Rare Iraqi Jewish books – who is the rightful owner?
This entry is cross-posted at the JPS Blog.
I’ve always had this nerdy thing for antiquarian books – I even once spent a summer working at a rare books and manuscripts library. So naturally I got pretty excited when I stumbled across this article earlier today. The article was published a little over a year ago, on June 27 – I’d be curious to know what kind of progress has been made in the smuggling operation since then.
The Agence France-Presse reported from Jerusalem:
Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq’s Jewish community by Saddam Hussein’s regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.
The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said.
The volumes are part of a massive collection of books confiscated by the secret police of the executed Iraqi dictator and stored in security installations in the Iraqi capital until the US-led invasion of 2003.
Many volumes were damaged during the bombing of government buildings in the opening weeks of the war, and after the fall of Baghdad most of the books were sent off to be temporarily stored at the Library of Congress in Washington.
Others however ended up in the hands of private dealers.
“We bought them from thieves,” Mordechai Ben-Porat, an Iraqi-born Jew and the founder of Jerusalem’s Babylonian Jewry Heritage centre told the newspaper, adding that the foundation paid some 25,000 dollars (16,000 euros).
In the beginning, Ben-Porat sent an emissary to Baghdad who shipped the books directly to Israel, but once the Americans caught wind of his activities they forbade further shipments, forcing him to smuggle the rest, he said.
I think this article poses an interesting question: who is the rightful owner of these cultural artifacts? Of course, it’s a little difficult to side with a repressive dictatorship, but still – are these Iraqi rare books, or Jewish rare books? I think you can easily argue either side. After all, Iraqi history isn’t just Arab, it’s also Jewish, Kurdish, Armenian, and even Christian. (Sidepoint: this definitely brings to mind the Elgin Marbles debate, and the sticky issue of art and cultural repatriation in general.)
And to add another layer of difficulty to the debate – the article says that these books were purchased from theives, who stole them from private dealers. Is this ethical? Of course, we don’t know how those private dealers got their hands on the books. But the question of rightful ownership is still very unclear. What are your thoughts on the issue?
-Naomi
This is a difficult subject.
Ignoring ownership for a minute, let’s look at what we desire for such rare things.
1. We wish them to be protected, physically from the effects of time; preserved, conserved for all time.
2. We wish for there to be access to the items for scholarly research, for the public to view.
3. We wish that whoever holds them, treasure, value and cherish them.
As to ownership now, I don’t think that a person, a culture, or a nation can really own them, any more than a person can own history. An object can be entrusted to someone to hold for all of us. This doesn’t mean that the trustee can’t change over time.
So, I would think that for now, the best place to entrust these books is in Israel. When Iraq develops the infrastructure, physically, politically, and culturally perhaps it will be time to entrust these books to them.
Bruce -
You make some very valid points. Most people who argue, for example, that the Elgin Marbles should stay in Britain make the point that the British Museum simply can do a better job preserving them and making them available to the widest possible audience.
I’d like to play devil’s advocate, though. Why shouldn’t the issue of ownership play a role in the debate? Are rare books – or any cultural or artistic artifact – the property of all of humanity, or can certain groups stake a personal claim over them? These books were not simply owned by Iraqi Jews, but in many cases were created by Iraqi Jews. Shouldn’t the production of these artifacts affect how we define who owns them? After all, the “owner” (the museum, library, or individual) is the one who decides how an object is preserved, displayed, and passed on. Can’t you make the argument that Iraqi Jews have a right to be in control of how their heritage is preserved, displayed, and passed on?
While the final home of the books is up in the air, they most definitely belong in Israel at this time. If nothing else, the books need to be repaired. The contents also need to be copied for future generations. It will be many years if ever before Iraq has the ability and facilities to care for such valuable and rare materials. What a tragedy it would be to lose these precious books simply for the fact that it seemed the right thing to give them back to the Iraqi people. If I remember correctly, Iraq has never been the greatest friend of the Jews. I don’t think that giving the books back is somehow going to turn that around. Please keep the books in Israel where they can be viewed, used and shared with all, no matter which nationality or religion.
I don’t understand the rush to get these books to Israel. It is NOT clear to me that Israeli cultural institutions have the financial wherewithal to care for these books, or are better situated to do so than Jewish cultural institutions elsewhere–quite the contrary. It is hard to overestimate the damage done to Israeli cultural institutions by government cutbacks in the last decade, or the likelihood that funding for cultural institutions will continue to drop–except as funded by people from outside of Israel, who could perhaps fund preservation and scholarship to better return on their investment at other Jewish cultural institutions outside of Israel.
Surely the disposition of the books should at least be mooted by remaining members of the Iraqi Jewish community, or by any survivors from whom the books were confiscated. Their voices should certainly be given weight in deciding where the books should be.
In all cases, certainly it is to everyone’s advantage to prevent the books from being stolen, and to prevent thieves from then earning money in their sale.