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Iraqi Jews built one of the oldest continuous Jewish civilizations on earth, 2,600 years on the Tigris and Euphrates, from the Babylonian exile until Operation Ezra and Nehemiah evacuated 120,000 of them between 1950 and 1952. They arrived in Israel with libraries, music, recipes, prayer melodies, and a distinct Judeo-Arabic dialect. The state in those years pushed assimilation hard. Two generations later, the grandchildren are doing the opposite work, recovering, recording, recombining. This lesson maps the institutions, the artists, and the political movement that carry that work today.
Cultural note, The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda (Mercaz Moreshet Yahadut Bavel, founded 1972 by Mordechai Ben-Porat, a former Mossad operative who organized the airlift itself) is the single most important Iraqi-Jewish institution in Israel. Its library holds 30,000 volumes, Judeo-Arabic newspapers, prayer books, family records, the kind of material that exists nowhere else. The center also runs the Iraqi-Hebrew Festival, a music revival program, and the lost-property documentation effort tied to ongoing Israeli compensation claims against Iraq. If you have any Iraqi ancestry on your side, this is the address.
Babylonian Heritage Center (Or Yehuda)
Music Revival (Dudu Tassa)
Identity & Mizrahi Movement
Lost Property Claims
Iraqi Neighborhoods Today
Why This Matters
Eight short pieces of context, what the heritage work is, who is doing it, and why second and third generation Iraqi-Israelis matter politically and culturally right now.