Once Neighbors, Now Strangers: Can Jews Walk Iraq’s Streets Again?

Imagine a Friday evening in Baghdad. The sun dips below the Tigris, casting long shadows on the city’s old Jewish quarter. The scent of freshly baked bread lingers in the air. A family gathers around a table somewhere, lighting candles, reciting blessings, and breaking challah. But this is not the Baghdad of today—a city that once was a memory trapped in time. And yet, as I sit in Mosul, my city, where once there were also Jewish homes and families, I find myself wondering: Could it ever return? Could Shabbat again be observed in the land that birthed the Babylonian Talmud?

For more than 2,500 years, Jewish life in Iraq was vibrant and woven into the fabric of its society. Baghdad was once a city where Jewish merchants, poets, and scholars thrived. The Jewish community was not just an essential part of Iraq—it was Iraq. From finance to medicine, from trade to literature, Jews contributed to every aspect of society. Families spoke Judeo-Arabic, and Hebrew songs were heard alongside Arabic poetry. They were neighbors, partners, friends. But history, like the river, has its course. By the mid-20th century, nearly all of Iraq’s Jews were gone—displaced, expelled, or fled in fear. Their synagogues emptied, their names erased from the records, and their stories barely whispered in the streets they once called home.

Borders are drawn in ink, but history is written in blood and longing. Officially, there is no law barring Jews from visiting Iraq. Yet, the ghosts of the past still stand at the gates. Israeli passports are banned. Those with Jewish names or heritage are often met with scrutiny. Decades of state-sponsored antisemitism have left scars deep in the national psyche. Fear lingers—on both sides. Generations of Iraqis have grown up never meeting a Jew, knowing them only as caricatures in textbooks or faceless figures in political rhetoric. To visit as a Jew is to walk among ruins, both physical and emotional. The few remnants of Jewish history in Iraq crumble under neglect. The great synagogue of Baghdad, once filled with the voices of prayer, is now a forgotten relic, its walls silent. The memories are there, but they are fragile, buried beneath the weight of wars, dictatorship, and collective amnesia.

I am a historian. I do not have the privilege of naivety. I know how history works. It is a force of its own, shaped by power, conflict, and survival. Hope alone does not rewrite the past. But still, I ask: Is it possible to dream? Can history shift enough for a Jew to put Iraq on their list of places to visit, not as a hidden pilgrim, not as a relic hunter searching for ghosts, but as a traveler? Could Mosul, my city, welcome them? Could Baghdad? Could Basra? Could there be a day when a Jewish family walks the banks of the Tigris, unafraid, stopping to buy sweets from a vendor, laughing in the warmth of the evening air, like their ancestors once did?

But wondering is not returning. And returning is not rebuilding. The past cannot be resurrected, only remembered. A Jewish presence in Iraq today would not look like the past; it would be something entirely new, something that would require not just acceptance but protection. The scars of history do not fade quickly, and the wounds of exile are not so quickly healed. Hatred is persistent, and history has taught Jews to be wary, to trust cautiously, and to remember what can happen when societies turn on them.

Could there be a Shabbat in Baghdad again, not as an act of defiance or a secret whispered in the dark, but as a natural rhythm of life? Could Jewish voices rise once more in prayer, without fear, without hiding? Could a Jewish family sit in a restaurant in Basra, speak Hebrew in the streets of Mosul, or visit the graves of their ancestors without hesitation? Or will Iraq remain a place where Jewish existence is spoken of only in the past tense? The possibility remains distant but not impossible. The questions linger, the echoes of prayers still vibrate in the air, and if there are people who dare to ask, perhaps one day, the answer will change.

Shabbat Shalom.