People of the Pod

Filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, in conversation with AJC’s Director of Contemporary Jewish Life Dr. Laura Shaw Frank, join us this week to discuss their groundbreaking historical documentary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” This latest installment from the acclaimed filmmaker, which debuted this past Sunday on PBS, explores America’s reaction – or lack thereof – to the Nazi genocide as it was unfolding in Europe as part of a critical addition to our understanding of the past. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Ken Burns and Lynn Novick ___ Show Notes: Watch “The U.S. and the Holocaust”  How to Combat Holocaust Trivialization Moving Toward Never Again: State of Holocaust Education in the United States Listen to our latest podcast episode: Noa Tishby on the Abraham Accords: The Middle East Realizes Israel is Not the Enemy Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

Israeli-American actress Noa Tishby didn’t set out to be Israel’s first special envoy for combating antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel. But since being appointed by then-Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in April 2022, Tishby has been a powerful voice when it comes to combating hatred against Jews and misinformation about Israel. Amid the paperback release of her book "Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth," Tishby joins us to discuss the impact of the Abraham Accords two years on, how she’s raising her son to love Israel, and why she doesn’t view antisemitism as a “problem to solve.” ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Noa Tishby ___ Show Notes: To register for Global Forum 2023, visit AJC.org/GlobalForum "Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth," By Noa Tishby Listen to our latest podcast episode: Here’s Why All of Society Must Take Action Against Antisemitism Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

It is no secret that antisemitism is on the rise in the United States. American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) 2021 State of Antisemitism in America report revealed that 90% of Jewish respondents believe antisemitism is a problem. Until now, there has not been a single resource for American society to tackle the world’s oldest hatred. In a just-released mobilization tool, AJC’s Call to Action Against Antisemitism in America highlights a path forward for all sectors of society, including government, corporations, the media, college campuses, and more. Listen as Holly Huffnagle, AJC’s U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism, breaks down this resource and explains why addressing antisemitism requires a bold, targeted, and cohesive strategy to understand, respond to, and prevent it. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Holly Huffnagle ___ Show Notes: Learn more about AJC’s Call to Action Against Antisemitism: ajc.org/call-to-action Check out season 1 of The Forgotten Exodus: ajc.org/forgottenexodus Listen to our latest podcast episode: What a Restored Deal with Iran Could Mean for Israel and the Entire Middle East Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid has voiced sharp criticism of reports claiming that the final text of a restored Iranian nuclear deal will soon be accepted by Tehran and Washington, reigniting debate about key components of the nuclear deal - sanctions against Iran’s energy exports, IAEA monitoring, unfreezing blocked Iranian assets, among others - and whether the United States should even be negotiating with Iran in the first place. Fresh off a recent escalation with the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, Israel has been vocal with the Biden administration about these concerns as well as Iran’s continued malign behavior. Behnam Ben Taleblu,, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), joins AJC Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer Jason Isaacson to break down the specifics of the emerging deal and explain why the nuclear threat is only one element of the broader danger posed by Iran.  ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Jason Isaacson and Behnam Ben Taleblu ___ Show Notes: For more Iran news and analysis, visit AJC.org/Iran Listen to our latest podcast episode: BDS on Campus: What Should Jewish Students Expect?  Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.  

Natalie Kahn, a Jewish student at Harvard University and editor at The Harvard Crimson, was stunned late last spring when the editorial board of the campus newspaper that had been so central to her college experience had endorsed the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Jeffrey Greenberg, AJC’s Assistant Director of Campus Affairs, said that Natalie’s feelings of betrayal are an increasingly common experience for pro-Israel college students. While BDS has had numerous setbacks and even been outlawed by many states and countries, on campus it has seen more success, where it is framed as a social justice opportunity to fight for an oppressed minority, playing on the emotions of students who aren’t fully informed. Joined by guest host Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman, Senior Director of AJC’s Alexander Young Leadership Department, Natalie and Jeffrey discuss what Jewish and pro-Israel students can expect as they head back to campus this fall. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Natalie Kahn and Jeffrey Greenberg ___ Show Notes: I Am a Crimson Editor and I Stand with Israel - oped by Natalie Kahn Learn more about AJC’s work in Campus Affairs Listen to our latest podcast episode: Walter Russell Mead: Debunking Myths and Misconceptions About the U.S.-Israel Relationship Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

Today, Israel is one of America’s top global allies. How did this relationship develop? Why does this alliance have such widespread support in America? To answer these questions and more, Walter Russell Mead, Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at the Hudson Institute and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, joins guest host, Melanie Maron Pell, AJC’s chief field operations officer, to discuss his latest book, “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People.” In their discussion, we delve into what fuels America and Israel’s alliance, debunk myths about the relationship, including antisemitic tropes and memes, and why it’s important not to take it for granted. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Melanie Maron Pell and Walter Russel Mead ___ Show Notes: The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People by Walter Russell Mead Listen to our latest podcast episode: Operation Breaking Dawn: Analyzing and Assessing the Latest Gaza Conflict Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

One of the top Jewish podcasts in the U.S., American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) The Forgotten Exodus, is the first-ever narrative podcast to focus exclusively on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. In this week’s episode, we feature Jews from Egypt.   In the first half of the 20th century, Egypt went through profound social and political upheavals culminating in the rise of President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his campaign of Arabization, creating an oppressive atmosphere for the country’s Jews, and leading almost all to flee or be kicked out of the country. Hear the personal story of award-winning author André Aciman as he recounts the heart-wrenching details of the pervasive antisemitism during his childhood in Alexandria and his family’s expulsion in 1965, which he wrote about in his memoir Out of Egypt, and also inspired his novel Call Me by Your Name.  Joining Aciman is Deborah Starr, a professor of Near Eastern and Jewish Studies at Cornell University, who chronicles the history of Egypt’s Jewish community that dates back millennia, and the events that led to their erasure from Egypt’s collective memory. Aciman’s modern-day Jewish exodus story is one that touches on identity, belonging, and nationality: Where is your home when you become a refugee at age 14? Be sure to follow The Forgotten Exodus before the next episode drops on August 22. ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  Rampi Rampi, Aksaray'in Taslari, Bir Demet Yasemen by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. “Middle Eastern Arabic Oud”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989 ___ Episode Transcript: ANDRÉ ACIMAN: I've lived in New York for 50 years. Is it my home? Not really. But Egypt was never going to be my home. It had become oppressive to be Jewish. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience.  This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: leaving Egypt. Author André Aciman can’t stand Passover Seders. They are long and tedious. Everyone gets hungry long before it’s time to eat. It’s also an unwelcome reminder of when André was 14 and his family was forced to leave Egypt – the only home he had ever known. On their last night there, he recounts his family gathered for one last Seder in his birthplace. ANDRÉ: By the time I was saying goodbye, the country, Egypt, had essentially become sort of Judenrein.  MANYA:  Judenrein is the term of Nazi origin meaning “free of Jews”. Most, if not all of the Jews, had already left. ANDRÉ: By the time we were kicked out, we were kicked out literally from Egypt, my parents had already had a life in Egypt. My mother was born in Egypt, she had been wealthy. My father became wealthy. And of course, they had a way of living life that they knew they were abandoning. They had no idea what was awaiting them. They knew it was going to be different, but they had no sense. I, for one, being younger, I just couldn't wait to leave. Because it had become oppressive to be Jewish. As far as I was concerned, it was goodbye. Thank you very much. I’m going. MANYA: André Aciman is best known as the author whose novel inspired the Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name – which is as much a tale of coming to terms with being Jewish and a minority, as it is an exquisite coming of age love story set in a villa on the Italian Riviera.  What readers and moviegoers didn’t know is that the Italian villa is just a stand-in. The story’s setting– its distant surf, serpentine architecture, and lush gardens where Elio and Oliver’s romance blooms and Elio’s spiritual awakening unfolds – is an ode to André’s lost home, the coastal Egyptian city of Alexandria.  There, three generations of his Sephardic family had rebuilt the lives they left behind elsewhere as the Ottoman Empire crumbled, two world wars unfolded, a Jewish homeland was born, and nationalistic fervor swept across the Arab world and North Africa. There, in Alexandria, his family had enjoyed a cosmopolitan city and vibrant Jewish home. Until they couldn’t and had to leave.  ANDRÉ: I would be lying if I said that I didn't project many things lost into my novels. In other words, to be able to re-experience the beach, I created a beach house. And that beach house has become, as you know, quite famous around the world. But it was really a portrait of the beach house that we had lost in Egypt.  And many things like that, I pilfer from my imagined past and dump into my books. And people always tell me, ‘God, you captured Italy so well.’ Actually, that was not Italy, I hate to tell you. It was my reimagined or reinvented Egypt transposed into Italy and made to come alive again. MANYA: Before he penned Call Me By Your Name, André wrote his first book, Out of Egypt, a touching memoir about his family’s picturesque life in Alexandria, the underlying anxiety that it could always vanish and how, under the nationalization effort led by Egypt’s President Gamel Abdel Nassar, it did vanish. The memoir ends with the events surrounding the family’s last Passover Seder before they say farewell.   ANDRÉ: This was part of the program of President Nasser, which was to take, particularly Alexandria, and turn it into an Egyptian city, sort of, purified of all European influences. And it worked.  As, by the way, and this is the biggest tragedy that happens to, particularly to Jews, is when a culture decides to expunge its Jews or to remove them in one way or another, it succeeds. It does succeed. You have a sense that it is possible for a culture to remove an entire population. And this is part of the Jewish experience to accept that this happens. MANYA: Egypt did not just expunge its Jewish community. It managed to erase Jews from the nation’s collective memory. Only recently have people begun to rediscover the centuries of rich Jewish history in Egypt, including native Egyptian Jews dating back millennia. In addition, Egypt became a destination for Jews expelled from Spain in the 15th Century. And after the Suez Canal opened in 1869, a wave of more Jews came from the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and Greece. And at the end of the 19th Century, Ashkenazi Jews arrived, fleeing from European pogroms. DEBORAH STARR: The Jewish community in Egypt was very diverse. The longest standing community in Egypt would have been Arabic speaking Jews, we would say now Mizrahi Jews. MANYA: That’s Deborah Starr, Professor of Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature and Film at Cornell University. Her studies of cosmopolitan Egypt through a lens of literature and cinema have given her a unique window into how Jews arrived and left Egypt and how that history has been portrayed. She says Jews had a long history in Egypt through the Islamic period and a small population remained in the 19th century. Then a wave of immigration came. DEBORAH: We have an economic boom in Egypt. Jews start coming from around the Ottoman Empire, from around the Mediterranean, emigrating to Egypt from across North Africa. And so, from around 5,000 Jews in the middle of the 19th century, by the middle of the 20th century, at its peak, the Egyptian Jews numbered somewhere between 75 and 80,000. So, it was a significant increase, and you know, much more so than just the birth rate would explain. MANYA: André’s family was part of that wave, having endured a series of exiles from Spain, Italy, and Turkey, before reaching Egypt. DEBORAH: Egypt has its independence movement, the 1919 revolution, which is characterized by this discourse of coexistence, that ‘we’re all in this together.’ There are images of Muslims and Christians marching together.  Jews were also supportive of this movement. There’s this real sense of a plurality, of a pluralist society in Egypt, that’s really evident in the ways that this movement is characterized. The interwar period is really this very vibrant time in Egyptian culture, but also this time of significant transition in its relationship to the British in the various movements, political movements that emerge in this period, and movements that will have a huge impact on the fate of the Jews of Egypt in the coming decades. MANYA: One of those movements was Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish state in the biblical homeland of the Jews. In 1917, during the First World War, the British government occupying Egypt at the time, issued a public statement of support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, still an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. That statement became known as the Balfour Declaration. DEBORAH: There was certainly evidence of a certain excitement about the Balfour Declaration of 1917. A certain amount of general support for the idea that Jews are going to live there, but not a whole lot of movement themselves. But we also have these really interesting examples of people who were on the record as supporting, of seeing themselves as Egyptians, as part of the anti-colonial Egyptian nationalism, who also gave financial support to the Jewish project in Palestine. And so, so there wasn't this sense of—you can't be one or the other. There wasn't this radical split. MANYA: Another movement unfolding simultaneously was the impulse to reclaim Egypt’s independence, not just in legal terms – Egypt had technically gained independence from the British in 1922 – but suddenly what it meant to be Egyptian was defined against this foreign colonial power that had imposed its will on Egypt for years and still maintained a significant presence. DEBORAH: We also see moves within Egypt, toward the ‘Egyptianization’ of companies or laws that start saying, we want to, we want to give priority to our citizens, because the economy had been so dominated by either foreigners or people who were local but had foreign nationality. And this begins to disproportionately affect the Jews.  Because so many of the Jews, you know, had been immigrants a generation or two earlier, some of them had either achieved protected status or, you know, arrived with papers from, from one or another of these European powers. MANYA: In 1929, Egypt adopted its first law giving citizenship to its residents. But it was not universally applied. By this time, the conflict in Palestine and the rise of Zionism had shifted how the Egyptian establishment viewed Jews.   DEBORAH: Particularly the Jews who had lived there for a really long time, some of whom were among the lower classes, who didn't travel to Europe every summer and didn't need papers to prove their citizenship, by the time they started seeing that it was worthwhile for them to get citizenship, it was harder for Jews to be approved. So, by the end, we do have a pretty substantial number of Jews who end up stateless. MANYA: Stateless. But not for long. In 1948, the Jewish state declared independence. In response, King Farouk of Egypt joined four other Arab nations in declaring war on the newly formed nation. And they lost.  The Arab nations’ stunning defeat in that first Arab-Israeli War sparked a clandestine movement to overthrow the Egyptian monarchy, which was still seen as being in the pocket of the British. One of the orchestrators of that plot, known as the Free Officers Movement, was Col. Gamel Abdel Nassar. In 1952, a coup sent King Farouk on his way to Italy and Nassar eventually emerged as president. The official position of the Nassar regime was one of tolerance for the Jews. But that didn’t always seem to be the case. DEBORAH: Between 1948 and ‘52, you do have a notable number of Jews who leave Egypt at this point who see the writing on the wall. Maybe they don't have very deep roots in Egypt, they've only been there for one or two generations, they have another nationality, they have someplace to go. About a third of the Jews who leave Egypt in the middle of the 20th century go to Europe, France, particularly. To a certain extent Italy. About a third go to the Americas, and about a third go to Israel. And among those who go to Israel, it's largely those who end up stateless. They have no place else to go because of those nationality laws that I mentioned earlier, have no choice but to go to Israel. MANYA: Those who stayed became especially vulnerable to the Nassar regime’s sequestration of businesses. Then in 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, a 120-mile-long waterway that connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea – that same waterway that created opportunities for migration in the region a century earlier. DEBORAH: The real watershed moment is the 1956 Suez conflict. Israel, in collaboration with France, and Great Britain attacks Egypt, the conflict breaks out, you know, the French and the British come into the war on the side of the Israelis. And each of the powers has their own reasons for wanting, I mean, Nasser's threatening Israeli shipping, and, threatening the security of Israel, the French and the British, again, have their own reasons for trying to either take back the canal, or, just at least bring Nassar down a peg. MANYA: At war with France and Britain, Egypt targeted and expelled anyone with French and British nationality, including many Jews, but not exclusively. DEBORAH: But this is also the moment where I think there's a big pivot in how Jews feel about being in Egypt. And so, we start seeing larger waves of emigration, after 1956. So, this is really sort of the peak of the wave of emigration.  MANYA: André’s family stayed. They already had endured a series of exiles. His father, an aspiring writer who copied passages by Marcel Proust into his diary, had set that dream aside to open a textile factory, rebuild from nothing what the family had lost elsewhere, and prepare young André to eventually take over the family business. He wasn’t about to walk away from the family fortune – again. DEBORAH: André Aciman’s story is quite, as I said, the majority of the Jewish community leaves in the aftermath of 1956. And his family stays a lot longer. So, he has incredible insights into what happens over that period, where the community has already significantly diminished. MANYA: Indeed, over the next nine years, the situation worsened. The Egyptian government took his father’s factory, monitored their every move, frequently called the house with harassing questions about their whereabouts, or knocked on the door to issue warrants for his father’s arrest, only to bring him in for more interrogation. As much as André’s father clung to life in Egypt, it was becoming a less viable option with each passing day. ANDRÉ: He knew that the way Egypt was going, there was no room for him, really. And I remember during the last two years, in our last two years in Egypt, there wAs constantly references to the fact that we were going to go, this was not lasting, you know, what are we going to do? Where do we think we should go? And so on and so forth. So, this was a constant sort of conversation we were having. MANYA: Meanwhile, young André encountered a level of antisemitism that scarred him deeply and shaped his perception of how the world perceives Jews. ANDRÉ: It was oppressive in good part because people started throwing stones in the streets. So, there was a sense of ‘Get out of here. We don't want you here.’ MANYA: It was in the streets and in the schools, which were undergoing an Arabization after the end of British rule, making Arabic the new lingua franca and antisemitism the norm. ANDRÉ: There's no question that antisemitism was now rooted in place. In my school, where I went, I went to a British school, but it had become Egyptian, although they taught English, predominantly English, but we had to take Arabic classes, in sort of social sciences, in history, and in Arabic as well. And in the Arabic class, which I took for many years, I had to study poems that were fundamentally anti-Jewish. Not just anti-Israeli, which is a big distinction that people like to make, it doesn't stick. I was reading and reciting poems that were against me. And the typical cartoon for a Jew was a man with a beard, big tummy, hook nose, and I knew ‘This is really me, isn't it? OK.’ And so you look at yourself with a saber, right, running through it with an Egyptian flag. And I'll never forget this. This was, basically I was told that this is something I had to learn and accept and side with – by the teachers, and by the books themselves.  And the irony of the whole thing is that one of the best tutors we had, was actually the headmaster of the Jewish school. He was Jewish in very sort of—very Orthodox himself. And he was teaching me how to recite those poems that were anti-Jewish. And of course, he had to do it with a straight face. MANYA: One by one, Jewish neighbors lost their livelihoods and unable to overcome the stigma, packed their bags and left. In his memoir, André recalls how prior to each family’s departure, the smell of leather lingered in their homes from the dozens of suitcases they had begun to pack. By 1965, the smell of leather began to waft through André’s home. ANDRÉ: Eventually, one morning, or one afternoon, I came back from school. And my father said to me, ‘You know, they don't want us here anymore.’ Those were exactly the words he used. ‘They don't want us here.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, they've expelled us.’  And I was expelled with my mother and my brother, sooner than my father was. So, we had to leave the country. We realized we were being expelled, maybe in spring, and we left in May. And so, for about a month or so, the house was a mess because there were suitcases everywhere, and people. My mother was packing constantly, constantly. But we knew we were going to go to Italy, we knew we had an uncle in Italy who was going to host us, or at least make life livable for us when we arrived. We had obtained Italian papers, obtained through various means. I mean, whatever. They're not exactly legitimate ways of getting a citizenship, but it was given to my father, and he took it. And we changed our last name from Ajiman, which is how it was pronounced, to Aciman because the Italians saw the C and assumed it was that. My father had some money in Europe already. So that was going to help us survive. But we knew my mother and I and my brother, that we were now sort of functionally poor. MANYA: In hindsight, André now knows the family’s expulsion at that time was the best thing that could have happened. Two years later, Israel trounced Egypt in the Six-Day War, nearly destroying the Egyptian Air Force, taking control of the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula, as well as territory from Egypt’s allies in the conflict, Syria and Jordan. The few remaining Jews in Egypt were sent to internment camps, including the chief rabbis of Cairo and Alexandria and the family of one of André’s schoolmates whose father was badly beaten. After three years in Italy, André’s family joined his mother’s sister in America, confirming once and for all that their life in Egypt was gone. ANDRÉ: I think there was a kind of declaration of their condition. In other words, they never overcame the fact that they had lost a way of life. And of course, the means to sustain that life was totally taken away, because they were nationalized, and had their property sequestered, everything was taken away from them. So, they were tossed into the wild sea. My mother basically knew how to shut the book on Egypt, she stopped thinking about Egypt, she was an American now. She was very happy to have become a citizen of the United States.  Whereas my father, who basically was the one who had lost more than she had, because he had built his own fortune himself, never overcame it. And so, he led a life of the exile who continues to go to places and to restaurants that are costly, but that he can still manage to afford if he watches himself. So, he never took cabs, he always took the bus. Then he lived a pauper’s life, but with good clothing, because he still had all his clothing from his tailor in Egypt. But it was a bit of a production, a performance for him.  MANYA: André’s father missed the life he had in Egypt. André longs for the life he could’ve had there. ANDRÉ: I was going to study in England, I was going to come back to Egypt, I was going to own the factory. This was kind of inscribed in my genes at that point. And of course, you give up that, as I like to say, and I've written about this many times, is that whatever you lose, or whatever never happened, continues to sort of sub-exist somewhere in your mind. In other words, it's something that has been taken away from you, even though it never existed.  MANYA: But like his mother, André moved on. In fact, he says moving on is part of the Jewish experience. Married with sons of his own, he now is a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, teaching the history of literary theory. He is also one of the foremost experts on Marcel Proust, that French novelist whose passages his father once transcribed in his diaries. André’s own novels and anthologies have won awards and inspired Academy Award-winning screenplays. Like Israel opened its doors and welcomed all of those stateless Egyptian Jews, America opened doors for André. Going to college in the Bronx after growing up in Egypt and Italy? That introduced him to being openly Jewish.  ANDRÉ: I went to Lehman College, as an undergraduate, I came to the States in September. I came too late to go to college, but I went to an event at that college in October or November, and already people were telling me they were Jewish.  You know, ‘I'm Jewish, and this and that,’ and, and so I felt ‘Oh, God, it's like, you mean people can be natural about their Judaism? And so, I began saying to people, ‘I'm Jewish, too,’ or I would no longer feel this sense of hiding my Jewishness, which came when I came to America. Not before. Not in Italy. Not in Egypt certainly. But the experience of being in a place that was fundamentally all Jewish, like being in the Bronx in 1968, was mind opening for me, it was: I can let everything down, I can be Jewish like everybody else. It's no longer a secret. I don't have to pretend that I was a Protestant when I didn't even know what kind of Protestant I was. As a person growing up in an antisemitic environment. You have many guards, guardrails in place, so you know how not to let it out this way, or that way or this other way. You don't speak about matzah. You don't speak about charoset. You don't speak about anything, so as to prevent yourself from giving out that you're Jewish. MANYA: Though the doors had been flung open and it felt much safer to be openly Jewish, André to this day cannot forget the antisemitism that poisoned his formative years. ANDRÉ: I assume that everybody's antisemitic at some point. It is very difficult to meet someone who is not Jewish, who, after they've had many drinks, will not turn out to be slightly more antisemitic than you expected. It is there. It's culturally dominant. And so, you have to live with this. As my grandmother used to say, I'm just giving this person time until I discover how antisemitic they are. It was always a question of time. MANYA: His family’s various displacements and scattered roots in Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, and now America, have led him to question his identity and what he calls home. ANDRÉ: I live with this sense of: I don't know where I belong. I don't know who I am. I don't know any of those things. What’s my flag? I have no idea. Where's my home? I don't know. I live in New York. I've lived in New York for 50 years. Is it my home? Not really. But Egypt was never going to be my home. MANYA: André knew when he was leaving Egypt that he would one day write a book about the experience. He knew he should take notes, but never did. And like his father, he started a diary, but it was lost. He started another in 1969.  