Oral History Project

JIMENA Oral History Project

Since 2009, JIMENA has recorded the testimonies of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa: women and men who grew up in Baghdad, Cairo, Casablanca, Tripoli, Tehran, Aden, Aleppo, and beyond, and who carried their memories to Israel, the United States, and around the world. In their own words, they describe family life, faith, language, food, and music, their friendships with neighbors, and the antisemitism, persecution, and displacement that ended Jewish communities more than 2,500 years old.

Why Oral History Matters

Between the 1940s and the 1970s, more than 850,000 Jews left or were forced out of Arab countries, and most of Iran’s Jews followed after the 1979 revolution. For decades, their experiences were missing from the history of the Middle East, of refugees, and of the Jewish people. As JIMENA’s Executive Director Sarah Levin has put it, these witnesses “hadn’t been given a microphone.” The generation that remembers Jewish life in the region firsthand is growing older, and every testimony we record preserves a piece of history that would otherwise be lost.

Our Approach

JIMENA’s interviewers were trained by the USC Shoah Foundation in best practices for recording testimony. Our long form interviews follow each narrator through three chapters of life: Jewish life in their country of origin, the story of leaving, and building a new life. Every narrator gives informed consent, can pause or skip any question, and chooses how their testimony may be shared.

Open Access, Preserved Forever

We believe these histories belong to everyone. In 2012, JIMENA partnered with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to give our collection a permanent academic home. Graduate students at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism transcribed and catalogued the testimonies, which are preserved there in perpetuity for research and education. Full length interviews are freely available to the public on the Ben-Gurion Archives YouTube channel, so that scholars, teachers, students, and families anywhere in the world can hear these voices.

A Growing International Effort

• 2009: JIMENA records its first testimonies in California.
• 2012: JIMENA partners with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to transcribe, catalogue, and permanently preserve its collection.
• 2018: JIMENA joins Israel’s Ministry of Social Equality, Beit Hatfutsot (today ANU Museum of the Jewish People), and Ben-Gurion University in a national initiative to document the heritage of Jews from Arab countries and Iran, training students to collect testimonies for Israel’s National Collection.
• 2019: On World Refugee Day, JIMENA helps launch the English version of Seeing the Voices, a mobile app created with Beit Hatfutsot and the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute that guides students in recording testimonies with a phone.
• Today: Anyone can record a testimony and share it with JIMENA directly through this website.

Since JIMENA began this work, oral history projects dedicated to Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have multiplied around the world. Together, they are building a rich record of the diversity of Jewish life across the Middle East and North Africa.