Podcasts about iraqi jews

This week Lara and Michael cover the formal announcement by the zionist government of the plan to depopulate the northern part of Gaza and not allow for the return of Palestinians many of whom are already refugees. We discuss the fiasco in Amsterdam, and Michael explains his theory as to why it happened, to recruit more people to the apartheid state. Michael references Professor Avi Schlaim where zionists used a similar playbook to get Iraqi Jews to move after Mossad orchestrated terrorist attacks in Baghdad in the 1950's. 

“I never thought there's antisemitism. It's something from the past, for my grandparents, for my mom a little, but it's not something in my generation, or my kids' generation. It's done . . . apparently, not.” Einat Admony is a chef, cookbook author, comedian, and social media star who grew up in Bnei Brak, Israel. With parents from Iran and Yemen, Einat spent her childhood in the kitchens of Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi neighbors. Learn about her family's deep-rooted Jewish heritage in Iran and the broader Middle East. Along with her mother Ziona's journey from Iran to Israel in 1948, Einat discusses the antisemitism she's dealt with online and on the streets in the past year. Hear her stories of Jewish-Muslim coexistence in Iran and memories of spices and perfumes that inspire Einat's dishes. Her cookbooks Balaboosta and Shuk, along with her Manhattan restaurant Balaboosta, reflect a blend of tradition and innovation. “You could not have Judaism today, if it were not for the Jews of Iran,” says Houman Sarshar, an independent scholar and director of publications at the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History in Los Angeles. Sarshar highlights the historical relationship between Iran and Israel, noting that Iran was the second Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel post-1948.  The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by Jews in Iran, their cultural integration, and the impact of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  —- Show notes: How much do you know about Jewish history in the Middle East? Take our quiz. Sign up to receive podcast updates. Learn more about the series. Song credits:  Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Suspense Middle East” Publisher: Victor Romanov, Composer: Victor Romanov; Item ID: 196056047 ___ Episode Transcript: EINAT ADMONY: I've been in Israel a few months ago. It's like you always feel loved, you always feel supported. It's still home. It's always going to be my home. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century. Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations despite hardship, hostility, and hatred, then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East.  The world has ignored these voices. We will not.  This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: Leaving Iran. MANYA: Whether she's deviling eggs soaked in beet juice, simmering Oxtail in shawarma spices, or sprinkling za'atar on pastry dough, chef Einat Admony is honoring her family's Middle Eastern heritage. Both the places where they have lived for generations, as well as the place they have and will always call home: Israel.   EINAT/Clip: Start with brushing the puff pastry with olive oil and za'atar. Have some feta all around and shredded mozzarella. Take the other sheet and just cut it to one inch strips. Now we're going to twist. Need to be careful. Now we're just gonna brush the top with the mix of oil and za'atar. Get it some shiny and glazy. This is ready for the oven. Bake at 400 until it's golden. That's it super easy, just sprinkle some za'atar and eat. MANYA: For the chef, author, reality TV star, and comedian, food reflects the Zionist roots that have been a constant for Einat, the self-made balaboosta, who is largely credited with introducing Israeli cuisine to the U.S. That love for Israel goes back generations, long before the modern state existed, when her maternal ancestors lived in the land, that until 1935 was known as Persia, but is now known as Iran. Her own mother Ziona, the third of seven siblings, was even named for the destination where Einat's grandparents aspired to one day raise their family. Returning home to the land of Zion from which Jews had been exiled centuries earlier was always the goal. When you ask her why, Einat laughs in disbelief.  EINAT: Why? Why? That's homeland. I think a lot of Jewish people for hundreds of years was, that's in every prayer, it's in every Shabbat dinner evening. MANYA: The hatred directed toward Israel by Iran's regime in the form of the deadly attacks on Israel by Iran-backed terrorist groups and the Islamic Republic of Iran itself make it hard to believe that Iran was once a place where Jews and the Zionist movement thrived. But in fact, Iran's history includes periods when the wide-open roads between Iran and Israel ran two ways and the countries not only lived in harmony but worked in close partnership.  Iran was the second Muslim-majority country after Turkey to recognize the modern state of Israel after its formation in 1948, and the two established diplomatic ties. Regular flights ran between Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport and Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.  SARSHAR: We cannot overlook the fact that since October 29, 539 BCE the Jewish community of Iran remains to this day the largest community of Jews anywhere in the Middle East outside the state of Israel. To this day. You could not have Judaism today, if it were not for the Jews of Iran.  MANYA: Houman Sarshar is an independent scholar and director of publications at the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History in Los Angeles. He has edited a number of books, including Esther's Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews.  SARSHAR: The history of the Jews in Iran begins about 2,700 years ago, when the first community of known Jews was taken to Iran. They are commonly believed to be one of the 10 Lost Tribes. And then when we fast forward to when Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and took Jews into captivity. Some years after that at 539 BCE on October 29, 539 BCE, to be exact, Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, liberated Babylon and gave Jews the permission to go back to Israel and rebuild the Second Temple. MANYA: Cyrus the Great – a Persian emperor particularly renowned among contemporary scholars for the respect he showed toward peoples' customs and religions in the lands that he conquered. According to the Book of Ezra in the Hebrew Bible, Cyrus even paid for the restoration of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. SARSHAR: This is known as the Second Temple period in Jewish history, and under the Achaemenid dynasty, Jews participated in every level of society. And a few centuries forward, around the 5th Century, we know the Jews continue to live with many freedoms, because that is the era when the Babylonian Talmud was originally produced in Iran by Rav Ashi. So, you know, there was a thriving rabbanut (rabbanite) in Iran who had the freedom and the luxury and the time to be able to produce such an important document as the Talmud, which has become the cornerstone of all jurisprudence that we know, Western law, and everything. MANYA: The advent and arrival of Islam in Iran in the 7th Century CE changed circumstances somewhat. As was the case across the Middle East, all non-Muslims became dhimmis – residents who paid a special tax and lived under certain restrictions. The situation for Jews worsened in the 16th Century when the Safavid dynasty made the Shiite creed the dominant form of Islam in Iran. Fatwas made life for all non-Shiites quite difficult. SARSHAR: And for reasons that are still open to discussion, all of these restrictions were most vehemently imposed on the Jews of Iran. And because of these restrictions, all non-Shiites were considered religiously impure. And this religious impurity, kind of like the concept of the untouchable sect in India, they were considered pollutive. MANYA: Jews could not look Muslims in the eye. They were placed in ghettos called mahaleh where they could not leave on rainy days for fear the water that splattered on them could contaminate the water supply. They wore yellow stars and special shoes to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They were not allowed to purchase property from Muslims or build homes with walls that were higher than those of their Muslim neighbors. SARSHAR: They could not, for example, participate in the trade of edible goods because, you know, fruits and vegetables and meats carried this pollution. So Muslims could no longer consume the foods that were touched by Jews. And as a result, this created a certain path forward in history for the Jews of Iran.  They went into antique trades. They went into carpet trades. They went into work of textiles. They became musicians. And for the following 500 years, these restrictions kind of guided the way the Jews of Iran lived in that country, even though they had been there for thousands of years previously. MANYA: Houman said the 1895 arrival of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based network of schools for Jewish children throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including within the mahalehs in Persia, was the first step in a series of improvements for Jews there. SARSHAR: Previous to that, Jews were not allowed to get any kind of an education whatsoever. The only teachers were the Muslim clergy, and they refused to teach anything to Jewish students. So this allowed for the Jewish community to finally start to get a Western-style education, which was very important at that time, given all of the dynamics that were going on in society with modernity. MANYA: As educational opportunities increased in the middle of the 19th Century, so did opportunities for the courtiers and elite to travel and see the Western world as it industrialized and modernized, expanding international trade and sharing wealth more widely. SARSHAR: Often they would be sent by their families to go and try to see if they can, you know, find a way to expand the family's businesses and lives as merchants, and they would come back shocked. I mean, Iran was a place where you know of mostly mud brick homes and dirt roads and people riding around on donkeys. And imagine this is all you've known. You never see women walking around the street. The only women you have ever seen with your own eyes in your life are your mom, your sister, your daughter or your wife, and occasionally, sex workers. And that's it. So all of a sudden, you know, you travel a couple of months by boat and train, and you get to Paris, and it's impossible to try to even conceive of the experience. It must have been something like the Hegelian experience of the sublime. What can the world look like? And where is it that I live in, and why isn't my country the same as this? MANYA: By the early 20th Century, the Persian people concluded the answer to that question was in the rule of law. The reason the European nations provided such opportunity for the community at-large had to do with the fact that the law of the land was not arbitrary or enforced by religion or royalty. It was embedded in a constitution – a set of laws that define the structure of a government and the rights of its citizens – a Western tenet that reduced the power of the clergy and created a parliament called the Majles. SARSHAR: They were starting to read travel journals. They were starting to understand the perspective that Westerners had on Iranians, and those perspectives were often awful. You know, the Western world believed, for example –the country was corrupt to the bone in every respect.  So all of these things gradually led to a call for a constitution, the major pivot of which was the establishment of a legislature of law that would start to create a community where everyone can feel like they're equal in the eyes of the law and have something to gain by trying to improve the country as a whole. Iran became the first constitutional monarchy in the Middle East in 1906 when that revolution happened, it was a momentous event. And really, things really, really did, in fact, start to change. MANYA: In 1925, Reza Shah Pahlavi – an arch nationalist who wanted to propel Iran forward into the industrial age – took over the crown of Iran. He welcomed any Iranian citizen to participate in that agenda. SARSHAR: By now, we had a good two generations of Jews who had been French-educated by the Allianz Society.  They had all gone to France at some point in their lives, so they were able to participate in this industrialization of the country, given the language skills that they had and some of the connections they had built in the Western world. MANYA: Both World Wars in Europe took a massive toll on Iran. Despite declaring neutrality, Iran was occupied by European nations that took over the nation's agriculture, treating Iran as a pantry to feed the armies. Droughts and disease worsened the toll. SARSHAR: One of the lesser-known factoids about history is that during World War I, the nation that lost the most individuals as a result of the war was Iran. Above and beyond all European nations who were at war, because of a famine that had started in Iran. The same dynamic started to happen in World War II. MANYA: With nationalist fever sweeping Europe and Iran, the Allies feared the arch-nationalist Shah would go the way of Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany. They also feared the Shah would collaborate with Hitler's Germany to provide oil for the German oil machine and cease being the pantry the Allies needed it to be. In 1941, the Western powers convinced him to abdicate the throne to his son Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. And when the war ended, Iran was able to enjoy the same economic benefits as the rest of the world at peace time. Most importantly, it was able to profit from its own oil reserves, significantly boosting Iran's national income. SARSHAR: In 1941, it was really the beginning of what is commonly referred to by the scholars of Jewish Iranian history as the Golden Age of Iranian Jewry. From 1941 until the revolution in 1978, the Jewish community of Iran saw a meteoric rise to power and social wealth. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, banking, insurance, real estate development, and other major industries, the aluminum plastics industries in Iran, all were either directly owned by the Jews of Iran or managed under their management.  And during this period, really, we can say that for the first time, after 2,500 years, the Jews of Iran really started to experience the kinds of freedoms that they had not seen since the Achaemenid dynasty. And it is during this time that, you know, we see, really, that life started to change for the Jews of Iran, even though some of the age-old social dynamics were still there.  The institutionalized antisemitism had not been completely wiped out. But for the most part, things had changed because Iranian society in general was also being Westernized, light speed. And many educated people had realized that antisemitism was really looked down upon, you know, that kind of prejudice was really no longer acceptable in the world at large. So many, many sections of the community really had shifted, genuinely shifted. And some, even though maybe their feelings had not changed, knew that their antisemitism was something that they needed to keep private. MANYA: At that time, Iran also became a refuge for Jews fleeing Europe and other parts of the Middle East. On June 1, 1941, a brutal pogrom in Iraq known as the Farhud, incited by Nazi propaganda, targeted Jews celebrating the holiday of Shavuot. Nearly 200 Jews were murdered in the streets. The violence became a turning point for Iraqi Jews. Thousands fled, many stopping in Iran, which became a way station for those headed to Palestine.  In 1942, thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland who had fled across the border into the Soviet Union during the German invasion traveled on trains and ships to Iran. Among the refugees – 1,000 orphaned children.  As Zionist leaders worked to negotiate the young Jews' immigration to Palestine, the Jewish Agency established the “Tehran Home for Jewish Children” – a complex of tents on the grounds of a former Iranian Air Force barracks outside Tehran. More than 800 orphans, escorted by adults, most of them also refugees, moved from Tehran to kibbutzim in Palestine the following year. Later, in 1948, when most Arab League states forbade the emigration of their Jews after the creation of Israel, the Zionist underground continued to smuggle Jews to Iran at about a rate of 1,000 a month, before they were flown to Israel. SARSHAR: The Zionist movement was fairly strong in Iran. It was a very lively movement. The Balfour Declaration was celebrated in all of the Allianz schools in Iran, and very soon thereafter, the first Zionist organization of Iran was established. And truly many of its founding fathers were some of the leading industrialists and intellectuals in Iranian society, in the Jewish Iranian community for the years to come. It was not unlike the kind of Zionism we see today in the United States, for example. You know, the wealthy families of the Jewish communities in New York and Los Angeles, all are very passionate about Israel, but you don't see very many of them selling their homes and packing up and moving to Israel because they just don't want to do it. They feel like they're very comfortable here. And what matters is that a state of Israel should exist, and they are political advocates of that state and of that policy and of its continued existence, but not necessarily diehard participants in the experiment itself. Iranians, after the establishment of the State of Israel, were being encouraged to move to Israel, and the Israeli government was having a lot of difficulty with that, because a lot of Iranians were seeing that life had become better for them, and they weren't as willing to leave, despite the fact that the Kourosh Project provided airplanes to get Jews out of Iran. My own great-grandmother was one of those passengers. She is buried in Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. She was one of the early citizens of Israel who went to live out the Zionist dream. MANYA: Both sides of Einat's family – her mother and father's ancestors – were among those early Israeli citizens. Einat's father was born in Tel Aviv. His parents and grandparents had come from Yemen in the late 19th Century. Einat's mother Ziona was 10 years old when in 1948, the family left Kerman, a city in southeastern Iran known for its carpet weaving and woolen shawls. They arrived in Israel with their suitcases ready to fulfill their dream. But living the dream in the new Jewish nation was not easy. After all, the day after Israel declared its independence, Arab nations attacked the Jewish state, launching the first of a series of Arab-Israeli Wars. EINAT: The story of my mom, it's a very interesting story. The family didn't have much money. There wasn't like, rich family that left, very different story. No, both of my parents come from very, I would say, very poor family. My grandpa was, like, dealing with textile. He was like, traveling from town to town with fabric. And that's what they did. They put them in what's called ma'aborot, which was like a very kind of small villages, tin houses. My mom always said there were seven kids, so all of them in one room. In the winter it's freezing; in the summer, it's super hot. But it was also close to the border, so the one window they have, they always had to cover it so at night, the enemy cannot see the light inside that room and shoot there. Also in the ma'aabarot, nobody speaks the same language. So, it was Moroccan and Iraqi and nobody speak the same dialect or the same language. So, they cannot even communicate quite yet. MANYA: Most of Ziona's six siblings did not go to school. To make it possible for Ziona, her parents placed her in a foster home with an Iraqi family in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv. EINAT: My mom's family decided that for her, she should get education, because most of the siblings didn't went to school or anything, So they put her in a foster home. In an Iraqi home, and she didn't speak a word there. So my mom, as a 10 years old, became a kid for foster parents that live in a center in Ramat Gan, where I basically grew up. And she got education, which was great. She learned also Iraqi, which is Arabic. So she speaks fluent Arabic, but she had not an easy life in coming to Israel from a different country. MANYA: Ziona has shared many of these stories with her daughter in the kitchen and dining room as they prepare and enjoy dishes that remind them of home. When she visited her daughter at her home in upstate New York at the end of the summer, Einat collected as many stories as she could over cutting boards, steaming pots, and sizzling pans. EINAT: There's a lot of story coming up, some old story that I know, some new stories. And it's really nice, because my mom is 84, 85. So, it's really nice to capture all of it, all of it. There is a lot of interesting stuff that happened during the first 10 years when she came to Israel.  That's the main, I think, I always talk about, like, how I grew up and how much food was a very substantial part of our life, if not the biggest part. You know, it's like, family can fight and this, but when it's come to the dinner, it's just change everything, the dynamic. For us, it was a big, significant part of everything. So obviously, most of these stories and memories come in while we're cooking or eating. A lot of time she used to talk about, and still talking about the smells, the smells of the flowers, the smells of the zafar (perfume). She still have the nostalgia from that time and talking very highly about what Iran used to be, and how great, and the relationship between the Muslims and the Jews back then. My grandpa's best friend was crying when he left, and he said: ‘Please don't go. Stay with us.' And he said: ‘I want to go to homeland.' So, they have a really great relationship. She's always talking, actually, about how they come for Shabbat dinner, the friends if they put the cigarettes outside of the door in Shabbat because they were observant. So cigarettes, lighter, everything, they keep it outside, in the garden, not coming inside the house. So a lot of mutual respect for the religion to each other. And I love that stories. It just showed what's happened when people take it extreme. MANYA: Einat's cookbooks and restaurant menus are filled with recipes from her own childhood and her parents' upbringing. To satisfy the appetite of her father, a former Israeli athlete, her house always had hummus and every weekend, the family made a hilbeh sauce --  a traditional Yemenite fenugreek dip made with cardamom, caraway seeds and chili flakes. Other recipes reflect her mother's Persian roots. And then there are recipes that, at first blush, seem to come out of left field, but are inspired by the Iraqi Jewish foster family that raised her mother, and the Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi neighbors that passed through the dining room and kitchen where Einat was raised in Bnei Brak.  Now a Haredi town east of Tel Aviv, it was then a diverse population of Jews from, well, everywhere. Einat still remembers standing on a stool next to the Moroccan neighbor in her building learning how to roll couscous. EINAT: One neighbor that was my second mom, her name was Tova, and she was Moroccan, so it was like, I have another Moroccan mom. But all the building was all Holocaust survivors. None of them had kids, and they were all speaking in Yiddish, mostly. So I grew up with a lot of mix. I wouldn't say, you know, in my time, it's not like our neighborhood. I grew up in Bnei Brak, and our neighborhood was very, it was before Bnei Brak became so religious like today. It was still religious, if you go really in, but we're close to Ramat Gan, and I have to say that it's, I would say, I didn't grow up with, it's very mixed, very mixed.  Wouldn't say I grew up just with Moroccan or Mizrahi, I say that it's very, very mixed. And my mom same. I think a lot of her friend is like, It's my mom would speak some Yiddish. She would do Kugel on Shabbat next to the jachnun and all the Mizrahi food. You know, this is the multi-pot and one things I love in Israel. You can see in one table so many different cultures. And that's something that would have happened in my house a lot. MANYA: That amalgam of Jewish cultures is reflected in her cookbooks Balaboosta and Shuk. It also shows up in her menu at the brick-and-mortar Balaboosta, a quaint Middle Eastern trattoria on Mulberry Street in Manhattan.  The name Balaboosta is borrowed from Yiddish meaning “a perfect housewife” – a twist on ba'al habayit, Hebrew for master of the house, or boss. But Einat insists that the term is no longer exclusively Ashkenazi, nor does it refer exclusively to a woman's domestic role. EINAT: An old friend, chef, asked me when I went to open Balaboosta, and I said, ‘I don't have a name.' She said: ‘What do you call a badass woman in Hebrew?' I'm like, ‘balaboosta.' She said, ‘It's a perfect name. We done.' Took five minutes to find this name, and I love it. It's really connected because for me it's so so much different things. You know, I always talk about the 20th century balaboosta. The balaboosta that outside going to work, the balaboosta that asking a man for a date. The balaboosta that it's not just like she's the housewife and the homekeeper. It's much more than that. Today, she's a multitask badass.  It's much more spiritual than what it is. I think it's the one that can bond the people together and bring them together and make peace between two parties clashing. So for me, it's much more than somebody that can cook and clean. So, much, much more than that. MANYA: Einat's parents became more religious when she was 12, which of course had the opposite effect on their daughter: she rebelled. When her time came to do her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Force, she was determined not to serve in a role typically assigned to women. She requested a post as a firing instructor. But after reviewing the high school transcript shaped by her rebellious adolescence, the IDF assigned her to the Nevatim Air Base where she served as a chauffeur for fighter pilots. EINAT: Back then most women would be secretaries giving coffee to some assholes. I was trying not to do that, and somehow I got very lucky, and I was in the same division, I was in the Air Force. I had amazing time for two years. I start the military a very different person, and left a very different person. I used to hang with a lot of bad people before, really bad people. And when I get to the military, I was a driver of pilots, it's the top of the top of the top in the hierarchy in the military in all IDF. So now I'm hanging with people that have the biggest ambition ever, and I'm learning new stuff, and everything opened up, even my language changed completely. Everything. I was want to travel more than I ever want before, and I have like, crazy dreams. MANYA: To make sure the elite pilots were well-fed, the IDF bused in a group of Yemenite grandmothers to provide ochel bayit, or home-cooked meals. Einat befriended the kitchen staff and helped out from time to time. Then in January 1991, she was tapped to cook a meal that probably launched her career. The IDF chiefs of staff had convened at Nevatim base to discuss the U.S. plan to bomb Iraq during the Gulf War and what Israel would do if Saddam Hussein retaliated with an attack on the Jewish state. But they needed to plot that strategy on full stomachs. A couple of pilots served as her sous chefs. That night, the Israeli generals dined on Chinese chicken with garlic, honey, and soy. And a rice salad. EINAT: It was definitely the turning point, the military.  I would say there is some values of relationship and working ethics that I wouldn't see anywhere else, and that's coming, I think because the military. They're waking up in the morning, the friendship, they're no snitching or none of this. It's to stand up for each other. There is so many other values that I grabbed from that. So when I start my culinary career, and I was in a fine dining kitchen, it was very helpful, very helpful. MANYA: After spending five years in a van driving around Germany – an extended celebration of freedom after IDF service --  it was time to get serious about a career. A culinary career made as good a sense as any. Einat worked as a waitress in Eilat and enrolled in culinary school. At the end, she marched into the kitchen of Keren, one of the first restaurants in Israel to offer haute cuisine. She got an internship, then a job. The former restaurant, run by Israeli Chef and television host Haim Cohen, is credited for reinventing Israeli cuisine. Now, as a restaurant owner and TV personality herself, Einat is largely credited for introducing Israeli cuisine to the U.S. But before she became the self-made Balaboosta of fine Israeli dining, Einat was America's Falafel Queen, made famous by two victories on the Food Network's show Chopped and her first restaurant – now a fast food chain called Ta'im Falafel. But her fame and influence when it comes to Israeli cooking has exposed her to a fair bit of criticism. She has become a target on social media by those who accuse Israelis of appropriating Palestinian foods – an argument she calls petty and ridiculous. So ridiculous, she has found the best platform to address it is on the stage of her new hobby: stand-up comedy. Cooking has always been her Zen. But so is dark humor. EINAT: I like comedy more than anything, not more than food, but close enough. EINAT/Clip: Yeah, this year was great here on Instagram, lot of hate comments, though. A lot about food appropriation, me making Arabic dishes. So let me clarify something here. I check my DNA through ancestry.com and I am 97% Middle Eastern, so I fucking bleed hummus. EINAT: It's very petty. Food, supposed always to share. Food supposed to moving forward.  It's tiring and life is much more complex than to even argue and have a debate about stupid things. I'm done. OK, yes, we're indigenous.I have connection to the land. My parents, my grandparents and great grandparents have connection to that land. Okay, I get it. Now we need to solve what's going on, because there was Palestinian that lived there before, and how we can, for me, how we change the ideology, which I don't see how we can, but how we can change the ideology, convince them that they want peace. And they want…I don't know. MANYA: Needless to say, in the year that has followed the attacks of October 7, stand-up comedy has not been the balm it once was. The attacks that unfolded that day by Iran-backed terrorists that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 250 more was simply too devastating. EINAT: I was broken there, my husband was with me, I was every day on a bed crying, and then going to work, and it was like I couldn't hear music, because every music thinking about Nova and my friends and then I couldn't see babies with a mom. Everything was a trigger. It was bad. We had a disaster of October 7 and then October 8 to see the world reaction was another. It's not just enough that we going through so much grief and need to kind of contain all that emotion and crazy and anger and rage and now we need to see the world's. Like, ok. I never thought there is antisemitism. It's something from the past, for my grandparents, for my mom a little, but it's not something in my generation, or my kids' generation. It's done, apparently, not. MANYA: The lack of sympathy around the world and among her culinary peers only amplified Einat's grief. As a way to push for a cease-fire and end U.S. support for Israel, nearly 900 chefs, farmers and others in the food industry signed a pledge to boycott Israel-based food businesses and culinary events that promote Israel. EINAT: I felt very, very alone, very alone. The first few months, I felt like, wow, not one call from anyone to check on me. It was pretty sad. At the same time, I'm in the best company ever Jewish community. There is nothing like that, nothing. MANYA: Her team at Balaboosta also checked in on their Israeli boss. But they too were scared. Soon after she posted pictures of the hostages on the window of her restaurant, she confronted a group of teenagers who tried to tear them down. EINAT: I stand in front of them and I said, ‘You better move fast'. MANYA: It's no secret that Iran helped plan Oct. 7. What is not as well known is how many Jews still live and thrive in Iran. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there were nearly 100,000 Jews in Iran. Today, Israeli sources say the population numbers less than 10,000, while the regime and Iran's Jewish leaders say it's closer to 20,000. Regardless, Iran's Jewish community remains the largest in the Middle East outside Israel.  To be sure, the constitution adopted in 1906 is still in place nominally, and it still includes Jews as a protected religious minority. Jews in Iran have synagogues, access to kosher meat, and permission to consume wine for Shabbat, despite a national ban on alcohol. There's also a Jewish representative in Iran's parliament or Majlis. But all women and girls regardless of religion are required to wear a veil, according to the Islamist dress code, and Jews are pressured to vote in elections at Jewish-specific ballot stations so the regime can monitor their participation. Zionism is punishable by death and after Oct. 7, the regime warned its Jewish citizens to sever contact with family and friends in Israel or risk arrest. They also can't leave. Iranian law forbids an entire Jewish nuclear family from traveling abroad at the same time. At least one family member, usually the father, must remain behind to prevent emigration. But Houman points out that many Iranian Jews, including himself, are deeply attached to Iranian culture. As a resident of Los Angeles, he reads Persian literature, cooks Persian herb stew for his children and speaks in Persian to his pets. He would return to Iran in an instant if given the opportunity to do so safely. For Jews living in Iran it may be no different. They've become accustomed to living under Islamist laws. They may not want to leave, even if they could. SARSHAR: The concept of living and thriving in Iran, for anyone who is not related to the ruling clergy and the Revolutionary Guard, is a dream that feels unattainable by anyone in Iran, let alone the Jews. In a world where there is really no fairness for anyone, the fact that you're treated even less fairly almost fades. MANYA: Scholars say since the Islamic Revolution, most Jews who have left Iran have landed in Los Angeles or Long Island, New York. Still, more Jews of Iranian descent live in Israel – possibly more than all other countries combined. The reason why? Because so many like Einat's family made aliyah–up until the mid-20th Century.  It's hard to say where another exodus might lead Iranian Jews to call home. Einat will be forever grateful that her family left when they still could and landed in a beautiful and beloved place. Though she lives in the U.S. now, she travels back to Israel at least twice a year. EINAT: It's a dream for every Jew, it's not just me. It's the safe zone for every Jew. It's the one place that, even if we have, it's not safe because there is people around us that want to kill us. It's still emotionally. You know, I've been in Israel a few months ago, it's like, you always feel loved, you always feel supported. It's incredible. And it's still home. It's always going to be my home. MANYA: Persian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century, left Middle Eastern and North African countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Many thanks to Einat for sharing her family's story. You can enjoy some of her family's favorite recipes in her cookbooks Balaboosta and Shuk. Her memoir Taste of Love was recently released in  an audio and digital format.  Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they'd never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to ask those questions. Find your stories. Atara Lakritz is our producer. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Nicole Mazur, Sean Savage, and Madeleine Stern, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC. You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

