I'm glad to see that Meir Shalev's fictional novel won for A Pigeon and a Boy...it was excellent in every aspect.

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner's Life Time Achievement Award is well-deserved, in my opinion.

A Guest in My Own Country looks to be an interesting book.

israeli-kurdish-friendship-league.blogspot.com/

Jewish Subjects and their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan: A Study in Survival, By Mordechai Zaken.
About the book: This book deals with the position of the Jewish communities in dozens of urban centers and rural villages chiefly in southern Kurdistan, namely Iraqi Kurdistan, during the last few hundreds of years and primarily during the first half of the 20th century. The book describes the position of many prominent and ordinary individual Jewish subjects within the tribal Kurdish society. The unique set of relations between the Jews and their tribal chieftains (aghas), the rights, duties and obligations of the Jews towards their aghas, and the traditional, tribal obligations of the chieftains towards their Jews, receive careful attention and analysis . The book brings to life many tribal chieftains whose personal history had been wiped out from the collective memory in Kurdistan. In fact, this study rescues the life history of many tribal figures and describes in details the Kurdish tribal society during the first half of the 20th century, as it was never told.
This book is based on new oral sources (based on hundreds of interviews with Jewish informants originally from Kurdistan), diligently collected and carefully analyzed. The four main parts of the book examine the relationships between the Kurdish Jews and their tribal chieftains in urban centers and villages in Kurdistan, using numerous new reports and vivid examples. It also deals extensively with topics such as the security and murder of Jews in the tribal Kurdish setting, the question of slavery of rural Jews and the conversion of Jews to Islam. The last part of the book examines the experience of the Jews in Iraqi Kurdistan between World War I (1914) and the immigration of Jews to Israel (1951-52). Readership: All those interested in the history of oriental Jewry, Kurds and Iraq, minorities in the Middle East, tribal society, as well as oral historians, sociologists and anthropologists.
About the author: Mordechai Zaken, Ph.D. (2004) in Near Eastern Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the history of the Kurds and the Jews in Kurdistan and in Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East. Dr. Zaken served as Adviser on Arab Affairs to the Prime Minister of Israel (1997-1999).
Published by Brill: • August 2007 • ISBN 978 9004161 90 0 • Hardback (xxii, 364 pp.) • Jewish Identities in a Changing World, vol. 9, List price EUR 120.- / US$ 162.- Book Orders: UK, TEL. + 44 (0) 1767 604-954; FAX +44 (0) 1767 601-640; brill@turpin-distribution.com CUSTOMERS IN THE AMERICAS BRILL P.O. Box 605 Herndon, VA 20172-0605 USA TEL. 1 800 337 9255 (toll free, US & Canada only) TEL. +1 (703) 661-1585 ; FAX: +1 (703) 661-1501 cs@brillusa.com; Brillonline@brill.nl; http://www.brill.nl/
Evaluation of the PhD thesis upon which the book ("Jewish Subjects and their tribal Chieftains," by Mordechai Zaken) was based
Joyce Blau, Professor Emerita, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris 19/06/2004
Moti Zaken’s thesis on the "Tribal Chieftains and their Jewish Subjects in Kurdistan: A Comparative Study in Survival” is highly original and makes a significant contribution to the general history of the Jewish diaspora. The aim of the author of the thesis was exhaustively to describe the relations between the Kurdish chiefs and their Jewish subjects daring the first part of the 20th century in northwestern Iraqi Kurdistan... Mr. Zaken has undertaken the study of precisely this recent history of a few Jewish communities which lived in the former, prestigious principality of Bahdinan, in northwestern Iraqi Kurdistan. He did this remarkably well. His documentation is based on firsthand information, and is of the highest value. Mr. Zaken collected his data from men and women from various areas of Bahdinan, where they had lived either in cites or villages, and most of whom had immigrated to Israel in the 1950s. He interviewed more than 50 people, many more than once. These discussions, which add up to hundreds of hours of interviews, most of which were taped, were then analyzed and classified. The task of gathering and ordering all this fieldwork was immense, and the candidate is to be congratulated on the methodology that he chose. This part of Mr. Zaken’s thesis, concerning Jewish life in Bahdinan, well complements the Impressive work of the pioneer ethnologist Erich Brauer.[ Erich Brauer, The Jews of Kurdistan, First edition 1940, revised edition 1993, completed and edited par Raphael Patai, Wayne State University Press, Detroit.] Chapter II, which deals with the Jews, Kurds and Arabs between 1941 and 1952 is important because it raises the issue of the emerging conflict between the Zionist movement and the incipient national movements in the Arab countries. This problem, which was aggravated by the establishment of the Stale of Israel in 1948, was profoundly to affect the situation of the Jews in the Arab countries. However, in Iraqi Kurdistan the Kurdish chiefs, who Were concerned by the conflict only indirectly, were not willing to break ties forged with the Jewish communities over the course of thousand of years of co—existence, which on the whole were useful to them, particularly when the Jews, in contrast to the Christians, as we see later in Mr. Zaken’s thesis, could not be suspected of harboring sympathy for the “European enemy”. Many agha and Kurdish chiefs regretted the massive departure of the Jews for Israel in the early 1950s.. Note, in particular, the ties which united the Barzani dynasty to the Jewish people, which Mr. Zaken describes at length and so well in several chapters of his thesis. These were not one-way ties, for even today, in spite of the departure of nearly the whole Jewish population of Kurdistan for Israel, the links have not been definitively broken, and there are many Kurds who recognize their debt to the Jews.. In order to defame the Kurds in the eyes of the Jslamicist-milieux, a thesis is now circulating in Turkey which ‘proves the Jewish origin of the Barzani family’ [Cevat Eroglu (2004) lsrail'in beak stratejisi ve Kurtler (Israel’s everlasting strategy and the Kurds), Sayfa, Istanbul, 244 p. ] Questioned about this, an eminent member of the family, not in the least upset, told me; ‘So much the better. I am convinced of our Jewish origins.” Chapters III to VI describe in detail the daily lives of the Jewish communities of Bahdinan during the first half of the 20th century.. The candidate tried to be exhaustive: the result of his quest for oral documentation was considerable. This huge amount of information has not only been well classified, hut the candidate succeeded in making it a smooth and agreeable read. This detailed study has made a major contribution to the study of the recent history of the region of Iraqi Bahdinan..
In sum, Mr. Zaken's thesis is highly original in both subject and method. The project he undertook is a significant one, in an academic area where there is still a dearth of knowledge, and his work complements the previous research which does exist. He made excellent methodological choices both in doing an impressive number of first hand interviews, a in the careful and detailed way he treated the material he obtained; his data is highly valuable. His work is an important contribution to the study of the Jewish diaspora, to the study of the specificities of the Kurdish Jews, to the study Jewish relations with Moslems and Christians in Iraqi Kurdistan, and to the study of Iraqi Kurdistan itself. I highly commend this thesis, and congratulate Mr. Zaken on His work.

Paris, June 19th, 2004,
Joyce Blau

I have just finished reading this interesting book. It is based on oral history (one of the most important methods for recapturing the history of the Jews in the Diaspora) and many personal stories by Jewish Kurds are dotted throughout the book. Many tales are not only interesting, but also witty, hilarious and telling... I hardly knew anything about the Jews of Kurdistan before reading this enjoyable book. Keep up with the Good work!