Books
Books recommended by JIMENA staff for readers, students, and educators exploring the history, literature, languages, and traditions of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Browse children’s books, novels, history, Jewish languages, and Sephardic thought.
Buy BookChildren’s & Young Adult Books
A Boy from Baghdad
by Miriam HalahmyA middle grade historical novel for ages 8 and up about twelve year old Salman Shasha, who leaves Baghdad with his family in 1951 and struggles with a new name, refugee camp hardship, and his swimming dreams in Israel.
Buy BookMemoirs & Biographies
Beyond the Rivers of Babylon: My journey of optimism and resilience in a turbulent century
by Joseph SamuelsA memoir by Joseph Samuels, who survived the 1941 Farhud as a child in Baghdad, escaped Iraq at nineteen, served in the Israeli navy, and built a life in Montreal and Los Angeles.
Buy BookFiction & Literature
Cover Me With My Izar
by Nora Houri-HaimA novel told in linked stories that follows several generations of an Iraqi Jewish family from Baghdad through the Farhud and mass emigration to Israel, and into the lives of Israeli born grandchildren.
Buy BookReligion & Philosophy
Ha-Emunot ve-ha-Deot (The Book of Beliefs and Opinions)
by Saadia ben Yosef al-FayyumiSaadia Gaon's tenth century Judeo Arabic treatise, written in Baghdad, the first systematic work of Jewish philosophy, which defends the harmony of reason and revelation on creation, God, the soul, and redemption.
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Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel
by Orit BashkinFollows the roughly 120,000 Iraqi Jews who arrived in Israel in the early 1950s, examining life in the transit camps, discrimination, labor and political protest, and how Iraqi Jews built new identities as Israelis; a scholarly social history.
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Jewish Subjects and Their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan
by Mordechai ZakenA history of the relationship between Jews and their Kurdish tribal chieftains in nineteenth and twentieth century Kurdistan, largely in northern Iraq, based on oral testimonies and showing how Jews negotiated protection until their emigration to Israel.
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My Mother’s Spice Cupboard
by Elana BenjaminA memoir tracing the author's Iraqi Jewish family from Baghdad to Bombay to Sydney, exploring four generations of migration, the decline of Bombay's Baghdadi community, and food as a vessel of family memory.
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New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq
by Orit BashkinA history of Iraqi Jews from the late Ottoman era through the 1950s, showing how Baghdad's Jews embraced Arab culture, journalism, and politics as Iraqi patriots before persecution and the 1950 to 1951 exodus.
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Osnat and Her Dove: The True Story of the World’s First Female Rabbi
by Sigal Samuel (Author), Vali Mintzi (Illustrator)A picture book about Osnat Barazani of seventeenth century Kurdistan, who led a yeshiva in Mosul and is remembered as the first female rabbi, retelling the legend of her and a dove.
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Scapegoat
by Eli AmirNuri, a thirteen year old Iraqi Jewish immigrant sent with other newcomer teenagers to a kibbutz in the early 1950s, where they wrestle with religion, family loyalty, and pressure to remake themselves as Israelis.
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Shoham’s Bangle
by Sarah Sassoon (Author), Noa Kelner (Illustrator)A picture book about Shoham, an Iraqi Jewish girl leaving Baghdad for Israel, who holds on to her grandmother's gold bangle as the family departs with only what they can carry.- Buy Book
Religion & Philosophy
Tafsir RaSaG – Saadia ben Yose al-Fayummi’s Judeo-Arabic Translation of the Torah
by Saadia ben Yosef al-FayyumiAn edition of Saadia Gaon's tenth century translation of the Torah into Judeo Arabic, a foundational text long read in Yemenite and other Arabic speaking Jewish communities.