After completing his dissertation, he began to write book reviews for Commentary, a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism and politics founded and published, at the time, by American Jewish Committee.  The editor suggested André write something personal, and that was the beginning of Out of Egypt. In fact, three chapters of his memoir, including The Last Seder, appeared in Commentary before it was published as a book in 1994.  André returned to Egypt shortly after its release. But he has not been back since, even though his sons want to accompany him on a trip. ANDRÉ: They want to go back, because they want to go back with me. Question is, I don't want to put them in danger. You never know. You never know how people will react to . . . I mean, I'll go back as a writer who wrote about Egypt and was Jewish. And who knows what awaits me? Whether it will be friendly, will it be icy and chilly. Or will it be hostile? I don't know. And I don't want to put myself there. In other words, the view of the Jews has changed. It went to friendly, to enemy, to friendly, enemy, enemy, friendly, and so on, so forth. In other words, it is a fundamentally unreliable situation.  MANYA: He also doesn’t see the point. It’s impossible to recapture the past. The pictures he sees don’t look familiar and the people he used to know with affection have died. But he doesn’t want the past to be forgotten. None of it. He wants the world to remember the vibrant Jewish life that existed in Cairo and Alexandria, as well as the vile hatred that drove all but a handful of Jews out of Egypt. Cornell Professor Deborah Starr says for the first time in many years, young Egyptians are asking tough questions about the Arabization of Egyptian society and how that affected Egyptian Jews. Perhaps, Israel and Zionism did not siphon Jewish communities from the Arab world as the story often goes. Perhaps instead, Israel offered a critical refuge for a persecuted community. DEBORAH: I think it's really important to tell the stories of Mizrahi Jews. I think that, particularly here we are speaking in English to an American audience, where the majority of Jews in North America are Ashkenazi, we have our own identity, we have our own stories. But there are also other stories that are really interesting to tell, and are part of the history of Jews in the 20th and 21st centuries. They're part of the Jewish experience. And so that's some of what has always motivated me in my research, and looking at the stories of coexistence among Jews and their neighbors in Egypt. MANYA: Professor Starr says the rise of Islamist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood has led Egyptians to harken back toward this period of tolerance and coexistence, evoking a sense of nostalgia. DEBORAH: The people are no longer living together. But it's worth remembering that past, it's worth reflecting on it in an honest way, and not, to look at the nostalgia and say: oh, look, these people are nostalgic about it, what is it that they're nostalgic for? What are some of the motivations for that nostalgia? How are they characterizing this experience? But also to look kind of critically on the past and understand, where things were working where things weren't and, and to tell the story in an honest way. MANYA: Though the communities are gone, there has been an effort to restore the evidence of Jewish life. Under Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Egypt’s president since 2014, there have been initiatives to restore and protect synagogues and cemeteries, including Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria, Maimonides’ original yeshiva in old Cairo, and Cairo’s vast Jewish cemetery at Bassatine. But André is unmoved by this gesture. ANDRÉ: In fact, I got a call from the Egyptian ambassador to my house here, saying, ‘We're fixing the temples and the synagogues, and we want you back.’ ‘Oh, that's very nice. First of all,’ I told him, ‘fixing the synagogues doesn't do anything for me because I'm not a religious Jew. And second of all, I would be more than willing to come back to Egypt, when you give me my money back.’ He never called me again. MANYA: Anytime the conversation about reparations comes up, it is overshadowed by the demand for reparations for Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel, even though their leaders have rejected all offers for a Palestinian state. André wishes the Arab countries that have attacked Israel time and again would invest that money in the welfare of Palestinian refugees, help them start new lives, and to thrive instead of using them as pawns in a futile battle.  He will always be grateful to HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, for helping his family escape, resettle, and rebuild their lives. ANDRÉ: We’ve made new lives for ourselves. We’ve moved on, and I think this is what Jews do all the time, all the time. They arrive or they’re displaced, kicked out, they refashion themselves. Anytime I can help a Jew I will. Because they've helped me, because it's the right thing to do for a Jew. If a Jew does not help another Jew, what kind of a Jew are you? I mean, you could be a nonreligious Jew as I am, but I am still Jewish.  And I realize that we are a people that has historically suffered a great deal, because we were oppressed forever, and we might be oppressed again. Who knows, ok? But we help each other, and I don't want to break that chain. MANYA: Egyptian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to André for sharing his story. You can read more in his memoir Out of Egypt and eventually in the sequel which he’s working on now about his family’s life in Italy after they left Egypt and before they came to America.  Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they had never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories.  Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions alive and memories alive as well. Call 212.891-1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don’t necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

On Friday, August 5, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched Operation Breaking Dawn in response to days of threats from the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) that it would attack Israel. The conflict, which lasted nearly three days, saw over 1,100 rockets launched towards Israel by PIJ. The IDF killed several high-ranking PIJ operatives and destroyed much of the terror group’s military capabilities. Listen to AJC Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer Jason Isaacson, in conversation with AJC Jerusalem Director Lt. Col. (res.) Avital Leibovich, analyze the latest conflict and the steps moving forward. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Jason Isaacson and Avital Leibovich ___ Show Notes: Photo credits: Kobi Alkotser/GPO Watch the full discussion: Briefing on the Situation in Israel - AJC Advocacy Anywhere Learn more about The Forgotten Exodus at AJC.org/ForgottenExodus Listen to our latest podcast episode: Behind the Scenes of AJC’s New Podcast Series The Forgotten Exodus Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.orgIf you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

