Beyond the Rivers of Babylon: My Journey of Optimism and Resilience in a Turbulent Century

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.

Joseph Samuels, a retired real estate developer who has traveled to more than 100 countries, writes frequently about Jews from Arab lands. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Ruby. They have three children, five grandchildren, and a garden with more than thirty fruit trees, twenty potted succulents, dozens of miniature rose bushes, and plenty of herbs.

Julie Gruenbaum Fax is a journalist, ghostwriter, and author of personal histories. As a senior writer and editor for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles for 15 years, she covered religion, education and community, and received awards from the Los Angeles Press Club, New American Media, and the American Jewish Press Association. She has ghostwritten and self-published five personal histories. Julie is an alumna of the Wexner Heritage Foundation leadership program. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three young adult children.