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My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq | 
 enlarge | Author: Ariel Sabar
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 23944
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 325
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1565124901
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.892405672092
EAN: 9781565124905
ASIN: 1565124901
Publication Date: August 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 46 more reviews...
Stepping Back in Time December 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq" is a unique blend of history, biography and memoir. Ariel Sabar traces not only his family's history, but the history and fate of the Kurdish Jews of Iraq. Sabar tells the detailed story of his father's life in Iraq, his exodus to the 'promised land' of Israel, and his decision to move to America. No matter in which direction his father moved, he could never escape his past. Ariel Sabar tells a story that is beautiful and heart-breaking, full of the history and faith of a people lost in time.
While Ariel Sabar talks about his own life in "My Father's Paradise", the main focus is on the remarkable story of his father, Yona Sabar. Currently a professor in Neo Aramaic, Yona has devoted his academic career to preserving the language of his homeland, a supposedly dead language. Readers learn of Sabar's idyllic childhood lived in harmony among Muslims, Christiams, and Jews in a corner of Iraq. The isolated town was so far removed from the outside world that the horrific events of the Holocaust were unbelievable.
But the war eventually reached Yona's village, and his family was forced to immigrate to Israel. It was a land that offered promise and freedom and homeland, but as Sabar tells, it was a land very much divided between the more 'civilized' European jews and those 'uncivilized' peoples from the Middle East. Yona knew that any true opportunity to improve his life was across the ocean in America. Through a scholarship to Yale University, he was able to immigrate a second time to a new country and it was here, far removed from his family and homeland, that he truly learned the power and importance of his native tongue.
"My Father's Paradise" is a truly remarkable book, offering insight into a very little known region's history. In today's world it is extremely difficult to fathom an area where three very different faiths could work and live in peace. It is a starkly realistic and brutal look at identity and family. Sabar manages to incorporate historical details and information on language and linguistics without losing his narrative thread or distracting from the story at hand. Through his searching to discover more about his father's past, Sabar learns more about himself and his own future. "My Father's Paradise" is a truly incredible and insightful story.
CSLA Rodda Award Nomination December 29, 2008
MY FATHER'S PARADISE: A SON'SSEARCH FOR HIS SEWISHPAST IN KURDISH IRAQ by Ariel Sabar been nominated for the 2009 Rodda Award sponsored by the Church and Synagogue Library Association (CSLA), an international organization serving congregational libraries of all faiths. CSLA's Rodda Award is named for Dorothy Rodda Sargent, a lifetime member and one of the founders of the organization. This award recognizes a book which exhibits excellence in writing and has contributed significantly to congregational libraries through promotion of spiritual growth. The award is given to books for adults, young adults, and children on a three-year-rotational basis. The 2009 Rodda Award focuses on books for adult readers and this year's winner will be announced at the CSLA annual conference to be held at the McKinley Grand Hotel in Canton, Ohio, July 26-28. To learn more about CSLA and the Rodda Award go to www.cslainfo.org.
A World Long Gone But Still With Us December 15, 2008
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.
A most marvelous story December 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise is one of the most poignant & touching memoirs of journey & renewal that I have ever read. In searching for his father's past in the Jewish history of Kurdish Iraq, he weaves story more fascinating & colorful than any of the fabrics sold in the shops of Zakho, the Kurdistan home of his ancestors. His many journeys of discovery are of the harrowng type seen in grand Hollywood adventure epics and no less exciting (as one might imagine, asking alot of questions as an American Jew of Kurdish discent in modern day Iraq can draw quite a bit of unwanted attention from some very unpleasant people.)
You can't help but be enthralled by this thuroughly engaging book. It is entertaining, elightening & endearing in ways that will bring many smiles as you read & not a few tears as well. A grand book that anyone could not help but treasure & enjoy. Very highly recommended!
 I don't mind being in the minority..... December 7, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I won't repeat the substance of the book since so many other reviewers here have done so in great detail. I, too, found the descriptions of life in Kurdistan fascinating and the issue of immigrants from such a culture finding it difficult to fit in elsewhere an important matter.
Where I differ from other reviewers is in two respects: First, I thought the writing was poorly organized and the story was choppy. There is always some shuffling done by an author, especially in a memoir, and this memoir is more the author's father's than his own. The shifts made the story and characters difficult to follow at times. Second, although the book is about history, generations past, continuity, etc, the author tells us that he has almost totally forsaken both the religion and the culture of his parents. [It may not be fair to lump his mother in there as she is only mentioned very briefly.] That may be what the melting pot of America often does but, given the context of the book, it is sad and affected my view of the book as a whole.
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