Hear behind-the-scenes details about AJC’s new podcast series The Forgotten Exodus, featuring its host Manya Brachear Pashman and cartoonist and musician Carol Isaacs, who shares more about her family’s flight from rising antisemitism in Iraq, as depicted in her graphic memoir and animated film, The Wolf of Baghdad. The Forgotten Exodus, which has ranked number one on Apple’s Jewish podcast chart since it was launched on August 1, is the first-ever podcast series focused exclusively on the rich, yet little-known heritage of Jews from Arab nations and Iran. This discussion, hosted by AJC’s Dr. Saba Soomekh, highlights the importance of learning Mizrahi and Sephardic stories to better understand the Jewish experience.  ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Saba Soomekh, Carol Isaacs, and Manya Brachear Pashman ___ Show Notes: Learn more about The Forgotten Exodus at AJC.org/ForgottenExodus Watch the rest of the discussion: The Forgotten Exodus Leaving Iraq - AJC Advocacy Anywhere Listen to our latest podcast episode: James Carville and Leslie Sanchez on the Battle Between Extremists and Moderates in U.S. Politics Follow to People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

Listen to the premiere episode of a new limited narrative series from American Jewish Committee (AJC): The Forgotten Exodus. Each Monday, for the next six weeks, AJC will release a new episode of The Forgotten Exodus, the first-ever narrative podcast series to focus exclusively on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. This week’s episode focuses on Jews from Iraq. If you like what you hear, use the link below to subscribe before the next episode drops on August 8. Who are the Jews of Iraq? Why did they leave? And why do so many Iraqi Jews, even those born elsewhere, still consider Iraq their home?  Join us to uncover the answers to these questions through the inspiring story of Mizrahi Jewish cartoonist Carol Isaacs’ family. Feeling alienated growing up as the only Jew in school from an Arab-majority country, Carol turned her longing for Iraq and the life her family left behind into a gripping graphic memoir, The Wolf of Baghdad.  Meanwhile, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, delves into the fascinating, yet the little-known history of Iraqi Jewry, from its roots in the region 2,600 years ago, to the antisemitic riots that led them to seek refuge in Israel, England, and the U.S. ____ Show Notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about The Forgotten Exodus here.  Song credits: Thanks to Carol Isaacs and her band 3yin for permission to use The Wolf of Bagdad soundtrack. Portions of the following tracks can be heard throughout the episode:  01 Dhikrayyat (al Qasabji)  02 Muqaddima Hijaz (trad)  03 Che Mali Wali (pt 1) (trad) 05 Fog el Nakhal (trad)  11 Balini-b Balwa (trad)  12 Al Effendi (al Kuwaiti)  14 Dililol (trad)  15 Che Mail Wali (pt 2) (trad)  Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837; “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989.; “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833.   ____ Episode Transcript: CAROL ISAACS: A lot of businesses were trashed, houses were burnt. It was an awful time. And that was a kind of time when the Jews of Iraq had started to think, ‘Well, maybe this isn't our homeland after all.’ MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: Welcome to the premiere of the first ever podcast series devoted exclusively to an overlooked episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. Some fled antisemitism, mistreatment, and pogroms that sparked a refugee crisis like no other, as persecuted Jewish communities poured from numerous directions.  Others sought opportunities for their families or followed the calling to help create a Jewish state. In Israel, America, Italy, wherever they landed, these Jews forged new lives for themselves and future generations. This series explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. Each week, we will share the history of one Jewish family with roots in the Arab world. Each account is personal and different. Some include painful memories or elegies for what could’ve been. Others pay homage to the conviction of their ancestors to seek a life where they were wanted. To ground each episode, we rely on a scholar to untangle the complexities. Some of these stories have never been told because they wished to leave the past in the past. For those of you who, like me, before this project began, never read this chapter in Jewish history, we hope you find this series enlightening. And for those who felt ignored for so many decades, we hope these stories honor your families’ legacies. Join us as we explore stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience.  I’m your host, Manya Brachear Pashman, and this is The Forgotten Exodus.   Today’s episode: Leaving Iraq.   CAROL: All my life, I've lived in two worlds – one inside the family home, which is a very Jewish world, obviously, but also tinged with Iraqi customs like Iraqi food, a language we spoke—Judeo Arabic. So, I've always known that I’m not just British. I've lived in these two worlds, the one at home, and then the one at school. And then later on at work, which was very English. I went to a terribly English school, for example, there were about a thousand girls. Of those thousand girls, 30 were Jewish, and I was the only Mizrahi, the only non-European Jew. So, there's always been that knowing that I’m not quite fitting into boxes. Do you know what I mean? But I never quite knew which box I fit into. MANYA: Carol Isaacs makes her living illustrating the zeitgeists of our time, poking fun at the irony all around us, reminding us of our common quirks. And she fits it all into a tiny box. You might not know Carol by her given name, but you’ve probably seen her pen name, scrawled in the corner of her cartoons published by The New Yorker and Spectator magazines: TS McCoy, or The Surreal McCoy.  Carol is homesick for a home she never knew. Born and raised Jewish in London, she grew up hearing stories of her parents’ life in Baghdad. How her family members learned to swim in the Tigris River using the bark of palm trees as life preservers, how they shopped in the city sooks for dates to bake b’ab’e b’tamer.  Millions of Jews have called Iraq home for more than 2,600 years, including many of their children and grandchildren who have never been there, but long to go. Like Carol, they were raised with indelible stories of daily life in Mosul, Basra, Baghdad – Jewish life that ceased to exist because it ceased to be safe. CAROL: My mother remembered sitting with her mother and her grandmother and all the family in the cellar, going through every single grain of rice for chometz. Now, if you imagine that there were eight days of Passover, I don't know 10, 12 people in the household, plus guests, they ate rice at least twice a day. You can imagine how much rice you'd have to go through. So little things like that, you know, that would give you a window into another world completely, that they remembered with so much fondness.  