“When we show the world that we're not what they say about us, that we're not white colonizers, that we're actually an indigenous tribe of people that was kicked out of their homeland . . .  the only argument I can think about to put against the story is ‘you're lying.' . . . If they accuse you of lying when you tell your family story, they lost.” Last week's episode featuring Adiel Cohen—Jewish activist, social media influencer, and Israel Defense Forces reservist—received heartfelt feedback. In part two of this conversation, Adiel joins us live from the AJC Global Forum 2024 in Washington, D.C., where listeners had the chance to ask their questions directly. Adiel discusses a plethora of topics, including his social media activism and how Israeli society today reflects the story of Jews returning to their ancestral homeland after over 2,000 years in the diaspora, refuting the false narrative that Jews are white settler colonialists.  If you haven't heard The Forgotten Exodus: Yemen: Live Recording with Adiel Cohen – Part 1, listen now.  —--- How much do you know about Jewish history in the Middle East? Take our short quiz! Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here: The Forgotten Exodus: Yemen: Live Recording with Adiel Cohen – Part 1 The Forgotten Exodus: Yemen, with Israeli Olympian Shahar Tzubari Song credits:  Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: N/A; Composer: DANIELYAN ASHOT MAKICHEVICH (IPI NAME #00855552512) “Suspense Middle East” Publisher: Victor Romanov, Composer: Victor Romanov; Item ID: 196056047 —-- Episode Transcript: Adiel Cohen:   When we show the world that we're not what they say about us, that we're not white colonizers, that we're actually an indigenous tribe of people that was kicked out of their homeland and spread throughout the diaspora for 2000 years . . . they can try to argue with that. But at the end of the day, the facts are on our side. Manya Brachear Pashman: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century. Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations–despite hardship, hostility, and hatred–then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman:. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East.  The world has ignored these voices. We will not. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  There has been moving and frankly overwhelming feedback from listeners of our second season, especially last week's live interview with digital influencer Adiel Cohen: about his family's journey from Yemen. If you didn't listen last week, be sure to go back and tune in. Then you'll know why there's been such a demand to release the second part of that interview – a question and answer session.  Why are we sharing this? It's a sampling of the conversations these episodes have generated in homes across the nation and around the world, inspired by this series. What would you ask our guests? Here's what a handful asked Adiel when he joined us at AJC Global Forum 2024 in Washington D.C.  Today's episode: Leaving Yemen, Part 2.  Thank you for this conversation, Adiel. But now I'd like to turn to our audience and give them an opportunity to ask what's on their minds. If you have a question, please raise your hand, someone will bring you a microphone. Be sure to state your name, where you're from, and keeping with the spirit of the event, tell us where your family is from going back generations. Audience Member/Carole Weintraub: Hi, thank you for coming. My name is Carole Weintraub. I'm from Philadelphia. And depending on the week, my family was either from Poland, Ukraine, or Russia – the borders changed all the time.  Adiel Cohen:   Oh wow, ok. Carole Weintraub: Take your pick. My question's kind of a fun question. You mentioned some dishes that your grandmom would make. You gave us the names, but I never heard of them, and could you describe them? Adiel Cohen:   Yes. So the main food that we eat, I would say it's like the equivalent to matzo ball soup. That's like the default dish for holidays, for day-to-day. It's Yemenite soup. It's just called Yemenite soup. It's very simple. It's a soup made with a lot of spices, I think. Kumkum and hell. It can be vegetable, chicken, or beef based, with a side of either potato or pumpkin inside the soup. It's very good, very healthy. We eat it, especially in winter, every Shabbat. Like it cleans your entire system, all the spices.  Some breads that we have that are also very common. Lachuch or lachoh, you know, in the Yemenite pronunciation, it's a flatbread similar to pancake. It's kind of like a pancake, only fried on one side with holes, yeah. And the other side, the top side becomes full of bubbles that turn into holes. So it's fluffy, like very, very soft, very good to eat with dips or with soup.  We also have saluf, which is just a regular pita, it's a flatbread. Zalabiyeh, which is kind of like the, in Yemen they used to eat it during Shavuot and in Israel, now we eat it a lot in Hanukkah, because it's fried. It's kind of like a flatbread donut. I don't know how else to explain it. Right. It's kind of like sufganiyah but made flat, like a pita. There's so much more wow, I'm starting to salivate here. Manya Brachear Pashman:   If you don't mind me just interjecting with one of my own questions, and that is, do you encourage people to make these recipes, to try out different parts of your culture or do you feel a little bit of or maybe fear appropriation of your culture? Like what is… Adiel Cohen:   No, not at all. Go look up Yemenite soup recipe on Google. It's all there in English. And it's delicious. It's healthy. Do it, really. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Do you try other Jewish cultures in fact? Adiel Cohen:   Kubbeh must be one of my favorite foods that is not Yemenite. It's Iraqi-Jewish. My hometown, Ramat Gan, is the capital of Iraqi Jews and Israel. Every time I say that I'm from Ramat Gan, people ask me ‘Oh, you're Iraqi?' I'm like, no, no, Yemenite. So kubbeh, sabich. Sabich, that's the best food, I think, Israel has to offer. Also Iraqi Jewish.  I feel bad that I don't have anything good to say about Ashkenazi foods. I tried matzo ball soup for the first time. I'm sorry. My sister, she married an Ashkenazi Jew from Monsey – can't get any more Ashkenazi than that. And this was actually my first time trying and getting a taste of Ashkenazi culture and cuisine. Can't say that it, like, blew me off. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Alright, next question. Audience Member/Amy Albertson: Hi, Adiel.  Adiel Cohen:   Hi, Amy. Amy Albertson: My name is Amy Albertson. I personally am from California and my family's from Russia, Poland, and China. And my question for you is, as a fellow social media creator, especially during times like this, I get asked a lot about racism in Israel since Americans are obsessed with racism. And they always want to point out how the Teimanim, the Yemenites, the Ethiopians, the other what Americans like to say not white Jews are discriminated against and have been discriminated against since the establishment of Israel.  Obviously, we can't deny that there is racism. However, I would like to know your perspective obviously as a Yemenite Jew living in Israel and also the good and the bad, where you find that things are hopefully better than they were in the past in Israel, and also where you think that Israeli society still has to improve when it comes to things like this. Adiel Cohen:   So part of the cultural discourse in Israel, we always make fun of how every wave of aliyah, from every place in the world that Israel experienced, the last wave of aliyah discriminates against them or makes fun of them, because ‘oh, the new ones.' And in a sense, it is true, you see it a lot. And racism, unfortunately, exists in Israel, in Israeli society, just like in every society in the world. I think that if you compare it to how it was in the 50s, we're way better off now.  And racism is widely condemned, all throughout Israeli society, against anyone, against any communities. We still have the stereotypes, we still have, you know, these jokes that sometimes are funny, sometimes are less funny about different communities. I would say for the most part, we know how to maintain a healthy humor of kind of making fun of each other as different communities but also making it all part of what it means to be Israeli. When my grandparents came to Israel, they were discriminated against. They were ‘othered' by the rest of society that was mostly dominated by secular Ashkenazim.  The same thing can also be said on Holocaust survivors that first arrived in Israel and also faced discrimination from their brothers and sisters, who are also Ashkenazim. So I don't know if racism is the right word. I don't think there's a word that can describe this dynamic that we have between our communities. But yeah, I definitely can say that throughout the generations it's become way better. We see way more diverse representation in Israeli media, in Israeli pop culture. If you look at what's Israeli pop culture, it's majority Mizrahi, and a lot of Yemenites if I may add, because, you know, we know how to sing. Not me, though, unfortunately. But yeah, we see a lot more representation. I believe we're on the right path to become more united and to bridge between our differences and different communities. Audience Member/Alison Platt: Hi, I'm Alison Platt. I live in Chicago by way of Northern California. My family is from all over Europe, and then about 1500 years before that Southern Italy. So I lost my grandmother last week, so I really thank you, I really appreciate the importance of telling our grandparents' stories. So thank you for sharing yours with us. For those of us who are millennials or Gen Z who are for better or worse, very online, storytelling is important and telling our own personal Jewish stories, very important, telling our collective Jewish story, very important. So for someone who does that on social media, what is your advice for those of us who are really trying to educate both on a one-to-one level and then communally about our Jewish identities, what has been successful for you, what has been challenging and where do you see that going? Adiel Cohen:   So, you know, telling a story, you can tell a story with words, you can also tell a story with visuals. Some of the most successful videos that I made about Yemenite Jews involved my grandma cooking and my mom cooking, making lachuch and showing the Seder, the table, how beautiful and colorful it is. So don't be afraid to pull up your phone and just show it when you see it. And in terms of verbal stories, speak to your grandparents as much as you can. When my grandma passed away, I realized how it can happen like that, and then that's it. And there's no more stories from Savta around Shabbat table and what you managed to gather, that's what you're carrying on to the future. So collect as many stories as possible from every generation so that these stories can live on and exist. And just tell them on social media, open your camera, tell it to the world, because this is how they get to know us. Audience Member/Ioel: Hi, everyone. I'm Ioel from Italy. I'm the Vice President of the Italian Union of Young Jews. And part of my family comes from Egypt. So I relate to your storytelling.  Recently, I have attended the inaugural seminar of Archon Europe. It's an organization that's fostering heritage towards Europe. And we were wondering how to share our stories. So I want to ask you, what is the best thing for you to make the story of this sort of silent exodus known in the Western society, and especially in our university. And how do you think your activism is contributing to fight antisemitism? Adiel Cohen:   I think it's as simple as just taking the leap and start telling these stories. As I said, sit with your grandparents, with your parents and just talk about it. Write down notes and turn it into a story that can be told through social media, make videos about it. You know, Egyptian jewelry, if you look into it, there's so much there. There's the Genizah, right, the Cairo Genizah – so much knowledge and Jewish history, not only from Egypt, but from the entire Middle East.  You got accounts in the Cairo Genizah about how Jews lived in Israel, in the Land of Israel, under Muslim rule; stories that are not heard. When you expose the world and people on campus to these stories, first of all, you burst the little bubble that says Jews poofed in Israel in 1948 and up until then, they didn't exist there. And second of all, you show them that Jews existed, not just in Europe, but also in other parts of the world – in Egypt, and in the Middle East as well.  Your question was, how does my activism contribute? I hope to inspire more young Jews, Gen Z, millennials, to share their stories and get connected to them and understand the importance of sharing stories because you can enjoy listening to your grandparents stories, but then do nothing about it. So I hope that my content and then my activism inspires other Jews to speak up, just like I am inspired by other creators who also tell their stories. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And I think the other aspect of his question was about fighting antisemitism, whether or not you feel that sharing these stories helps in that effort. Adiel Cohen:   Definitely. Again, when we show the world that we're not what they say about us, that we're not white colonizers, that we're actually an indigenous tribe of people that was kicked out of their homeland and spread throughout the diaspora for 2000 years, they can try to argue with that. But at the end of the day, the facts are on our side, and also the importance of a story, you can't argue with a story.  If you're telling a story from your family, from your own personal experience, the only argument I can think about to put against the story is ‘you're lying.' And ‘you're lying' is not a good argument. If they accuse you of lying when you tell your family story, they lost. Audience Member/Daniel: Hi, my name is Daniel. I'm American-Israeli and my family background is I'm half Lithuanian and half Yemenite. I just wanna say I feel very and thoroughly inspired by you, and thank you so much for coming today.  Adiel Cohen: Thank you. Daniel: As a child, I was fortunate enough to hear stories from my grandparents and my great grandfather about their lives in Yemen. Recently, I read Maimonides' letter to Yemen Adiel Cohen: Beautiful. Daniel: And I was particularly inspired by the fact that it was originally written in Arabic and it was translated into Hebrew so that it could be properly disseminated in the community. It remains my favorite primary source regarding Yemen's Jewish community. But with 3000 years of history, almost, there's plenty to choose from. So what's your favorite text or book relating to Yemen's Jewish community? Adiel Cohen:   That. Iggeret Teiman, the letter of Maimonides to the Yemenite Jewish community is a transformative letter. It came in a time that was very, very tough for the Yemenite Jewish community. It was a time of false messiahs that started popping out of nowhere in Yemen, both in the Muslim community but also in the Jewish community. And a false messiah that pops out of nowhere creates civil unrest. It sounds a little weird and otherworldly in the world that we live in now, but when someone pops out of nowhere and says, I'm the Messiah. I'm coming to save you all, and back at the time, it was revolutionary.  And there was a lot of troubles that the Jews faced at the time because of the false messiahs. The Yemeni leadership was very hostile to Jews, just like, every time there's problems in society, who gets blamed? The Jews, for different reasons, and that time was the reason that Jews were blamed. That was the reason Jews were blamed for.  And out of Egypt, Rambam comes. He did not set foot in his life in Yemen. But the head of the Yemenite Jewish community sent him a letter all the way to Egypt. He was in Egypt at the time after migrating all the way from Spain to Morocco to Egypt, asking him for help. And he sent him this letter, Rambam sent him back this letter, Iggeret Teiman, where he basically empowers and strengthens the Jewish community, telling them to maintain their faith and do not fall for the false messiahs and keep their faith in Hashem, and they will be saved.  It was as simple as that to save the Jewish community who was suffering at the time, and ever since then, Jews adopted, not fully, but adopted a lot of the Rambam's Mishnah, his ideas. And till this day, the Rambam is the most notable figure that Yemenite Jews look up to. He did not set foot in Yemen one time.  The Jews did not go to Egypt and sought for help, but it shows you why it's my favorite text in our history. It's because it shows that even in the diaspora, even when, you know, we were seemingly disconnected, we always relied on each other. And it's amazing to think about it, how a letter got to Egypt, sent back, and he saved a community from all the way far over there. So yeah, that's the answer. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So I think we are out of time. Thank you for all those thoughtful questions. That was really wonderful. And thank you for being such a lovely audience. And thank you, Adiel. Adiel Cohen: Thank you. Manya Brachear Pashman:   For joining us and sharing your family's story and hopefully inspiring some of us to do the same. So thank you. Adiel Cohen:   I hope so. Thank you so much. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Yemenite Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century, left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Adiel for sharing his story. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they'd never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to ask those questions. Find your stories. Atara Lakritz is our producer. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Nicole Mazur, Sean Savage, and Madeleine Stern, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible.  You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

