The punitive policies of Iraq’s Ba’ath Party uprooted the majority of the country’s ancient Jewish community (already a shadow of its former self by the 1960s) and succeeded in erasing Jews from Iraqi history. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, some Iraqis have begun the difficult process of discovering what they were previously forbidden to learn about: the significant cultural contributions of Iraqi Jews.
As a child growing up in Sudan, Yehoshua Levy would be hounded on the streets with calls of “Jew, go to Palestine! What are you doing here?” Nevertheless, 1,000 Jews called Sudan home, a fact largely unknown to both contemporary Sudanese and scholars of Mizrahi Jewry.
The Hebrew and Arabic inscribed gravestone of Yitzchak Gabra, Jewish Cemtery, Khartoum, Sudan (Photo courtesy of C. Motzen for the Diarna Geo-Museum, 2005). Click here to see exclusive footage of the cemetery
Rabbi Maimon (Meni) Cohen, Rabbi Hayim Biton, and Rabbi Shimon Eluz perform a Moroccan version of “Maoz Tsur Yeshuati,” the universally popular Chanukkah piyyut (2011).
Click here to see the trailer for “Shadow in Baghdad”
Duki Dror’s new documentary-style film, “Shadow in Baghdad,” thoughtfully tells the story of Linda Abdul Aziz Menuhin, whose father remained in Iraq after her emigration to Israel and was later abducted by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services into the Qasr al-Nihaya (“Palace of the End”). With the help of an Iraqi journalist who reached out to her, Linda seeks to learn her father’s fate, but in chasing one “shadow” the journalist risks becoming his own.
On Omer Avital’s new album, New Song, the half-Yemenite, half-Moroccan Israeli jazz maestro mines the musical traditions of the Middle East and North Africa to make “world music... with strong jazz roots.”
Click here to hear Omer Avital’s “Sabah el-Kheir” (Good Morning) from New Song
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