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Iraqi Jews

A seasonal sukkah on view at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or-Yehuda, Israel. Credit: Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center.

This Sukkot, Sarah Sassoon will celebrate in an Iraqi sukkah, with Czech candlesticks

The Israeli writer, who comes from a prominent Iraqi family, is working on two new books about Jews of Babylonian ancestry.

September 21, 2023

Torah scrolls of the Iraqi-Jewish community at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda. Photo by Lily Shor.

The secret archive of the Iraqi Jews

The documents were rescued during the Iraq War and are now in Washington. The Baghdad regime wants them back.

August 31, 2023

The Farhud, Baghdad 1941. Credit: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi Archive.

The Farhud and the Palestinian ‘cause’

Nazism continues to inspire the Palestinians.

May 31, 2023

Jewish refugees from Iraq leave Lod (today Ben-Gurion) Airport, 1951. Credit: GPO via Wikimedia Commons.

One man’s mission to document Mosul’s Jewish history

The Tomb of Jonah was not presented to him as a Jewish site, Iraqi historian Omar Mohammed says.

April 2, 2023

The Farhud, Baghdad 1941. Credit: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi Archive.

Why we need to remember the Farhud

The baton has been passed from those who massacred Jews in 1941 Baghdad to today’s Iraqi politicians controlled by Iran.

June 1, 2022

Palestinian children participate in a rally marking the 70th anniversary of the “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe,” the term used to mark the events leading to Israel's founding in 1948, at a school in Shechem on May 13, 2018. Credit: Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90.

Abolish ‘Nakba Day’

It fetishizes Palestinian displacement and minimizes that of Jews.

May 12, 2022

Mordechai Ben-Porat. Photo by Gil Hadani/Dan Hadani Collection, The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, The National Library of Israel.

Why haven’t more Israelis heard of Mordechai Ben-Porat?

Throughout Jewish history, there have been three luminaries who brought exiled Babylonian Jews back to their ancestral homeland en masse: the prophets Jeremiah and Ezra, and Ben-Porat.

February 3, 2022

Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Credit: Beyond the Road Prod/Shutterstock.

Despite crackdown, Iraqi Jewish activists cautiously optimistic after Erbil peace conference

While there have been ramifications for those who attended it, they also say it was a productive first step for Iraqis to consider the prospects of peace with Israelis.

November 4, 2021

The Farhud, Baghdad 1941. Credit: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi Archive.

The Farhud: Dramatis personae

A look at some of the individuals that played a key role in the 1941 Baghdad pogrom.

Nimrod Raphaeli

June 27, 2021