And it's been like that all my life. I've had this nostalgia for this, this place that my parents used to . . . now and again they’d talk about it, this place that I've never visited and I've never known. But it would be wonderful to go and just smell the same air that my ancestors smelled, you know, walk around the same streets in the Jewish Quarter. The houses are still there, the old Jewish Quarter. They're a bit run down. Well, very run down. MANYA: Carol turned her longing for Iraq and the life her family left behind into a graphic memoir and animated film called The Wolf of Baghdad. Think Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the graphic novel about the Holocaust, but for Jews in Iraq who on the holiday of Shavuot in 1941 suffered through a brutal pogrom known as the Farhud, followed by decades of persecution, and ultimately, expulsion. Her research for the book involved conversations with family members who had never spoken about the violence and hatred they witnessed. They had left it in the past and now looked toward the future. There’s no dialogue in the book either. The story arc simply follows the memories. CAROL: They wanted to look forward. So, it was really gratifying that they did tell me these things. ‘Cause when my parents came, for example, they came to the UK, it was very much ‘Look forward. We are British now.’ My father was the quintessential city gent. He'd go to the office every day in the city of London with his pinstriped suit, and a rose plucked from the front garden, you know, a copy of The Guardian newspaper under his arm. He was British. We listened to classical music. We didn't listen to the music of my heritage. It was all Western music in the house. MANYA: But her father’s Muslim and Christian business associates in Iraq visited regularly, as long as they could safely travel.    CAROL: On a Sunday, every month, our house would turn into little Baghdad. They would come and my mother would feed them these delicacies that she spent all week making and they’d sit and they’d talk. MANYA: As Carol said, she had heard only fond memories throughout her childhood because for millennia, Jews in Iraq lived in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors.  CAROL: Jews have always lived in Mesopotamia, lived generally quite well. There was always the dimmi status, which is a status given to minorities. For example, they had to pay a certain tax, had to wear certain clothing. Sometimes, they weren't allowed to build houses higher than their neighbor, because they weren't allowed to be above their neighbor. They couldn't ride a horse, for example, Jews. I mean, small little rules, that you were never quite accorded full status. But then when the Brits arrived in 1917, things became a bit easier. MANYA: But 20-some years later, life for Jews took a turn for the worse. That sudden and dramatic turning point in 1941 was called The Farhud. ZVI BEN-DOR BENITE: Jews have been living in Iraq for thousands of years. If we start with the Farhud, we are starting in the middle of the story, in fact, in the middle of the end.” MANYA: That’s Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, a professor of history and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. The son of Iraqi Jewish parents who migrated to Israel in the early 1950s, he carries in his imagination maps of old Jewish neighborhoods in Mosul and Baghdad, etched by his parents’ stories of life in the old country. He shares Carol’s longing to walk those same streets one day.  ZVI: Iraqis, even those who were born in Israel, still self-identify as Iraqis and still consider that home to a certain extent – an imaginary home, but home. And you can say the same thing, and even more so, for people who were born there and lived there at the time. So here’s the thing: if I go there, I would be considering myself a returnee. But it would be my first time. MANYA: As a Jew, Zvi knows the chances of his returning are slim. To this day, Iraq remains the only Arab country that has never signed a ceasefire with Israel since Arab nations declared war on the Jewish state upon its creation in 1948. Jews are not safe there. Really, no one has been for a while. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, ISIS, and general civil unrest have made modern-day Iraq dangerous for decades. The region is simply unstable. The centuries leading up to the Farhud in 1941 were no different. The territory originally known as Mesopotamia flipped from empire to empire, including Babylonian, Mongol, Safavids, Ottoman, British. Just to name a few. But during those centuries, Iraq was historically diverse – home to Muslims, Jews, Assyrian Christians. Yes, Jews were a minority and faced some limitations. But that didn’t change the fact that they loved the place they called home.  ZVI: We zoom in on the Farhud because it is a relatively unique event. Jews in Iraq were highly integrated, certainly those who lived in the big cities and certainly those who lived in Baghdad. Few reasons to talk about this integration. First of all, they spoke Arabic. Second of all, they participated in the Iraqi transition to modernity. In many ways, the Jewish community even spearheaded Iraqi society’s transition into modernity. Of course, you know, being a minority, it means that not everything is rosy, and I'm not in any way trying to make it as a rosy situation. But if you compare it to the experiences of European Jews, certainly Europeans in the Pale of Settlement or in Eastern Europe, it's a much lovelier situation. Many Jews participate in Iraqi politics in different ways. Many Jews joined the Communist Party, in fact, lead the Communist Party to a certain extent. Others join different parties that highly identify in terms of Iraqi nationalism. MANYA: Very few Iraqi Jews identified with the modern Zionist movement, a Jewish nationalist movement to establish a state on the ancestral homeland of the Jews, then known as Palestine. Still, Iraqi Jews were not immune from Arab hostility toward the notion of Jewish self-determination. Adding to that tension: the Nazi propaganda that poured out of the German embassy in Baghdad.  CAROL: Mein Kampf was translated into Arabic and published in all the newspapers there. There were broadcasts coming from Radio Berlin, in Arabic, politicizing Islam and generally manipulating certain texts from the Quran, to show that Jews were the enemies of Islam. So, there was this constant drip, drip of antisemitism. ZVI: Another factor is, of course, the British. There is an anti-British government in Baghdad at the time, during the period of someone who went down in history as a Nazi collaborator, Rashid Ali. And Rashid Ali's been removed just before the British retake Iraq. We should remember that basically, even though Iraq is a kind of constitutional monarchy, the British run the show behind the scenes for a very, very long time. So, there is a little bit of a hiatus over several months with Rashid Ali, and then when he is removed, you know, people blame the Jews for that. MANYA: On the afternoon of June 1, 1941, Jews in Baghdad prepared to celebrate the traditional Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot. Violent mobs descended on the celebrants. CAROL: In those two days the mobs ran riot and took it all out on the Jews. We don't, to this day, we don't know how many Jews died. Conservative estimates say about 120. We think it was in the thousands. Certainly, a lot of businesses were trashed, houses were burnt, women raped, mutilated, babies killed. It was an awful time. And that was a kind of time when the Jews of Iraq had started to think, ‘Well, maybe this isn't our homeland after all.’ MANYA: The mobs were a fraction of the Iraqi population. Many Muslim residents protected their Jewish neighbors.  