Listen to the premiere episode of the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, the multi-award-winning, chart-topping, and first-ever narrative podcast series to focus exclusively on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. This week's episode focuses on Jews from Tunisia. If you like what you hear, subscribe before the next episode drops on September 3. “In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA, we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us . . . I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity... I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation.”  Hen Mazzig, a writer, digital creator, and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute, shares his powerful journey as a proud Israeli, LGBTQ+, and Mizrahi Jew, in the premiere episode of the second season of the award-winning podcast, The Forgotten Exodus. Hen delves into his family's deep roots in Tunisia, their harrowing experiences during the Nazi occupation, and their eventual escape to Israel. Discover the rich history of Tunisia's ancient Amazigh Jewish community, the impact of French colonial and Arab nationalist movements on Jews in North Africa, and the cultural identity that Hen passionately preserves today. Joining the conversation is historian Lucette Valensi, an expert on Tunisian Jewish culture, who provides scholarly insights into the longstanding presence of Jews in Tunisia, from antiquity to their exodus in the mid-20th century. ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  "Penceresi Yola Karsi" -- by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Danielyan Ashot Makichevich (BMI), IPI Name #00855552512, United States BMI “Tunisia Eastern”: Publisher: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Composer: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Item ID#155836469. “At The Rabbi's Table”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Fazio Giulio (IPI/CAE# 00198377019). “Fields Of Elysium”; Publisher: Mysterylab Music; Composer: Mott Jordan; ID#79549862  “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Hatikvah (National Anthem Of Israel)”; Composer: Eli Sibony; ID#122561081 “Tunisian Pot Dance (Short)”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: kesokid, ID #97451515 “Middle East Ident”; Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Alon Marcus (ACUM), IPI#776550702 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. ___ Episode Transcript: HEN MAZZIG: They took whatever they had left and they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected, and that she was coming home. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century. Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations–despite hardship, hostility, and hatred–then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East.  The world has ignored these voices. We will not. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: leaving Tunisia. __ [Tel Aviv Pride video] MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: Every June, Hen Mazzig, who splits his time between London and Tel Aviv, heads to Israel to show his Pride. His Israeli pride. His LGBTQ+ pride. And his Mizrahi Jewish pride. For that one week, all of those identities coalesce.  And while other cities around the world have transformed Pride into a June version of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Israel is home to one of the few vibrant LGBTQ communities in the Middle East. Tel Aviv keeps it real. HEN: For me, Pride in Israel, in Tel Aviv, it still has this element of fighting for something. And that it's important for all of us to show up and to come out to the Pride Parade because if we're not going to be there, there's some people with agendas to erase us and we can't let them do it. MANYA: This year, the Tel Aviv Pride rally was a more somber affair as participants demanded freedom for the more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza since October 7th.  On that day, Hamas terrorists bent on erasing Jews from the Middle East went on a murderous rampage, killing more than 1,200, kidnapping 250 others, and unleashing what has become a 7-front war on Israel. HEN: In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us, and we had to fight. And the LGBTQ+ community also knows very well how hard it is. I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity. And I don't want anyone to go through that. I don't want my children to go through that. I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation. MANYA: Hen Mazzig is an international speaker, writer, and digital influencer. In 2022, he founded the Tel Aviv Institute, a social media laboratory that tackles antisemitism online. He's also a second-generation Israeli, whose maternal grandparents fled Iraq, while his father's parents fled Tunisia – roots that echo in the family name: Mazzig. HEN: The last name Mazzig never made sense, because in Israel a lot of the last names have meaning in Hebrew.  So I remember one of my teachers in school was saying that Mazzig sounds like mozeg, which means pouring in Hebrew. Maybe your ancestors were running a bar or something? Clearly, this teacher did not have knowledge of the Amazigh people. Which, later on I learned, several of those tribes, those Amazigh tribes, were Jewish or practiced Judaism, and that there was 5,000 Jews that came from Tunisia that were holding both identities of being Jewish and Amazigh.  And today, they have last names like Mazzig, and Amzaleg, Mizzoug. There's several of those last names in Israel today. And they are the descendants of those Jewish communities that have lived in the Atlas Mountains. MANYA: The Atlas Mountains. A 1,500-mile chain of magnificent peaks and treacherous terrain that stretch across Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastline.  It's where the nomadic Amazigh have called home for thousands of years. The Amazigh trace their origins to at least 2,000 BCE  in western North Africa. They speak the language of Tamazight and rely on cattle and agriculture as their main sources of income.  But textiles too. In fact, you've probably heard of the Amazigh or own a rug woven by them. A Berber rug. HEN: Amazigh, which are also called Berbers. But they're rejecting this term because of the association with barbarians, which was the title that European colonialists when they came to North Africa gave them. There's beautiful folklore about Jewish leaders within the Amazigh people. One story that I really connected to was the story of Queen Dihya that was also known as El-Kahina, which in Arabic means the Kohen, the priest, and she was known as this leader of the Amazigh tribes, and she was Jewish.  Her derrogaters were calling her a Jewish witch, because they said that she had the power to foresee the future. And her roots were apparently connected to Queen Sheba and her arrival from Israel back to Africa. And she was the descendant of Queen Sheba. And that's how she led the Amazigh people.  And the stories that I read about her, I just felt so connected. How she had this long, black, curly hair that went all the way down to her knees, and she was fierce, and she was very committed to her identity, and she was fighting against the Islamic expansion to North Africa.  And when she failed, after years of holding them off, she realized that she can't do it anymore and she's going to lose. And she was not willing to give up her Jewish identity and convert to Islam and instead she jumped into a well and died. This well is known today in Tunisia. It's the [Bir] Al-Kahina or Dihya's Well that is still in existence. Her descendants, her kids, were Jewish members of the Amazigh people.  Of course, I would like to believe that I am the descendant of royalty. MANYA: Scholars debate whether the Amazigh converted to Judaism or descended from Queen Dihya and stayed.  Lucette Valensi is a French scholar of Tunisian history who served as a director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, one of the most prestigious institutions of graduate education in France. She has written extensively about Tunisian Jewish culture.   Generations of her family lived in Tunisia. She says archaeological evidence proves Jews were living in that land since Antiquity. LUCETTE VALENSI: I myself am a Chemla, born Chemla. And this is an Arabic name, which means a kind of belt. And my mother's name was Tartour, which is a turban [laugh]. So the names were Arabic. So my ancestors spoke Arabic. I don't know if any of them spoke Berber before, or Latin. I have no idea. But there were Jews in antiquity and of course, through Saint Augustin. MANYA: So when did Jews arrive in Tunisia? LUCETTE: [laugh] That's a strange question because they were there since Antiquity. We have evidence of their presence in mosaics of synagogues, from the times of Byzantium. I think we think in terms of a short chronology, and they would tend to associate the Jews to colonization, which does not make sense, they were there much before French colonization. They were there for millennia. MANYA: Valensi says Jews lived in Tunisia dating to the time of Carthage, an ancient city-state in what is now Tunisia, that reached its peak in the fourth century BCE. Later, under Roman and then Byzantine rule, Carthage continued to play a vital role as a center of commerce and trade during antiquity.  Besides the role of tax collectors, Jews were forbidden to serve in almost all public offices. Between the 5th and 8th centuries CE, conditions fluctuated between relief and forced conversions while under Christian rule.  After the Islamic conquest of Tunisia in the seventh and early eighth centuries CE, the treatment of Jews largely depended on which Muslim ruler was in charge at the time.  Some Jews converted to Islam while others lived as dhimmis, or second-class citizens, protected by the state in exchange for a special tax known as the jizya. In 1146, the first caliph of the Almohad dynasty, declared that the Prophet Muhammad had granted Jews religious freedom for only 500 years, by which time if the messiah had not come, they had to convert.  Those who did not convert and even those who did were forced to wear yellow turbans or other special garb called shikra, to distinguish them from Muslims. An influx of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal arrived in the 14th Century. In the 16th Century, Tunisia became part of the Ottoman Empire, and the situation of Jews improved significantly. Another group who had settled in the coastal Tuscan city of Livorno crossed the Mediterranean in the 17th and 18th centuries to make Tunisia their home. LUCETTE: There were other groups that came, Jews from Italy, Jews from Spain, of course, Spain and Portugal, different periods. 14th century already from Spain and then from Spain and Portugal. From Italy, from Livorno, that's later, but the Jews from Livorno themselves came from Spain.  So I myself am named Valensi. From Valencia. It was the family name of my first husband. So from Valencia in Spain they went to Livorno, and from Livorno–Leghorn in English–to Tunisia. MANYA: At its peak, Tunisia's Jewish population exceeded 100,000 – a combination of Sephardi and Mizrahi. HEN: When we speak about Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, specifically in the West, or mainly in the West, we're referring to them as Sephardi. But in Tunisia, it's very interesting to see that there was the Grana community which are Livorno Jews that moved to Tunisia in the 1800s, and they brought the Sephardi way of praying.  And that's why I always use the term Mizrahi to describe myself, because I feel like it encapsulates more of my identity. And for me, the Sephardi title that we often use on those communities doesn't feel accurate to me, and it also has the connection to Ladino, which my grandparents never spoke.  They spoke Tamazight, Judeo-Tamazight, which was the language of those tribes in North Africa. And my family from my mother's side, from Iraq, they were speaking Judeo-Iraqi-Arabic.  So for me, the term Sephardi just doesn't cut it. I go with Mizrahi to describe myself. MANYA: The terms Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi all refer to the places Jews once called home.  Ashkenazi Jews hail from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Germany, Poland, and Russia. They traditionally speak Yiddish, and their customs and practices reflect the influences of Central and Eastern European cultures.  Pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust led many Ashkenazi Jews to flee their longtime homes to countries like the United States and their ancestral homeland, Israel.  Mizrahi, which means “Eastern” in Hebrew, refers to the diaspora of descendants of Jewish communities from Middle Eastern countries such as: Iraq, Iran, and Yemen, and North African countries such as: Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco. Ancient Jewish communities that have lived in the region for millennia long before the advent of Islam and Christianity. They often speak dialects of Arabic. Sephardi Jews originate from Spain and Portugal, speaking Ladino and incorporating Spanish and Portuguese cultural influences. Following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, they settled in regions like North Africa and the Balkans. In Tunisia, the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities lived side by side, but separately. HEN: As time passed, those communities became closer together, still quite separated, but they became closer and closer. And perhaps the reason they were becoming closer was because of the hardship that they faced as Jews.  For the leaders of Muslim armies that came to Tunisia, it didn't matter if you were a Sephardi Jew, or if you were an Amazigh Jew. You were a Jew for them. MANYA: Algeria's invasion of Tunisia in the 18th century had a disproportionate effect on Tunisia's Jewish community. The Algerian army killed thousands of the citizens of Tunis, many of whom were Jewish. Algerians raped Jewish women, looted Jewish homes. LUCETTE: There were moments of trouble when you had an invasion of the Algerian army to impose a prince. The Jews were molested in Tunis. MANYA: After a military invasion, a French protectorate was established in 1881 and lasted until Tunisia gained independence in 1956. The Jews of Tunisia felt much safer under the French protectorate.  They put a lot of stock in the French revolutionary promise of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Soon, the French language replaced Judeo-Arabic. LUCETTE: Well, under colonization, the Jews were in a better position. First, the school system. They went to modern schools, especially the Alliance [Israélite Universelle] schools, and with that started a form of Westernization.  You had also schools in Italian, created by Italian Jews, and some Tunisian Jews went to these schools and already in the 19th century, there was a form of acculturation and Westernization.  Access to newspapers, creation of newspapers. In the 1880s Jews had already their own newspapers in Hebrew characters, but Arabic language.  And my grandfather was one of the early journalists and they started having their own press and published books, folklore, sort of short stories. MANYA: In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and quickly overran the French Third Republic, forcing the French to sign an armistice agreement in June. The armistice significantly reduced the territory governed by France and created a new government known as the Vichy regime, after the central French city where it was based.  The Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis, establishing a special administration to introduce anti-Jewish legislation and enforce a compulsory Jewish census in all of its territories including Tunisia. Hen grew up learning about the Holocaust, the Nazis' attempt to erase the Jewish people. As part of his schooling, he learned the names of concentration and death camps and he heard the stories from his friends' grandparents.  But because he was not Ashkenazi, because his grandparents didn't suffer through the same catastrophe that befell Europe, Hen never felt fully accepted.  It was a trauma that belonged to his Ashkenazi friends of German and Polish descent, not to him. Or so they thought and so he thought, until he was a teenager and asked his grandmother Kamisa to finally share their family's journey from Tunisia. That's when he learned that the Mazzig family had not been exempt from Hitler's hatred. In November 1942, Tunisia became the only North African country to come under Nazi Germany's occupation and the Nazis wasted no time. Jewish property was confiscated, and heavy fines were levied on large Jewish communities. With the presence of the Einsatzkommando, a subgroup of the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units, the Nazis were prepared to implement the systematic murder of the Jews of Tunisia. The tide of the war turned just in time to prevent that. LUCETTE: At the time the Germans came, they did not control the Mediterranean, and so they could not export us to the camps. We were saved by that. Lanor camps for men in dangerous places where there were bombs by the Allies. But not for us, it was, I mean, they took our radios. They took the silverware or they took money, this kind of oppression, but they did not murder us.  They took the men away, a few families were directly impacted and died in the camps. A few men. So we were afraid. We were occupied. But compared to what Jews in Europe were subjected to, we didn't suffer.  MANYA: Almost 5,000 Jews, most of them from Tunis and from certain northern communities, were taken captive and incarcerated in 32 labor camps scattered throughout Tunisia. Jews were not only required to wear yellow stars, but those in the camps were also required to wear them on their backs so they could be identified from a distance and shot in the event they tried to escape. HEN: My grandmother never told me until before she died, when she was more open about the stories of oppression, on how she was serving food for the French Nazi officers that were occupying Tunisia, or how my grandfather was in a labor camp, and he was supposed to be sent to a death camp in Europe as well. They never felt like they should share these stories. MANYA: The capture of Tunisia by the Allied forces in May 1943 led the Axis forces in North Africa to surrender. But the country remained under French colonial rule and the antisemitic legislation of the Vichy regime continued until 1944. Many of the Vichy camps, including forced labor camps in the Sahara, continued to operate.  Even after the decline and fall of the Vichy regime and the pursuit of independence from French rule began, conditions for the Mazzig family and many others in the Tunisian Jewish community did not improve.  But the source of much of the hostility and strife was actually a beacon of hope for Tunisia's Jews. On May 14, 1948, the world had witnessed the creation of the state of Israel, sparking outrage throughout the Arab world. Seven Arab nations declared war on Israel the day after it declared independence.  Amid the rise of Tunisian nationalism and its push for independence from France, Jewish communities who had lived in Tunisia for centuries became targets. Guilty by association. No longer welcome. Rabbinical councils were dismantled. Jewish sports associations banned. Jews practiced their religion in hiding. Hen's grandfather recounted violence in the Jewish quarter of Tunis.  HEN: When World War Two was over, the Jewish community in Tunisia was hoping that now that Tunisia would have emancipation, and it would become a country, that their neighbors and the country itself would protect them. Because when it was Nazis, they knew that it was a foreign power that came from France and oppressed them. They knew that there was some hatred in the past, from their Muslim neighbors towards them.  But they also were hoping that, if anything, they would go back to the same status of a dhimmi, of being a protected minority. Even if they were not going to be fully accepted and celebrated in this society, at least they would be protected, for paying tax. And this really did not happen. MANYA: By the early 1950s, life for the Mazzig family became untenable. By then, American Jewish organizations based in Tunis started working to take Jews to Israel right away.  HEN: [My family decided to leave.] They took whatever they had left. And they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression of living as a minority that knows that anytime the ruler might turn on them and take everything they have and pull the ground underneath their feet, they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected. And maybe they will face hate, but no one will hate them because they're Jewish.  And I often dream about my grandmother being a young girl on this boat and how she must have felt to know that the nightmare and the hell that she went through is behind her and that she was coming home. MANYA: The boat they sailed to Israel took days. When Hen's uncle, just a young child at the time, got sick, the captain threatened to throw him overboard. Hen's grandmother hid the child inside her clothes until they docked in Israel. When they arrived, they were sprayed with DDT to kill any lice or disease, then placed in ma'abarot, which in Hebrew means transit camps. In this case, it was a tent with one bed. HEN: They were really mistreated back then. And it's not criticism. I mean, yes, it is also criticism, but it's not without understanding the context. That it was a young country that just started, and those Jewish communities, Jewish refugees came from Tunisia, they didn't speak Hebrew. They didn't look like the other Jewish communities there. And while they all had this in common, that they were all Jews, they had a very different experience. MANYA: No, the family's arrival in the Holy Land was nothing like what they had imagined. But even still, it was a dream fulfilled and there was hope, which they had lost in Tunisia. HEN: I think that it was somewhere in between having both this deep connection to Israel and going there because they wanted to, and also knowing that there's no future in Tunisia. And the truth is that even–and I'm sure people that are listening to us, that are strong Zionists and love Israel, if you tell them ‘OK, so move tomorrow,' no matter how much you love Israel, it's a very difficult decision to make.  Unless it's not really a decision. And I think for them, it wasn't really a decision. And they went through so much, they knew, OK, we have to leave and I think for the first time having a country, having Israel was the hope that they had for centuries to go back home, finally realized. MANYA: Valensi's family did stay a while longer. When Tunisia declared independence in 1956, her father, a ceramicist, designed tiles for the residence of President Habib Bourguiba. Those good relations did not last.  Valensi studied history in France, married an engineer, and returned to Tunisia. But after being there for five years, it became clear that Jews were not treated equally and they returned to France in 1965. LUCETTE: I did not plan to emigrate. And then it became more and more obvious that some people were more equal than others [laugh]. And so there was this nationalist mood where responsibilities were given to Muslims rather than Jews and I felt more and more segregated.  And so, my husband was an engineer from a good engineering school. Again, I mean, he worked for another engineer, who was a Muslim. We knew he would never reach the same position. His father was a lawyer. And in the tribunal, he had to use Arabic. And so all these things accumulated, and we were displaced. MANYA: Valensi said Jewish emigration from Tunisia accelerated at two more mileposts. Even after Tunisia declared independence, France maintained a presence and a naval base in the port city of Bizerte, a strategic port on the Mediterranean for the French who were fighting with Algeria.  In 1961, Tunisian forces blockaded the naval base and warned France to stay out of its airspace. What became known as the Bizerte Crisis lasted for three days. LUCETTE: There were critical times, like what we call “La Crise de Bizerte.” Bizerte is a port to the west of Tunis that used to be a military port and when independence was negotiated with France, the French kept this port, where they could keep an army, and Bourguiba decided that he wanted this port back. And there was a war, a conflict, between Tunisia and France in ‘61.  And that crisis was one moment when Jews thought: if there is no French presence to protect us, then anything could happen. You had the movement of emigration.  Of course, much later, ‘67, the unrest in the Middle East, and what happened there provoked a kind of panic, and there were movements against the Jews in Tunis – violence and destruction of shops, etc. So they emigrated again. Now you have only a few hundred Jews left. MANYA: Valensi's first husband died at an early age. Her second husband, Abraham Udovitch, is the former chair of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Together, they researched and published a book about the Jewish communities in the Tunisian island of Djerba. The couple now splits their time between Paris and Princeton. But Valensi returns to Tunisia every year. It's still home. LUCETTE: When I go, strange thing, I feel at home. I mean, I feel I belong. My Arabic comes back. The words that I thought I had forgotten come back. They welcome you. I mean, if you go, you say you come from America, they're going to ask you questions. Are you Jewish? Did you go to Israel? I mean, these kind of very brutal questions, right away. They're going there. The taxi driver won't hesitate to ask you: Are you Jewish? But at the same time, they're very welcoming. So, I have no trouble. MANYA: Hen, on the other hand, has never been to the land of his ancestors. He holds on to his grandparents' trauma. And fear.  HEN: Tunisia just still feels a bit unsafe to me. Just as recent as a couple of months ago, there was a terror attack. So it's something that's still occurring.  MANYA: Just last year, a member of the Tunisian National Guard opened fire on worshippers outside El Ghriba Synagogue where a large gathering of Jewish pilgrims were celebrating the festival of Lag BaOmer. The synagogue is located on the Tunisian island of Djerba where Valensi and her husband did research for their book. Earlier this year, a mob attacked an abandoned synagogue in the southern city of Sfax, setting fire to the building's courtyard. Numbering over 100,000 Jews on the eve of Israel's Independence in 1948, the Tunisian Jewish community is now estimated to be less than 1,000.  There has been limited contact over the years between Tunisia and Israel. Some Israeli tourists, mostly of Tunisian origin, annually visit the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba. But the government has largely been hostile to the Jewish state.  In the wake of the October 7 attack, the Tunisian parliament began debate on a law that would criminalize any normalization of ties with Israel. Still, Hen would like to go just once to see where his grandparents lived. Walked. Cooked. Prayed.  But to him it's just geography, an arbitrary place on a map. The memories, the music, the recipes, the traditions. It's no longer in Tunisia. It's elsewhere now – in the only country that preserved it. HEN: The Jewish Tunisian culture, the only place that it's been maintained is in Israel. That's why it's still alive. Like in Tunisia, it's not really celebrated. It's not something that they keep as much as they keep here.  Like if you want to go to a proper Mimouna, you would probably need to go to Israel, not to North Africa, although that's where it started. And the same with the Middle Eastern Jewish cuisine. The only place in the world, where be it Tunisian Jews and Iraqi Jews, or Yemenite Jews, still develop their recipes, is in Israel.  Israel is home, and this is where we still celebrate our culture and our cuisine and our identity is still something that I can engage with here.  I always feel like I am living the dreams of my grandparents, and I know that my grandmother is looking from above and I know how proud she is that we have a country, that we have a place to be safe at.  And that everything I do today is to protect my people, to protect the Jewish people, and making sure that next time when a country, when an empire, when a power would turn on Jews we'll have a place to go to and be safe. MANYA: Tunisian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century, left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Hen for sharing his story. You can read more in his memoir The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they'd never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to ask those questions. Find your stories. Atara Lakritz is our producer. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Nicole Mazur, Sean Savage, and Madeleine Stern, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible.  You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

