Baghdad Opens Museum Dedicated to Iraq’s Jewish History

Iraq’s first museum devoted exclusively to Iraqi Jewish history opened in Baghdad over the weekend, bringing together documents, personal possessions and recorded memories of a community that once numbered more than 100,000. Local news reports said more than 1,000 visitors attended on its opening day.

The Jewish Shamash Museum occupies the historic Shamash School site on Al-Rashid Street. Founded by the Jewish community in 1928, the prestigious school had 900 pupils by 1939. By 1951, it had moved out of the building, although it continued teaching at another location until approximately 1973. The museum initiative seeks to revive collective memories of Baghdad and its pluralistic past.

Its collections include official documents, school records and academic certificates associated with students and families who lived in the capital. Family photographs, traditional garments, household utensils and religious objects are also on display. Permanent screens show recorded interviews and other audiovisual material presenting community members’ accounts of their lives.

Jewish life in Iraq stretches back more than 2,500 years to the Babylonian exile. The community reached its peak in the early 1900s, when Jews represented nearly a quarter of Baghdad’s population. Before the Farhud pogrom in 1941, Iraq had an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 Jews. During that violence, Jewish residents were attacked, killed and robbed. Around 120,000 Iraqi Jews subsequently departed for Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah between 1950 and 1951.

Only a handful of Jews remain in the country, with estimates placing Baghdad’s Jewish population at between four and six people. Around 50 Jewish families are believed to live in Iraqi Kurdistan. Khalida Elyahu, a dentist working at a Baghdad health center, is referred to as the head of Iraq’s Jewish community and chairs the Administrative Committee for Iraqi Jews.

That legally recognized committee manages the community’s remaining financial matters, including communal property and religious endowments. It oversaw the restoration of Rabbi Isaac Gaon’s shrine in central Baghdad’s Qanbar Ali neighborhood in 2025. Local Arabic-language Iraqi reports also credited the committee with making restoration of the original Shamash School building possible.

Established on February 25, 1958, the committee remains the sole authority for the Jewish community’s financial affairs in Iraq, according to a January 5, 2026, federal court ruling seen by The Jerusalem Post. Who commissioned the school restoration remains unclear. Local media attributed its funding to the Jewish endowment, while the US nonprofit JIMENA said it had met Iraqis leading the preservation effort earlier in October.

JIMENA, which focuses on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, welcomed the school’s restoration in a statement on Saturday but questioned the meaning of preserving a Jewish school that Jews cannot visit. The organization warned that excluding descendants of the families connected to the site could turn preservation into a portrayal of Jewish absence instead of a renewal of Jewish presence.