CAROL: One of my relations said that during the Farhud, the pogrom, that her neighbors stood guard over their house, Muslim neighbors, and told the mobs that they wouldn't let them in that these people are our family, our friends. They wouldn't let them in. They looked after each other, they protected each other. MANYA: But the climate in Iraq was no longer one in which Jews could thrive. Now they just hoped to survive. In the mid-to-late 40s, Carol’s father, who worked for the British army during World War II, left for the United Kingdom and, as the eldest son, began to bring his family out one by one. Then came 1948. Israel declared independence and five Arab nations declared war.  ZVI: So, Iraq sent soldiers to fight as part of the Arab effort in Palestine, and they began to come back in coffins. I mean, there's a sense of defeat. Three deserters, three Iraqi soldiers that deserted the war, and crossed the desert back to Iraq, and they landed up in Mosul on the Eve of Passover in 1949. And they knocked on the door of one of my uncles. And they said, they were hosted by this Jewish family. And they were telling the Jews, who were their hosts that evening, about the war in Palestine, and about what was going on and so on. This is just an isolated case, but the point is that you know, it raises the tension in the population, and it raises the tensions against Jews tenfold. But there's no massive movement of Iraqi Jews, even though the conditions are worsening. In other words, it becomes uneasy for someone to walk in the street as a Jew. There is a certain sense of fear that is going on. And then comes the legal action. MANYA: That legal action, transacted with the state of Israel and facilitated by Zionist operatives, set the most significant exodus in motion. In 1950, the Iraqi government gave its Jewish citizens a choice. Renounce their Iraqi citizenship, take only what fits in a suitcase, and board a flight to Israel, or stay and face an uncertain future. The offer expired in a year, meaning those who stayed would no longer be allowed to leave. ZVI: If you're a Jew in Iraq in 1950, you are plunged into a very, very cruel dilemma. First of all, you don't know what the future holds. You do know that the present, after 1948, suggests worsening conditions. There is a sense that, you know, all the Jews are sort of a fifth column. All of them are associated with Zionism, even though you know, the Zionist movement is actually very small. There are certain persecutions of Zionists and communists who are Jews as well. And, you know, there have been mass arrests of them, you know, particularly of the young, younger Jewish population, so you don't know. And then the state comes in and says, ‘Look, you get one year to stay or to leave. If you leave, you leave. If you stay, you're gonna get stuck here.’ Now, just think about presenting someone with that dilemma after 1935 and the Nuremberg Laws, after what happened in Europe. MANYA: In all, 120,000 Iraqi Jews leave for Israel over nine months – 90% of Iraqi Jewry. For the ten percent who stayed, they became a weak and endangered minority. Many Iraqis, including the family on Carol’s mother’s side, eventually escaped to America and England.  CAROL: My mother and my father were separated by a generation. My father was much older, 23 years older than my mother. So, he had a different view of life in Baghdad. When he was around, it was generally very peaceful. The Jews were allowed to live quite, in peace with their neighbors. But with my mother's generation and younger, it was already the beginning – the rot had started to set in. So, she had a different view entirely. CAROL: My grandmother, maternal grandmother, was the last one to come out of our family, to come out of Iraq. She left in ‘63. And my dad managed to get her out. MANYA: After Israel defeated another Arab onslaught in 1967, thousands more fled. ZVI: This was a glorious community, a large community, which was part of the fabric of society for centuries, if not millennia. And then, in one dramatic day, in a very, very short period, it just basically evaporated. And what was left is maybe 10 percent, which may be elite, that decided to risk everything by staying. But even they, at the end, had to leave.  MANYA: Remember, Carol said she was one of 30 Jewish girls at her school, but the only Mizrahi Jew. The term Mizrahi, which means “Eastern” in Hebrew, refers to the diaspora of descendants of Jewish communities from Middle Eastern countries such as: Iraq, Iran, and Yemen, and North African countries such as: Egypt, Libya, and Morocco. CAROL: It's been interesting. A lot of people didn't even know that there were Jews living in Arab lands. I mean, for all my life, I've been told, ‘Oh, you're Jewish, you speak Yiddish, you come from Poland. You eat smoked salmon and bagels. You say ‘oy vey,’ which is great if you do all those things and you do come from Eastern Europe, but I don't. Almost 1 million Jews of Arab lands, nobody knows about what happened to them, that they were ethnically cleansed, removed from their homes, and dispersed across the world. It's our truth. And it's our history and make of it what you will, just add it to other family histories that we know. MANYA: Carol has discovered that even Iraqis did not know of their country’s rich Jewish past, nor the fate of its Jewish citizens. Since the animated version of The Wolf of Baghdad premiered at the Israeli and Iraqi embassies in London, accompanied by Carol’s accordion and other musicians playing its Judeo-Arabic soundtrack, Iraqis in the audience have been moved to tears.  CAROL: At one Q&A, after we did a performance, one Iraqi gentleman stood up at the front. He was crying. He said, ‘I'm really sorry for what we did to you. I'm so sorry.’ And that was immensely moving for me. It was like, well, you know what? We're talking now. It's wonderful. We can sit down together. We can talk in a shared language. We can talk about our shared culture, and we've got more that ties us together than separates us. We've got more in common, right? So, I'm always looking for that, that kind of positive, and so far it's come back to me, multiplied by a million, which has been brilliant. The truth is coming to light, that people know that the Jews of Iraq contributed so much, not just culturally but also socially, in the government too. So, it's this reaching out from Iraq to its lost Jews saying ‘Well where are you? What happened to you? Tell us your story. We want to see where you are. Come back even,’ some of them are saying. MANYA: Carol has continued to give a voice to the Jewish refugees of Iraq. Most recently, she has been adapting The Wolf of Baghdad for younger, middle school-aged readers to better understand the story. And high schools in London and Canada have added The Wolf of Baghdad to their history curriculum.  CAROL: Leaving Iraq was called the silent exodus for a reason. We just left quietly and without fuss, and just went and made our lives elsewhere. I do know that life was difficult for them wherever they went, but they just got on with it, like refugees will do everywhere. MANYA: These Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Carol Isaacs for sharing her family's story and to her band 3yin for the music. Throughout this episode, you have been listening to pieces of the soundtrack from The Wolf of Baghdad motion comic performed by 3yin, a groundbreaking London based band that plays Jewish melodies from the Middle East and North Africa. The soundtrack is available at thesurrealmccoy.com. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/forgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don’t necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.