Ezekiel Judah
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Ezekiel Judah (Hebrew: יחזקאל יהודה) also known as Yehezkel Yehuda, or Yahuda, or Ezekiel Judah Jacob Sliman (1800–22 April 1860), was a Jewish communal leader, trader of indigo, muslin, and silk, philanthropist, and Talmudist from Baghdad. He migrated to India, where he led the Baghdadi Jewish community of Kolkata and established the city's first synagogues.
Judah came from a prominent Jewish family in Baghdad, known in English as the Judah family, in Hebrew as the Yehuda family, or originally as the Ma'tuk family.
The Ma’tuk family of Baghdad was descended from Rabbi Ma’tuk, the last Nasi (Prince) of the Jewish community of Anah on the Euphrates. Rabbi Ma’tuk fled to Baghdad with his family in the early 17th century due to threats from a tyrannical governor who had persecuted the community.[1] Rabbi Ma’tuk, as was customary for leaders of prominent Jewish communities in Iraq at the time, had served as the Saraf-Bashi, or treasurer, of the governor.[2] The historian of Baghdad Jewry, Rabbi David Solomon Sassoon, notes that the Ma’tuk family had been established in Anah for centuries.[3]
The family's flight reflected a shift in the axis of Mesopotamian Jews. The historian of Iraqi Jewry, Zvi Yehuda, notes that the conflict between the Ottoman Empire and Persia harmed Anah, and the cessation of caravan trade between Aleppo and Baghdad impoverished the Jewish community, prompting many of the wealthiest Jewish families, including the Ma’tuks, to move to Baghdad.[4] Anah, which had previously been a prosperous Jewish center, fell into sharp decline; a Portuguese traveler in 1663 even observed that the only Jews living there made their livelihoods by producing cloth from camel hair.[4]
Despite this, origins in Anah were seen as a sign of the family's antiquity among Iraqi Jews at the time. This was due to the ancient Iraqi Jewish belief that Anah was the site of Nehardea, which features prominently in the Talmud, including as the first seat of the Exhilarch and his Beth din.[5] The Jews of Anah maintained that they were descended from the Babylonian Exile and had never subsequently returned to Judaea.[6][7] The descendants of the Ma’tuk family from Anah, known as the Judah family since the late 18th century, continue to uphold this tradition to this day.[7] This belief was corroborated by Christian missionaries in Anah in the 19th century, who reported that "these Jews maintained their forefathers were of the first captivity and had never returned to Palestine."[8]
The family's arrival in Baghdad marked a revival of the city's fortunes. Baghdad, which had ceased to be a Jewish center following its capture by Timur in the 14th century, was re-emerging as a major Jewish center when the family arrived in the early 17th century.[4] According to historian Zvi Yehuda, there are no reports of Jews in Baghdad or its surroundings—including Basra, Hilla, Kifil, Anah, Kurdistan, or even Persia and the Persian Gulf—during the 15th century.[4] The migration of the Ma’tuk family to Baghdad was part of the city's emerging Jewish revival.[4] Historian and Rabbi David Solomon Sassoon noted that the family was one of the oldest Jewish families in Baghdad.[9] The 19th-century German ethnographer H. Peterman corroborated this, writing that the oldest Jewish families of Baghdad, including the Ma’tuk, came from Anah.[10] Historians of Iraqi Jewry recount that the Ma’tuk family, later known as Yehuda or Judah, gained great renown as scholars, rabbis, merchants, and communal leaders in Baghdad during the 18th and 19th centuries. Most notably, the communal leader, poet, and astronomer Sliman Ben David Ma’tuk, also known under the Anglicized name Solomon Ma’tuk, achieved significant prominence.[9]