Iraq opens first Jewish museum as country's ancient community nears extinction

Iraq opened its first Jewish museum, the Jewish Shamash Museum, in Baghdad this weekend at the site of the historic Shamash School. The museum houses documents, photographs, and religious artifacts. Over 1,000 visitors attended on opening day. Iraq's Jewish community, once 150,000 strong, now has only a handful of members left.

Iraq inaugurated its first museum dedicated entirely to Iraqi Jewish history, the Jewish Shamash Museum, in Baghdad this weekend. The museum is located on Al-Rashid Street at the site of the historic Shamash School, which was established by the Jewish community in 1928 and had 900 students by 1939. The building no longer housed the school after 1951, but the school continued elsewhere until around 1973. The museum displays official documents, school records, academic certificates, family photographs, traditional clothing, household utensils, and religious artifacts. Permanent screens show recorded interviews and testimonies from community members. Local reports indicated that over a thousand people visited on the first day. Iraq's Jewish community, which dates back 2,500 years to the Babylonian exile, once numbered between 100,000 and 150,000 and made up nearly a quarter of Baghdad's population before the 1941 Farhud pogrom. Following that, around 120,000 Iraqi Jews left for Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah from 1950 to 1951. Today, only a handful of Jews remain: between four and six in Baghdad and around 50 families in Iraqi Kurdistan. The community's leadership figure is Khalida Elyahu, a dentist who chairs the Administrative Committee for Iraqi Jews, which is legally responsible for the community's financial affairs and property. The committee oversaw the restoration of the shrine of Rabbi Isaac Gaon in 2025 and the Shamash School building. However, it is unclear who commissioned the restoration. JIMENA, a US nonprofit, noted that it met with non-Jewish Iraqis leading the preservation work and questioned the meaning of preserving a Jewish school that Jews cannot visit.