Compare and Contrast

Sephardi Voices. Edwin Shuker interview, Part Two. Page PAGE 44

SEPHARDI VOICES

Interview NO.

NAME: Edwin Shuker

DATE: 13 July, 2012 and 14 September 2012

LOCATION: London, UK

INTERVIEWER: Henry Green

[Part Two]

[0:00:00]

Edwin, in the first part of the interview, you talked about how you had come to London, and that you had gone to University, and you started off …in a, a future life. And then you said that you began questioning life; that, you began to question the meaning of life. Could you begin by talking about that please?

I still remember very well, the…that moment which was a life changing moment. I was crossing a bridge, by foot, and I was looking and I, I was worried about my hair loss, that day. I was in my early twenties, I had a sports car. I had found a niche work in computers which was earning me per day what I would have earned normally per week for my age. And I thought, ‘Life cannot get better!’ But then, life can only get worse. That was the second part of the sentence. And I’m thinking, ‘right now I am handsome, I am rich, I’m everything I-- one wants to be. And here I am, I’m beginning to lose it. I’m starting with losing my hair line. What’s next? My eye sight, my movement? What do I need this for? What is the point of this whole journey, that you only go downhill from now?’ And I looked at and I seriously thought, ‘Let’s end it on the top. Let’s go. Let’s jump.’ And it was not just a flippant remark. It was a very serious and deep moment. And, well I chose not to throw myself over the bridge, obviously. And I began to look at life in a different way. I joined a, what one could call a cult, now. Some movement which is based on Eastern… meditation. But more than that, on a philosophy.

[02:39]

And they, I joined them. I went …learning about philosophy and economics [unintell]. And this movement chose kids, young people between the age of say twenty-one and twenty-eight. They had a precise age. And, they asked us to go and join them over weekends. And I went for the first weekend, and that lasted for three years. And for three years, I was at that headquarters near a place it was Waterperry Gardens, near Oxfordshire, and…every weekend. And there, I learnt to see life in a different way. I learnt what I call now, spirituality. That there is a voice inside you that tells you, that you connect with, that there is an inner truth. That things are not just physical and not just surface-wise.

Were there other Jews that you met in this, retreat that you entered?

There were other Jews but Judaism was left at the doorstep. If you recall I had, I just came out of University where I actually lived as an Arab for three years. I found Judaism at that stage totally trivial, superstition, based-- no intellect. No meaning for me. And, the traditions that we kept in Iraq I rejected. And therefore it didn’t mean a thing to me at the beginning.

Did the spiritual awakening, did it also make you reflect upon back to your feelings towards the Iraqis who had made you feel fear and distress and…?

No, absolutely not. I-- what it made me, it made me …have the ability to go over, all the physical things that happens. It’s something that helps me till today. I simply lift up and I am above day-to-day things and above pain and above… all the normal physical things that one can have. And, it, basically made me, as if I was entering a new world which has no relationship whatsoever to the world that - the physical world that - I’ve lived up to that moment. It was as if, I was playing Monopoly and now I actually have real money.

[05:24]

And so you then, as this was going on, because you said for three years you did this on the weekends. How did your life go in terms of…business?

It was at the beginning of my business work. I, as I said, I was actually in computers, in programming and system designs. That was such a new world at the end of the seventies, that you could name your price. You could name your timing. And so, I worked as- around the country…going there for during the week and then Fridays I would just go to Waterperry.

And during this period, your parents were in London?

My parents were in London, in this very house.

And did you have contact with them?

Yes I had contact with them. Yes, of course.

Frequently?

Yes. Because, I actually was living at home at that stage, having lived three years in University, and because I , I was living a, a pretend life, I actually did, they…I did not allow them to visit me once, of course in the three years. I did not speak with them from there. And I did have a very difficult, other than the, during the vacations. So then after I came back, I came back and lived here.

And did, so you, you lived here, you, you moved forward with your retreat. Where did your life change after that?

[07:02]

After that, something happened. As I progressed in that cult, there was a, a character which has founded this thing, and, as I progressed in seniority, we were getting closer to this, human being, to this person. But it seemed suddenly that we actually need to almost worship that person. And to, bow in his presence. And that’s when I believe my Jewish Shama, my Jewish soul, for the first time, got suddenly awakened. And I just simply could not do it. And which was very surprising, because I, what we used to have is a group of young people, a class. So this class which we’d by now we’d been three years together, built very strong bonds between each other. We lift each other up and sometimes you actually feel really down, sometimes you have complete disbelief of what you’re doing and what you’re working on. And so, each one is in charge of lifting up the other. And people leave their jobs; become better things or different things. They live together, they keep good company, good company meaning, each other’s company. And everybody was progressing very, very nicely. Except I just couldn’t do it. I just could not worship any human being or, or feel such reverence to him. And, it showed. And I… actually was in very short time I was, felt, I cannot carry on with this any more. And when I stopped going there, which normally would not happen, once you’d built up this bond, they actually would call you, would, would write to you, would show up on your doorstep, saying you know, ‘Don’t leave us. Don’t let us down.’ They actually did never call me again, ever. Full stop. No--Nothing. Just, let go. I stopped one weekend, and that was it!

So where did you go?

I learnt a lot, and I thought I would try to teach my sisters now, how to live that life. And my sisters were actually, they came younger than me, so they actually weren’t, were more, conversant in Judaism. And the Jewish Judaism that they were, were actually based on what they learned in this country, based on a lot of intellect, books as opposed to the Judaism…almost…pseudo–Judaism of tradition and superstition that we lived in Baghdad. So, instead of me converting them, they actually managed to do the reverse. And, open my eyes to what can, what Judaism was meant to be, rather than how it was practiced in back home.

[10:18]

And so how did, did you become Shabbat shaves? Did you become more religious, did you…join any Jewish organisations?

What happened, they led me to their Rabbi, [Sochor Abrahai - Yissochor Avrohom ?], passed away last year, Rabbi [Freidech]. And Rabbi [Freidech]…I run with him about…I was bursting to teach people what I learnt, and how can one connect with his inner truth. And I found out that actually, many of the things that I’ve learnt were embedded in Judaism; it was just not explained. And even the Rabbi was not able to explain. But by him talking to me about it, and me asking him questions, it suddenly hit me, that everything I’ve learnt, was there to teach me Judaism in the proper way. So he, the only thing that I remember, him challenging me to keep Shabbat. And I…he made a deal with me; keep one Shabbat and we’ll see how it goes. And I accepted the challenge, and it was a summer day, and Shabbat here finishes at about ten thirty at night. And at ten thirty-two, he called me and he said, ‘How was it?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely horrible. Worst twenty-five hours of my life.’ And he said, ‘Oh, great! Very, very good. It means it’s working.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? In that last twenty-five hours I would have done hundreds of things.’ And he said, ‘Exactly. You’ll see that actually the hundreds of things, it doesn’t matter what you could have done. It’s what you have lived through.’ And he said, ‘I want to ask you one more favour, just do one more.’ I said ‘OK.’ Did another one, now I knew what it was like, so it was, I said to him ‘It’s a little bit less horrible, but what’s the point? What is the point of stopping all activities for twenty-five hours?’ So then he said, ‘OK, one more. Just…the last time. If it was horrible, I will never ask you again.’

[12:28]

So I said, ‘No, no way. I know’ by then I knew a little bit that said when you do something for three times, it becomes whatever it is, in Jewish, you know it becomes a tradition or, you have to keep it. I said, ‘Zero. Zero, and you know what Rabbi? I’m off to Manchester for a party because I was invited to that party. And, nothing will stop me. I’m sorry.’ So, here I am driving, on the next Friday, with a partner, and I was on the M1 in my sports car, and the sun was setting. And, I said to my partner, ‘Do you know soon I will be zapped by God?’ in a very joke-y way. And she said. And I said, ‘Well you know, for the last two Fridays, every time the sun set, I stopped working, I stopped activities, I stopped doing and now we are driving, so I will be zapped.’ Just as I was saying that, I actually lost complete control of the car. The car, the engine just stopped functioning. I was literally on, on, on, on empty, on neutral. It was…something so, so unbelievable, that a car suddenly goes on neutral. And I’m pressing the pedals. Absolutely nothing is happening. I manoeuvred my way to the hard shoulder and, having to cross four lanes without, without any power. And we called the, the AA. And the guy came in, and it was pelting with rain, it was dark, Friday night, and I’m on the hard shoulder with a, with a junk of a car and the feeling that, ‘this is something beyond me’. And the, the man just, I still use his word, is like, ‘Major job, Sir. Major job.’ He said to me, ‘I have been working in this business. I have no idea. How can this car cut off completely, without any warning sign, without any red lights coming on? It… I don’t know how.’ So I said to him, ‘Well I know.’ And I left it there. And …in a way I, I, I had no choice but to keep Shabbat in a way. I felt, that last years of, of getting close to myself and to my inner truth. I actually found that there is something called [ashkahar pretit] and that actually, there is a God that hears, and listens, and actually deals with you directly. So it’s not a fable, and it’s not … superstition and it’s not just a, just a, a story. It actually, there is a God that actually answers you directly.