“In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA, we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us . . . I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity... I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation.”  Hen Mazzig, a writer, digital creator, and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute, shares his powerful journey as a proud Israeli, LGBTQ+, and Mizrahi Jew, in the premiere episode of the second season of the award-winning podcast, The Forgotten Exodus. Hen delves into his family's deep roots in Tunisia, their harrowing experiences during the Nazi occupation, and their eventual escape to Israel. Discover the rich history of Tunisia's ancient Amazigh Jewish community, the impact of French colonial and Arab nationalist movements on Jews in North Africa, and the cultural identity that Hen passionately preserves today. Joining the conversation is historian Lucette Valensi, an expert on Tunisian Jewish culture, who provides scholarly insights into the longstanding presence of Jews in Tunisia, from antiquity to their exodus in the mid-20th century. ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  "Penceresi Yola Karsi" -- by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Danielyan Ashot Makichevich (BMI), IPI Name #00855552512, United States BMI “Tunisia Eastern”: Publisher: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Composer: Edi Surya Nurrohim, Item ID#155836469. “At The Rabbi's Table”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Fazio Giulio (IPI/CAE# 00198377019). “Fields Of Elysium”; Publisher: Mysterylab Music; Composer: Mott Jordan; ID#79549862  “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Hatikvah (National Anthem Of Israel)”; Composer: Eli Sibony; ID#122561081 “Tunisian Pot Dance (Short)”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: kesokid, ID #97451515 “Middle East Ident”; Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Alon Marcus (ACUM), IPI#776550702 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. ___ Episode Transcript: HEN MAZZIG: They took whatever they had left and they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected, and that she was coming home. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century. Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations–despite hardship, hostility, and hatred–then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East.  The world has ignored these voices. We will not. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: leaving Tunisia. __ [Tel Aviv Pride video] MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: Every June, Hen Mazzig, who splits his time between London and Tel Aviv, heads to Israel to show his Pride. His Israeli pride. His LGBTQ+ pride. And his Mizrahi Jewish pride. For that one week, all of those identities coalesce.  And while other cities around the world have transformed Pride into a June version of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Israel is home to one of the few vibrant LGBTQ communities in the Middle East. Tel Aviv keeps it real. HEN: For me, Pride in Israel, in Tel Aviv, it still has this element of fighting for something. And that it's important for all of us to show up and to come out to the Pride Parade because if we're not going to be there, there's some people with agendas to erase us and we can't let them do it. MANYA: This year, the Tel Aviv Pride rally was a more somber affair as participants demanded freedom for the more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza since October 7th.  On that day, Hamas terrorists bent on erasing Jews from the Middle East went on a murderous rampage, killing more than 1,200, kidnapping 250 others, and unleashing what has become a 7-front war on Israel. HEN: In the Israeli DNA and the Jewish DNA we have to fight to be who we are. In every generation, empires and big forces tried to erase us, and we had to fight. And the LGBTQ+ community also knows very well how hard it is. I know what it is to be rejected for several parts of my identity. And I don't want anyone to go through that. I don't want my children to go through that. I'm fighting for my ancestors, but I'm also fighting for our future generation. MANYA: Hen Mazzig is an international speaker, writer, and digital influencer. In 2022, he founded the Tel Aviv Institute, a social media laboratory that tackles antisemitism online. He's also a second-generation Israeli, whose maternal grandparents fled Iraq, while his father's parents fled Tunisia – roots that echo in the family name: Mazzig. HEN: The last name Mazzig never made sense, because in Israel a lot of the last names have meaning in Hebrew.  So I remember one of my teachers in school was saying that Mazzig sounds like mozeg, which means pouring in Hebrew. Maybe your ancestors were running a bar or something? Clearly, this teacher did not have knowledge of the Amazigh people. Which, later on I learned, several of those tribes, those Amazigh tribes, were Jewish or practiced Judaism, and that there was 5,000 Jews that came from Tunisia that were holding both identities of being Jewish and Amazigh.  And today, they have last names like Mazzig, and Amzaleg, Mizzoug. There's several of those last names in Israel today. And they are the descendants of those Jewish communities that have lived in the Atlas Mountains. MANYA: The Atlas Mountains. A 1,500-mile chain of magnificent peaks and treacherous terrain that stretch across Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastline.  It's where the nomadic Amazigh have called home for thousands of years. The Amazigh trace their origins to at least 2,000 BCE  in western North Africa. They speak the language of Tamazight and rely on cattle and agriculture as their main sources of income.  But textiles too. In fact, you've probably heard of the Amazigh or own a rug woven by them. A Berber rug. HEN: Amazigh, which are also called Berbers. But they're rejecting this term because of the association with barbarians, which was the title that European colonialists when they came to North Africa gave them. There's beautiful folklore about Jewish leaders within the Amazigh people. One story that I really connected to was the story of Queen Dihya that was also known as El-Kahina, which in Arabic means the Kohen, the priest, and she was known as this leader of the Amazigh tribes, and she was Jewish.  Her derrogaters were calling her a Jewish witch, because they said that she had the power to foresee the future. And her roots were apparently connected to Queen Sheba and her arrival from Israel back to Africa. And she was the descendant of Queen Sheba. And that's how she led the Amazigh people.  And the stories that I read about her, I just felt so connected. How she had this long, black, curly hair that went all the way down to her knees, and she was fierce, and she was very committed to her identity, and she was fighting against the Islamic expansion to North Africa.  And when she failed, after years of holding them off, she realized that she can't do it anymore and she's going to lose. And she was not willing to give up her Jewish identity and convert to Islam and instead she jumped into a well and died. This well is known today in Tunisia. It's the [Bir] Al-Kahina or Dihya's Well that is still in existence. Her descendants, her kids, were Jewish members of the Amazigh people.  Of course, I would like to believe that I am the descendant of royalty. MANYA: Scholars debate whether the Amazigh converted to Judaism or descended from Queen Dihya and stayed.  Lucette Valensi is a French scholar of Tunisian history who served as a director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, one of the most prestigious institutions of graduate education in France. She has written extensively about Tunisian Jewish culture.   Generations of her family lived in Tunisia. She says archaeological evidence proves Jews were living in that land since Antiquity. LUCETTE VALENSI: I myself am a Chemla, born Chemla. And this is an Arabic name, which means a kind of belt. And my mother's name was Tartour, which is a turban [laugh]. So the names were Arabic. So my ancestors spoke Arabic. I don't know if any of them spoke Berber before, or Latin. I have no idea. But there were Jews in antiquity and of course, through Saint Augustin. MANYA: So when did Jews arrive in Tunisia? LUCETTE: [laugh] That's a strange question because they were there since Antiquity. We have evidence of their presence in mosaics of synagogues, from the times of Byzantium. I think we think in terms of a short chronology, and they would tend to associate the Jews to colonization, which does not make sense, they were there much before French colonization. They were there for millennia. MANYA: Valensi says Jews lived in Tunisia dating to the time of Carthage, an ancient city-state in what is now Tunisia, that reached its peak in the fourth century BCE. Later, under Roman and then Byzantine rule, Carthage continued to play a vital role as a center of commerce and trade during antiquity.  Besides the role of tax collectors, Jews were forbidden to serve in almost all public offices. Between the 5th and 8th centuries CE, conditions fluctuated between relief and forced conversions while under Christian rule.  After the Islamic conquest of Tunisia in the seventh and early eighth centuries CE, the treatment of Jews largely depended on which Muslim ruler was in charge at the time.  Some Jews converted to Islam while others lived as dhimmis, or second-class citizens, protected by the state in exchange for a special tax known as the jizya. In 1146, the first caliph of the Almohad dynasty, declared that the Prophet Muhammad had granted Jews religious freedom for only 500 years, by which time if the messiah had not come, they had to convert.  Those who did not convert and even those who did were forced to wear yellow turbans or other special garb called shikra, to distinguish them from Muslims. An influx of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal arrived in the 14th Century. In the 16th Century, Tunisia became part of the Ottoman Empire, and the situation of Jews improved significantly. Another group who had settled in the coastal Tuscan city of Livorno crossed the Mediterranean in the 17th and 18th centuries to make Tunisia their home. LUCETTE: There were other groups that came, Jews from Italy, Jews from Spain, of course, Spain and Portugal, different periods. 14th century already from Spain and then from Spain and Portugal. From Italy, from Livorno, that's later, but the Jews from Livorno themselves came from Spain.  So I myself am named Valensi. From Valencia. It was the family name of my first husband. So from Valencia in Spain they went to Livorno, and from Livorno–Leghorn in English–to Tunisia. MANYA: At its peak, Tunisia's Jewish population exceeded 100,000 – a combination of Sephardi and Mizrahi. HEN: When we speak about Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, specifically in the West, or mainly in the West, we're referring to them as Sephardi. But in Tunisia, it's very interesting to see that there was the Grana community which are Livorno Jews that moved to Tunisia in the 1800s, and they brought the Sephardi way of praying.  And that's why I always use the term Mizrahi to describe myself, because I feel like it encapsulates more of my identity. And for me, the Sephardi title that we often use on those communities doesn't feel accurate to me, and it also has the connection to Ladino, which my grandparents never spoke.  They spoke Tamazight, Judeo-Tamazight, which was the language of those tribes in North Africa. And my family from my mother's side, from Iraq, they were speaking Judeo-Iraqi-Arabic.  So for me, the term Sephardi just doesn't cut it. I go with Mizrahi to describe myself. MANYA: The terms Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi all refer to the places Jews once called home.  Ashkenazi Jews hail from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Germany, Poland, and Russia. They traditionally speak Yiddish, and their customs and practices reflect the influences of Central and Eastern European cultures.  Pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust led many Ashkenazi Jews to flee their longtime homes to countries like the United States and their ancestral homeland, Israel.  Mizrahi, which means “Eastern” in Hebrew, refers to the diaspora of descendants of Jewish communities from Middle Eastern countries such as: Iraq, Iran, and Yemen, and North African countries such as: Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco. Ancient Jewish communities that have lived in the region for millennia long before the advent of Islam and Christianity. They often speak dialects of Arabic. Sephardi Jews originate from Spain and Portugal, speaking Ladino and incorporating Spanish and Portuguese cultural influences. Following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, they settled in regions like North Africa and the Balkans. In Tunisia, the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities lived side by side, but separately. HEN: As time passed, those communities became closer together, still quite separated, but they became closer and closer. And perhaps the reason they were becoming closer was because of the hardship that they faced as Jews.  For the leaders of Muslim armies that came to Tunisia, it didn't matter if you were a Sephardi Jew, or if you were an Amazigh Jew. You were a Jew for them. MANYA: Algeria's invasion of Tunisia in the 18th century had a disproportionate effect on Tunisia's Jewish community. The Algerian army killed thousands of the citizens of Tunis, many of whom were Jewish. Algerians raped Jewish women, looted Jewish homes. LUCETTE: There were moments of trouble when you had an invasion of the Algerian army to impose a prince. The Jews were molested in Tunis. MANYA: After a military invasion, a French protectorate was established in 1881 and lasted until Tunisia gained independence in 1956. The Jews of Tunisia felt much safer under the French protectorate.  They put a lot of stock in the French revolutionary promise of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Soon, the French language replaced Judeo-Arabic. LUCETTE: Well, under colonization, the Jews were in a better position. First, the school system. They went to modern schools, especially the Alliance [Israélite Universelle] schools, and with that started a form of Westernization.  You had also schools in Italian, created by Italian Jews, and some Tunisian Jews went to these schools and already in the 19th century, there was a form of acculturation and Westernization.  Access to newspapers, creation of newspapers. In the 1880s Jews had already their own newspapers in Hebrew characters, but Arabic language.  And my grandfather was one of the early journalists and they started having their own press and published books, folklore, sort of short stories. MANYA: In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and quickly overran the French Third Republic, forcing the French to sign an armistice agreement in June. The armistice significantly reduced the territory governed by France and created a new government known as the Vichy regime, after the central French city where it was based.  The Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis, establishing a special administration to introduce anti-Jewish legislation and enforce a compulsory Jewish census in all of its territories including Tunisia. Hen grew up learning about the Holocaust, the Nazis' attempt to erase the Jewish people. As part of his schooling, he learned the names of concentration and death camps and he heard the stories from his friends' grandparents.  But because he was not Ashkenazi, because his grandparents didn't suffer through the same catastrophe that befell Europe, Hen never felt fully accepted.  It was a trauma that belonged to his Ashkenazi friends of German and Polish descent, not to him. Or so they thought and so he thought, until he was a teenager and asked his grandmother Kamisa to finally share their family's journey from Tunisia. That's when he learned that the Mazzig family had not been exempt from Hitler's hatred. In November 1942, Tunisia became the only North African country to come under Nazi Germany's occupation and the Nazis wasted no time. Jewish property was confiscated, and heavy fines were levied on large Jewish communities. With the presence of the Einsatzkommando, a subgroup of the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units, the Nazis were prepared to implement the systematic murder of the Jews of Tunisia. The tide of the war turned just in time to prevent that. LUCETTE: At the time the Germans came, they did not control the Mediterranean, and so they could not export us to the camps. We were saved by that. Lanor camps for men in dangerous places where there were bombs by the Allies. But not for us, it was, I mean, they took our radios. They took the silverware or they took money, this kind of oppression, but they did not murder us.  They took the men away, a few families were directly impacted and died in the camps. A few men. So we were afraid. We were occupied. But compared to what Jews in Europe were subjected to, we didn't suffer.  MANYA: Almost 5,000 Jews, most of them from Tunis and from certain northern communities, were taken captive and incarcerated in 32 labor camps scattered throughout Tunisia. Jews were not only required to wear yellow stars, but those in the camps were also required to wear them on their backs so they could be identified from a distance and shot in the event they tried to escape. HEN: My grandmother never told me until before she died, when she was more open about the stories of oppression, on how she was serving food for the French Nazi officers that were occupying Tunisia, or how my grandfather was in a labor camp, and he was supposed to be sent to a death camp in Europe as well. They never felt like they should share these stories. MANYA: The capture of Tunisia by the Allied forces in May 1943 led the Axis forces in North Africa to surrender. But the country remained under French colonial rule and the antisemitic legislation of the Vichy regime continued until 1944. Many of the Vichy camps, including forced labor camps in the Sahara, continued to operate.  Even after the decline and fall of the Vichy regime and the pursuit of independence from French rule began, conditions for the Mazzig family and many others in the Tunisian Jewish community did not improve.  But the source of much of the hostility and strife was actually a beacon of hope for Tunisia's Jews. On May 14, 1948, the world had witnessed the creation of the state of Israel, sparking outrage throughout the Arab world. Seven Arab nations declared war on Israel the day after it declared independence.  Amid the rise of Tunisian nationalism and its push for independence from France, Jewish communities who had lived in Tunisia for centuries became targets. Guilty by association. No longer welcome. Rabbinical councils were dismantled. Jewish sports associations banned. Jews practiced their religion in hiding. Hen's grandfather recounted violence in the Jewish quarter of Tunis.  HEN: When World War Two was over, the Jewish community in Tunisia was hoping that now that Tunisia would have emancipation, and it would become a country, that their neighbors and the country itself would protect them. Because when it was Nazis, they knew that it was a foreign power that came from France and oppressed them. They knew that there was some hatred in the past, from their Muslim neighbors towards them.  But they also were hoping that, if anything, they would go back to the same status of a dhimmi, of being a protected minority. Even if they were not going to be fully accepted and celebrated in this society, at least they would be protected, for paying tax. And this really did not happen. MANYA: By the early 1950s, life for the Mazzig family became untenable. By then, American Jewish organizations based in Tunis started working to take Jews to Israel right away.  HEN: [My family decided to leave.] They took whatever they had left. And they got on a boat. And my grandmother told me this story before she passed away on how they were on this boat coming to Israel.  And they were so happy, and they were crying because they felt that finally after generations upon generations of oppression of living as a minority that knows that anytime the ruler might turn on them and take everything they have and pull the ground underneath their feet, they are going to come to a place where they are going to be protected. And maybe they will face hate, but no one will hate them because they're Jewish.  And I often dream about my grandmother being a young girl on this boat and how she must have felt to know that the nightmare and the hell that she went through is behind her and that she was coming home. MANYA: The boat they sailed to Israel took days. When Hen's uncle, just a young child at the time, got sick, the captain threatened to throw him overboard. Hen's grandmother hid the child inside her clothes until they docked in Israel. When they arrived, they were sprayed with DDT to kill any lice or disease, then placed in ma'abarot, which in Hebrew means transit camps. In this case, it was a tent with one bed. HEN: They were really mistreated back then. And it's not criticism. I mean, yes, it is also criticism, but it's not without understanding the context. That it was a young country that just started, and those Jewish communities, Jewish refugees came from Tunisia, they didn't speak Hebrew. They didn't look like the other Jewish communities there. And while they all had this in common, that they were all Jews, they had a very different experience. MANYA: No, the family's arrival in the Holy Land was nothing like what they had imagined. But even still, it was a dream fulfilled and there was hope, which they had lost in Tunisia. HEN: I think that it was somewhere in between having both this deep connection to Israel and going there because they wanted to, and also knowing that there's no future in Tunisia. And the truth is that even–and I'm sure people that are listening to us, that are strong Zionists and love Israel, if you tell them ‘OK, so move tomorrow,' no matter how much you love Israel, it's a very difficult decision to make.  Unless it's not really a decision. And I think for them, it wasn't really a decision. And they went through so much, they knew, OK, we have to leave and I think for the first time having a country, having Israel was the hope that they had for centuries to go back home, finally realized. MANYA: Valensi's family did stay a while longer. When Tunisia declared independence in 1956, her father, a ceramicist, designed tiles for the residence of President Habib Bourguiba. Those good relations did not last.  Valensi studied history in France, married an engineer, and returned to Tunisia. But after being there for five years, it became clear that Jews were not treated equally and they returned to France in 1965. LUCETTE: I did not plan to emigrate. And then it became more and more obvious that some people were more equal than others [laugh]. And so there was this nationalist mood where responsibilities were given to Muslims rather than Jews and I felt more and more segregated.  And so, my husband was an engineer from a good engineering school. Again, I mean, he worked for another engineer, who was a Muslim. We knew he would never reach the same position. His father was a lawyer. And in the tribunal, he had to use Arabic. And so all these things accumulated, and we were displaced. MANYA: Valensi said Jewish emigration from Tunisia accelerated at two more mileposts. Even after Tunisia declared independence, France maintained a presence and a naval base in the port city of Bizerte, a strategic port on the Mediterranean for the French who were fighting with Algeria.  In 1961, Tunisian forces blockaded the naval base and warned France to stay out of its airspace. What became known as the Bizerte Crisis lasted for three days. LUCETTE: There were critical times, like what we call “La Crise de Bizerte.” Bizerte is a port to the west of Tunis that used to be a military port and when independence was negotiated with France, the French kept this port, where they could keep an army, and Bourguiba decided that he wanted this port back. And there was a war, a conflict, between Tunisia and France in ‘61.  And that crisis was one moment when Jews thought: if there is no French presence to protect us, then anything could happen. You had the movement of emigration.  Of course, much later, ‘67, the unrest in the Middle East, and what happened there provoked a kind of panic, and there were movements against the Jews in Tunis – violence and destruction of shops, etc. So they emigrated again. Now you have only a few hundred Jews left. MANYA: Valensi's first husband died at an early age. Her second husband, Abraham Udovitch, is the former chair of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Together, they researched and published a book about the Jewish communities in the Tunisian island of Djerba. The couple now splits their time between Paris and Princeton. But Valensi returns to Tunisia every year. It's still home. LUCETTE: When I go, strange thing, I feel at home. I mean, I feel I belong. My Arabic comes back. The words that I thought I had forgotten come back. They welcome you. I mean, if you go, you say you come from America, they're going to ask you questions. Are you Jewish? Did you go to Israel? I mean, these kind of very brutal questions, right away. They're going there. The taxi driver won't hesitate to ask you: Are you Jewish? But at the same time, they're very welcoming. So, I have no trouble. MANYA: Hen, on the other hand, has never been to the land of his ancestors. He holds on to his grandparents' trauma. And fear.  HEN: Tunisia just still feels a bit unsafe to me. Just as recent as a couple of months ago, there was a terror attack. So it's something that's still occurring.  MANYA: Just last year, a member of the Tunisian National Guard opened fire on worshippers outside El Ghriba Synagogue where a large gathering of Jewish pilgrims were celebrating the festival of Lag BaOmer. The synagogue is located on the Tunisian island of Djerba where Valensi and her husband did research for their book. Earlier this year, a mob attacked an abandoned synagogue in the southern city of Sfax, setting fire to the building's courtyard. Numbering over 100,000 Jews on the eve of Israel's Independence in 1948, the Tunisian Jewish community is now estimated to be less than 1,000.  There has been limited contact over the years between Tunisia and Israel. Some Israeli tourists, mostly of Tunisian origin, annually visit the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba. But the government has largely been hostile to the Jewish state.  In the wake of the October 7 attack, the Tunisian parliament began debate on a law that would criminalize any normalization of ties with Israel. Still, Hen would like to go just once to see where his grandparents lived. Walked. Cooked. Prayed.  But to him it's just geography, an arbitrary place on a map. The memories, the music, the recipes, the traditions. It's no longer in Tunisia. It's elsewhere now – in the only country that preserved it. HEN: The Jewish Tunisian culture, the only place that it's been maintained is in Israel. That's why it's still alive. Like in Tunisia, it's not really celebrated. It's not something that they keep as much as they keep here.  Like if you want to go to a proper Mimouna, you would probably need to go to Israel, not to North Africa, although that's where it started. And the same with the Middle Eastern Jewish cuisine. The only place in the world, where be it Tunisian Jews and Iraqi Jews, or Yemenite Jews, still develop their recipes, is in Israel.  Israel is home, and this is where we still celebrate our culture and our cuisine and our identity is still something that I can engage with here.  I always feel like I am living the dreams of my grandparents, and I know that my grandmother is looking from above and I know how proud she is that we have a country, that we have a place to be safe at.  And that everything I do today is to protect my people, to protect the Jewish people, and making sure that next time when a country, when an empire, when a power would turn on Jews we'll have a place to go to and be safe. MANYA: Tunisian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century, left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Hen for sharing his story. You can read more in his memoir The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they'd never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to ask those questions. Find your stories. Atara Lakritz is our producer. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Nicole Mazur, Sean Savage, and Madeleine Stern, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible.  You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

