How a project reconnecting Middle Eastern Jews to their former homes became big in Saudi Arabia

ELHANAN MILLER interviewed Mizrahi Jews about their former lives in Baghdad, Aleppo and even Port Sudan, and struck a chord in the Arab world

A few months ago, Rabbi Elhanan Miller posted a video online of his interview with an elderly Jewish man who had fled Syria in the 1980s. The video, in which Mordechai Ezra shared his terrifying experience undergoing interrogation by Syrian intelligence officers before escaping to Israel, went viral.

Among the hundreds of thousands who viewed it on Miller’s YouTube channel and Facebook page was a Syrian refugee living in Germany.

“Like Mordechai Ezra, this young man – who was Kurdish – came from the city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria,” recounts Miller. “The story of this Jewish refugee resonated strongly with him, as it has with many Syrian refugees.  Not only did it receive many comments but it also generated direct email requests for Ezra’s contact information. After obtaining his interviewee’s permission, Miller was happy to oblige.

“Jews of the Middle East,” as this oral history project is known, was launched five years ago as a way of preserving the stories of Jews from communities in the Arab world on the verge of extinction. Thus far, Miller has posted some 70 interviews on his dedicated website – as well as on his YouTube channel and Facebook page – with Mizrahi Jews old enough to have memories to share. It follows that most of them are in their seventies and older.

“There are many positive and inspiring stories,” he adds, “but there are also stories about Jews who were persecuted and stripped of their citizenship in these countries.”

It would seem natural for Iraqis and Syrians to show interest in the fate of their former neighbours. But Saudis are also being drawn to stories of Middle Eastern Jews, although they have not hosted a proper Jewish community on their land in about 1400 years.

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How a project reconnecting Middle Eastern Jews to their former homes became big in Saudi Arabia (Haaretz)

Photo: An Iraqi Jewish family photographed in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Kharada, probably in the 1930s (Nir Kafri)