In Iraq, restored tomb of biblical prophet Nahum quietly attracts Jewish pilgrimage

A day after arriving in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Michigan rabbi Asher Lopatin woke up at 3 a.m. and set out across the dusty desert landscape for the small town of Alqosh, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) away.

There, as dawn broke, he donned his tefillin and recited the morning prayers beside what an ancient tradition holds is the tomb of the biblical prophet Nahum.

“Alqosh is a beautiful Christian town,” Lopatin told The Times of Israel by phone. “Some city officials met me at 4:30 a.m., and then we went to the grave. Sunrise was around 5:30 a.m. As we made our way there, the light grew brighter and brighter. It was beautiful.”

Neglected for decades and threatened by war, the tomb of Nahum quietly reopened to visitors three years ago following a secretive restoration led by an American preservation group. Since then, a significant number of Jewish visitors are believed to have made the pilgrimage to the ancient shrine, including Israelis, despite its sensitive location.

According to Adam Tiffen, deputy director of the Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage, who led the original restoration effort, among those who have made the journey to the tomb and adjacent synagogue since it reopened in 2022 are members of prominent Iraqi Jewish families from the country’s once-thriving community.

“While we do not maintain a formal registry, we estimate that several dozen Jewish visitors have likely made the journey since the site was restored,” he told The Times of Israel via email. “Visits are possible, but they must be arranged in advance due to the site’s sensitive location and custodial oversight by the local government.”

While it is unclear when the tomb dates from, local Iraqi Jews have maintained for centuries that the shrine in the village was the burial place of the prophet Nahum, whose words are recorded in the short biblical book that bears his name.

Little is known about Nahum, though he is described as an “Alqoshite.” While some identify Alqosh as the Kurdish city just east of the Tigris, others have argued that Nahum’s Alqosh is the Galilee town of Kfar Nahum, known today as Capernaum.

A US veteran from the Maryland National Guard with several stints in Iraq, Tiffen first visited the tomb in 2016 as fighting against Islamic State raged nearby. At the time, the shrine was in a ruinous state, with its roof partially caved in and piles of rubble all around.

In the years that followed, ARCH led a complex operation to restore the building, raising some $2 million for the project, about half of which came from the US government. Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused delays, the project was completed in late 2021, and limited public access has been available since 2022.

Jewish pilgrims, interfaith groups, heritage travelers, adventurous backpackers, and local school and university students have visited the tomb.

“While most [Jews] have visited quietly and privately, their presence is deeply symbolic — many came to recite prayers, lay stones, and reconnect with ancestral history,” Tiffen said. “In some cases, their families had personal ties to the region, while others came out of a broader interest in preserving Jewish heritage in Muslim-majority countries.”

An ‘oasis of tolerance’

Lopatin, who serves as director of Community Relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor in Michigan, was in Iraq as one of a handful of Jewish leaders invited to attend the first-ever Kurdistan National Prayer Breakfast, flying to Erbil from Detroit hours after the conclusion of Passover.

Lopatin said that he received warm welcomes in Erbil and in Alqosh, noting he went everywhere with his kippah and did not encounter any problems.

“Kurdistan is such a magical oasis of tolerance, openness, and safety,” he said.

The rabbi was invited to the National Prayer Breakfast through the Chaldean community in Detroit, home to some 200,000 adherents of the Eastern Catholic church, most of whom have roots in Iraq and Syria. A large Chaldean community still lives in Iraqi Kurdistan.

“One of our local Chaldean leaders already invited me to visit Erbil a couple of years ago, but at the time, I felt it was not safe,” Lopatin recalled. “This time I went.”

According to Lopatin, the conference focused on tolerance and peace. During breakfast, several religious leaders addressed the audience of about 1,000 people. Participants included representatives of several Christian and Muslim groups.

Yet, as a visibly Jewish person, he perceived some apprehension around his presence.

While Iraqi Kurdistan enjoys a high level of autonomy, and many Kurds are thought to be open to ties with Israel, it is still bound by Baghdad, which rejects any diplomatic relationship with Jerusalem.

