Books

A bilingual digital anthology by Israeli author Almog Behar that rejects strict copyright norms by inviting readers to freely replicate and distribute his work, weaving together alternative translations of his short stories and poetry to explore the complexities of Mizrahi identity, cultural displacement, and the fractured, silenced relationship between the Hebrew and Arabic languages.

A linguistic study of the Judeo Arabic dialect of Baghdad's Jews, describing its sounds, grammar, and vocabulary, with transcribed texts recorded from native speakers.

Set in Baghdad in the years before the mass exodus of 1950 and 1951, the novel follows Kabi, a teenage boy in an Iraqi Jewish family, as his community faces rising persecution, political upheaval, and the decision to leave the country it had called home for millennia.

A history of the Babylonian geonim, the heads of the great rabbinic academies in Iraq from the seventh to eleventh centuries, and their role in shaping Jewish law and medieval Jewish culture.

An Israel Museum exhibition volume, edited by Orpa Slapak, on the Bene Israel, Cochin, and Baghdadi Jewish communities of India, with essays and illustrations of their history, ritual objects, dress, and customs.

A history of Iraqi Jewry from the Babylonian exile through the Talmudic academies, Ottoman rule, and the twentieth century, ending with the community's mass emigration around 1950.

A ethnographic study of Kurdish Jewish life before World War II, documenting the community’s material culture, religious practices, family traditions, occupations, and relations with Muslim neighbors, while preserving the history and heritage of a Jewish community that largely migrated to Israel in the mid-twentieth century.

Traces two Baghdadi Jewish families, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, who built commercial empires in Shanghai and Hong Kong from the mid nineteenth century through war, revolution, and the Communist takeover.

A scholarly history of Iraq's Jewish community from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, tracing its revival in Baghdad and Basra, its economic and cultural life, and the events leading to its end.

In this picture book, Amira and her Nana enter a cholent contest in Australia with their Iraqi Jewish t'bit, a slow cooked Shabbat stew of stuffed chicken, rice, and spices, gently showing that Jewish food is more than Ashkenazi food.

Victoria from girlhood in a crowded Jewish courtyard house in early twentieth century Baghdad through marriage, poverty, and family upheaval, a richly detailed portrait of Iraqi Jewish family and women's lives before the community's departure.

Examines the Zionist underground movement among Iraqi Jewish youth in the 1940s, its relations with the community leadership and emissaries from Palestine, and its role in the mass emigration of 1950 and 1951.