The renowned Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim speaks to Edgar about the Jews of Iraq and the Arab-Jews in general - an identity that was largely destroyed in the wake of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, speaks to Edgar about the Jews of Iraq, who numbered 130,000 in 1948, and what led to every single one of them leaving. It is a candid conversation in which Avi Shlaim answers difficult questions about his own past. He was born in Baghdad in 1945 to a prosperous, upper-middle class family. At the age of five they left Iraq and arrived in Israel as impoverished second class citizens. If you want to learn more about the Iraqi Jews and their tragic plight, please check out Avi Shlaim's brilliant book Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew. The video recorded version of this interview is available at the Kalam Podcast Youtube channel. If you enjoy Kalam Podcast and would like to support the show you can do so, by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/kalampodcast. For just $3/month you'll gain access to lots of bonus content and full-length interviews with all our guests.Please like and subscribe to this channel - it helps other people find out about us. For continuous updates on Kalam Podcast follow us on Instagram, @kalampodcast

With Debbie Whitmont | Historian Avi Shlaim's Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew combines a fascinating family story of moving from Baghdad to Israel with a historical account of Iraqi Jews during an especially calamitous period. Shlaim joins via live stream for this conversation with Debbie Whitmont. Event details: Mon 04 Mar, 5:00pm

Miriam Halahmy has published 9 novels for children and teens. Her new book A Boy from Baghdad (Green Bean Books, 2024), tells the story for children the first time in English, of the exile of the Iraqi Jewish community 1949-1951 to Israel and their subsequent difficulties in the Promised Land. The book was inspired by Miriam's husband's family who are all Babylonian Jews born in Baghdad. About the book:  It's 1951, and twelve-year-old Salman Shasha is happy with his life in Baghdad. But trouble is brewing. Salman and his family are Iraqi Jews and their government has been turning against their community for years. Things become so dangerous that the whole family are forced to leave Iraq for Israel, the "Promised Land". Once they arrive, however, they realize that things are not what they dreamed they would be. Taken to a refugee camp, the Shasha family try to make the best of their situation. But the dominant group in the country - the Ashkenazi Jews - look down on families like Salman's and treat them horribly. Salman decides to focus on his greatest passion, swimming, and beating his rivals in a race. Facing taunts from his bullying peers, Salman feels defeated, but he soon realizes that with hard work and determination anything is possible. An inspiring, atmospheric tale about the power of perseverance, friendship and family in the face of hardship, hatred and change, A Boy From Baghdad is an important story of diversity in the modern world. Essential reading for any child 8 years and over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Miriam Halahmy has published 9 novels for children and teens. Her new book A Boy from Baghdad (Green Bean Books, 2024), tells the story for children the first time in English, of the exile of the Iraqi Jewish community 1949-1951 to Israel and their subsequent difficulties in the Promised Land. The book was inspired by Miriam's husband's family who are all Babylonian Jews born in Baghdad. About the book:  It's 1951, and twelve-year-old Salman Shasha is happy with his life in Baghdad. But trouble is brewing. Salman and his family are Iraqi Jews and their government has been turning against their community for years. Things become so dangerous that the whole family are forced to leave Iraq for Israel, the "Promised Land". Once they arrive, however, they realize that things are not what they dreamed they would be. Taken to a refugee camp, the Shasha family try to make the best of their situation. But the dominant group in the country - the Ashkenazi Jews - look down on families like Salman's and treat them horribly. Salman decides to focus on his greatest passion, swimming, and beating his rivals in a race. Facing taunts from his bullying peers, Salman feels defeated, but he soon realizes that with hard work and determination anything is possible. An inspiring, atmospheric tale about the power of perseverance, friendship and family in the face of hardship, hatred and change, A Boy From Baghdad is an important story of diversity in the modern world. Essential reading for any child 8 years and over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Israeli election of November, 2022 brought into the Knesset some of the most extreme individuals in that country's history.  To bring himself back into office,  Netanyahu brought them into his cabinet.  (Smotrich and Bin Gvir get the most attention, but there are others).   These were people who had been brought up in the shadow  of Rabbi Meir Kahane.  Kahane had been banned from office and Netanyahu's new allies had also seen their party banned.  But they had reconstituted themselves into a new configuration and evaded the ban.  With the horrendous attacks of October 7 and the brutal Gaza war that followed,   suddenly the thinking of those religio-nationalists has moved closer to the center of the political system.  (Note:  1200 Israelis and Israeli-linked workers were  killed on October 7.   22,000 Palestinians are dead as of early January, 2024,  70% being women and children). This is a reposting of an earlier podcast outlining the ideology of Rabbi Kahane.  Kahane was born in Brooklyn but moved to Israel and was elected to the Knesset.  He was later assassinated.  At the time, his views were considered shockingly extreme.  He was widely renounced by American Jews and by Israelis.   (Note that someone of his thinking had conducted the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre in Hebron in February, 1994.  29 Muslims had been killed on the first day of Ramadan, plus ten more sot by Israeli soldiers in the aftermath).  And someone of this mind-set also assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin).  I heard Kahane speak twice in the Detroit area in the early 1980s.  I also read two of his books, Time to Go Home [a call for Americans Jews to escape to Israel before the American holocaust] and They Must Go!  [ A call to expel all Palestinians so that Israel can become a Jews-only state].  Those books were chilling  I also read quite a few essays by him, and one biography.    As far as I can tell, those who today embrace his name and his ideas are not fundamentally different from what I heard in the 1980s.   Kahane believed that anything is justified to bring the new age and to save the Jews.  I thought of the accusations by radical Iraqi Jews that the 1952 bombings of synagogues were done by Zionist commandos in an effort to panic them into fleeing to Israel.  I have no way to know if those accusations are correct but such a thing would surely be justified by Kahane.  He was filled with hatred of Arabs, Americans and secular Jews.  He believed in his cause and would do anything to achieve it.  He had a definite support base in the American Jewish community, although certainly not nearly as big as the vast proportion who were hostile to him.  I don't want to be inflammatory but I wrote in my notes back in the 1980s that I felt I was in a Munich beer hall in 1924 listening to Hitler polish up a speech.  I have never heard anyone quite like him. Note that in the Knesset, there are religious parties connected to the rabbis.  Two are United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi) and Shas (Sephardic).  These are NOT Kahanist. If you are interested in how  a similar logic works out in American culture you might listen to my podcast on the Replacement Wars. 

Professor Avi Shlaim discusses his recent book, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, as he revisits his family's idyllic days in Iraq before they were unwittingly swept into the mass emigration of Iraqi Jews into newly-created Israel. The family's cultural shock was traumatic, and their fortunes were reversed forever.

In the Fall of 2022, Richard Raymond, British Filmmaker, graduated from the Hoffman Process. Yes, Richard is a filmmaker, but as you'll discover listening to this conversation with Liz, Richard is a masterful storyteller.  and boy does he have stories to tell. From a very young age, films enthralled Richard. When he realized he wanted to be involved in making films, he took action. To that end, he made his own introduction to the world of filmmaking. Then, as he followed his heart's vision, he learned from amazing actors, directors, and other filmmaking artists (see some listed below). Eventually, his vision led him to Australia and then America. Two main threads weave this conversation together. The threads are finding where we belong and learning to trust one's creative voice enough to give it free rein. Through his rich storytelling, Richard takes us along on his journey of finding belonging from childhood to those seven days at the Process. Eventually, at the end of this conversation, you'll hear the wisdom of belonging Richard has discovered. You'll also hear how he came to trust in himself and his voice as an artist through the deep work of the Process. This was one of the biggest gifts and takeaways from Richard's week at the Hoffman Process. More about Richard Raymond: Richard Raymond is a British filmmaker known for his visually striking and emotionally impactful works. Born and raised in London, to a Jewish Indian family, Raymond developed a love for film from a young age and began making his own short films at the age of 15. In 2015, he made his feature film debut with "Desert Dancer,” starring Freida Pinto, a biographical drama about the Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian, which premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and received critical acclaim. Raymond's follow-up film, “Souls of Totality”, was released in 2018 and starred Tatiana Maslany. It was the first film in history to be shot during a real solar eclipse. The film won awards at 12 International Film Festivals and was long-listed for the Oscar. In 2020, Raymond directed “A Million Eyes”, which was released to widespread praise for its thought-provoking and visually stunning portrayal of a young gifted photographer. As a filmmaker, Raymond is not only dedicated to his craft but also to giving back to the community. Through organizations such as YoungArts, he is a fierce advocate for arts education for young people in underprivileged areas and has taken on the role of mentor to many young artists who may not have had access to guidance and support otherwise. Additionally, Raymond has made a significant impact in the autism community through the creation of the Celebrity Chef Gala for Autism Speaks. Over the past 15 years, this event has raised $16 million to support its efforts to provide solutions for individuals with autism and their families throughout all stages of life. Richard Raymond resides in Malibu with his better half, Nousha, and their two children, Rumi and Bodhi. Learn more about Richard and his work here. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter.   https://media.blubrry.com/the_hoffman_podcast/content.blubrry.com/the_hoffman_podcast/Liz_and_Richard_Raymond_Podcast_Final.mp3 As mentioned in this episode: Bhagdadi Jews: "The former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East are traditionally called Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea." Wikipedia Bombay/Mumbai, India Hertfordshire Countryside Pinewood Film Studios / Shepperton Studios - London, England Fox Studios Australia /now Disney Studios Australia Sundance Film Festival Paravision Film Equipment Akram Kahn, Choreographer Hoffman Part 2: Toward the end of this conversation, Richard mentions  that he is looking forward to doing "Part Two.

