Beyond the Rivers of Babylon

Book excerpt: Rowing upon the Tigris River to enjoy a summer campfire on the tiny islands that emerged every summer, teenaged Joseph Samuels never could have imagined that these waters would soon become his only hope for freedom. At the age of 19, he was forced to leave his family behind as he smuggled out of Iraq in the secret hold of a Basra riverboat to escape the violent and repressive anti-Semitism that, over the next few years, would spell the end of the two-millennium old Iraqi Jewish community. Beyond the Rivers of Babylon follows Joe's remarkable journey, from his colorful childhood in the Old Jewish Quarter of Baghdad, to his life-altering service in the Israeli Navy, to starting a family and building a real estate empire in Montreal and Los Angeles. Blessed with a remarkably vivid memory and a keen ability to look inward, Joe paints a sensory landscape of a home that is no more, and in the process imparts the lessons of a life lived to its fullest.