[15:18]

Did you then negotiate with God?

I did, I still do. I still negotiate with God and I obviously…I don’t, I mean I’m sort of simplifying it. I don’t see him as a, an old man with a white beard that I talk to. I, as you grow older and as you learn more you develop a concept of what God is and that’s private. Each person has his own God and talks to him but, I have absolutely no doubt, that, I’m blessed and I’m, I have somebody keeping an eye on me. And in this world, [ph. type of thing].

Did this, this transformation lead you to Esther?

No. That was way, way, many, many years before.

What came between this road trip as it were, and Esther?

Well this road trip, I am not going to… I mean, I had a couple more of those, supernatural moments, almost to, just to prove to me that it wasn’t a one-off. I remember…driving in the rain as well, at night, in the East End of London. A terrible night with, lightning and thunder, and I had, I had a, as I was driving, I did not see a bollard in the street, a stone bollard. And I hit that stone bollard. And I hit it on the side of the wheel, so the wheel collapsed, and I actually was trapped in the car that I was driving at speed, without any way of controlling it. My, it collapsed on my leg, so my feet was not; I, I was not able to do anything. And I was, the car was travelling at speed, in a, as the road bent, I actually became on the other side of the road, facing traffic, coming in, in the rain, with lights glaring at in my eyes. And I am absolutely totally and completely trapped in this vehicle, going opposite people coming towards me. And you could see them… you could I guess just see people in disbelief, for trying to avoid hitting me.

[17:48]

And that for me that was a, a moment of revelation that lasted as far as I’m concerned, hours, suddenly. I mean it probably was three or four seconds, but for me the clarity was there. And I remember bargaining with God at the time, and I remember almost a conversation with him. So, I don’t know whether I want to say it all but I, I remember saying to him, ‘OK, first of all, I don’t know why you’re doing this for me, to me. And also, I actually don’t want to be injured. I don’t want to, to suffer anything.’ And, I just don’t know why I’m remembering it now. I was sort of saying, bargaining with him, and then I said, ‘I’m not even willing, for one, for the top of a finger, for me to lose. I’m not willing to give you that.’ And, the car just found its way; kept on hitting the kerb, and slowing down, and… it finally, very gently, hit a, a wall, extremely gently. And I remember people abandoning their cars and coming to, to save me. And they broke the, the sort of the door for me, to get out. And, and I got out. And I don’t think I even needed to send my suit to the drycleaner. I was just - walked. And we, that was the times when there was no mobiles or, or anything like that. And I was in the East End. It was a horrible night. It was, it was not a place to walk, but I just remembered… I just walked. I just kept on walking in the rain, and celebrating that moment.

The, the celebration, how did that then lead to, to you coming, getting more involved in Jewish life?

[20:04]

Well, one of the reasons why, I was being pushed by this supernatural force, to go to Jerusalem. Because the idea was planted in, in my mind by the Rabbi, who said to me, ‘Really, you need to educate yourself. You are…trying, but you can’t do it while you’re doing all this work and… Guess what, take a year off, and go to, to a Yeshiva.’ So he suggested a certain Yeshiva, which was called The Jerusalem Academy of Higher Learning for [unintell] in Hebrew was Dear Jerusalaim. And he said, ‘Treat yourself.’ So I applied. But you know, the pull of my work, my car, my shares, my poker nights, my womanising, all this was, was very strong. So it was, yes, I would ask for the brochure, I would ask for that, and…I was taking my time. And suddenly, everything started happening to push me towards Jerusalem including this car accident. I never lose in poker, until I started losing amazingly. I mean, again, really it might be, I mean for me that was every time a message. I mean I, I- one night I said, ‘This time I’m not going to lose in poker. I’m just gonna play the safest possible game.’ So here I am, winning, seventy eighty Pounds, and we are finishing, and there was one last hand, to finish. And I’m saying, ‘Well, I beat you God.’ And I actually looked around, and I have three Aces. And, and I said, ‘Well, ok God, so now I’m going to get a bonus. I’m going to win even more.’ Because three Aces is unbeatable. The first three cards. And …I decided I’m not going to play it like I should be playing it. I, I, but I’ll just finish the game. So it comes my, my turn and I say, ‘A hundred Pounds’, which was an unbelievable fortune. Just wanted everybody out; I’m just gonna get the pot. And there’s this idiot who says, ‘Ok, I’ll see you.’ And, and he got a straight! After five cards! I mean it was like that and I’ve got, I left wiped out. So, so that night I just said, ‘I can’t beat you, God. And I’ll do it.’ So I went to Jerusalem. I cleared everything. I stopped my business. I sold my car. Sold my shares. I didn’t want anything left. Zero. Z E R O. I left with my clothes on. And, and, and basic clothes and I took myself and I went to Jerusalem.

[23:00]

Which year was that?

Which year?

Year.

That was 1980.

And what happened in Jerusalem?

In Jerusalem I had… a most fantastic year. I had a year where I combined what I learnt in the cult, what I wanted to, to pass on to people, and I combined that with Judaism. So everything I’ve learnt, everything, was translated into Jewish…learning and formulated something for myself. Formulate what Shabbat means for me, what [ph. modehani] means, what [Brochot] on the, on the, that we do daily are, and what do they mean for me. And I form--formulated a way of life. I also… I, I, I went for the school of Mussar, which is the ethical school, and I, I was every single night I had a [ ph.hishbod nefish]. I would sit at night, for one hour, and I would write down everything that happened to me that day from the absolute smallest thing, that, you know the one of the teachers said something and I felt, jealousy, that he had praised somebody else, or the smallest tiniest thing that happened to me I would analyse it. I also followed the positive way of thinking. I never, ever dwell on anything negative. I never dwelt on, on, on past, so I always looked for a positive future and for a positive way of dealing with everything. It’s not always have been helpful, this approach, but, but it, on the whole I’m very happy that I actually took it. There are more, more hits than misses, basically, i.e. sometimes to now, I find it difficult to deal with negativity. I’d rather not. I’d rather just move on and, and produce positive results that covers the negativity rather than actually having to deal with it.

[25:13]

In your Mussar practice, often Mussar practice is where one takes a particular… exercise… jealousy, enthusiasm, courage, these different kinds of exercises one can do in Mussar. Did, do you remember focussing on any one in particular?

No, I, I, I focussed on becoming a, a person who walks in God’s image. I focussed on somebody who has zero negative traits. I was very harsh on extracting everything which is negative in my trait. The smallest tiniest, as, as my growth, as my diary you know became more detailed and I started concentrating on the smaller and smaller and smaller, and removing the bigger negativity whatever they were and concentrating on, on becoming a very, very good person, almost a divine…person. And I had of course, being a year in the, in a Yeshiva surrounding, and it was ultra–basic Yeshiva. It was hilariously, I mean we were five people in one room the size of this room. We had no, not even a wardrobe for the hanging of clothes. There was no place. We had just our, each one had a suitcase and in that suitcase, his whole life was there. It wasn’t by design; it was simply a very, very poor Yeshiva. And, the food was so basic, we they used to have like tzedakah, the charity, the shops that doesn’t sell, you know tomatoes or rotten cucumber, whatever left at the end of that day, they would put it to us and we would fight for, for, for this sort of basic food. And, it wasn’t pretence; it was really this is how we live for the year. But then that removed me from all the trappings of, of, of, of materialistic…life.

Your Yeshiva was Ashkenazi, in terms of the training?

Purely Ashkenazi.

[27:23]

Did you associate with any Sephardi? Were they part of the Yeshiva? Did you, was there any Sephardi custom or any…?

