My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Family's Past, by Ariel Sabar

I learned about My Father’s Paradise after it was selected by my reading group. I was immediately taken by both the subject, the Jews of Kurdistan, and the writing.

The author, Ariel Sabar, grew up in California and is all American. In his boyhood eye, he saw his father, Yona beh Sabagah, as something of an embarrassment. He was a funny, out-of-date man who didn’t pay attention to the latest in men’s fashion and spoke with a strange accent. In addition, he drove a beat-up old car that he parked among the Mercedes and Fiats of his California colleagues.

My Father’s Paradise traces Sabar’s paternal family on their journey from the remote area of what is modern day Iraq, to Israel and America. For over 2700 years, Jews had been living peacefully in the mountains of what be known as Kurdistan. As Moslems settled in the mountains, they shared and honored each other’s religious holidays and took care of each other. Their shared language was Aramaic, the franca lingua of the region.

Following World War I, the lands that had once belonged to the Ottoman Empire were divided and the area of Sabar’s family became a part of Iraq. The beginning of the end for their way of life. Tensions escalated in the Middle East. The Kurdish Jews were somewhat protected, but the politics of World War II and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel, forced Jews of the Arab countries to flee. The remote town of Zakho, where Sabar’s family lived was no exception.

When living in Zakho, the family name was Sabagha, which means “dyer.” The family dyed wool for weaving into cloth. The author’s great-grandfather, however, was also a scholar, and could be found in the town’s synagogue studying.

As violence against the Jews in Iraq escalated, the Sabagha family realized it was time to leave for Israel. Although Yona ben Sabagha was only 12 years old, his father insisted that he celebrate his bar mitzvah in the town of his birth. This event marked the end of his idyllic childhood, both literally and figuratively. The bar mitzvah marks the entrance into adulthood, but in Yona’s case, it also marked the end of life as he knew it.

Life in Israel was an adjustment. Israel was a new country and did not have the infrastructure to accommodate the mass immigration. Middle Eastern Jews were discriminated upon by the European Jews, which made life in the Promised Land an additional challenge. One change the family made was to change their surname from Sabagha to Sabar. The new name distanced them from their Kurdish roots and sounded more “Israeli.” In addition, the new family name was a play on the work “sabra”, which means a native-born Israeli.

Yona thrived in Israel, he studied hard and went to college. Because he was a native Aramaic speaker, he became involved in a research project focusing on this previously thought “lost language.” Yona was hooked. Eventually, his study brought him to Yale University where he got a Ph.D. Once he discovered America, even though he was initially disillusioned, he never looked back. He married an American and moved to Los Angeles where he took a job as a professor at the University of California.

In the process of researching this book, Ariel Sabar is able to make peace with his father. Yona and his son return to Iraq to the family village. There, they encounter some of the neighbors that Yona remembered as a child. They also become aware of the danger of being Jewish in this country so many years after their exodus. My Father’s Paradise is a wonderful book. Not only does the reader learn about the Kurdish Jews, but Sabar’s family comes alive. This is a book that should be on everyone’s reading list.

Read: February 16, 2010