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ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 642

Jews of Arab lands

A general view of the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue, at the Abrahamic Family House, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, February 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
April 4, 2025, 5:51 am
Jewish children in UAE targeted by antisemitism amid Gaza war, say parents
The local community has flourished since the 2020 Abraham Accords, but incidents in schools spark fear for some parents, while others say they feel safer than elsewhere in the Diaspora
By toi reporter
Abraham Hamra faces off with a pro-Palestinian protester in New York City. (Courtesy)
March 17, 2025, 3:39 am
Bucking stereotypes and fighting hatred, a Syrian Jewish ex-refugee lights up Instagram
An immigration lawyer by day, New Yorker Abraham Hamra has gained over 59,000 followers using his fluent Hebrew and Arabic to bridge gaps with adversaries and counter misinformation
By Cathryn J. Prince
Illustrative: People visit the Israeli stand at the Dubai Air Show in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, November 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell)
February 21, 2025, 9:55 pm
Money talks: Trade keeps Israel-UAE relations afloat despite Oct. 7 and Gaza war
Commerce between the two Abraham Accords signatories has grown 11% year over year, but maintaining ties has been a diplomatic tightrope
By toi reporter
Owner and proprietor Tzvi David makes baba qadrasi at Konditorei David, March 2024. (Courtesy)
March 23, 2024, 8:14 am
Heavenly Purim treats at this Iraqi Jewish confectionery are a window into a bygone era
Customers line up in Petah Tikva for an ancient nougat named for manna and a trip back in time, as they fear 70-year-old Konditorei David may too soon be a thing of the past
By Eliyahu Freedman
Interior of the Meir Tweig Synagogue in Baghdad, Iraq, on January 7, 2022. (Sabah ARAR / AFP)
February 21, 2024, 1:38 am
Search this new list of Jewish family names from across the Middle East
Former Israeli ambassador Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch might be Ashkenazi himself, but his meticulous lists of names from ancient Cairo to Baghdad have earned him the title of ‘genius’
By Asaf Elia-Shalev
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli (2nd-R) and Tourism and Antiquities Minister Ahmed Issa (3rd-R) touring around the newly-restored 19th century Jewish synagogue of Ben Ezra in Coptic Cairo on August 31, 2023. (Photo by Egypt's Prime Minister Office / AFP)
December 22, 2023, 3:52 pm
Historic synagogue creates tension between Egypt’s government and few remaining Jews
The antiquities ministry has exerted control over the 1,200-year-old house of prayer it paid to renovate. Now the tiny community fears it doesn’t respect their ownership of the site
By David I. Klein
Clockwise from left: Victor Sassoon at a horse race in 1953 (Sassoon Papers and Photographs, DeGolyer Library, SMU/ Random House); A hospital built by David Sassoon for the city of Pune, circa 1855-1862. (Public domain); David Sassoon (seated) and his sons Elias David Sassoon, Albert Abdallah David Sassoon, and Sassoon David Sassoon. (Public domain)
November 26, 2022, 11:05 am
The rise and fall of the opium-fueled Sassoon dynasty, the ‘Rothschilds of the East’
In ‘Sassoon,’ Prof. Joseph Sassoon tells how his distant family of Baghdadi Jews fled to India and built an empire on the legal narcotics trade, hobnobbing with the British royals
By Robert Philpot
Olga stands with her husband Daoud Cemel's 90-year-old mom, Adile, in Antakya, Turkey. (David I. Klein/ JTA)
October 21, 2022, 9:04 pm
On the Turkish-Syrian border, a city’s last Jews watch the ending of an epoch
Antakya, known in antiquity as Antioch, has a Jewish community 2,300 years old and is mentioned in the Talmud, but a flight to urban areas has left just a dozen Jewish residents
By David I. Klein
A Jewish wedding in Baghdad, date unknown. (courtesy/JIMENA)
April 23, 2021, 8:49 pm
Is your name on this list? Your Jewish roots may be in Cairo, Baghdad or nearby
Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch unveils a painstaking compilation of late 19th-century men who managed to evade Ottoman conscription, among the few available records of bygone communities
By Asaf Shalev
Clockwise from top left: A man outside the mass grave of Jews killed in the Farhud (public domain); center: an undated recent photo of Daniel and Shulamit Sasson; the Diwaniya ghetto, Sasson's grandfather's house (both photos courtesy); Iraqi Jews arriving at Lod Airport in Israel, May 1, 1951 (GPO / BRAUNER TEDDY); a monument in Ramat Gan to Jews slain in the Farhud and in violence in the 1960s (CC-BY-2.5/ Dr. Avishai Teicher)
March 3, 2021, 12:44 am
85-year-old Israeli testifies to Nazi-inspired pogrom that massacred Iraqi Jewry
Iraqi-born Daniel Sasson recounts firsthand how in the early 1940s, Hitler-emulating dictator Rashid Ali al-Gaylani sent Jews to ghettos and firing squads in the Middle East
By Lynette Hacopian
Jewish children dressed up to celebrate the Purim holiday in Sudan, 1950. (Courtesy Tales of Jewish Khartoum)
October 31, 2020, 3:35 pm
Exiled Jews would ‘love’ to see Sudan again, if given chance via new Israel ties
UK-based Tales of Jewish Sudan website founder Daisy Abboudi talks about tiny community’s rich but short history, in which all her grandparents played a part
By Yaakov Schwartz
Known only as Mosul Eye, an anonymous blogger documenting Islamic State’s atrocities, Iraq's Omar Mohammed reveals his identity in Europe on December 5, 2017. (AP Photo)
September 11, 2020, 4:09 pm
The man who risked everything to report from IS-controlled Mosul
Under alias ‘Mosul Eye,’ historian Omar Mohammed used Twitter and blogs to document beheadings, torture in his Iraqi hometown before fleeing in 2017. His work continues from Paris
By Shaul Adar
Stephen Bush, the new chairman for the British Board of Deputies' Commission on Racial Inclusivity, standing in front of the House of Commons in Westminster, July 15, 2020. (Jenni Frazer/ Times of Israel)
July 24, 2020, 9:20 am
Meet the new head of UK Jewry’s first-of-its-kind racial equality commission
As US-inspired racial justice protests sweep the world, the British Board of Deputies assigns Stephen Bush to listen to British Jews of color and implement policy change
By Jenni Frazer
Psalm 1 from the Zechariah Ben 'Anan Codex, rediscovered in 2017 by Israeli scholar Prof. Yoram Meital in a Cairo synagogue. (Yoram Meital)
February 24, 2020, 3:58 pm
Lost 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible found on dusty Cairo synagogue shelf
While attempting to document Egyptian synagogues, an Israeli historian stumbles upon a massive, well-preserved 616-page codex that was written in 1028
By Amanda Borschel-Dan
Names of deceased relatives from Alexandria are read out inside the newly renovated Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria, Egypt, February 14, 2020. (David Lisbona)
February 15, 2020, 4:00 pm
Homecoming: Alexandria synagogue hosts Egypt’s largest Jewish prayers in decades
180 members of Egyptian-Jewish Diaspora return to fete renovated Eliyahu Hanavi shul, even as country’s tiny Jewish community prepares for a Jew-free future
By Floris Bosscher
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