Wafia Abrahim was finally able to share her secret. This is her story…

Arabic Translates into Hashgachah

A couple of years after the 9/11 World Trade Center Twin Towers attack, when US forces mounted an invasion of Iraq, a Jewish soldier in the US Army signed up to go. Yacov Margolese was deployed in Iraq from April 2003 until April 2004.

“We had four Iraqi interpreters with us, since we didn’t know Arabic,” recalls Yacov. “One was about 65 years old; his name was Mohammed; two were in their early twenties; their names were Mohammed and Ali. The third was Rwaida, a woman in her late thirties. At some point, I told them I was Jewish. I got three very distinct reactions. The older gentleman became visibly scared, backed away from me, and said in Arabic, ‘No Jews, no Jews!’ The two younger ones started talking to me in Hebrew and told me they worked for the Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel. And the woman interpreter said to me, ‘My mother is Jewish!’”

Yacov was obviously shocked and said to her, “That means you’re Jewish, too!” She told him she wasn’t; she was adopted. It showed Yacov how much she knew — that the Jewish lineage can only be passed down from a birth mother to her daughter.

“Soon after Rwaida met me, she told her mother Wafia that she met a Jew. Wafia wanted to write to me,” continues Yacov. “We started corresponding and when Rwaida brought me the first letter from Wafia, she also gave me a section of a Torah klaf (parchment) that belonged to Wafia to prove that her mother was Jewish. I was in tears. I was thinking, this is incredible. I gave the klaf back to her but the next time I met Rwaida, she gave it to me again and said her mother wanted me to have it; it was one of several klafim she owned.”