Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
(Jewish Group)In Iraqi Kurdistan, a one-man museum celebrates the region's Jewish history...
In Iraqi Kurdistan, a one-man museum celebrates the region’s Jewish history and ethnic diversityFor more than 27 centuries, Jews lived in the region around Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-independent Kurdish Regional Government.
Once home to a Jewish community numbering in the tens of thousands, the Kurdistan region and wider area of Northern Iraq is also, many believe, the final resting place of the prophets Nahum and Jonah and where lived one of the first female rabbinic figures, Asaneth Barzani. The city of Erbil was even once the capital of the Jewish kingdom of Adiabene, after the conversion of its Queen Helene and her son Monobaz in the first century AD.
Today however, no native Jewish community remains.
Along with the rest of Iraq’s Jews, most Kurdish Jews left in the 1950s under pressure from the government following the establishment of the State of Israel.
more...