There was a mystical rabbi that …that came to visit the Yeshiva. He was a very Sephardi, very Iraqi. I didn’t know how famous he was. And, as I, he came to the Yeshiva to perform…I think it was circumcision, but I’m not sure. He wasn’t the [Muher], but he was reading the…And, and he looked at me and I looked at him, and…he just, his eyes penetrated my innards, and he said to me, ‘Who are you?’ So I said to him my name. And he said, ‘What’s your mother’s name?’ And I told him. And he said, ‘What was her family name?’ And that was just so weird in the middle of this Yeshiva with hundreds of people crowding, that he would ask me about… And then he says to me, ‘I taught your mother in Baghdad.’ And…I thought, ‘This guy is totally senile.’ And I said to him…Oh yeah, he said, ‘Send her my regards. Tell her Samuel Darsi sends her his regards.’ I said, ‘Are you, are we talking the same language here? Are you…?’ He said, ‘Your mother is Victoria, her brother is Eddie?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I taught them, back home.’ And so I built this relationship with this unbelievable man, and I used to go and study with him privately from then on during the Yeshiva time. And that connected me with my, I felt suddenly how much I missed my, my Iraqism, my Orientalism, and that I actually was almost a fish out of water in this intellectual Ashkenazi, cold, world. That is actually a much learned, much more learned than me, but it was not, it doesn’t have the heart that I wanted. So I actually felt, I belonged to both sides. I am a bridge. I am the cross section of the world. I came to the conclusion that Israel was a cross section, was a microcosm of the whole universe, and I felt I was that, put in that place because I could…very happily move between Ashkenazi and Sephardi. I’m learning Ashkenazi; I have a heart in the Sephardi world. I am left and right and I’m straight and bent and I’m ethical and, and cult and the whole world was, I felt, I felt it was in me.

[30:30]

So at the end of the year, you have to make a decision, do you stay in Israel, or do you leave?

Yes. At the end of the year as I…was waiting for, and I still do, I still wait for God to tell me what to do. And I miss him when he doesn’t and I shout at him when he doesn’t and sometimes he goes away for, for a, couple of weeks, sometimes a couple of years. But I, I almost am able to do big decisions without him telling me what to do. And so my world was in limbo. People were saying goodbye. And, lo and behold on the dot somebody comes to me and he says to me, ‘My name is Rabbi [Kassin]. I heard about you, that you are a Sephardi boy in this Yeshiva. And I want to, to suggest something for you.’ I said ‘OK.’ And he said, ‘I want you to come and run the Sephardic Educational Centre.’ I said, ‘What is that?’ So he said, ‘Come and see me in the old City tomorrow.’ I go to see him in this incredible place right at the car park of the Old City. Absolutely gorgeous home, with a courtyard and a tree in the middle. And tens and tens and tens of rooms and, you know, how many, fifty, sixty, right in the heart of the Old City. And I said, ‘What do you want me to do here?’ He said ‘Well, this belongs to, to a, to an American Sephardi guy, by the name of Dr [Hossein Nissim] who has taken now a lease on it from the [ph. Var Aida]. And he has a dream, to do something called Sephardic Educational Centre. And I think you can do it.’ I said, ‘Do what? What is there?’ He said, ‘Oh, there is absolutely nothing here.’

[32:36]

‘What’s the, what’s the budget? What’s the money? Where is…what do you want me to do?’ ‘There is no money. You‘ll have to create, you’ll have to create the content and the money and everything. But you have this house. This whole thing and these are the keys. And, really there is no one else.’ So I took it. I took the challenge. Well, I had no choice, as, as in with all the big decisions of my life. I absolutely had no choice. I never, like when I go now to …to Baghdad or to…to do something. I don’t ask Esther or I don’t ask myself…or I don’t ask the children. I just, have to do it.

So you, you, how long did you run the Centre for?

I ran the Centre for seven years.

And, did you meet; did [Nissim] come from LA and meet you? Did you go to LA?

Yes! Of course. Of course. He was, very much a hands–on. And…he was a personality. Let’s put it that way; a personality. Positive and negative. But…mostly… he had a charisma and a, and a -what can I say- just, whenever he goes into somewhere you know, people have to stop, and look up to him.

The Sephardic Educational Centre…Tell, tell us a bit about it. It’s the core institution that… trains Rabbis. That train Rabbi [ inaud ]that coordinates with Rabbis that does all kinds of educational programmes.

No that wasn’t, that wasn’t the case. There is an offshoot. Rabbi Kassin that I mentioned before, he was in a way, too religious, to take on what Dr Nassim wanted to do which is, reaching the children of the Sephardic world. The lost children in LA and New York, in London, in Mexico and Panama. The kids who are not being brought up as Sephardi, or with the Sephardi spirit. So Rabbi Kassin, having run the first such programme of children, could not do it any more, because these kids come in half-naked and …you know probably smoking, hashish and probably and, and no exper-- they are here on the pretext that they’re here to spend the summer. And for them summer is, a summer camp, you know, you have, you dance and you go out with a girl and, and, and you, you smoke and, and that’s what a summer camp is. So he took a side, and then he went and opened a Yeshiva at the back of that huge place. And left me with actually becoming the Director of the Sephardic Centre, which is which really deals with kids.

[35:53]

And the kids who come from outside Israel?

The kids come all from outside Israel.

And just for the summer?

Summer, or winter, when the summer of the South Americans.

And what was your vision of, of your Sephardic programme? What was the vision that you put together?

Very, very simple. I was going to change people’s lives. That was the, that was the laboratory. I was going to put everything I’d learnt into that…number one. I understood exactly what he meant by ‘Sephardic Educational Centre’ by the word ‘Sephardic’. By then I saw both sides, and I saw…that the Jewish persona in Israel, and in Diaspora, is not mixing the true personalities and forming a new personality which is what I thought should happen. I saw how Ashkenazim have kept their Ashkenazi approach to religion. They are learned, they are versed in, in, in, in [ph. Gemaa], they are extremely rigid, and they live sometimes in bubbles of Orthodoxy or Reform or conservatism.

[37:32]

The Sephardic world on the other hand, had a huge amount to offer, but it was cut off now from their sources. There is no more [Haleb] and no more Baghdad and no more of any of those things. The children have a choice. The children who were growing up in America, either they’re going to become; they want to be Jews, in which case they will join [ bNer Kiva]. They want to be religious, they’re going to be joining the Ashkenazi world and wear these funny hats and, and become- and don’t eat in their parents houses. Or, besid- or leave Judaism. There is, there was no other, middle of the road. And there is no Sephardi movement that will show them, that there’s some value in their parents’ and their grandparents’ houses. But later on, later on, I, rather than I changed, rather than wanting to preserve them as Sephardi, cause what I did not like, is the fact that some of the people that were teaching, were trying to teach them Sephardic pride. And therefore ‘we are the Sephardim’ and that really was quite, revolting for me, that sort of approach. That, my approach would be that we need to formulate a new Jew, now, before it’s too late. We needed to form- a, a Jew embedded in the, imbued with Sephardic values, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, so that he can combine that emotion and the, the hospitality and the, and the, the heart into the other side, into the brain. And this has been what I think since then, or since the early 80s till now. I have not moved from that position.

And what would be a typical program of how you would do that?

What, then?

Yeah.

[39:39]

Oh, then, I, I, I had …I lived few years as a conduit, a pure conduit of God’s will almost, how I, as I saw it. I simply lost my ego, for a few years, completely. And I just went with the, with the flow as I could, as every hour, every minute, I would know what to do next. Because it would be very clear, and it would be, only one option. There was - a very clarity in my mind. I was reading, I was studying, but the clarity was, something I have never re-captured…where every decision is right or wrong. There was no, nothing in between. And so for years, not too many but for the when I was on that, I was just following the right. Right, wrong, of course, go right. Choose life. And continuously, and so, continuously, as you take on the right option, the next decision becomes easier and easier, becomes even more clear. And then suddenly my day would be drawn out for me.

The… when you were there in the mid-80s, was also the time that [ph Chass] was beginning, it was also the time that the American Sephardic Federation was having its heyday, was coming back into its own. Nissim was doing his, his great work in California and LA. Was this a time that you were also social networking and meeting all these people and building up…?

Oh, par excellence! I was probably at one stage I was the most networked person in the Sephardic world, because, I took upon myself to go around the world, because I love travelling, I love people, I love places like Singapore and Taiwan, and so, and God loved me, and so every time I knew exactly where I’m going next. And I built what I did, I kept going to the same places, and I remember my first round the world trip, and I remember going to Singapore, and I had only two names with me. I mean, the world has changed so much. Even now, if I were to live again, that period, I would just go on the internet, and be so utterly knowledgeable before reaching that place. I cannot tell you what the world was only twenty years ago, thirty years ago.

