Joe Samuels

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Jun 8, 2016, 12:10 AM

Shavu‘ot in Baghdad: 75th anniversary of the Farhud

The festival of Shavu‘ot commemorates the time when the Jews received the Torah at Mount Sinai. It also marks the beginning of a new agricultural season, Hag Hakatsir (The Harvest Holiday). It comes seven weeks after Passover. This year...

Feb 19, 2016, 5:03 AM

The vanished Iraqi Jews

An ancient community lost to the anti-Semitic Farhud riots is memorialized in a treasure trove of Jewish artifacts

May 20, 2015, 6:20 PM

The continuous Nakba: Two Arab refugees

Picture Samir and Yusuf, two Arab teenagers, who faced the same Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe): the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.Both were uprooted from their homes and their countries, and lost their family assets. They both became homeless, penniless refugees; their...

Mar 12, 2014, 9:01 PM

Open letter to the Presbyterian Church USA from an Iraqi Jew

First-hand testimony refuting the claim that all was well for Jews in Arab lands until Zionism came along

Sep 10, 2013, 2:12 AM

Don’t Return the Iraqi Jewish Archive

My Arabic name is Yusuf Sasson Shumail. I was born in Taht Al Takia, in the old city of Baghdad, Iraq on December 31,1930. In 1941, I survived the anti-Jewish pogrom, known as the Farhud. During the Farhud, which...

Mar 13, 2013, 1:57 PM

My escape from Iraq

An invitation to Iraqi Jews to return stirs memories of a terrifying and irreversible escape

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About Me

Joseph Samuels was born in Taht El Takia, the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Iraq in 1930 and he now resides in Santa Monica, California. He is a member of the Speaker’s Bureau of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa)