Arts & Entertainment .k. • Catering available at all locations • Coupons are for all locations including Hercules Family Restaurant at 12 Mile & Farmington Visit us at www.leosconeyisland.com Receive Receive Receive $100 Off $200 off Total Bill Over $10 Total Bill Over $20 Not valid with Specials. Not valid with any other offers. With coupon. Expires 12/31/08 Not valid with Specials. Not valid with any other offers. With coupon. Expires 12/31/08 10% Off Total Bill Not valid with Specials. Not valid with any other offers. With coupon. Expires 12/31/08 Come celebrate 33 years in the metro Detroit area!!!! 1 10%0ff The Man From Zakho Sandee Brawarsky Special to the Jewish News T here are no more Jews in Zakho. Once the center of Jewish activity in Kurdish Iraq, the isolated town, a dusty vision of biblical landscape, was known as the "Jerusalem of Kurdistan." Residents spoke the ancient Aramaic language, which they kept alive, along with their faith and distinctive culture, for almost 3,000 years. In the 1950s, after the Iraqi gov- ernment turned against the Jews, the entire community moved to Israel, as part of Operations Ezra and Nehemiah. More than 120,000 Jews were airlifted from Iraq, including 18,000 Kurdish Jews; other Kurdish Jews arrived from Syria and Iran. Yona Sabar was born in Zakho, and was the last boy to have his bar mitzvah there. He lived in a mud home whose roof his family sometimes slept on in the heat; and he enjoyed meet- ing his grandfather in shul, where the old man sat up every night, con- versing with the angels. In Israel, his once-successful merchant family was impoverished; while the Muslims and Christians in Zakho had respected them, the Kurds were looked down on as the very lowest class in the new State of Israel. Sabar, unlike most of his fellow vil- lagers, graduated from high school in Israel (while working full time to help support his family) and the Hebrew University, where he studied language with a special interest in Aramaic. He received his doctorate in Near East Languages and Literature from Yale and now is a distinguished professor at University of California Los Angeles. The remarkable arc of Sabar's life is at the center of his son Ariel Sabar's outstanding book, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Algonquin; $25.95). In telling his father's story intertwined with the family's tales, journalist Sabar reconstructs the little- known history of the Kurdish Jews, who lived in harmony with their non- Jewish neighbors. In Zakho, Muslims would bring tea to their Jewish neighbors on Shabbat, when the Jews weren't able to cook. Jewish men wore the same baggy trousers and embroi- dered shirts as Muslims, "even if a few strands of tzitzit poked out from beneath their shirts." My Father's Paradise also is a deeply personal story of a distant father and son who were ultimately reconciled. Total Food Bill Dine-in only. Not valid with Specials. Not valid with any other offers. With coupon. Expires 11/30/08 JN First Person BEST LAMB CHOPS IN TOWN R1 VATS D NM& ROO 4301 ORO:WARD' LAKE ROAD WEST BLOO'M EN) CROSSWINDS PLAZA g 8-6000 Suzanne Chessler Special to the Jewish News FULL BAR FULL SERVICE CATERING T., 71,7410, 10% OFF TOTAL BILL Excluding tax, tip and beverages • With this ad Dine in only • Expires 11/30/08 JN ORCHARD LAKE RD. SOUTH OF 14 MILE Farmington Hills • 851-7000 C6 November 6 • 2008 iN •Carry-Out •Our Speciality "Low Carb Ribs & Chicken & Lam p eter Ney's 7th birthday seemed like a terrible night- mare at first — crashing sounds unlike anything he ever heard, t the furnishings in his family's apart- ment destroyed and left covered with shards from broken windows. The youngster soon realized the horrors he faced were real, rampant and part of Kristallnacht, the time of intense destruction carefully planned by the Nazis against Jews living in Germany, Austria and Sudetenland. Ney's recollections, 70 years later, are joined with the recollections of other survivors in a new book, 48 Hours of Kristallnacht: Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust: An Oral History (Lyons Press; $19.95). Author Mitchell Bard presents essays based on testimonies of people who lived through the hours of Nov. 9- 10, 1938, and he documents the Nazi commands that spawned the destruc- tion by soldiers and non-Jewish citi- zens. "I wanted to capture the emotions of Kristallnacht that too often get lost in numbers and statistics:' explains