[42:35]

Manila, where would I find what Manila looks like? Where will I find- who is there? What is there? Nowhere, absolutely nowhere. And you arrive there, and you’re lucky before your trip that somebody tells you, ‘Oh, this Ezra is in Manila, I know. I don’t know whether he’s still alive, but last time I was there this was his number.’ So you, you reached this, this city that you, you know, and you go there and he says, ‘Right, I’ve got only two shots, Ezra and, and, and Shaul. And if this doesn’t work, then I’m dead.’ You know, I’m feeling that trip is dead meat. So, you call Ezra and Ezra answers the phone, and you have this three minute slot to convince Ezra to see you. And the minute they hear, ‘Hi, I’m Edwin Shuker and I come from Jerusalem.’ They immediately say, ‘Oh, nice to talk to you. I’m actually leaving Manila tomorrow morning for a trip.’ They immediately associated my trip with [unintell] exercise; this guy wants money, and, [unintell]. And it was just miraculous to be able to go to the third sentence and say, ‘Just, I don’t want nothing from you. Just want to introduce myself. See me, because I’m here to help you.’ And the words would come out from my mouth and then they’d say, ‘Ok. Come over, but it’s gotta be five o’clock.’ ‘Of course!’ Five o’clock you go there and you stand there and for the and, and for the first time, basically I would say to them, for the first time they would see somebody who really cares about who they are, their children, what is their problem. And I would make a note of it, and I could see the cynicism in their eyes. Because they must have seen that so many times; a Jewish Agency guy comes in, makes a note and they never hear about it again. But I actually came in six months later, and made sure that literally every single thing that they’ve asked for, was delivered, like, reading books or Hebrew books for the kids. So I’d buy twelve books from Hebrew books and with pictures. I don’t know if you can have a few mezuzot, mezuzot were there. And so, when I called next time and say, ‘Ezra, you remember?’ He’d say, ‘No, I don’t remember.’ ‘You remember last time?’ ‘Well I’m trying…’ ‘Ok but can I just meet you because I’ve got some books for the kids and some, some mezuzot covers.’ And he was like, ‘Oh! Maybe you come for dinner to us tonight.’ And so I built this network.

[45:20]

So, the network. So this network that you’re talking about?

Yes, so I, I really…was a connecting, the Sephardic world. Some of them had been cut off Israel and the Sephardism for years. For decades. I was now connecting them back to the core, to Jerusalem. And I was, trusted, by them. And I was then becoming, getting calls 24/7. I lived for, my life was that. And there was never a ‘No’ it was always, done. Turkey, Spain… India, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, wherever there is five Jews, I was there. And, and, and then my greatest project of my life project was India; how, through the Sephardic Centre, when we brought more than 500 Indians to Israel, without them paying a single penny. It took twenty trips of mine, over three years. It stretched every single fibre of everything I’ve ever learnt, and done, in my whole life, into this one project. While running everything else, but that was the one thing that I, I always remember which such fondness.

You [inaud]Indians. Did they come just for the Centre or did they make Aliya?

[47:04]

No, they, those people First of all, imagine the enormity of actually raising a sum like maybe, I don’t know, a million and a half Dollars? To get kids into Israel on a non-committal basis. It was an enormous task. And I did it with such ease, that I actually had sometimes a lot more money than I can even handle. So these people, I actually instead of coming for the three weeks that all the, they came for six weeks, and then they are allowed to stay another six weeks at their own, with their own relatives. So it was a, and then if they want to do Aliya of course, we were there, to do that for them. The way things worked, was, I was simply I felt, simply a conduit. I would look at a person, and whatever that person wanted, I was a reflection of his desire. And I was just there to do it for him. So whether he, there was no ideology. It was not, ‘I’m looking at you. I need to you be counted as number seventeen…person who made Aliya through me.’ It was never like this. It was at that moment that I’m looking at Henry Green, I was Henry Green’s angel. I was the one who would fulfil his desires. And whatever he says, it will happen, because I have the strength to do it. I mean I …I believed that any person, that I have ever and will ever encounter, was sent just for me, and for me, and I’m for him. I was really working on that level at the time. I mean I can only just now tell you a story and remember how it was but I, I, I don’t know whether I can ever, ever recount- you can never say never, but that was a period when, when I when it was, I was like Harry Potter, I don’t know. I was just a magician. And …and the people that, we changed their lives, overnight. Because I would pick the people would come, and he would ask me a question, a kid. And I would just tell him the answer. And I would challenge him through the newly acquired knowledge that I had, to try something for one morning, and if it doesn’t work, then he should abandon Judaism and become whatever he wants. And it works. Because I was saying to them, you know, ‘Try this tomorrow morning. When it works you’re going to come to me, and I’m going to teach you the next thing. But if it doesn’t work, just leave it. It’s not for you.’

[50:00]

Did you go to the States during this time?

I went to the States.

And who did you meet in the States?

It was less the States, because the States…Nissim was there, and, and he had his crowd with him, and they were doing fine work in LA, and…and there was really no need for me. I was going to the States only to report back, to, to him and to try and get money for the next project, rather than working in the States.

Did you ever[inaud]Federation, the…their conventions or other kinds of [inaud]?

I really can’t remember. Of course I attended everything that was in Jerusalem. The…you know the [ph galls] and the [unintell] Shaloms, and all that sort of, these people that, they were the pioneers of that time and, and we used to visit, David Levy was there at the time and…these were, were extraordinary days where the Sephardim were flexing their muscles for the first time. The, the Black Panthers and the …everything was suddenly an awakening. And they, it was, for the first time they, they, they felt the confidence to complain and to ask, and to want, to, to do this. I was less involved with that work…but, more involved with what I had to do, which was presented to me, for me to do and that was not part of it.

Did, did Iraq play any role in your consciousness at this time?

No.

Did…as you got older did you feel that you needed a partner? That there should be a partner [inaud]?

I felt absolutely no need for anything. I was totally and absolutely a complete person. I did not need…at times I didn’t feel I needed to eat. And I went without food sometimes. I didn’t feel I needed sex, I didn’t feel I needed love, money or anything. I just felt complete, total and absolute. I just…I was reading a book, and…I was I don’t know if you’ve heard of Richard Bach, but, books called ‘Illusion’ and ‘Jonathan Seagull’; and, and that I was in that spirit, that I, and one of the books was about the Messiah, a real man, you know, a real person becoming a Messiah. And that’s what I thought. I thought I was a Messiah. I didn’t think that I was, special. I thought that everyone, like the book says, everyone could be the Messiah, but I thought. ‘I know how to be the Messiah, and I am the Messiah now. I’ve reached it.’ And I…I was just, just absolutely floating.

[53:12]

Eighty-six after the seven years, you decide to move on, or was there some… negotiation again?

No, I had a conflict with [Joe] Nissim at the time, and …and I left the Centre…I left the Centre at the time. It was…and I set up my next step in life which was…I created something called Kehillot, I created the name, I created the concept. And the concept was, that all my contacts are purely, it’s, it’s my contacts. They did not care about anything else, or anybody else. They trusted Edwin Shuker, they trusted them by calling me and saying ‘I’m sending my mother to an old age home in Hertzeria. She’s arriving on the plane, but for some reason I cannot go with her. Edwin, help me.’ They’d say, ‘Edwin, will organise everything else.’ And this is the type of thing that would come in, in a, in a, any day, so many times or like that. And I thought, ‘My next step is to be a service centre for the world, for the Sephardi world’. So set up on my own, and…and I connected. I had files about every community. I had the most up-to-date files that anyone in the world would have, for obvious reasons. I am the one who is in touch with them by phone. I’m the one who goes to see them. I’m the one who accumulated the information about them. Turkey, Spain, and these people were beginning to actually write to the Jewish Agency saying, ‘We have a representative in Israel, called Edwin Shuker and we don’t want you to send anyone to fact finding, to see what’s going on, what we need. We don’t, we are fed up of this. We don’t need anything. He, he, he will, he knows what we need. And you should see him.’ And so this little, nothing thing, with just a, an idea and Esther was, I was not married to her, I was not even thinking about marrying her. My sister had married her brother. That was our connection. She was just the two of us. I, I would be dictating all these things. She would be putting in, and filing them and I had these files about every country. And then suddenly it became …a powerhouse.

[55:59]

Because, when I know the Foreign Ministry wanted to send a, a Minister going to, to, to Spain or to, to, to, Singapore, the people there would say, ‘Go to see Edwin. He will, he will build for you who and what and what to see.’ And so I started enjoying that. I was building, I was, even when the President of the Indian Community would come to Jerusalem, and nobody would know him or care for him, but I would. And I would invite fifteen people from the Foreign Ministry, from the Ambassador and this little house, became a, a hub, of a fantastic idea. Of an idea where these people want something. They’ve got the money for it and they’ll get it now. And so I don’t know, I don’t know where I was going with this idea. I don’t know. I don’t know where it’s gonna, every day I wake up there’s a new challenge and then I’ll do the challenge and I wait for the next thing to happen.