In 2022, the Iraqi parliament passed a bill criminalizing the normalization of ties and any relations with Israel, making it an offense punishable by death or life imprisonment.

“I took a picture with an imam, who eventually chased me down to delete it and asked me to forget his name,” Lopatin said. “I was told that not only can talking to an Israeli earn you the death penalty, but even ‘consorting with a Zionist’ in Iraq can lead to five years in jail.”

According to Lopatin, though, Kurds have very positive sentiments about the Jewish state.

“I think the Kurds are great allies of Israel,” he said. “They are not active because they have to balance everything out, but they have the potential for being great friends of Israel.”

While Israelis have visited Nahum’s tomb (including experts as part of the restoration project), Tiffen said they had to exercise caution.

“The area is protected by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which maintains its own visa and security policies,” Tiffen wrote. “However, Iraq does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and Israeli passport holders will be denied entry at the border. Visitors with dual citizenship may enter the KRG region using a second passport, but caution and discretion are advised for anyone with Israeli citizenship.”

The Jewish community in Iraq dates from the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE, if not earlier, and was once one of the largest in the Middle East, but it has dwindled to just dozens in recent.

Baghdad today has a single synagogue and no rabbi. Many houses that once belonged to Jews are abandoned and dilapidated.

Despite its size, Baghdad’s tiny Jewish community recently embarked on a project to fund the restoration of the tomb of 7th century rabbi Isaac Gaon in the capital.

Another biblical restoration

Nahum’s tomb is not the only Jewish heritage site in Iraqi Kurdistan that ARCH has focused on.

In 2023, the group also completed work at the Synagogue of Ezekiel in the town of Shush, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Alqosh in the Zagros Mountains.

After hearing about the site in 2020, Tiffen traveled to the village and confirmed it was once an active synagogue.

“I was impressed by how desolate and isolated the area was,” he said, comparing the tiny hamlet of Shush to the relatively expansive town of Alqosh. “Unlike the Synagogue of Nahum, which is an impressive building in a large town, the synagogue in Shush was a humble, ancient building in a poor community of shepherds and farmers.”

According to Tiffen, local tradition holds that the Jews of Shush were primarily descendants of the tribe of Benjamin who had migrated to Kurdistan when the Assyrians destroyed the kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BCE.

“When we first arrived, locals consistently claimed that a general of King David was buried in the valley near the synagogue,” he said. “Regional oral history associates that location with Uriah the Hittite.”

The biblical Book of Samuel recounts how King David, after setting his sights on Bathsheba as a wife, orchestrated the death of her husband Uriah, a loyal soldier.

“The Jews of Shush were part of a network of Kurdish-speaking Jewish villages with strong ties to regional religious centers and trade routes,” Tiffen said. “Most families emigrated to Israel during the mass exodus of Iraqi Jews in the early 1950s, though older villagers in the region still remember their Jewish neighbors.”

Today, visitors to Shush can find the remains of an old church, an ancient mosque, and a Zoroastrian fire temple within a short distance of the synagogue.

“It’s as if thousands of years of faith in the region are captured on that one hillside,” Tiffen said.

After obtaining a $500,000 grant from the US State Department, ARCH worked with the same team that brought Nahum’s tomb back to life to restore the synagogue in Shush.

Tiffen said he was not sure whether any Jewish visitors had since made their way to the village.

“Shush is significantly more remote and less well-known than the synagogue in Alqosh,” he noted. “That said, we do know that people visit, and we think it’s likely that members of the Jewish community or people with ties to it have been back over the years.”

To Tiffen, the rehabilitation of Jewish historical sites in Alqosh and Shush contained a powerful message about the region’s future.

“The restoration of these two important sites took place with the support of Christians, Jews, and Muslims,” he said. “With the right partnerships and a shared sense of respect, projects like this can succeed. They offer hope — not just for preservation but for the future of coexistence, mutual recognition, and cultural resilience in a part of the world where all of that is desperately needed.”

AFP contributed to this report.