During the Middle Ages, a small group of Jewish settlers arrived in Barzan.

Under the patronage of the Kurdish tribe members, they settled there and engaged in agriculture. Their homes were built in separate neighborhoods and were made of the same materials as their neighbors – mud and straw, and straight cut poles from poplar trees brought from the river.

Over the years, their numbers grew. They improved their dwellings, organized themselves into a community, and added the place name to their family name, which became a brand and a source of pride throughout the region.

 

The Jewish Barazanis combined the sacred with the mundane – they engaged in agriculture and cultivated their Jewish heritage.

In the heart of the village stood a magnificent synagogue – built of basalt stones, standing out among the village homes. The synagogue also served as a yeshiva for young men, from which rabbis, shochetim (ritual slaughterers), and community leaders emerged.

 

Since establishing their home in Barzan, the Barazanis cultivated a family tree that reaches back to Rabbi Natanel al-Levi (known as "Babo Saba," the Old Father) – a renowned rabbinic figure whose name was widespread among Iraqi Kurdistan's Jewish communities for hundreds of years. His son, Rabbi Shmuel (Adoni) Barazani, established yeshivas in various communities and trained rabbis and leaders. His granddaughter, the righteous female scholar Osnat Barazani, was called "the Tannaite," and was a paytanit (liturgical poet), scholar, and poseket halachot (decisor of Jewish law), and served as a woman leading a yeshiva.

From these same sources emerged "Shechitat Barazani" – a collection of laws of ritual slaughter that was considered an authoritative halachic source for shochetim in the Jewish communities of Kurdistan. The author, Shimon Ben Yona Barazani, was also a branch of the family originating from Barzan.

 

By the early 19th century, the Jewish community of Barzan numbered many dozens of families, most of them branches of a single family. Some of them accumulated real estate – besides the agricultural work they engaged in, they owned plots of land that they leased to tenant farmers, who then produced agricultural yield from them.

The lives of the Barazanis, both Kurds and Jews, on the same land in the heart of the mountainous region, left their mark on their daily conduct, thought patterns, and facial expressions. They grew to resemble each other in their robust and lean nature, ascetic, content with little, and uncomplaining.

Given the external resemblance of men and women, it was difficult to distinguish who belonged to which of the two peoples. The men – robust and lean, average height, with strong faces featuring determined chins and foreheads, rigid black eyebrows, and mustaches filling the upper lip. On their heads they wore turbans made of colorful kaffiyehs that covered their hair, and on their bodies, they wore wide Sharawal trousers. The women – their bodies hidden beneath layers of clothing, obedient to patriarchal rules, devoted mothers, and leaders of the family unit within the home, responsible for cooking and childcare.

Both Kurds and Jews zealously preserved their religion within a family framework that included parents, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren – all living together on the same plot of land. They preferred marriages within the family, but when the local supply of a suitable spouse was scarce, they went to neighboring villages to find a groom or bride.

 

In the mid-19th century, Rabbi Hacham Tzemach (Barazani, meaning: native of Barzan) headed the Jewish Barazani families. Rabbi Tzemach served as a religious leader, headed the yeshiva located within the synagogue, and was commonly known as "Hacham Tzemach," as was customary among the Jews in Kurdistan. He taught young people the Torah of Israel and chapters of Jewish law passed down through generations, and became a renowned rabbinic figure in Jewish communities and centers. He also managed the family's businesses – plots of land leased to farmers, from which he earned his livelihood.

His son, Hacham Sasson, married Varda, a daughter from the nearby town of Akra, and moved there to serve as the local community's rabbi.

The rabbinic lineage passed to Sasson's grandson, who was also named Hacham Tzemach, after his grandfather.

Tzemach's father, Yosef, Hacham Sasson's son, chose to engage in commerce. As a boy, he studied and gained wisdom, but as he grew older, he left his studies at the Beit Midrash (house of study) and devoted himself to work. Yosef preferred the secular over the sacred, the engagement with life itself – the pipe he smoked, conversations with buyers and sellers, proverbs he heard and passed on, and traveling to the next commercial destination, the next meeting, the next deal.

 

Yosef married Esther, who bore him three children, and later married Rachel, who bore him four children. With Rachel and their shared children, he moved to Baghdad, where he expanded his businesses, and from there they made aliyah to the State of Israel. He and all his children and their families made aliyah in "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah," and reunited in the Kastel ma'abara (transit camp) established in the Jerusalem mountains.