And Esther was one of those things?

Um, it wasn’t in my mind at the time anything, at all. Certainly nothing personal, as I didn’t, I didn’t think I would marry. I didn’t want children. I didn’t want a home, I didn’t want a mortgage, I didn’t want…I did not want to live like human beings.

How did Esther come into the picture then? I mean, she is your wife.

[57:30]

What happened was…a catastrophe happened. Disaster happened. On a personal level. That ended the whole, this whole dream. This whole lifestyle.

Do you want to share this, or…are we going to…

I don’t know. I…it’s very, very difficult for me to, to speak about it. …I don’t know. [Pause] What do you think?

I think that… this is part of the negotiation with God. Your, your stories.

I…em…I was living like this, and I had contacts with the Jewish Agency at its highest. I had contacts with the Foreign Ministry, I had contacts with all the…you know the Jewish leaders, and I…everything was going like magic. I was basking with the, the, the Indian Project was coming to end only because there was not one single more person to bring. We ran out. And that gave me huge kudos in the, in the Jewish world, especially the organised Jewish world, the Jewish Agency, this. I was bringing more children, through the Sephardic Centre and through the, than all of the Jewish Agency with their five-hundred million Dollar budget. We had hundreds of Mexican kids because as the…word went back that this is the greatest place. This is fun. Of course I am not taking all the credit. We had a fantastic team. We had Rabbi Baruch [Garcon], who is a just magic person. I mean, just…can’t think of somebody that I would want to be at his feet more than that person. We had Rabbi Kassin. Next door to us we had, we had a very dedicated staff. We had people who just stayed with the project.

[01:00:10]

And so these kids would come in, totally physical, totally, spoiled brats. We had thirteen, twelve year-old kids from Mexico coming in with 2-3,000 Dollars in their pocket, that’s on top of everything else. And, they would come in to me and he says, ‘But I need to spend the [massari]. I need to, to spend. You are not giving us a chance.’ And they are actually, honestly, I mean I was the most popular man in the whole city - why - because these kids would go to the Arab market, and buy…[haloukia], for six hundred dollars when it was probably worth sixty Pence or two Dollars fifty. And they would say, ‘Look, this is the real thing. They actually discovered it underneath the …’ these thirteen year-old kids with thousands and thousands of Dollars. So, we were very popular. So one day, I, I was doing this [Kehillot] from my workplace where I was living in Mapu. And, and one day I, I got a knock on the door, an angry knock on the door about seven in the morning. And, I opened the door, and I had two guns on my head. I had somebody with a gun. And…so I was, was so out of, my comfort zone, that I was traumatised, stunned, which was the… objective of them doing this. And… they were flashing things on me like their IDs and they were, they were actually police; a special unit, anti –corruption unit. And… they just went in, and they had a warrant. I couldn’t, I couldn’t even work out what they were talking about.

[ 01:02:28]

And …and they just, I literally remember [slumping/slamming?] on the chair, and I remember this…I even remember they cut up the chair, just slumped with open mouth. And these guys were, if anybody had encountered such, you know, the FBI, they all behave the same thing, it’s a kind of a sadistic, power-mad people, that love these jobs. And so these guys said, ‘You are under arrest.’ My Hebrew wasn’t that good and I wasn’t following most of what they were saying, but they were rampaging through these wonderful filing cabinets that I had got. I had [a] wall-to-wall filing cabinets with every person, and every city and every country, and... And they were just rampaging; they were actually pulling these files out. And it’s and they’re just pulling it, and they’re throwing it on the floor. They would look at something and it’s…and it was…They were…smiling with such evil smiles, like you know…like ‘You’ve got your day, here.’ And, ‘You thought you got away with…’ and I am just…totally traumatised. Totally. I just, not sure whether this is real or this is a nightmare and I’m going to wake up from this nightmare and, and …and then they said, ‘Well, you’ve got to come with us. You are under arrest.’ And, ‘For what?’ And they said, I actually just remembered now. I, there was a few things that happened to me, a couple of months beforehand that were very, very strange. And so in the back of my mind there was…anxiety that something is happening in terms…but I actually… First of all I never believed it would develop into anything, purely because I am a pure force for good. I’m the one who goes around the world bringing kids to Israel. I’m the, the Jew who never worked- never earned a penny in Israel.

[01:05:12]

I was not even a citizen. I was just a tourist… in all sorts of ways, a tourist. You know, I was transit in this world! So what could possibly there be a problem? And then I remember them taking me in the car, and telling me that I’m arrested because I have bribed a, a, a senior Jewish Agency official, that really I am an accomplice rather than the main. They-- He was their target, and I’m the accomplice. I’m the one who bribed him. And for bribing him, I received, i.e. the Centre has received, half a million, or I really can’t remember the figure but certainly hundreds of thousands of Dollars, from the Jewish Agency, in help to the grants to the Sephardic Centre. But that was received because I was bribing him. And I remember me, they took me to his house, and I was downstairs in the car when they did the same thing to him. And this giant of a man, this father figure for me, this ... the man I respected most, is being led …with these scum, into their cars and we were driven to, high speed, back to Tel Aviv for, for, we were arrested. We were put in prison, we were put overnight. And…I - it was not one night. I think it was like, do you know actually when it was? It was today’s date. It was September 13th. How’s that for…for a coincidence? It was today. So. That’s when the whole world collapsed. My entire world collapsed. I think we were, we were in, in isolated jail for …we were isolated from each other for…for five, six days…with drug addicts, with criminals, with lowlifes. I was even denied praying. I was asking for, to pray. I didn’t have my tefillin with me. And they said, ‘Where do you think you are? In a hotel? There’s no tefillin here.’

[01:07:41]

And they were trying to basically dest - wipe, destroy my, my self-worth so that they probably tactics of interrogation, you know it’s like, you know like, now, you know ‘you pray from one side and you bribe people and from the other side’ -type of needling. Well, you know I mean I’m not gonna take longer than that with this incident. It’s just that, that incident was the end of my chapter in Israel. My…my life as a messiah.

And you went where then?

It- I couldn’t leave the country. I was under, you know they took my passport. I…I saw another world. I had a world of, I had a whole different universe of prisoners, and having to queue to get your rights and having to …I have to mention it as well, I mean I, at one stage they actually were taking me to court for remand and they handcuffed me. And, it was a very, very difficult period to fall from grace, and to feel that the people who actually… I, I had many encounters with intelligence service and, before, in the Arab world when I was passing by, bringing Indian kids, and I brought them through Egypt. And I was arrested in Egypt and I was led into interrogation. I could take that, and it was wonderful stories. I had, I dined and wined on that story of the Egyptian intelligence arresting me and …and wanting me to be, to ask the Iraqi Ambassador, and life and death situation. And I, I loved, I loved the excitement of telling that story. But it’s one thing they do it to me, and another thing is my own people! The people I have…lived for.

So…

[01:09:58]

So. It took, it took…it took a few months…before I could even communicate and move and, you could…me being such a, such a naturally hospitable person, and I had the Centre, the whole Centre. So I had invited, I invite people for dinners, and you know I, ‘did they want to stay over Shabbat?’ I, I, I had that whole thing. And imagine all these people who would stay in Shabbat, totally now, starting to think, ‘Was that- if I call Edwin now, will they think I’ve been bribed here?’ Because the, I mean it was so ludicrous at the end, the, because they actually were recording me and, and, and this person [Chaim Zohar], and they just misunderstood the English, some of it, and actually, they, they, it was…literally a comedy. They actually didn’t understand English and they, they, they understood it wrongly, and then they were, when I was explaining it to them, first of all they didn’t want any of it, it was…then they said, ‘Oh, you did a party for him…Bar Mitzvah or something…and instead of charging nine Dollars per person, you charged seven dollars per person.’ I said, ‘Yes, and?’ ‘So it’s bribery. You’re bribing an official.’ And, and so what happened was, all the people and all the contacts and all the Israelis I, suddenly neither would they dare contacting me, neither would I dare contacting them. And this man who lived on networking and all that, suddenly he was he was a man on his own. Just by myself. And Esther.

So the charges are dropped…in the end.

Yes.

You come to, you marry Esther there?

Yes I do because Esther stood by me. And Esther…who was, as always whenever she is needed she’s, like an angel. And I was actually almost losing my mind at that time. I was really on the verge of losing my mind. I was feeling, I could not cope with that speed of things, how it happened.

And you come back to London?

