ac.il

The untimely passing away of our friend, the novelist and playwright, the Late Mr. Samir Naqqash on July 6, 2004 was a great shock to his friends and admirers all over the world. Although he wrote mainly in canonical Arabic he developed a genuine Arabic style with allusions to Jewish and Muslim history, proverbs, idioms, folklore and cultures. In his dialogues he uses various Iraqi colloquial dialects mainly those of the Muslim majority, Christians and of the formerly Jewish minority dialects of Iraq. In this way he was able to characterize his heroes and gave the social, cultural and genuine environment, which he described.

This special characteristic of his style beside his with his great talent as a genius novelist, short story writer and dramatist, arose the admiration not only of the Jews from Iraq living in Israel but also the Iraqi Muslim refugees in the West and the Orientalists. Many students in various universities wrote their M.A. and Ph. D. thesis on his works. Because of his various techniques and variety of styles using stream of conscience, and several post-modern techniques describing the absurdity of life and the complicated social and economical relations between the various communities in Iraq during the first half of the Twentieth century. His insistence on writing only in Arabic, very few of his stories of his 14 books were translated into other languages and was unable to earn his living in spite of his outstanding talent as a creative artist.

This masterpieces were those stories and novels in which he described with great nostalgia, his happy family life during his childhood in Baghdad, its feasts, holidays, rituals and folklore, especially in his 4 stories included in his collection “The Day in which World has been Conceived and Miscarried”, (1980) describing a Yom Kippur prayer in an Iraqi Synagogue in Bombay and the stream of conscience of the protagonist who suspect his wife of being pregnant from his friend. His story of Laylat ‘Arabah relates the festive environment of this special night during the Feast of Tabernacles. However, he was the first Jewish writer in Arabic who wrote about the Pogrom known as the Farhud committed by the Iraqi armed policemen, soldiers, Palestinians and mobs during the Shavu’ot 1-2 June 1941 after the defeat of the revolt of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid ‘Ali al-Kilani. He described the daily persecution and oppression proceeded the Farhud in such powerful colors that divided the Arab readers into to two camps of approving and denouncing his literature.

In his collection of stories “Nubu’at Rajul Majnun fi Madina Mal‘una” (Jerusalem, Association of Jewish Academics from Iraq, 1995) he expressed his macabre story “Risalat al-Duktor Khudadad ila Ahali Baghdad” his objection to the destruction of the old Jewish cemetery in Baghdad by ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim and its removal to a new cemetery in order to build his Tower and inciting the Iraqis to revolt against the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Naqqash was of a strong personality and character. However he chose to swim against the currents. He never felt himself at home in Israel. He considered the great wave of emigration to Israel under the government of Tawfiq al-Suwaydi, a forced expulsion form the paradise of his childhood in Baghdad. He never forgave the Iraqi and the Israeli governments for what he considered a cruel uprooting of the oldest Diaspora in the Jewish world and “selling the Jews of Iraq”. He tried several times to leave Israel and left to Iran, India, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and finally to England but he was always disappointed and returned to Israel.

The late Naqqash was in fact the representative of the collective conscience of the Jews of Iraq by expressing his anger about the terrible Pogrom of the Farhoud in his Arabic novels, and for the sudden uprooting them from their natural milieu to a different home which was net yet prepared to receive them in a respectable way. He was in fact the Historical Memory of the Jews of Iraq since the Muslim Occupation of Iraq if not from the Babylonian time. He dealt mainly with the Jewish-Muslim communities of Iraq and their close daily relation and political conflicts using Jewish and Muslim dialects in his dialogs in a fascinating way. Muslim Iraqi exiles considered him one of the greatest living writers in Arabic. He has considered himself an Iraqi exiled writer whether he lived in Israel or abroad. His untimely death is a great loss and tragedy to the Jewish communities from Iraq and to the Iraqi Arabic Literature.

We hope that he will be the last in a series of Jewish writers from Iraq who expressed themselves in Arabic only and passed away during 2004. Our Israeli community who immigrated to Israel since 1950 lost recently the following eminent writers: Issac Bar-Moshe, Ya'kov Lev (Balboul), and 'Izzat Mou'allem. May their souls rest in peace.