16 February 2014

The World’s Oldest Kurd: A Beloved Rabbi in the Heart of the Holy City

In a humble apartment in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood, about a mile south of the walls of the Old City, the world’s oldest living Jew goes about his daily ritual. As he has for over a century, the rabbi rises in the morning, puts on his tefillin, or prayer phylacteries, with the help of one of his students, and says his morning prayers. Then, he sits to learn the Torah, Talmud, or kabbalah, examining it with the same fervor and passion he did when he started learning as a teenager.

In addition to being the world’s oldest Jew, Rabbi Zechariah Barashi, 114, is also the world’s oldest Kurd.
Read the whole story. It is quite a long article (114 years is a long time), but nevertheless a compelling one.

6 comments:

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Yeah, well if they are 0 for 36 maybe it should stay secret.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Indeed. But I shall read that darn book eventually.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Why? Do you want to live forever? Immortality is a contradiction in terms.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

On, uh, "the face of it," he looks younger than some 70-year-olds. Might have skipped over more than a few birthdays. These "oldest" claims always seem dubious to me.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

No no, of course I don't, but the mystery of these 0:36, as Sennacherib noticed, is more than I could bear.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

That true, in many cases the births weren't all that carefully recorded back then. But let it remain the social security problem ;-)