Tirza Teitelbaum guided Jews to a new life
The 79-year-old St. Paul woman worked in an underground movement in her native Iraq during the 1940s. Later she helped guard her kibbutz in Israel.
Tirza Teitelbaum helped Jews flee Iraq in the 1940s, cofounded a kibbutz in Israel and brought a unique variety of ethnic music to the Twin Cities. Teitelbaum, who worked as a teacher in Iraq, Israel and New York, died of cancer in St. Paul on Sunday. She was 79. She worked in the beleaguered Iraqi Jewish community's underground movement, helping others flee to Israel, said her son, Chaim, of Afton.Tirza Teitelbaum's job in the movement was to teach Iraqi Jews the Hebrew language so that they could prepare for a new life in Israel. She left Iraq in 1948."She decided that it was too dangerous to live in Iraq. She took on the identity of a nun and flew to Israel via Switzerland," said her son.Teitelbaum served as a night guard of a kibbutz that she helped found near the Sea of Galilee."Night guards had two duties: Looking out for infiltrators and changing the diapers of the babies in the nursery," said her son.Teitelbaum went on to get a teaching degree in Israel and taught primary education for at-risk children. In 1964 she and her family moved to New York, where she continued to teach in Jewish religious schools. In 1997, she moved to St. Paul, where she gave lectures and performed songs about the Jewish music of Iraq at synagogues and community centers.Rachel Milloy of Plymouth, a singer, became fast friends with Teitelbaum. Milloy said that Teitelbaum had written down the music and took notes about how it was performed and enjoyed by Iraqi Jews long ago."She was very willing to share her music with anyone who was interested about it," said Milloy. "She passed on a wonderful tradition of music that nobody else, I believe, could pass on."In addition to her son, Teitelbaum's survivors include a daughter, Orna of Newton Center, Mass.; a sister, Daisy Dov of Holon, Israel, and four grandchildren.Services have been held.