Throughout most of her life, Giulietta Boukhobza rarely talked about the life she left behind in Libya when she was 16. However, today, with antisemitism on the rise and Israel under constant threat, she shares her family's story of their harrowing escape from Libya as part of an effort to raise awareness for future generations. Joining Boukhobza is filmmaker Vivienne Roumani-Denn, the creator of “The Last Jews of Libya,” a documentary about how her family and others were forced out of their North African homeland, who provides the historical backdrop for Boukhobza's story, illustrating how life was never easy for Jews in Libya, but it was still home.  Boukhobza's story is also one of triumph. Together with her husband David Harris, the longtime CEO of American Jewish Committee, they demonstrate that speaking up and fighting for what you believe is the only option.  ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  "Enta Omri" (live) by Umm Kulthum Kamar Barik; Gushe Cheman; Rampi Rampi; Aksaray'in Taslari; all by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. “Middle Eastern Arabic Oud”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989 “A Middle East Lament”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Dan Cullen (PRS), IPI#551977321 “Mystic Anatolia”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Okan Akdeniz (MSG), IPI#37747892568 “Modern Middle Eastern Underscore”: Publisher: All Pro Audio LLC (611803484); Composer: Alan T Fagan (347654928) ___ Episode Transcript: GIULIETTA BOUKHOBZA: My family was in Libya for many, many years. You were a second-class citizen, but you didn't know better. You knew that if somebody hits you in the street, you don't go to the police, because the police will take the side of the Arab. They didn't care. You were just a Jew and a Zionist.  MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel.  I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience.  This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: Leaving Libya. GIULIETTA: We were all hiding in our houses, all the Jews. And there were news about buildings, that they were burned. We didn't know at the time that they had killed some families. And my particular family, we were able to leave, actually the famous Quatorze Juillet, the 14th of July, the Bastille Day. So it was freedom for us too, and we ended up, we went to Italy. MANYA: Until recently, Guilietta Boukhobza never talked about the life she left behind in Libya at the age of 16, and for many years her children rarely inquired. Only recently, her oldest son has started to ask his mother what happened to her family, their family, more than 50 years ago. What prompted her parents to leave everything behind, besides what each family member could fit inside a suitcase? GIULIETTA: One suitcase. So we were eight children, and a mother and a father. Each one got his suitcase. I don't even remember what we put in it. I have no memory. It's so funny. I don't remember making the bag. I vaguely remember getting into this kind of truck, arriving at the airport.  I remember arriving in Rome and starting to cry. Because I was saying, and it's true, we were very, very happy to get out of there, but still there is trauma. That you just leave there, you arrive to a train station and you start crying and you say ‘I want to go home.' What the hell is home? They'll kill you there. MANYA: Her father's favorite wool blanket. A handmade rug her mother treasured. The journals Giulietta had kept since the age of ten. Though she doesn't remember any of these items going into a suitcase, these are the mementos that over the years have reminded Giulietta of her childhood in Misrata and Tripoli. The contents of those suitcases mattered very little at the time.  GIULIETTA: In my family they came, they almost killed us. I mean, I still remember coming, and we're alive by a miracle so, we are grateful that we were not killed. MANYA: World events, ignorance about history, and the naïveté that often accompanies that ignorance also propel Giulietta to share her story. She is bewildered and alarmed by the rising tide of antisemitism and anger toward Israel. Israel is not perfect. Not by any stretch. But neither is America, the country that has given her freedoms and opportunities that she never knew existed for Jews growing up in Libya.   Giulietta has a unique vantage point. She is married to the longtime CEO of American Jewish Committee, David Harris, who has shown her that speaking up and fighting for what you believe is the only option.  In 2017, David wrote Letter from a Forgotten Jew, a column stylistically written from a first-person perspective based on the stories he had heard from Jews that fled Arab countries such as Iraq and Libya. In reality, it was an ode to his wife whose experience had been ignored for too long. Since then, Giulietta has shared pieces of her story and occasionally picks up her own pen to offer her perspective on world events.   GIULIETTA: Now, everything that happened to me I see in a different light. It's not any more about me. I was just, how do you say, I just happened to be at the wrong time at the wrong place. So, I don't want you to feel bad for me or feel sorry for me. I talk like almost as if it is not me. I'm talking about the third person. And, and I don't even have so much pity for this third person because this third person survived and thrived in a way.   When I look at my story now, I see it in relation to what I see around me – the growing antisemitism, the stupidity of the West, the ignorance towards history, the indifference and almost embarrassment of some Jews who should be proud of who they are and what they achieved. You almost envy these people who never had the trauma that you have. Now, I feel almost privileged that I had that because I can understand more and see the danger of what can happen when people don't know history or whatever. MANYA: The Libyan Jewish community goes back thousands of years, to the Third Century before the Common Era, even before Roman times. Of course, it wasn't called Libya at the time. Over millennia, Jews lived in Cyrenaica, the region next to Egypt, and Tripolitania, the region bordering Tunisia. They lived under Roman, Ottoman, Italian, Spanish, British and, eventually, Libyan rule.   Who was in charge at the time determined Jews' comfort, their livelihood, and oftentimes their survival. Under some regimes, Jews were treated as a protected minority who paid special taxes and faced certain restrictions.  Under some, they held government positions. And yet under others, they feared for their lives. In fact, after the 18th Century, Jews in Tripoli– when there were still Jews in Tripoli– celebrated two additional Purims to mark their deliverance from two separate attempts to annihilate them. VIVIENNE ROUMAINI-DENN: Even in the best of times, they lived uneasily. On an individual basis there was that full trust. But at the same time, when there were pogroms, you just never knew when somebody would save you, or kill you. And both happened. You found Arabs who really risked their life to save you and you found others who actually just killed you.  MANYA: That's filmmaker Vivienne Roumani-Denn, the creator of “The Last Jews of Libya,” a documentary about how her family was forced out of their North African homeland. The documentary was inspired by a manuscript her mother left behind, which Vivienne discovered only after her death.  A librarian by training, Vivienne began conducting oral histories, interviewing dozens of Jewish refugees who once called Libya home. She also created the first website to curate stories and conversations in the Libyan Jewish community.  In 1999, she became the founding director of the Sephardic Library and Archives of the American Sephardi Federation at the Center for Jewish History in New York. She later served as the federation's executive director.  Meanwhile, her older brother Maurice Roumani, a professor of politics and international relations, wrote the seminal scholarly work on Libya's modern Jewish history titled, “The Jews of Libya.”  VIVIENNE: At the end of the Ottoman period, there was a thriving Jewish school. Many Jewish children learned Hebrew so well that they would speak it in the street. It's a nice little glimpse of the Ottoman rule in Libya, which was before anybody is currently living. MANYA: Indeed, Jewish life flourished in Libya for centuries. Shabbat tables featured chraime, fish simmered in a spicy tomato sauce, and mafrum, vegetables stuffed with meat. In Tripoli, by the 1940s, men could walk to one of 44 synagogues every Saturday morning. The beat of the goblet drum, or darbouka, signaled the impending nuptials of a bride and groom. And when the bride emerged on her wedding day with her hands and head exquisitely painted with henna, she was a sight to behold.  In 1911, the Italians conquered the Ottoman rulers and at first, Jews fared well.  VIVIENNE: Life under Italian rule was calm, and even when fascism first came about, it was almost like just another form of government. But a major change happened when Mussolini aligned himself with Hitler. MANYA: Benito Mussolini instituted racial laws in 1938 that required Jews to open their stores on Shabbat or face severe punishment. Eventually, Jews were barred from holding government positions. A sfollamento, or process of removing Libya's Jews, commenced. In 1940, the African campaign of the Second World War was unfolding in the eastern Libyan desert, adjacent to Egypt. The British captured Benghazi twice.  The first time, Jews welcomed them. But Germany pushed the British out. Shortly after, anti-Jewish riots destroyed homes and businesses. When the British were pushed back a second time, many Jews with British passports fled with the British soldiers. Those who stayed were rounded up and sent to detention camps in Italy.  VIVIENNE: Some were later sent to Bergen-Belsen. They all survived. But this is a little-known part of the Holocaust history. In 1942, Mussolini ordered the expulsion of all Jews in Cyrenaica because of their interaction with the British. Those with French or French protectorate passports were sent to Tunisia and Algeria.  Those without foreign passports, and a small number with Italian passports were sent to an Italian-run detention camp in Giado, in the mountains of Tripolitania. The conditions there were very harsh. Families required to live in cramped quarters, separated only by a sheet. They had lice-borne typhus everywhere. Food was very scarce. The interviewees told me how they had to carve out all these lice from a teeny piece of dried bread. And about one-fourth perished.  MANYA: Giulietta's father was a young man then and later told stories of time spent in a concentration camp. She believes it was Giado.  The Jews of Giado were liberated after the British conquered Tripolitania in 1943. But two years later, in 1945, brutal pogroms unfolded across Tripoli and other cities across Tripolitania, sparked by soccer fans coming from a stadium about one kilometer from the city's Jewish quarter. The British did not intervene for three days. VIVIENNE: The spread throughout Tripolitania was too rapid to have been coincidental. 129 Jews were killed. Some of the descriptions of the atrocities that I recorded in the oral histories are horrifying. I'll never forget one interview, when she opened the door to greet me, in tears. She said, ‘I've waited 50 years for you.' I've never met that woman before. And she said . . . she just unburdened herself of the most horrific memories.  MANYA: Another pogrom in 1948, a month after Israel declared independence, took fewer Jewish lives because the community was more prepared to defend itself. But both the pogroms in '45 and '48 became rallying cries for Israel. Between 1949 and 1951, 95% of Libyan Jews left when aliyah became possible. For those who stayed, like Giulietta's family, the situation continued to deteriorate. GIULIETTA: My family was in Libya for many, many years. I don't know how many generations my family was there. But we were there many years. MANYA: Giulietta was born in 1951, the same year Libya gained its independence. By then, a fierce nationalism expressed through anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish policies had swept the region. At that time, her family lived in Misrata, a coastal city in northwestern Libya where mass riots took place on the day of Libya's first-ever election.  Giulietta recalls that they were the only Jewish family left in Misrata at that time. The others had gone to Tripoli. The family lived in an apartment at the center of town. The Libyans' distaste and distrust for Jews was especially evident when King Idris came to visit Misrata. GIULIETTA: When the king will come, we have all these policemen in our house. And then the shades will be down. And we as children weren't allowed to see. And I never understood, I never asked my parents, ‘Were they there because we were the only Jewish family, and they didn't trust us? Or were the police there because that was a very good location to see if there were snipers or something against the king?' If I had to guess, I think because we were Jewish. MANYA: At the age of eight, Giulietta's family moved to Tripoli where her father worked in human resources for the Volkswagen corporation. Most of the schools in Libya were still Italian Catholic. Giulietta knew all the prayers, all the sacraments. By then, there were unspoken rules about being Jewish. You kept it quiet, even though people still knew. GIULIETTA: First of all, you have to realize that when you don't know any different, your abnormal becomes normal. And so, if you ask me about growing up, we went to schools. We went to the beach. Some people were able to travel. The whole family couldn't leave. You always have to leave somebody there. This kind of blackmail, because they were afraid that you will escape and go to Israel. So basically life was, let's say normal for us, because we didn't know. For example, you knew you don't advertise the fact that you're Jewish even though we had synagogues.  As an example, even though we went to Italian school with Italian books. Sometimes the books about geography, they will come late because they will arrive from Italy. And why they will arrive late? Because they will have to remove the page if there was a picture of Israel. If in the thing you see in the Middle East there was Egypt, Jordan, etc, Libya, they had to remove it. MANYA: When a new law in 1961 required a special permit to prove Libyan citizenship, most Jews were denied. Jews could not open businesses unless they had an Arab partner who owned more than half. Jews could not vote. GIULIETTA: You were a second-class citizen, but you didn't know better. You just knew not to do things. You knew that if somebody hits you in the street, you don't go to the police, because the police will take the side of the Arab.  You thought things were relatively normal, and then they will turn on a dime on you. They didn't care. You were just a Jew and a Zionist. You went to the movie, and you see the newsreel,  and you see they were completely brainwashed by Egypt. And the famous phrase was ‘aleaduu alsuhyuniu' [in Arabic: العدو الصهيوني] -- the Zionist enemy, the Zionist enemy, the Zionist enemy. We were there generations before them. We never went to Israel, but it was always, this is how they brainwashed you. Then in ‘67, during the Six Day War, that is where everything exploded, and we had to leave. MANYA: Tension started to build days before Egypt, Jordan, and Syria began battling Israel. Giulietta remembers young men on the side of the street drawing their hands across their throats when she and her sister walked by. Her school closed and her father started staying home from work.  GIULIETTA: We were on the phone with other Jewish families, and we could hear that things were burning. They killed . . . We didn't know. That's what helped us to keep our sanity. When we left, we knew – that they also killed people. MANYA: Then one night, the mob arrived at her family's house. Remember, her father worked in human resources. That detail spared their lives. GIULIETTA: I remember this group of people coming toward us, we had a garden. They could have been 500. Or they could have been 1,000. Or they could have been just 70. But in my eyes, there were so, so many. And they wanted to burn us alive. My mother, she knew them. She knew the mentality. So, she pushed my father away, and she went there and basically, she started pleading with them saying ‘What did we do to you? And it happened that the guy that worked for my father, and he was supposed to be fired, my father decided not to fire him. And he turned to them, and he said to them and said, ‘These are good Jews. Let's don't kill them.' Sorry if I laugh. So they took the, how do you say, the match. They put it back and they left.  But we knew we were not safe. The Arabs, the Muslims, these were our enemies. We're in their country. We are the Jews. They wanted us dead. I never want to think of what would have happened if they got hold of us. MANYA: The government set a curfew to curb the violence. Still, afraid for their lives, Giulietta's mother reached out to a Muslim family with whom they were close and asked for help. They agreed to hide the whole family – Giulietta's mother, father, and eight children.   GIULIETTA: This wonderful man. He sent us his driver, with this big car. And I remember we all dressed as Arabs. I think maybe even my father, he covered himself. And he took us all to that house. And we stayed there for about two weeks. MANYA: Men occupied one corner of the house, watching television, and listening to BBC, which was reporting on Israel's victories over the Egyptian Air Force and its capture of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip. The women lived in the other wing, listening to Arabic radio, which told a very different story. One day, Giulietta crossed over to the other side of the house to visit her father for a kosher lunch of boiled potatoes, eggs, and tuna, drizzled with olive oil.  GIULIETTA: I said to my father, ‘How are you doing on the other side?' I said, ‘We are OK. But mama is crying, crying, crying.' And he said, ‘Why? We are safe.' I said, ‘Because we're listening to the news, she had brothers in Israel, and the Arab news was saying that every Jew in Israel was killed. That they won the war, and everybody's dying. And he told me, ‘Go to your mother and whisper to her, that this is bullshit, that Israel was the biggest victor in the history, and the Egyptians are running in the desert without shoes.'  MANYA: But after two weeks, Giulietta's mother became suspicious of their hosts. She still trusted the adults in the family. But not necessarily their teenage sons.  Vivienne Roumani-Denn said older generations of Libyans tended to appreciate what Jews had contributed to society over the years and respect that. Younger Libyans were more easily swept up by the nationalistic and antisemitic fervor, regardless of the nation's Jewish heritage.  GIULIETTA: My mother told my father, ‘I feel it in my bones, his sons are going to sell us. So, let's go home. We'd rather die in our own home. It's also dangerous for them.' So, we went home. MANYA: Not long after, the King of Libya gave the Jews an impossible choice. They could go to an internment camp where they would supposedly be protected, or each person could pack a bag, take no more than 30 sterling, and abandon their homes, the lives that generations of their family had built in this country – forever.  There were too many tales of families and neighbors accepting so-called offers of protection from authorities, only to be led to their death. Giulietta's family and thousands of others packed their bags. An Italian airlift transported 6,000 Jews to safety. GIULIETTA: The reason why we went to Italy is because the Italian ambassador at that time in Libya decided that he had to help the Jews. And there was something for which we could all go to Italy. I just remember they took us in this kind of truck to the airport. And then from there, we went to Rome and the feeling of freedom when we arrived in Rome. But I heard stories of people who the police wouldn't take them, or they left them somewhere and they were saved by a miracle. So, you couldn't trust anybody. MANYA: The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, encouraged them to go to the States. Her father wanted to go to Israel. Her mother wanted to stay in Italy. That's what they did.  GIULIETTA: Every country that took the Libyan Jews, and I can say that with a lot of pride, we just added to the country. We either opened businesses, or, you understand? We were never parasites. They accepted us, but we never relied on them. At the contrary, we added whatever it was to business to, to whatever. And we are always grateful. I mean, to me, Italy is one of my most favorite countries, I will always be grateful.  MANYA: With only a fourth-grade education, Giulietta's mother became an Arabic-Italian translator for hospitals and doctors across Rome. But her father struggled. Educated at Alliance Israel Francaise, French-run Jewish schools across the Middle East, he was erudite and ambitious.  GIULIETTA: My father basically, I never saw him as a worker. He was a man that was always reading and studying languages. He was a dreamer in a way.  When he got to Italy, he tried to find a job and he couldn't. It was terrible to see that. But it was not easy. My father was never able to become who he was basically. He always felt like a failure. He was an idealist. He loved, he wanted to go to Israel all his life. He always used to say ‘I'd rather die young in the land of Israel than old anywhere else' and he died old somewhere else. But you know, in life, you cannot always have what you … He's buried in Israel, yeah. MANYA: While her father dreamed of going to Israel, her mother dreamed of going back home to Libya. Even though she worked hard to settle the family and become part of the fabric of Italian society, Italy was only a temporary refuge.  In fact, Giulietta's parents did go back, in 1969, hoping to reclaim some of the possessions they had left behind. While they were there, King Idris was overthrown in a military coup led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Giulietta's parents were prisoners in their former home for about a year before they could return to their new home in Rome. They recovered very little. Gaddafi confiscated all Jewish property. GIULIETTA: My mother thought eventually she'll go back to Libya. That was always her home. That was her country. That was her house.  Maybe in the last 10 years before she died, she realized there was no hope and she saw all the, forgive me, the bestiality, all the things of terrorism and she said ‘[I could] never go back there.' But she always dreamed of going back. MANYA: Instead, Libya has lived on in their everyday lives – their recipes, their superstitions, and their deepest memories. To this day, guests at Giulietta's Shabbat and holiday tables eat rice, couscous, chraime, mafrum, and a special dish of white beans called lubya. When Giulietta's sons or daughters-in-law send her photographs of grandchildren, she responds with the emojis of a fish and a hand, to ward off the evil eye. The hand, or hamsa, is a symbol originated by Muslims, but embraced and redefined by the Mizrahi Jews who once lived among them.  And when Giulietta's mother was in the final stage of Alzheimer's, that ruthless disease that strips one's memories, Giulietta would turn on Umm Kulthum, a popular Egyptian singer who, despite being a raging antisemite, was beloved by Arabs and Jews.  GIULIETTA: You will hardly meet any Arab, any Jew, from North Africa or the Middle East who doesn't know Umm Kulthum. The only thing that she would remember, and I would put on Umm Kulthum. And I will tell her, I pretend to say ‘Mama, I cannot understand Arabic. Can you translate it to me?' And she would translate the words, which were always: You are my life. You are my eyes, I love you. You know, the melodrama of songs. MANYA: Roumani-Denn said for Jews in Libya, the antisemitism, no matter how rabid, no matter how pervasive, did not steal the love and sense of belonging we all have, or long for in the place we call home.  VIVIENNE: You know, it's home. It's not home, you were never made to feel at home. But it was . . . there were some really good times. Every time I interviewed anybody, they said, ‘Life was good. They hated us.' And I said, ‘Isn't there a contradiction here?' And the thing is, you know, … life in Libya revolved around family and faith, and extended family and friends. So, there was all this warmth on the one hand. MANYA: Giulietta has no desire to return to the land she once called home. When she thinks about what she misses most, it's her childhood. She left that behind when she boarded the plane to Italy, and it would not be waiting for her if she went back. It's gone.  GIULIETTA: The country can go to hell. Sorry. I have no interest. No sympathy. Where can they give you back the money? The place is bankrupt. They don't even have . . . they're going to give it to the Jews? Some people are still fighting, ‘it's our money.' Some people left so much, so much. But that happened also to the Jews all over the world. MANYA: She also knows now what was missing from that childhood. Leaving Libya introduced her to liberties she never knew existed for Jews. And for women. She wouldn't want to return to a life without rights and freedom. Wherever they landed in Italy, the States, or Israel, she, her parents, and her seven siblings encountered new opportunities and seized them.  After two years of freedom in Rome, Giulietta's younger sister Liliana at the age of 16 moved to Israel to finish high school and become a lone soldier. A soldier in the Israel Defense Forces with no family in Israel to support them, only their comrades and their countrymen.  GIULIETTA: It was horrible to be kicked out, we lost all our money. And we all say it was the best thing that happened to us. It was the best thing that happened to us, being kicked out, because finally we have what we never had before.   MANYA: Landing in Italy when she did not only introduced her to unexpected freedoms. In 1975, her cousin introduced her to a co-worker at HIAS, an American son of Holocaust survivors who had landed in Rome after being expelled from the Soviet Union for helping persecuted Jews. He became Giulietta's husband and the CEO of AJC, David Harris. In 1979, they moved to the States where David became CEO 11 years later. In that role, he has expanded the organization's reach in the Arab world. Meanwhile, Giulietta taught Italian and raised their three sons in the kind of home she could not have growing up in Libya – one that was openly and proudly Jewish. Inspired by his wife's journey, David has sought justice for Jews around the world by urging nations to fight antisemitism with more than just words and ceremonies to remember the Holocaust. He has encouraged them to see the fuller picture of Jews after the Holocaust, including those forced from their homes in Arab nations and Iran, the crucial role Israel has played for thousands of refugees, and the hope it offers for millions of others, should the need ever arise. GUILIETTA: I feel blessed, because he understood. He understood. I mean, it's his job. He went to Russia. He went to Rome. He helped the Russian Jews to come. He studied our history.  And to be honest with you, a lot of American Jews, they live in a bubble. It's like if being born in freedom, and in a democracy, they cannot envision anything that is different than what they have. MANYA: They cannot envision a world where Jews had to celebrate life cycle events quietly, could not travel or pursue their dreams, or feared for their lives. They cannot envision a world without Israel, or worse, they can, and they believe the world would be better for it. They don't understand why Israel exists, what purpose it served for millions of Jews, thousands from across the Arab world, including Libya. But Giulietta knows why Israel exists.  GIULIETTA: When you come from this country, and things happen to you like [they] happened to me, to the Egyptian Jews, to the Iraqi Jews, even to the Russian Jews. We see something which is sad: that people who lived in freedom lost the ability to think rationally.  MANYA: There are no more Jews left in Libya. The Great Synagogue in Tripoli has been boarded up. When in 2011, a Libyan Jew returned from exile and broke through the boards to go inside, armed vigilantes surrounded the site. He was lucky to leave alive.  Giulietta remembers no matter how discreet Libyan Jews were about their Judaism, they never missed a High Holiday service at that synagogue and the men went there every Saturday morning. Bar mitzvahs were done quietly, unlike in the States where her three sons' bar mitzvahs weren't a concern. GIULIETTA: I see my oldest son, who is 42, who every now and then he says, ‘Mom, can you please tell me how it happened, what happened?' And it's funny they ask, because today, when I knew you were coming, I said, there are so many questions I didn't ask my parents. MANYA: I asked Giulietta why her family stayed in Libya after the pogroms of '45 and '48. Many of her aunts, uncles, cousins fled Tripoli for Israel before she was even born. Why did her parents move to Tripoli and try to stay?  GIULIETTA: I wouldn't know how to answer because you think they will always be alive, you think, and then they disappear, and you realize there are things you don't know. I never asked. I think, I think, they thought … I never asked. MANYA: Libyan Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Giulietta for sharing her story. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because, like Giulietta, they never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories.  Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions alive and memories alive as well. Call 212.891-1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Tune in every Friday for AJC's weekly podcast about global affairs through a Jewish lens, People of the Pod,brought to you by the same team behind The Forgotten Exodus.  Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed the episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