[01:12:33]

I come back to London, yes.

And why do you choose London?

In 1988. Oh, my parent lived here. My life was here, pre-…

And did you come back and live with your parents?

No, I came- I married by then. I married…

Esther

…Esther in late, in, in November ’87. And, by the time they allowed me to come out, was in, I think April or something like that, April ’88.

And you come to London.

So I came to London. And by then I was married and I…we, we had to…I mean, it was, it was, I mean she stood by me. We had no money. I, I had no money. And, and I married her…even my parents, my mother was not invited to the wedding. And I was, I was ashamed of myself, at that time. I was, I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to see anybody to see me, or to be seen, or to talk or, to be talked and... And it was in the newspapers. It was…You know, it was, here was a big shot, and actually…you know, it’s a…so it was a difficult period. I had lost contact with God which was the worst thing. I, I cursed him every day. I…but there was no response.

So you’re…you’re angry, you’re cut off, you’re no longer connected to God. You come to London. You don’t have a cent in your pocket. What did you do?

[01:14:21]

I, I was brought to London by a, a life-long friend who’s, not brought to London, but said to me, and I’ll never forget that, because I was… He said to me, ‘Look, what you have, and what you always had, you have not lost. It’s still there. It’s in, it’s your mind. It’s the way you communicate with people, and the way you conduct yourself.’ He was not spiritual at all. He said, ‘What you have, it’s your brain. That is still there. The question is, if you lose that, then you might as well jump.’ Literally he said to me, literally, ‘I have to say, there’s nothing left for you. Your name, your reputation, your, you, you are just nothing now. And if you don’t have your brain then…that’s it. Go. Jump.’ And that’s how he said it. ‘If you want though, you’re gonna have to re-build. But you’re gonna need your mind. You’re gonna need your brain. You’re gonna need to be fully functional and you’re gonna have to start from minus zero. But, you have a job with me. And…you know you can make a life [unintell] and start again.’ And that’s what I did.

And the job was?

Well he runs, he had…a chain of…twelve, fourteen shops in the West End, in Oxford Street and Regent Street. And the job was, ‘Be my right-hand man. Manage the whole thing.’

And where did you go from there?

Where I went from there, I learnt the, the trade. I learned the business that I was by his side. I immersed myself in learning everything. And I slept sometimes in the job itself, literally. I would finish at ten, eleven at night, and I would be starting at eight, so there was no point, and I would actually sleep on the chair. But I produced…I, I, I forgot all my sorrows and my, lost life through, through hard work, through literally exhausting myself to sleep.

And did you stay with this business, or did you move on…?

I stayed till, till the business was hit by a recession and then that recession, I, at the end of it, I knew enough about business, that I actually knew that I had to leave him as well, because he could not afford any more to do that. And I started…buying tiny little shop, because it was total recession, it was like, almost going for anyone who’s got a few pennies. So I borrowed and bought a shop and, managed to rent it and... And I thought that was good and worked very well, then I bought another one and another one and …the rest is history. I, I…I had breaks. I…took a few years now to, to recover my connection with God. And even then I didn’t, even when he was connected and things were happening I didn’t want to talk to him again. And…with Esther of course my life was completely, you know we lived for each other at that time and, when you’re, you know you just, we took about three, three years, four years actually before she was able to be pregnant. We tried, and then when you know once you’ve got your child then life becomes a different… thing and then …slowly I rebuilt.

[01:18:07]

As you rebuilt, where did…Sephardi fit into this? You came to this community again and, you’re…not connecting to God in the same way. You’re, do you become a member of a synagogue? Do you, do you have Sephardic customs at home, in terms of cooking or Shabbat or…?

Well, first of all, I was known, very well known, by the Sephardic world. So I abandoned it, but I was still known. Still knew Rabbi Abraham Levy still knows [inaud]. And in fact almost every Sephardi of a certain age knows who, you know, [Leon Tamar] and, all these people. So, especially that the case, there was no case, and everybody knew that the whole thing was [unintell]. This was a feeling from inside me.

Hmnn.

And, I remember obviously my speciality is the Sephardic world, and my story, you know which I was, I have always used in order to reach an audience, how I escaped from Iraq and how I lived in Iraq and…and it’s a very exciting story. And then, once you capture the imagination, then you can go to the next thing whether you want to sell the Sephardic Centre or a way of life or whatever. And the…as I, as, as I became successful in business and as I became, I had money and my family was beautiful and, we moved to a house and, I became an outstanding member of the Ashkenazi community. And I …was…you know I, I, I also I, I, I started, testing coming back to the Jewish community and, and I’m, I’m good. I’m good at what I do. I’m good at… so, just my being a, a one person in the [unintell] Sephardic Rabbi, no sorry, Rabbi Sachs had a, a new concept called Jewish Continuity. So I joined it as one of the people, but as I opened my mouth and as I, as I discovered, as they discovered this when I was… I was appointed the Chair of the Israel Experience, which is the entire Israel experience for the whole of the UK, all the groups that go to Israel, so I became the Chair of that. And then one day, they, I was offered to be on the Board of Jewish Continuity, which was the, the greatest energy thing. And then this…then I was called overnight, to come to the place, and… and they said, ‘Listen, you know we have received some very, very serious information from people who have your name. And we just need to clarify because we just [unintell] you as a Board member, but we understand that you were jailed and…’ you know, the usual good Samaritans who contributed that. And, once I overcame that, then I gained back my confidence and I felt I could face the world again now. I, you know, I am not keeping a secret any more, or don’t have to hide it. And then, I was giving a talk in the…early 90s and my usual talk about the Jews of Iraq and somebody walked in, a senior member, a staff press, and they said, ‘This is a fascinating story. I didn’t even know there were Jews in Iraq.’ And somehow this sentence just was…something so enormous, and still plays a huge part in my life. But… that opened my eyes that I am, I have that huge responsibility. I am a capable person. I am a networked person. I am a star, if I want to be. And, I have a story to tell, that all my compatriots and colleagues, and friends are just incapable. They are too small to be able to go on a, on an international stage and tell their story.

[01:22:53]

They don’t care; they don’t see. They don’t feel whats happening. They don’t feel that the entire history of Sephardis and…rests on this generation. That this man, in my lifetime has not heard that there were Jews in Iraq. That my child would never know. And if they know they will be laughed at. And that the story like, you, Henry, told me, if you tell it from your father or your grandfather, it’s never, ever the same as, as I was there. And I saw. And I did see, and I have something to convey and therefore I said, ‘The hell with all the hang-ups and all the hiding and all that. I, I, I will come back. I will tell the story again.’

Did you become a member of Sephardic synagogue?

I, I embraced everything which is Sephardi. I, I, I am [Shomer] Shabbat and so, naturally, my kids grow up, we are all [Shomer] Shabbat you know we are at least Ashkenazi and there is no Sephardi synagogue within walking distance. But I embraced it again. I…back connected with them. And then one day, I had a call from Leo Levy, which…I’ve met of course from before, and I helped his daughter…in every way possible. His daughter was a total, totally lost, at certain stage of her life, and Leon called me up from, New York and said, ‘I want you to save my daughter. I don’t know how, but she is lost and I want you to do it.’ And so, ‘What do you want Leon?’ He said to me, ‘Offer her a job.’ I said, ‘You’ve got it.’ I offered her a job and the Centre, and Janet came, and I told her my history, not my history, I told her my philosophy. And I worked on her like I worked on the other kids. And Janet now is, is an absolute star of a lawyer, with [ph. Yacov Neman’s] firm, Senior Partner, married an Israeli, gorgeous children, wonderful life; just a dream. And Leon, who has not contacted me for like ten years, suddenly calls me up and he said, ‘I want you to take a plane tomorrow morning and come to New York.’ He said, ‘I’m emailing you…faxing you the, the ticket.’ And I got there, and he said to me, ‘I’ve been appointed as the Chairman of the Conference of Major Jewish Organisations. I want you to leave everything and come and work with me.’ I did. Long story, but I did. I left my work, I froze everything. I left Esther with two little children. And halfway through the mission I had, she was pregnant again. And I left all that and I worked with Leon until he finished his mandate.

[01:26:01]

Living in New York?

Living in New York, for about eighteen months.

Did you ever go down to Miami and play tennis when he used to come down?

No I didn’t. I held…I was guarding the shop. And, obviously that now, I was fully rehabilitated in the Jewish world. I was, I was coming in from high up.

