Iraqi Jews
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The Jews in Iraq (Hebrew: יֵהוּדִים בָּבְלִים, Yehudim Bavlim, Arabic: يهود العراق) is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BCE. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities.
The Jewish community of Babylon included Ezra the scribe, whose return to Judea in the late 6th century BCE is associated with significant changes in Jewish ritual observance and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Talmud was compiled in Babylonia, identified with modern Iraq.
From the Babylonian period to the rise of the Islamic caliphate, the Jewish community of Babylon throve as the center of Jewish learning. The Mongol invasion and Islamic discrimination in the Middle Ages led to its decline. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Jews of Iraq fared better. The community established modern schools in the second-half of the 19th century.
In the 20th century, Iraqi Jews played an important role in the early days of Iraq's independence, but the Iraqi Jewish community, numbered at around 120,000 in 1948, almost entirely left the country due to persecution following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Most of them fled to the newly founded state of Israel, and today, fewer than 100 Jews remain.
Read more about Iraqi Jews: Early Biblical History, Late Biblical History and The Babylonian Exile, Greek Period, Parthian Period, Babylonia As The Center of Judaism, Sassanid Period, Islamic Arab Period, Mongol Period, Ottoman Rule, Modern Iraq
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... Philip Mendes asserts that before the anti-Jewish actions of the 1930s and 1940s, overall Iraqi Jews "viewed themselves as Arabs of the Jewish faith, rather than as a separate race ... Additionally, early Labor Zionism mostly concentrated on the Jews of Europe, skipping Iraqi Jews because of their lack of interest in agriculture ... The result was that "Until World War II, Zionism made little headway because few Iraqi Jews were interested in the socialist ideal of manual labor in Palestine." (Simon, Reguer, and ...
... Main article Operation Ezra and Nehemiah See also History of the Jews in Iraq, Baghdadi Jews, and Kurdish Jews In 1948, there were approximately 150,000 Jews in Iraq ... known as the Farhud broke out in Baghdad in which approximately 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were ... Iraq initially forbade the emigration of its Jews after the 1948 war on the grounds that allowing them to go to Israel would strengthen that state ...
... The history of the Jews in Iraq is documented over twenty-six centuries, from the time of the Babylonian captivity c ... Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities ... In the 1930s, the situation of the Jews in Iraq deteriorated ...
Famous quotes containing the words jews and/or iraqi:
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