Listen to the premiere episode of a new limited narrative series from American Jewish Committee (AJC): The Forgotten Exodus. Each Monday, for the next six weeks, AJC will release a new episode of The Forgotten Exodus, the first-ever narrative podcast series to focus exclusively on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. This week's episode focuses on Jews from Iraq. If you like what you hear, use the link below to subscribe before the next episode drops on August 8. Who are the Jews of Iraq? Why did they leave? And why do so many Iraqi Jews, even those born elsewhere, still consider Iraq their home?  Join us to uncover the answers to these questions through the inspiring story of Mizrahi Jewish cartoonist Carol Isaacs' family. Feeling alienated growing up as the only Jew in school from an Arab-majority country, Carol turned her longing for Iraq and the life her family left behind into a gripping graphic memoir, The Wolf of Baghdad.  Meanwhile, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, delves into the fascinating, yet the little-known history of Iraqi Jewry, from its roots in the region 2,600 years ago, to the antisemitic riots that led them to seek refuge in Israel, England, and the U.S. ____ Show Notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about The Forgotten Exodus here.  Song credits: Thanks to Carol Isaacs and her band 3yin for permission to use The Wolf of Bagdad soundtrack. Portions of the following tracks can be heard throughout the episode:  01 Dhikrayyat (al Qasabji)  02 Muqaddima Hijaz (trad)  03 Che Mali Wali (pt 1) (trad) 05 Fog el Nakhal (trad)  11 Balini-b Balwa (trad)  12 Al Effendi (al Kuwaiti)  14 Dililol (trad)  15 Che Mail Wali (pt 2) (trad)  Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837; “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. ____ Episode Transcript: CAROL ISAACS: A lot of businesses were trashed, houses were burnt. It was an awful time. And that was a kind of time when the Jews of Iraq had started to think, ‘Well, maybe this isn't our homeland after all.' MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: Welcome to the premiere of the first ever podcast series devoted exclusively to an overlooked episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. Some fled antisemitism, mistreatment, and pogroms that sparked a refugee crisis like no other, as persecuted Jewish communities poured from numerous directions.  Others sought opportunities for their families or followed the calling to help create a Jewish state. In Israel, America, Italy, wherever they landed, these Jews forged new lives for themselves and future generations. This series explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. Each week, we will share the history of one Jewish family with roots in the Arab world. Each account is personal and different. Some include painful memories or elegies for what could've been. Others pay homage to the conviction of their ancestors to seek a life where they were wanted. To ground each episode, we rely on a scholar to untangle the complexities. Some of these stories have never been told because they wished to leave the past in the past. For those of you who, like me, before this project began, never read this chapter in Jewish history, we hope you find this series enlightening. And for those who felt ignored for so many decades, we hope these stories honor your families' legacies. Join us as we explore stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience.  I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman, and this is The Forgotten Exodus.   Today's episode: Leaving Iraq.   CAROL: All my life, I've lived in two worlds – one inside the family home, which is a very Jewish world, obviously, but also tinged with Iraqi customs like Iraqi food, a language we spoke—Judeo Arabic. So, I've always known that I'm not just British. I've lived in these two worlds, the one at home, and then the one at school. And then later on at work, which was very English. I went to a terribly English school, for example, there were about a thousand girls. Of those thousand girls, 30 were Jewish, and I was the only Mizrahi, the only non-European Jew. So, there's always been that knowing that I'm not quite fitting into boxes. Do you know what I mean? But I never quite knew which box I fit into. MANYA: Carol Isaacs makes her living illustrating the zeitgeists of our time, poking fun at the irony all around us, reminding us of our common quirks. And she fits it all into a tiny box. You might not know Carol by her given name, but you've probably seen her pen name, scrawled in the corner of her cartoons published by The New Yorker and Spectator magazines: TS McCoy, or The Surreal McCoy.  Carol is homesick for a home she never knew. Born and raised Jewish in London, she grew up hearing stories of her parents' life in Baghdad. How her family members learned to swim in the Tigris River using the bark of palm trees as life preservers, how they shopped in the city sooks for dates to bake b'ab'e b'tamer.  Millions of Jews have called Iraq home for more than 2,600 years, including many of their children and grandchildren who have never been there, but long to go. Like Carol, they were raised with indelible stories of daily life in Mosul, Basra, Baghdad – Jewish life that ceased to exist because it ceased to be safe. CAROL: My mother remembered sitting with her mother and her grandmother and all the family in the cellar, going through every single grain of rice for chometz. Now, if you imagine that there were eight days of Passover, I don't know 10, 12 people in the household, plus guests, they ate rice at least twice a day. You can imagine how much rice you'd have to go through. So little things like that, you know, that would give you a window into another world completely, that they remembered with so much fondness.  And it's been like that all my life. I've had this nostalgia for this, this place that my parents used to . . . now and again they'd talk about it, this place that I've never visited and I've never known. But it would be wonderful to go and just smell the same air that my ancestors smelled, you know, walk around the same streets in the Jewish Quarter. The houses are still there, the old Jewish Quarter. They're a bit run down. Well, very run down. MANYA: Carol turned her longing for Iraq and the life her family left behind into a graphic memoir and animated film called The Wolf of Baghdad. Think Art Spiegelman's Maus, the graphic novel about the Holocaust, but for Jews in Iraq who on the holiday of Shavuot in 1941 suffered through a brutal pogrom known as the Farhud, followed by decades of persecution, and ultimately, expulsion. Her research for the book involved conversations with family members who had never spoken about the violence and hatred they witnessed. They had left it in the past and now looked toward the future. There's no dialogue in the book either. The story arc simply follows the memories. CAROL: They wanted to look forward. So, it was really gratifying that they did tell me these things. ‘Cause when my parents came, for example, they came to the UK, it was very much ‘Look forward. We are British now.' My father was the quintessential city gent. He'd go to the office every day in the city of London with his pinstriped suit, and a rose plucked from the front garden, you know, a copy of The Guardian newspaper under his arm. He was British. We listened to classical music. We didn't listen to the music of my heritage. It was all Western music in the house. MANYA: But her father's Muslim and Christian business associates in Iraq visited regularly, as long as they could safely travel.    CAROL: On a Sunday, every month, our house would turn into little Baghdad. They would come and my mother would feed them these delicacies that she spent all week making and they'd sit and they'd talk. MANYA: As Carol said, she had heard only fond memories throughout her childhood because for millennia, Jews in Iraq lived in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors.  CAROL: Jews have always lived in Mesopotamia, lived generally quite well. There was always the dimmi status, which is a status given to minorities. For example, they had to pay a certain tax, had to wear certain clothing. Sometimes, they weren't allowed to build houses higher than their neighbor, because they weren't allowed to be above their neighbor. They couldn't ride a horse, for example, Jews. I mean, small little rules, that you were never quite accorded full status. But then when the Brits arrived in 1917, things became a bit easier. MANYA: But 20-some years later, life for Jews took a turn for the worse. That sudden and dramatic turning point in 1941 was called The Farhud. ZVI BEN-DOR BENITE: Jews have been living in Iraq for thousands of years. If we start with the Farhud, we are starting in the middle of the story, in fact, in the middle of the end.” MANYA: That's Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, a professor of history and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. The son of Iraqi Jewish parents who migrated to Israel in the early 1950s, he carries in his imagination maps of old Jewish neighborhoods in Mosul and Baghdad, etched by his parents' stories of life in the old country. He shares Carol's longing to walk those same streets one day.  ZVI: Iraqis, even those who were born in Israel, still self-identify as Iraqis and still consider that home to a certain extent – an imaginary home, but home. And you can say the same thing, and even more so, for people who were born there and lived there at the time. So here's the thing: if I go there, I would be considering myself a returnee. But it would be my first time. MANYA: As a Jew, Zvi knows the chances of his returning are slim. To this day, Iraq remains the only Arab country that has never signed a ceasefire with Israel since Arab nations declared war on the Jewish state upon its creation in 1948. Jews are not safe there. Really, no one has been for a while. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, ISIS, and general civil unrest have made modern-day Iraq dangerous for decades. The region is simply unstable. The centuries leading up to the Farhud in 1941 were no different. The territory originally known as Mesopotamia flipped from empire to empire, including Babylonian, Mongol, Safavids, Ottoman, British. Just to name a few. But during those centuries, Iraq was historically diverse – home to Muslims, Jews, Assyrian Christians. Yes, Jews were a minority and faced some limitations. But that didn't change the fact that they loved the place they called home.  ZVI: We zoom in on the Farhud because it is a relatively unique event. Jews in Iraq were highly integrated, certainly those who lived in the big cities and certainly those who lived in Baghdad. Few reasons to talk about this integration. First of all, they spoke Arabic. Second of all, they participated in the Iraqi transition to modernity. In many ways, the Jewish community even spearheaded Iraqi society's transition into modernity. Of course, you know, being a minority, it means that not everything is rosy, and I'm not in any way trying to make it as a rosy situation. But if you compare it to the experiences of European Jews, certainly Europeans in the Pale of Settlement or in Eastern Europe, it's a much lovelier situation. Many Jews participate in Iraqi politics in different ways. Many Jews joined the Communist Party, in fact, lead the Communist Party to a certain extent. Others join different parties that highly identify in terms of Iraqi nationalism. MANYA: Very few Iraqi Jews identified with the modern Zionist movement, a Jewish nationalist movement to establish a state on the ancestral homeland of the Jews, then known as Palestine. Still, Iraqi Jews were not immune from Arab hostility toward the notion of Jewish self-determination. Adding to that tension: the Nazi propaganda that poured out of the German embassy in Baghdad.  CAROL: Mein Kampf was translated into Arabic and published in all the newspapers there. There were broadcasts coming from Radio Berlin, in Arabic, politicizing Islam and generally manipulating certain texts from the Quran, to show that Jews were the enemies of Islam. So, there was this constant drip, drip of antisemitism. ZVI: Another factor is, of course, the British. There is an anti-British government in Baghdad at the time, during the period of someone who went down in history as a Nazi collaborator, Rashid Ali. And Rashid Ali's been removed just before the British retake Iraq. We should remember that basically, even though Iraq is a kind of constitutional monarchy, the British run the show behind the scenes for a very, very long time. So, there is a little bit of a hiatus over several months with Rashid Ali, and then when he is removed, you know, people blame the Jews for that. MANYA: On the afternoon of June 1, 1941, Jews in Baghdad prepared to celebrate the traditional Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot. Violent mobs descended on the celebrants. CAROL: In those two days the mobs ran riot and took it all out on the Jews. We don't, to this day, we don't know how many Jews died. Conservative estimates say about 120. We think it was in the thousands. Certainly, a lot of businesses were trashed, houses were burnt, women raped, mutilated, babies killed. It was an awful time. And that was a kind of time when the Jews of Iraq had started to think, ‘Well, maybe this isn't our homeland after all.' MANYA: The mobs were a fraction of the Iraqi population. Many Muslim residents protected their Jewish neighbors.  CAROL: One of my relations said that during the Farhud, the pogrom, that her neighbors stood guard over their house, Muslim neighbors, and told the mobs that they wouldn't let them in that these people are our family, our friends. They wouldn't let them in. They looked after each other, they protected each other. MANYA: But the climate in Iraq was no longer one in which Jews could thrive. Now they just hoped to survive. In the mid-to-late 40s, Carol's father, who worked for the British army during World War II, left for the United Kingdom and, as the eldest son, began to bring his family out one by one. Then came 1948. Israel declared independence and five Arab nations declared war.  ZVI: So, Iraq sent soldiers to fight as part of the Arab effort in Palestine, and they began to come back in coffins. I mean, there's a sense of defeat. Three deserters, three Iraqi soldiers that deserted the war, and crossed the desert back to Iraq, and they landed up in Mosul on the Eve of Passover in 1949. And they knocked on the door of one of my uncles. And they said, they were hosted by this Jewish family. And they were telling the Jews, who were their hosts that evening, about the war in Palestine, and about what was going on and so on. This is just an isolated case, but the point is that you know, it raises the tension in the population, and it raises the tensions against Jews tenfold. But there's no massive movement of Iraqi Jews, even though the conditions are worsening. In other words, it becomes uneasy for someone to walk in the street as a Jew. There is a certain sense of fear that is going on. And then comes the legal action. MANYA: That legal action, transacted with the state of Israel and facilitated by Zionist operatives, set the most significant exodus in motion. In 1950, the Iraqi government gave its Jewish citizens a choice. Renounce their Iraqi citizenship, take only what fits in a suitcase, and board a flight to Israel, or stay and face an uncertain future. The offer expired in a year, meaning those who stayed would no longer be allowed to leave. ZVI: If you're a Jew in Iraq in 1950, you are plunged into a very, very cruel dilemma. First of all, you don't know what the future holds. You do know that the present, after 1948, suggests worsening conditions. There is a sense that, you know, all the Jews are sort of a fifth column. All of them are associated with Zionism, even though you know, the Zionist movement is actually very small. There are certain persecutions of Zionists and communists who are Jews as well. And, you know, there have been mass arrests of them, you know, particularly of the young, younger Jewish population, so you don't know. And then the state comes in and says, ‘Look, you get one year to stay or to leave. If you leave, you leave. If you stay, you're gonna get stuck here.' Now, just think about presenting someone with that dilemma after 1935 and the Nuremberg Laws, after what happened in Europe. MANYA: In all, 120,000 Iraqi Jews leave for Israel over nine months – 90% of Iraqi Jewry. For the ten percent who stayed, they became a weak and endangered minority. Many Iraqis, including the family on Carol's mother's side, eventually escaped to America and England.  CAROL: My mother and my father were separated by a generation. My father was much older, 23 years older than my mother. So, he had a different view of life in Baghdad. When he was around, it was generally very peaceful. The Jews were allowed to live quite, in peace with their neighbors. But with my mother's generation and younger, it was already the beginning – the rot had started to set in. So, she had a different view entirely. CAROL: My grandmother, maternal grandmother, was the last one to come out of our family, to come out of Iraq. She left in ‘63. And my dad managed to get her out. MANYA: After Israel defeated another Arab onslaught in 1967, thousands more fled. ZVI: This was a glorious community, a large community, which was part of the fabric of society for centuries, if not millennia. And then, in one dramatic day, in a very, very short period, it just basically evaporated. And what was left is maybe 10 percent, which may be elite, that decided to risk everything by staying. But even they, at the end, had to leave.  MANYA: Remember, Carol said she was one of 30 Jewish girls at her school, but the only Mizrahi Jew. The term Mizrahi, which means “Eastern” in Hebrew, refers to the diaspora of descendants of Jewish communities from Middle Eastern countries such as: Iraq, Iran, and Yemen, and North African countries such as: Egypt, Libya, and Morocco. CAROL: It's been interesting. A lot of people didn't even know that there were Jews living in Arab lands. I mean, for all my life, I've been told, ‘Oh, you're Jewish, you speak Yiddish, you come from Poland. You eat smoked salmon and bagels. You say ‘oy vey,' which is great if you do all those things and you do come from Eastern Europe, but I don't. Almost 1 million Jews of Arab lands, nobody knows about what happened to them, that they were ethnically cleansed, removed from their homes, and dispersed across the world. It's our truth. And it's our history and make of it what you will, just add it to other family histories that we know. MANYA: Carol has discovered that even Iraqis did not know of their country's rich Jewish past, nor the fate of its Jewish citizens. Since the animated version of The Wolf of Baghdad premiered at the Israeli and Iraqi embassies in London, accompanied by Carol's accordion and other musicians playing its Judeo-Arabic soundtrack, Iraqis in the audience have been moved to tears.  CAROL: At one Q&A, after we did a performance, one Iraqi gentleman stood up at the front. He was crying. He said, ‘I'm really sorry for what we did to you. I'm so sorry.' And that was immensely moving for me. It was like, well, you know what? We're talking now. It's wonderful. We can sit down together. We can talk in a shared language. We can talk about our shared culture, and we've got more that ties us together than separates us. We've got more in common, right? So, I'm always looking for that, that kind of positive, and so far it's come back to me, multiplied by a million, which has been brilliant. The truth is coming to light, that people know that the Jews of Iraq contributed so much, not just culturally but also socially, in the government too. So, it's this reaching out from Iraq to its lost Jews saying ‘Well where are you? What happened to you? Tell us your story. We want to see where you are. Come back even,' some of them are saying. MANYA: Carol has continued to give a voice to the Jewish refugees of Iraq. Most recently, she has been adapting The Wolf of Baghdad for younger, middle school-aged readers to better understand the story. And high schools in London and Canada have added The Wolf of Baghdad to their history curriculum.  CAROL: Leaving Iraq was called the silent exodus for a reason. We just left quietly and without fuss, and just went and made our lives elsewhere. I do know that life was difficult for them wherever they went, but they just got on with it, like refugees will do everywhere. MANYA: These Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Carol Isaacs for sharing her family's story and to her band 3yin for the music. Throughout this episode, you have been listening to pieces of the soundtrack from The Wolf of Baghdad motion comic performed by 3yin, a groundbreaking London based band that plays Jewish melodies from the Middle East and North Africa. The soundtrack is available at thesurrealmccoy.com. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/forgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