So your, your second life, in a way, in terms of coming back to London. Israel being one kind of Sephardic experience, London being a different experience, a married man, family, the issue of Jewish continuity in the 1990s being an issue in which the, the, the theme was, ‘How do you really build for the next generation?’ In, in, in organisational life, you were involved in all kinds of things: Board of Deputies, and, and then later on JJAC…

…and Sephardi Congress, the works, [inaud]…

How did you, how did all these come into play?

Well I mean… I, I absolutely love this work, all organisational work; all Jewish work. I love the Jewish people…to bits. I also don’t see things, in day to day things. I always see them, in perspective. For me to go to Jerusalem, and complain about ‘the soup is cold’, doesn’t happen. Because when I am in Jerusalem, I think ‘every Jew over the last 2,000 years would have given two years of their lives’ just to be where I was. And that’s how I see things all the time. So therefore, with that vision, I, I have a free entry to whichever organisation, wants to use my services. And I believe again, that if somebody asks for me then that’s my destiny to be there and I put everything I have in that service. So I, I don’t see the difference between all the people, all the ones that you mentioned. They would ask me and I’m, I’m there, and I create and I, and I just give everything that I have. And I enjoy it immensely. JJAC, Congress of President, for me it’s just a need, a demand, a service, and I just do it. And if I feel I cannot contribute, which happens in certain organisations, then I just pull out and I just…that, it’s not that it was not for me, it’s just that I have nothing to give any more to that particular organisation and it’s time to go. To move.

Some of these organisations, like…the Board of Deputies let’s say or, or JJAC or… you sit on the European Jewish Council. Do you see yourself as bringing a Sephardic voice?

One-hundred and fifty percent.

And what, what’s your, your thrust in terms of the message you want to bring to these organisations, in terms of that Sephardic voice?

[01:29:35]

First of all, the original…Doctor [Nissim’s] vision, of a world of Sephardi culture, tolerance, comfort, ease, that is being lost now, through the Yeshivot, the Ashkenazi Yeshivot. So all the brightest young people are, are, are becoming polarised into the Orthodox camp and into the other camps, when actually, Sephardim never, ever had adjectives as Rabbi Levi used to say, to describe them. We were just Jews. And that’s what I’d love to be. I’d love to be ‘just a Jew’. And we go to the synagogue and the Rabbi we insist on him being…very learned and very… adhere to the laws, but everybody else can do what they want to. And then they leave the synagogue and their car’s outside and they have no embarrassment about it. And they feel, ‘We belong to the Shul.’ And, maybe I can’t today keep Shabbat or even think about keeping Shabbat, but that’s where I want to be, away from that strict interpretation of the law. And… So that’s a huge part to pass on, before it’s lost. That tolerance. That you come to me over Shabbat, and if you feel you need to put, to take your mobile and answer a call, I’m not mortally offended and I don’t think I need to kick you out of the house and, and, and, and wipe your memory and never invite you again, that’s your problem. You are more than welcome; you are my guest, and that sort of thing. And …so that’s, that’s how I grew up and that’s what I want to in, to, to give back a taste of, to people who have not seen that. Secondly, is the, relationship between Jew and Arab which are such, so central to my life, in so many ways. I, I deal with Arabs all day every day from morning till night, and, I’m loved and I love. And I feel Israel has missed out immensely, and the Jewish world, the Ashkenazi Jewish organised world has missed out immensely, on this contact between a Jew and an Arab. It would not matter if the Arab was not surrounding Israel. If it would not matter… If I was born in Peru, I would not dedicate my life to introduce to you how Jews lived with Peruvians. But with Arabs, I have to… Because our destiny is to be with them, for the rest of… eternity, till Mashia will come I hope. Therefore, it is so important that we understand them and they understand us. And, we’re not recreating the wheel. We lived like that for 1,400 years, and there are no secrets. I could teach it to you; I can practice it to you, in my sleep. And so can all the Jewish form Arab countries, the original ones.

[01:33:05]

And so, why are we not in a position to A - teach this, and B - to actually live it, and to bring this young state of Israel to a peaceful coexistence with its neighbours? So, that and the connection, the awareness of God’s presence and the inner truth with- inside each person, that really are the pillars of my life. I see religion also now, in, in a way also in… I study mysticism, but I’m not, nowhere near a practitioner of the art. But I kept a flavour of what it means to read beyond the…the, the words and, and so that’s, that’s Edwin Shuker. And that’s what Edwin Shuker wants to convey to the world and to whatever organisations he works. On the, on the plain simple interpretation, yes, I am on the Board of Deputies because I report back about what’s happening in the Arab world and what’s happening in the Jews of the Arab world inside and outside. And, and I have a niche market, so to speak. But I see well beyond an imparting of information gleaned from newspapers. I, I have a role, and I have a mission and I want to do that. And I carry that with me whichever organisation I work. And then if the organisation is not receptive, or does not want to hear that story, then it’s time for me to go.

You do have a, a special optic, as it were, because you travel to the Arab world. You travel to, to Iraq or to Libya or to Egypt. How did this come about that you can travel to these countries?

01:34:58]

It is to prove to myself, that I’m not talking rubbish, that I’m not talking [ph. chtiot] and if I say, the Arab world, we have a mutual respect, and they realise and they actually feel that the Jew is…carries with him a secret. Has the blessing, has contact with, with the Almighty, although they do not say it, and I cannot expect them to say it, and it’s part of the deal that they don’t say it, they actually feel it. And actually know it. And actually want it. And so how do I prove that this is not in my imagination? That this is not, I’m not talking rubbish? I have to go. I have to go there and I say, ‘I am the Jew. And I am under, I am under your protection, but I bring you a blessing.’ And if it works, and it works every single time, then I can go and say it, not in so many words but actually act it and behave it and, and hope for the day when I actually have a stage. And I know it will happen, if God wants me to. He will give me the stage, where I can carry that message, right up to the leaders who are controlling things. And they will hear me and they will listen to me. An every time something happens in my life, a problem, a conflict with an organisation, I’m out in the cold, I’m doomed, I’m removed…I’m back to being nobody and nothing, and that happens every year, I don’t know, every few months. You know the Jewish world and you know the conflicts within. I know they fight, I know they seek; I know they create another organisation; I simply wait for my next mission. And sure, like hell it comes, right on the dot. When the time is right, I’m suddenly picked up from nowhere and this President calls me up, or this Minister calls me up, because he met a friend and he told him ‘Edwin is your man’. And suddenly I’m back in the, in the limelight and I’m back conveying my mission on a, on a higher scale. And what happened? What happened one day that I would be able to, to talk to, to talk on a level where people will sit and listen and understand. That there is a, the time is ticking, and that soon there will be no Edwin Shuker. I mean Edwin Shuker and all that he represents and all the hundreds and thousands like him, that he is in the front, opening your eyes, because he’s connected and he wants to be connected and he cares. And he cares more than anything else, and when the message is there, he doesn’t say, ‘[ chtiot, ] What, God is talking to me? What rubbish.’ Or, ‘Yes’, the message is to go to Baghdad, or to go to Iraq or to go to Libya. But ‘Hey, I’ve got three little kids and my wife and …I’m not going to do it. I’ll do it next time.’ No. He says, ‘This is it. It’s mine, I’m off.’ And so Edwin is ready to put himself, right on that line, because when you doubt that message then that message doesn’t come back to you, and doesn’t come back that strong. And you start doubting everything and you start thinking it’s a coincidence that I’m seeing Henry Green after twenty-five years, when he met me with Leah or something, whatever happens, it’s just damn coincidence. I don’t see anything, anything as a coincidence. I don’t see daily life as a coincidence. And so, the day will come when my message will be articulated and be able to be transmitted. And if I could be …a, factor, in making Jews live with Arabs, like we lived back home, for 1,400 years, then maybe this is, I would like, that’s now ego playing, but I would love to be that person who bring that message and for that message to be understood and accepted.

What, what kind of impact do you think all your Youtube-s have on people who see it?

[01:39:10]

Immense. And I think that …these are the days of… we’re approaching days of, of, of, awe. We’re approaching even the end of the world as we know it. And …and Youtube, and …and what will develop in the next few years are just manifestations of God’s will to speed up things, nothing else. It’s not Steve Jobs who can make a little tablet, a plate, a plastic little thing becomes the conduit of everything we’ve ever known in the whole of history and mankind. And just rub it, and there it is, in picture, in sound, in voice, and probably in smell and touch soon. It’s not Steve Jobs.

Well, does, at a more concrete level, do, when you speak about Iraqi Jews, which is how your conduit into the Sephardi world in many ways, people see this. Do you think that that gives them more pride? Do you think that it… helps with Jewish the Jewish Sephardi refugee issue? Do you…what kind of impact? How do you think it plays out for them? Will they do more testimonies where they reach out to us, because they hear your Youtube piece?

