The images of those long-ago prayers are indelibly ingrained in the hearts and minds of those who grew up in a different time and place
“Baghdad was a center of Jewish life during the time I lived there,” says Morris Nissan of Jerusalem. “There were many batei knesset in Baghdad, but the Masudah Shem Tov shul, just a few steps away from our house, was considered one of the largest. There was a large open court for community gatherings, in addition to the sanctuary where we’d daven three times a day. In the last years of the Jewish community in Baghdad in the early 1950s, it also became a center for applications to make aliyah, and from where designated emigres left for the airport.”
Morris was just a little boy at the time, but he’ll never forget the power of the Yamim Noraim, when masses of people crowded together, dressed in white and wrapped in talleisim, davening in several different minyanim.
“There wasn’t room for everyone in the shul, so some had to daven outside. The davening was in the Bavli nusach, with many songs and piyutim. When the davening was finished, everyone would go outside and bless each other with the traditional words ‘santat chadara [a green year].’
“On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we walked to the banks of the Tigris to perform Tashlich together. It was a massive gathering — I don’t think there was a single Jew in all of Baghdad who wasn’t there.”
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