Finally some news on the Iraqi Jewish archive

UPDATE: How I became an artefact: the story of Iraq's Jewish archive and its restoration. Edwin Shuker’s Iraqi school report turned up in an exhibition at the US National Archive. He told a Limmud audience the remarkable story of how it got there (The Jewish Chronicle). A fascinating story by someone who has been involved with the Iraqi Jewish archive since it was discovered. Indeed, before.

You should read the whole article, but I will just quote the part that updates us on the status of the archive:

Despite the agreement being that the archived items would be returned in September 2018, Mr Shuker told the audience, “We have been managing to delay the sending back by telling the US State Department, ‘We will hold you responsible if these archives go back to the same sewage waste that they came out of. What guarantee have we got that they are actually going to be treasured?’”

He confirmed that there had been a “three-year extension, which is not yet formal, you will not see it on the internet... to allow the Iraqis to come up with a proposal as to where are they going to keep it, how are they going to make it accessible — especially to the owners of those things, so that Edwin Shuker can take his son and say, ‘This is my certificate, this is the place they took from me’ — is that going to be open for us?”

However, Mr Shuker suggested that there were grounds for hope.

So the latest is that there is an informal three-year extension to the deadline for the return of the archive to Iraq. Meanwhile, there is a lawsuit (Mr. Shuker is involved) and negotiations continue. Looks like I called it about right.

Follow the links starting at the last link above for many, many additional posts on the Iraqi Jewish archive going back to its discovery in 2003.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.