Family of Iraqi Chief Rabbi Hakham Ezra Dangoor in Baghdad, 1910

Hakham ''Hakham'' (or ''chakam(i), haham(i), hacham(i)''; he, חכם ', "wise") is a term in Judaism, meaning a wise or skillful man; it often refers to someone who is a great Torah scholar. It can also refer to any cultured and learned person: "He ...

Ezra Reuben Dangoor (1848–1930) was the Chief Rabbi of

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

from 1923 to 1926, and the founder of the first publishing company in Baghdad.

Early life

Ezra Sasson ben Reuven Dangoor was born in 1848 in

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

. He was educated in Baghdad, where he studied under Rabbi

Abdallah Somekh Abdallah (Ovadia) Somekh (1813–September 13, 1889) was an Iraqi Jewish hakham, rosh yeshiva and posek. Early life Abdallah Somekh was born in 1813 in Baghdad to Abraham Somekh, himself a descendant of Nissim Gaon; he was the eldest of eight b ...

Career

Dangoor worked as a ritual slaughterer and ritual circumciser, before from 1880 to 1886 working as the scribe in charge of writing documents issued by the Baghdad's

Bet Din A beit din ( he, בית דין, Bet Din, house of judgment, , Ashkenazic: ''beis din'', plural: batei din) is a rabbinical court of Judaism. In ancient times, it was the building block of the legal system in the Biblical Land of Israel. Today, it ...

. Dangoor was the Chief Rabbi of Rangoon,

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

from 1893 or 1894, but had to return to Baghdad in 1895 due to ill health. In 1904, Dangoor opened the first printing press in Baghdad, which printed Arabic textbooks as well as books in Hebrew. Dangoor was the author of several books and commentaries on the

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the ...

. From 1923 to 1926, Dangoor was Chief Rabbi of

Personal life

Dangoor had five children: Sion, Abdulla Joseph, Farha (who married Shaul Basri), Eliahou and Moshe.

Death and legacy

Dangoor died in 1930. He was the grandfather of Sir Naim Eliahou Dangoor (1914–2015), and of the wife of the latter and Iraq's first beauty queen,

Renée Dangoor Renée Rebecca, Lady Dangoor ( ar, رينيه دنكور) was the first beauty queen in the history of Iraq, being crowned in 1947. She was born in December 1925 to a Jewish Baghdadi family in Shanghai ( Republic of China), and died on 9 July ...

, and also the great-grandfather of the philanthropist David Dangoor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dangoor, Ezra 1848 births 1930 deaths 19th-century Iraqi rabbis 20th-century Iraqi rabbis Rabbis from Baghdad Mohels