I, I, I’m a natural salesman. And I see that, it comes to me. I just don’t know how to explain it, but if I go to Portugal, for the next two months, everyone I speak to wants to go to Portugal, and wants to go tomorrow. And I think, ‘God’, I mean, it’s twenty-five Dollars to Lisbon and thousands of people have done that trip. But somehow, when I go, and I talk about it, everyone wants to do it. And I could, and I’ve done that even in business. And I just have…this, this ability. And it comes in, naturally. And in business, I started from absolutely nothing and in just an hour of communication and an hour of convincing, that, that comes without me even planning it, that is unstoppable.

There are some projects that you’re involved in, that, that are …very closely tied to your identity such as the, the artefacts that were taken out of Iraq and brought to Unites States to be preserved and saved. Are, are you involved in this in any way? Do you have an opinion about it?

[01:42:17]

I, first of all I’m a collector of …incredible rare documents, books…files, whatever comes form Iraq, at the moment, or anything else actually, because I’m known there and I have got Arabs who are my friends and I visit there regularly, so, it’s safe for me. And I either buy it or get given that or something like that. So I am collecting what I think is an exceptional collection of, of documentation and stories and objects. The artefacts in America I know a lot about. And…I think that it can be used to actually… I apply when talking about these artefacts and talking about, I apply what I told you before about how Jews worked with Arabs before. And I think that… many people do not understand how this worked. And I feel sad about it. I feel sad that people have lost that knack that we used to have, to get our way, and now wants to be confrontational or posing, or, or, nationalistic and feel, ‘Well now that I’m a free person and I’m… I can tell the Iraqis where to go and I can demand. I can do that.’ And I feel that is also the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, is this approach. That some people feel it’s weakness, or [unintell] or something like that. The way I would have approached these artefacts would be very simple. I would form a delegation, I would go to the Iraqis, and I would say to them, ‘You know what, we trust you. We’ve brought these things to America, for preservation. You want them back. Why don’t we just sit down and discuss how to, at the end of the day, you’ve been our, we’ve been under your protection for 14,000 years. You’ve always been good to us. You’ve protected our shrines. You’ve protected our, our, our prophets. And we want you to protect these things as well, and we trust you will take custody of these things.’ I would say to them, ‘Let’s talk about practicalities. Do you have the means to actually preserve them, or should we give it to these Americans, who actually have, have developed things? And if you have the means, why don’t we, together, let’s see them. Let’s together go to the Americans and say to the Americans ‘Look, these Iraqis have got the means. They will do it. They will preserve it. They will digitalise it’. And basically we will do whatever we have done throughout our lives.

[01:45:27]

We will give them the solution, but we will not impose it on them. We will solve the problem for them how we want it to be resolved, and we will give them the respect that is coming from them as well.’ And that’s really all there is to it. And then you will have, the Iraqis themselves joining hand in hand, going to the Americans and saying, ‘Look my Jewish brother, here with me, supporting me. However, I actually would like you to send the technicians. I would like you to, to provide the money. At the end of the day this is a project that needs the Arab, Iraqi, Muslim and my dear friend the Jewish one, and so we resolve it. They have their pride back. They have their respect back. We have our documents digitalised either by the Americans or by the Iraqis. And the world is a better place. And from that, you move on to the next project, and the next project, and the next project. I could make Iraq…welcome embrace its Jewish…history with, with the Jews. And I would have the Jews singing the praise of the Iraqis without compromising, and without lying and without being [ph dimmies], and without hiding the bad parts. But together we could, we could do a truth and reconciliation with no time. No time!

Where do you consider home?

Home? Home is God. I rest in God’s presence wherever he wants me to be there. That’s the honest truth. Physical place makes no difference. I love, I love being in Jerusalem only for the, for, for the feeling that we pray for that one place. But, I could be anywhere.

Do you consider yourself a refugee? A migrant? What, how do you see yourself?

I consider myself someone who spent 2,600 years in one place, where he lived because God put us there. I believe that this period has finished. I believe this period was not for nothing, or for waste. And just as the Jews lived thousands of years on the memory of being in Egypt, on the lessons we learnt from Egypt, hardly any command comes in without they say, ‘Please remember that you were in Egypt for whenever as a stranger, or a, or a this one or whatever [ph zecher ], every single [Braha] we make on Shabbat it’s a [ ph zecher ] and I believe that we need [zecher ], Babylon and [ph zecher – long reference to places … ], America, because this is our time to be back in, in Israel, and to fulfil our mission. But do not leave behind what we’ve learnt in our countries. And if I can achieve this, being a refugee, or being an immigrant, or being a displaced person, or being a kicked out person, whatever means I will, what takes for the world, and for Iraq, and for the Jews to hear me, I will use.

[01:49:02]

And how does this then pass on to your children? How, how do you pass this on to your children? What, what identity do you want to pass on to them?

I want to pass on to them that they were not born as Jews by accident. That they did not have a Sephardi and an Ashkenazi father by accident – mother – father and mother. That actually there’s a purpose in life, and that they actually whether they want it or not, they’re in the heart of that path. And the Jews have a mission. And whether, and I always have, [you’re now?] one of my heroes…And I feel like him and I pass this message also to my children. If your day is here and you have to deliver something and you have to be part of history and part of, part of humanity, and play an active and key role, whether you like it or not, this is your optimum. And whether you’re gonna escape, the world will vomit you out. You might as well give that…make a, might as well take on the challenge and do it.

And what message would you like to give to anyone who would be listening, to this interview?

The message is: clear your mind, connect, be aware. Your inner truth is talking to you all the time. But it’s coming out with mixed signals because you are mixing the inner truth with the chatter of the mind. With whatever you read in the newspaper. With the prejudice, with whatever your girlfriend told you or whether your neighbour chatted to you the gossip. Everything is mixed up, always, in all our brains, and, and we hear dozens of messages at all times. First thing: work on yourself. Work so that you clear the rubbish, and you just hear the message. And when you hear the message, just do it. The rest…is plain sailing. The rest is open door to eternal happiness.

I want to thank you, Edwin, for taking so much time over two different days, to share your story for Sephardi Voices. We’re very, very grateful. Thank you.

Thank you.

[01:51:56]

[End of interview, Part Two]

[Photographs]

This is my great grandfather. This picture was 1922. I just love the dignity and pride they have in these old pictures.

This is Moshe, the son of my – this is my grandfather - the son of the previous picture. His wife [Hatoun] and my father Shaul. These are my grandparents that I never knew existed until I escaped from Iraq in 1971. They left in 1951.

[01:52:31]

This is Papa Sion and Mama Violet, my maternal grandparents. They were the only relatives we had in Iraq. This ID card is my…Mama Violet’s Iraqi nation- -nationality.

This is Papa Sion, and Mama Violet, my maternal grandparents, our only relatives in Iraq.

This is the Iraqi National ID. This one is my grandmother’s.

Every year, we, the family would go and have a formal picture. This is me, my two sisters Rita and Linda, and my father Shaul and my mother Victoria.

What date is it please?

1965, 1966.

This is our yellow ID card. Exclusively for Jews. 1963, every Jew had to produce one of this whenever he went, after that date.

This is Edwin Shuker as a cool teenager. I love this picture. It’s a whole period of my life in Baghdad.

And [inaud] the time?

This is 1967.

Salahaddin, North Iraq. 1970. Summer vacation. Happiest week…for many, many years. That was the time when we were there, before we were, pretending to be on holiday and managing to …to escape, making contact with the smugglers and, and… it was, after the hangings and the tortures and all that. And then suddenly we had one week, where we just forgot the whole world. And this is probably in last, since ’63 to ’71, the only week where I, because it was not in Iraq, it was not in Baghdad, it was not at home. We were just free youngsters in North Iraq. Just, no police, no intelligence…

Jerusalem 30th of November 1987, twenty five years ago. My wedding day. The hills of Jerusalem at sunset.

[01:55:16]

And my most treasured moment with the President Massoud Barzani, the very person who saved our lives back in 1971, and drove us personally through the mountains of Kurdistan to freedom and into Iran. I meet him thirty-two years later. He’s the President. And I’m a grateful Jew from, London.

My father’s, Shaul’s, missing Certificate. My father passed away in September 2003. Two weeks later I was in Baghdad, and with an incredible miracle, I find his, the archives of the…of my father. And there it was, the Certificate, the missing Certificate. I bring it back, two weeks too late.

[End of Photos]

[01:56:33]

[End of Edwin Shuker recording, Pt 2]