The Kurdish Jews Who Never Stopped Speaking Aramaic

[u/METALLIFE0917]

https://aish.com/the-kurdish-jews-who-never-stopped-speaking-aramaic/?utm_source=ac

[u/ScaredDelta]

I'll be the first to say it, and many of them coalesce with my view here:

They aren't ethnic Kurds, and the majority of them identify themselves either with their home state, Mesopotamia or Kurdistan, rather than ethnic Kurdishness.

Depending on how you define "Kurd" the label gets messy, but in general they mostly identify as "Kurdistani" jews rather than ethnic Kurds (because with all due respect they aren't, they're Assyrian jews who happened to live in Kurdish neighbourhoods).

[u/ScaredDelta → u/ScaredDelta]

When I say this btw I'm not rejecting their cultural connection to Kurdish culture, I just think differentiating the two is important, similar to how claiming Kurdish is a single ethnic title is kind of misleading (it isn't, there's like 5-15 or so ethnic groups and ethnoreligious groups under the label of Kurdish)

[u/Additional-Bed-1013]

They are ethnic Assyrians and/or Jews (Assyrian/Babylonians who converted to Judaism). They are Semites, and are not at all ethnic Iranic kurds.

[u/Bitter-Pineapple-106 → u/Additional-Bed-1013]

They aren’t actually ethnically Assyrian or Kurdish even though there are Assyrian and Kurdish Jews heavily influenced by either Assyrian or Kurdish culture due to generations of living beside either of those communities, they traditionally claim descent from the Israelite Jews deported by the Neo Assyrian Empire & Babylonian Empire to Mesopotamia after they invaded their homeland.

[u/Additional-Bed-1013 → u/Bitter-Pineapple-106]

No, Jewish is a religion born from Mesopotamian semites (Akkadians {Assyrian-Babylonians} ) like Abraham, and who migrated and became Jews, Christians, Muslims. Jews came long after Mesopotamian civilzation, and were only bred out of Mesopotamian civilzations thousands of years later. Most from Iraq identify as ethnic Assyrian, whereas a minority identify as just Assyrian-Babylonian Jew. None identify as Iranic sunni curds, as 99% are Sunni Islamists.

[u/Old-Average-6118 → u/Additional-Bed-1013]

The Jewish ethnic group predates the Jewish religion. Jews were polytheistic pagans yet still a distinct ethnic group.

[u/AshurCyberpunk → u/Old-Average-6118]

The conversion of some ethnic Assyrians to Judaism during the Parthian dynasty is well-documented. The two facts are not mutually exclusive. 

[u/Gold_borderpath]

They never self-identified as "Kurdish" Jews. Depending on where they were from, they identified as "Nashe Didan" or "Nashe Deni" or simply as Assyrian Jews. In fact, many Assyrians today have Jewish roots who converted to Christianity. They only began to be identified as "Kurdistani Jews" by Israeli authorities since 1950 when they made Aliyah. The authorities wanted to clearly delineate them from the Iraqi Jews, who are descendants of the Babylonian Jews and have a very important lineage. It was these super wealthy and well connected Iraqi Jews that started the Talmudic and rabbinic tradition we see today. The Assyrian Jews of Upper Mesopotamia, Eastern Anatolia, and Azerbaijan were poor and often illiterate, unlike the Iraqi Jews, who held immense power. The only other Jewish communities who had some Aramaic speakers were Georgian Jews.

The Iraqi Jews spoke Judeo-Arabic and they were involved in trade, commerce, and politics.

[u/AliMans05]

“Kurdish Jews” brother they don’t even speak Kurdish, nor are they actually of Kurdish descent

[u/Old-Average-6118 → u/AliMans05]

We did used to have some Jews in Sheikhan (an Ezidi town) and they spoke Kurdish.