Who are the Jews of Iraq? Why did they leave? And why do so many Iraqi Jews, even those born elsewhere, still consider Iraq their home?  The premiere episode of a new limited narrative series from American Jewish Committee (AJC) uncovers the answers to these questions through the inspiring story of Mizrahi Jewish cartoonist Carol Isaacs' family. Feeling alienated growing up as the only Jew in school from an Arab-majority country, Carol turned her longing for Iraq and the life her family left behind into a gripping graphic memoir, The Wolf of Baghdad.  Meanwhile, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, delves into the fascinating, yet the little-known history of Iraqi Jewry, from its roots in the region 2,600 years ago, to the antisemitic riots that led them to seek refuge in Israel, England, and the U.S. _________ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits: Thanks to Carol Isaacs and her band 3yin for permission to use The Wolf of Bagdad soundtrack. Portions of the following tracks can be heard throughout the episode:  01 Dhikrayyat (al Qasabji)  02 Muqaddima Hijaz (trad)  03 Che Mali Wali (pt 1) (trad) 05 Fog el Nakhal (trad)  11 Balini-b Balwa (trad)  12 Al Effendi (al Kuwaiti)  14 Dililol (trad)  15 Che Mail Wali (pt 2) (trad)  Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837; “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. ______ Episode Transcript: CAROL ISAACS: A lot of businesses were trashed, houses were burnt. It was an awful time. And that was a kind of time when the Jews of Iraq had started to think, ‘Well, maybe this isn't our homeland after all.' MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: Welcome to the premiere of the first ever podcast series devoted exclusively to an overlooked episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. Some fled antisemitism, mistreatment, and pogroms that sparked a refugee crisis like no other, as persecuted Jewish communities poured from numerous directions.  Others sought opportunities for their families or followed the calling to help create a Jewish state. In Israel, America, Italy, wherever they landed, these Jews forged new lives for themselves and future generations. This series explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. Each week, we will share the history of one Jewish family with roots in the Arab world. Each account is personal and different. Some include painful memories or elegies for what could've been. Others pay homage to the conviction of their ancestors to seek a life where they were wanted. To ground each episode, we rely on a scholar to untangle the complexities. Some of these stories have never been told because they wished to leave the past in the past. For those of you who, like me, before this project began, never read this chapter in Jewish history, we hope you find this series enlightening. And for those who felt ignored for so many decades, we hope these stories honor your families' legacies. Join us as we explore stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience.  I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman, and this is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: Leaving Iraq. CAROL: All my life, I've lived in two worlds – one inside the family home, which is a very Jewish world, obviously, but also tinged with Iraqi customs like Iraqi food, a language we spoke—Judeo Arabic. So, I've always known that I'm not just British. I've lived in these two worlds, the one at home, and then the one at school. And then later on at work, which was very English. I went to a terribly English school, for example, there were about a thousand girls. Of those thousand girls, 30 were Jewish, and I was the only Mizrahi, the only non-European Jew. So, there's always been that knowing that I'm not quite fitting into boxes. Do you know what I mean? But I never quite knew which box I fit into. MANYA: Carol Isaacs makes her living illustrating the zeitgeists of our time, poking fun at the irony all around us, reminding us of our common quirks. And she fits it all into a tiny box. You might not know Carol by her given name, but you've probably seen her pen name, scrawled in the corner of her cartoons published by The New Yorker and Spectator magazines: TS McCoy, or The Surreal McCoy.  Carol is homesick for a home she never knew. Born and raised Jewish in London, she grew up hearing stories of her parents' life in Baghdad. How her family members learned to swim in the Tigris River using the bark of palm trees as life preservers, how they shopped in the city sooks for dates to bake b'ab'e b'tamer.  Millions of Jews have called Iraq home for more than 2,600 years, including many of their children and grandchildren who have never been there, but long to go. Like Carol, they were raised with indelible stories of daily life in Mosul, Basra, Baghdad – Jewish life that ceased to exist because it ceased to be safe. CAROL: My mother remembered sitting with her mother and her grandmother and all the family in the cellar, going through every single grain of rice for chometz. Now, if you imagine that there were eight days of Passover, I don't know 10, 12 people in the household, plus guests, they ate rice at least twice a day. You can imagine how much rice you'd have to go through. So little things like that, you know, that would give you a window into another world completely, that they remembered with so much fondness.  And it's been like that all my life. I've had this nostalgia for this, this place that my parents used to . . . now and again they'd talk about it, this place that I've never visited and I've never known. But it would be wonderful to go and just smell the same air that my ancestors smelled, you know, walk around the same streets in the Jewish Quarter. The houses are still there, the old Jewish Quarter. They're a bit run down. Well, very run down. MANYA: Carol turned her longing for Iraq and the life her family left behind into a graphic memoir and animated film called The Wolf of Baghdad. Think Art Spiegelman's Maus, the graphic novel about the Holocaust, but for Jews in Iraq who on the holiday of Shavuot in 1941 suffered through a brutal pogrom known as the Farhud, followed by decades of persecution, and ultimately, expulsion. Her research for the book involved conversations with family members who had never spoken about the violence and hatred they witnessed. They had left it in the past and now looked toward the future. There's no dialogue in the book either. The story arc simply follows the memories. CAROL: They wanted to look forward. So, it was really gratifying that they did tell me these things. ‘Cause when my parents came, for example, they came to the UK, it was very much ‘Look forward. We are British now.' My father was the quintessential city gent. He'd go to the office every day in the city of London with his pinstriped suit, and a rose plucked from the front garden, you know, a copy of The Guardian newspaper under his arm. He was British. We listened to classical music. We didn't listen to the music of my heritage. It was all Western music in the house. MANYA: But her father's Muslim and Christian business associates in Iraq visited regularly, as long as they could safely travel.    CAROL: On a Sunday, every month, our house would turn into little Baghdad. They would come and my mother would feed them these delicacies that she spent all week making and they'd sit and they'd talk. MANYA: As Carol said, she had heard only fond memories throughout her childhood because for millennia, Jews in Iraq lived in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors.  CAROL: Jews have always lived in Mesopotamia, lived generally quite well. There was always the dimmi status, which is a status given to minorities. For example, they had to pay a certain tax, had to wear certain clothing. Sometimes, they weren't allowed to build houses higher than their neighbor, because they weren't allowed to be above their neighbor. They couldn't ride a horse, for example, Jews. I mean, small little rules, that you were never quite accorded full status. But then when the Brits arrived in 1917, things became a bit easier. MANYA: But 20-some years later, life for Jews took a turn for the worse. That sudden and dramatic turning point in 1941 was called The Farhud. ZVI BEN-DOR BENITE: Jews have been living in Iraq for thousands of years. If we start with the Farhud, we are starting in the middle of the story, in fact, in the middle of the end.” MANYA: That's Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, a professor of history and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. The son of Iraqi Jewish parents who migrated to Israel in the early 1950s, he carries in his imagination maps of old Jewish neighborhoods in Mosul and Baghdad, etched by his parents' stories of life in the old country. He shares Carol's longing to walk those same streets one day.  ZVI: Iraqis, even those who were born in Israel, still self-identify as Iraqis and still consider that home to a certain extent – an imaginary home, but home. And you can say the same thing, and even more so, for people who were born there and lived there at the time. So here's the thing: if I go there, I would be considering myself a returnee. But it would be my first time. MANYA: As a Jew, Zvi knows the chances of his returning are slim. To this day, Iraq remains the only Arab country that has never signed a ceasefire with Israel since Arab nations declared war on the Jewish state upon its creation in 1948. Jews are not safe there. Really, no one has been for a while. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, ISIS, and general civil unrest have made modern-day Iraq dangerous for decades. The region is simply unstable. The centuries leading up to the Farhud in 1941 were no different. The territory originally known as Mesopotamia flipped from empire to empire, including Babylonian, Mongol, Safavids, Ottoman, British. Just to name a few. But during those centuries, Iraq was historically diverse – home to Muslims, Jews, Assyrian Christians. Yes, Jews were a minority and faced some limitations. But that didn't change the fact that they loved the place they called home.  ZVI: We zoom in on the Farhud because it is a relatively unique event. Jews in Iraq were highly integrated, certainly those who lived in the big cities and certainly those who lived in Baghdad. Few reasons to talk about this integration. First of all, they spoke Arabic. Second of all, they participated in the Iraqi transition to modernity. In many ways, the Jewish community even spearheaded Iraqi society's transition into modernity. Of course, you know, being a minority, it means that not everything is rosy, and I'm not in any way trying to make it as a rosy situation. But if you compare it to the experiences of European Jews, certainly Europeans in the Pale of Settlement or in Eastern Europe, it's a much lovelier situation. Many Jews participate in Iraqi politics in different ways. Many Jews joined the Communist Party, in fact, lead the Communist Party to a certain extent. Others join different parties that highly identify in terms of Iraqi nationalism. MANYA: Very few Iraqi Jews identified with the modern Zionist movement, a Jewish nationalist movement to establish a state on the ancestral homeland of the Jews, then known as Palestine. Still, Iraqi Jews were not immune from Arab hostility toward the notion of Jewish self-determination. Adding to that tension: the Nazi propaganda that poured out of the German embassy in Baghdad.  CAROL: Mein Kampf was translated into Arabic and published in all the newspapers there. There were broadcasts coming from Radio Berlin, in Arabic, politicizing Islam and generally manipulating certain texts from the Quran, to show that Jews were the enemies of Islam. So, there was this constant drip, drip of antisemitism. ZVI: Another factor is, of course, the British. There is an anti-British government in Baghdad at the time, during the period of someone who went down in history as a Nazi collaborator, Rashid Ali. And Rashid Ali's been removed just before the British retake Iraq. We should remember that basically, even though Iraq is a kind of constitutional monarchy, the British run the show behind the scenes for a very, very long time. So, there is a little bit of a hiatus over several months with Rashid Ali, and then when he is removed, you know, people blame the Jews for that. MANYA: On the afternoon of June 1, 1941, Jews in Baghdad prepared to celebrate the traditional Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot. Violent mobs descended on the celebrants. CAROL: In those two days the mobs ran riot and took it all out on the Jews. We don't, to this day, we don't know how many Jews died. Conservative estimates say about 120. We think it was in the thousands. Certainly, a lot of businesses were trashed, houses were burnt, women raped, mutilated, babies killed. It was an awful time. And that was a kind of time when the Jews of Iraq had started to think, ‘Well, maybe this isn't our homeland after all.' MANYA: The mobs were a fraction of the Iraqi population. Many Muslim residents protected their Jewish neighbors.  CAROL: One of my relations said that during the Farhud, the pogrom, that her neighbors stood guard over their house, Muslim neighbors, and told the mobs that they wouldn't let them in that these people are our family, our friends. They wouldn't let them in. They looked after each other, they protected each other. MANYA: But the climate in Iraq was no longer one in which Jews could thrive. Now they just hoped to survive. In the mid-to-late 40s, Carol's father, who worked for the British army during World War II, left for the United Kingdom and, as the eldest son, began to bring his family out one by one. Then came 1948. Israel declared independence and five Arab nations declared war.  ZVI: So, Iraq sent soldiers to fight as part of the Arab effort in Palestine, and they began to come back in coffins. I mean, there's a sense of defeat. Three deserters, three Iraqi soldiers that deserted the war, and crossed the desert back to Iraq, and they landed up in Mosul on the Eve of Passover in 1949. And they knocked on the door of one of my uncles. And they said, they were hosted by this Jewish family. And they were telling the Jews, who were their hosts that evening, about the war in Palestine, and about what was going on and so on. This is just an isolated case, but the point is that you know, it raises the tension in the population, and it raises the tensions against Jews tenfold. But there's no massive movement of Iraqi Jews, even though the conditions are worsening. In other words, it becomes uneasy for someone to walk in the street as a Jew. There is a certain sense of fear that is going on. And then comes the legal action. MANYA: That legal action, transacted with the state of Israel and facilitated by Zionist operatives, set the most significant exodus in motion. In 1950, the Iraqi government gave its Jewish citizens a choice. Renounce their Iraqi citizenship, take only what fits in a suitcase, and board a flight to Israel, or stay and face an uncertain future. The offer expired in a year, meaning those who stayed would no longer be allowed to leave. ZVI: If you're a Jew in Iraq in 1950, you are plunged into a very, very cruel dilemma. First of all, you don't know what the future holds. You do know that the present, after 1948, suggests worsening conditions. There is a sense that, you know, all the Jews are sort of a fifth column. All of them are associated with Zionism, even though you know, the Zionist movement is actually very small. There are certain persecutions of Zionists and communists who are Jews as well. And, you know, there have been mass arrests of them, you know, particularly of the young, younger Jewish population, so you don't know. And then the state comes in and says, ‘Look, you get one year to stay or to leave. If you leave, you leave. If you stay, you're gonna get stuck here.' Now, just think about presenting someone with that dilemma after 1935 and the Nuremberg Laws, after what happened in Europe. MANYA: In all, 120,000 Iraqi Jews leave for Israel over nine months – 90% of Iraqi Jewry. For the ten percent who stayed, they became a weak and endangered minority. Many Iraqis, including the family on Carol's mother's side, eventually escaped to America and England.  CAROL: My mother and my father were separated by a generation. My father was much older, 23 years older than my mother. So, he had a different view of life in Baghdad. When he was around, it was generally very peaceful. The Jews were allowed to live quite, in peace with their neighbors. But with my mother's generation and younger, it was already the beginning – the rot had started to set in. So, she had a different view entirely. CAROL: My grandmother, maternal grandmother, was the last one to come out of our family, to come out of Iraq. She left in ‘63. And my dad managed to get her out. MANYA: After Israel defeated another Arab onslaught in 1967, thousands more fled. ZVI: This was a glorious community, a large community, which was part of the fabric of society for centuries, if not millennia. And then, in one dramatic day, in a very, very short period, it just basically evaporated. And what was left is maybe 10 percent, which may be elite, that decided to risk everything by staying. But even they, at the end, had to leave.  MANYA: Remember, Carol said she was one of 30 Jewish girls at her school, but the only Mizrahi Jew. The term Mizrahi, which means “Eastern” in Hebrew, refers to the diaspora of descendants of Jewish communities from Middle Eastern countries such as: Iraq, Iran, and Yemen, and North African countries such as: Egypt, Libya, and Morocco. CAROL: It's been interesting. A lot of people didn't even know that there were Jews living in Arab lands. I mean, for all my life, I've been told, ‘Oh, you're Jewish, you speak Yiddish, you come from Poland. You eat smoked salmon and bagels. You say ‘oy vey,' which is great if you do all those things and you do come from Eastern Europe, but I don't. Almost 1 million Jews of Arab lands, nobody knows about what happened to them, that they were ethnically cleansed, removed from their homes, and dispersed across the world. It's our truth. And it's our history and make of it what you will, just add it to other family histories that we know. MANYA: Carol has discovered that even Iraqis did not know of their country's rich Jewish past, nor the fate of its Jewish citizens. Since the animated version of The Wolf of Baghdad premiered at the Israeli and Iraqi embassies in London, accompanied by Carol's accordion and other musicians playing its Judeo-Arabic soundtrack, Iraqis in the audience have been moved to tears.  CAROL: At one Q&A, after we did a performance, one Iraqi gentleman stood up at the front. He was crying. He said, ‘I'm really sorry for what we did to you. I'm so sorry.' And that was immensely moving for me. It was like, well, you know what? We're talking now. It's wonderful. We can sit down together. We can talk in a shared language. We can talk about our shared culture, and we've got more that ties us together than separates us. We've got more in common, right? So, I'm always looking for that, that kind of positive, and so far it's come back to me, multiplied by a million, which has been brilliant. The truth is coming to light, that people know that the Jews of Iraq contributed so much, not just culturally but also socially, in the government too. So, it's this reaching out from Iraq to its lost Jews saying ‘Well where are you? What happened to you? Tell us your story. We want to see where you are. Come back even,' some of them are saying. MANYA: Carol has continued to give a voice to the Jewish refugees of Iraq. Most recently, she has been adapting The Wolf of Baghdad for younger, middle school-aged readers to better understand the story. And high schools in London and Canada have added The Wolf of Baghdad to their history curriculum.  CAROL: Leaving Iraq was called the silent exodus for a reason. We just left quietly and without fuss, and just went and made our lives elsewhere. I do know that life was difficult for them wherever they went, but they just got on with it, like refugees will do everywhere. MANYA: These Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Carol Isaacs for sharing her family's story and to her band 3yin for the music. Throughout this episode, you have been listening to pieces of the soundtrack from The Wolf of Baghdad motion comic performed by 3yin, a groundbreaking London based band that plays Jewish melodies from the Middle East and North Africa. The soundtrack is available at thesurrealmccoy.com. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/forgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.  

Sabich is a Middle Eastern sandwich of fried eggplant, hard-boiled egg, hummus, tahini, salad, and a spicy mango Amba Sauce all cozied up in a pita flatbread. When Heather stumbled across it while browsing Pinterest, she knew she would be making sabich for a Three Kitchens episode. And we're so glad she did! Heather takes us through all the recipes she made in order to create her sabich:mango amba sauce, hummus,  tahini sauce, a quick Middle Eastern salad, and a homemade pita bread. It sounds like a lot of work, but if you plan ahead and make the amba sauce in advance, it really isn't too time consuming.  And you WILL want to make this sauce. It is delicious on burgers, or as a dip scooped up with pita chips.  Of course, you can always use store-bought pita if you're pressed for time (but you may not want to once you've made your own).  Apparently, the ingredients in a sabich are based on a traditional quick breakfast of Iraqi Jews. To that we say, that sounds like our kind of breakfast! We're confident this combination of flavours will win you over too. Episode Links~~~~~ Amba Sauce Recipe~ Hummus Recipe~ Sabich Sandwich Recipe~ Pita Bread Recipe~ Calgary Stampede~~~~Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking showCheck out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes, and find recipes on our blog (psst! there are even some extra recipes never discussed on the podcast!).www.threekitchenspodcast.com~~~~Or join us on our socials!Instagram @three_kitchens_podcastFacebook @threekitchenspodcastPinterest @threekitchenspodcastYouTube @threekitchenspodcast~~~~Drop us a comment or give us a like - we'd love to hear from you! Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking showCheck out our website where you can listen to all of our episodes, and find recipes on our blog (psst! there are even some extra recipes never discussed on the podcast!).www.threekitchenspodcast.comYou can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you! Or join us on our socials!Instagram @three_kitchens_podcastFacebook @threekitchenspodcastYouTube @threekitchenspodcastDrop us a comment or give us a like - we'd love to hear from you!

George Mordecai - a rabbi, cantor and composer born in Australia to Iraqi Jews from India and Singapore - shares the ancestral journeys and musical influences that led to the creation of his album, Safra, and speaks to the power of communal chanting and participatory prayer.

As The CJN Daily continues its brief summer hiatus, we're bringing subscribers another compilation of some of our favourite stories. Today, two episodes in one: Canadians remember the Iraqi Farhud, a pogrom in 1941, as well as Argentina's AMIA bombing in 1994, which remains the country's biggest unsolved terror attack. What we talked about: Learn about the museum in Israel dedicated to the history of Iraqi Jews at bjhcenglish.com Find Joseph Samuels's book, Beyond the Rivers of Babylon, on Amazon Listen to our original broadcast about the AMIA bombing and the Farhud at thecjn.ca The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network; find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.

A massacre changed the lives of many Iraqi Jews forever and eighty years on, one survivor is hoping for a peaceful future.

You definitely do not want to miss this fabulous and super important interview to understand what we are experiencing today, and how to move forward with "peace" with our Arab Muslim neighbors. Speaking with Lyn Julius, author of the book Uprooted, about 3,000 years of Jewish civilization in the Arab world that vanished overnight. Remembering the massacre of Iraqi Jews in 1941 pogrom and the connection to what we are experiencing today in Israel, on this 80th anniversary of Farhoud day, check out www.remember-farhud.com/ to learn more.

There are extremist group in Israel, even in the Knesset,  that trace their origins to Rabbi Meir Kahane.  Kahane was born in Brooklyn but moved to Israel and was elected to the Knesset.  He was later assassinated.  At the time, his views were considered shockingly extreme.  He was widely renounced by American Jews and by Israelis.  I heard Kahane speak twice in the Detroit area in the early 1980s.  I also read two of his books, Time to Go Home and They Must Go!  They were chilling  I also read quite a few essays by him.    As far as I can tell, those who embrace his name and his ideas are not fundamentally different from what I heard in the 1980s.   Kahane believed that anything is justified to bring the new age and to save the Jews.  I thought of the accusations by radical Iraqi Jews that the 1952 bombings of synagogues were done by Zionist commandos in an effort to panic them into fleeing to Israel.  I have no way to know if those accusations are correct but such a thing would surely be justified by Kahane.  He was filled with hatred of Arabs, Americans and secular Jews.  He believed in his cause and would do anything to achieve it.  He had a definite support base in the American Jewish community, although certainly not nearly as the vast proportion who were hostile to him.  I don't want to be inflammatory but I wrote in my notes back in the 1980s that I felt I was in a Munich beer hall in 1924 listening to Hitler polish up a speech.  I have never heard anyone quite like him. Note that in the Knesset, there are religious parties connected to the rabbis.  Two are United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi) and Shas (Sephardic).  There are NOT Kahanist. If you are interested in how  a similar logic works out in American culture you might listen to my podcast on the Replacement Wars. 

In the summer of 1971 around 2,000 Iraqi Jews were forced to flee the country following persistent threats and persecution. The Jewish community in Iraq dated back to the Babylonian times, but by the mid 1950s numbered less than eight thousand. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to Edwin Shuker, who was just 16 years old when he and his family were smuggled over the mountains to safety in neighbouring Iran by members of Iraq’s Kurdish minority. Edwin and his family eventually settled in the UK. Photo: Edwin Shuker and his parents and grandmother at home in Baghdad before they left in 1971 (courtesy of Edwin Shuker)

Exclusive Interview with Dr. Harold Rhode, the Collection’s Angel. Harold Rhode: In 2003, during the American liberation of Iraq, all of a sudden, the head of the Iraqi opposition, Ahmed Chalabi, a great man, calls me saying: “Harold, get over here. The man who ran the Israel and Jewish section of the Iraqi intelligence has just come to tell us all the things that he has done, and he is willing to show us the documents, where he had them in the Iraqi intelligence ministry.”

In this 2004 recording, Leslie Lutsky interviews Ella Shohat, internationally renowned Mizrahi academic, and Professor of Cultural Studies at NYU. They speak about what led Iraqi Jews to leave for Palestine, how asserting Arab-Jewish identity has become politicized, and what it was like growing up as a Mizrahi Jew in Israel.

In the years 1921–1951, the Iraqi Jewish community thrived. Numbering around 150,000, this primarily urban community figured prominently in Iraq’s culture, literature and economy. Bashkin raises a few questions relating to the meanings of the Jewish sense of belonging to the Iraqi community through a reading of three poems written by Iraqi Jews. In doing so, I explore the ways in which Iraqi Jews wrote about modernity and secularism, and the manners in which their texts shed light on sociocultural processes occurring in Iraq at the time.

Ariel Sabar's father Yona was born in a tiny village in the Kurdiish region of Iraq, in a Jewish enclave so isolated that the residents still spoke Aramaic. Yona Sabar and thousands of other Iraqi Jews were resettled in Israel in the 1950s. From there, he went to Yale University and became a professor of Near Eastern languages at UCLA, dedicated to preserving the unique heritage of the Jews of Kurdistan.Growing up in Los Angeles, Ariel Sabar wanted nothing to do with his father's strange immigrant heritage -- until he had a son of his own. In My Father's Paradise, Ariel Sabar retells his father's story and finds his own.Ariel Sabar covered the 22008 U.S. presidential campaigns for The Christian Science Monitor. He is an award-winning former staff writer for the Baltimore Sun and the Providence Journal. My Father's Paradise won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle award for autobiography. Recorded On: Tuesday, November 17, 2009