BAGHDAD: Dozens of Iraqis visit Baghdad’s first Jewish museum each day to view faded school certificates, handwritten documents and family photographs. The exhibits offer a glimpse into a once integral part of Iraqi life that has all but disappeared.
The museum occupies the historic Shamash Jewish School, founded in 1928 on Al-Rashid Street, a prominent thoroughfare in Baghdad. Iraq’s Jewish community opened the museum last month in a rare public celebration of the country’s Jewish heritage.
Inside the restored building, visitors move between display cases holding personal photographs, identity cards, graduation certificates and records of Jewish students who studied at the school, which the Jewish philanthropist Yacoub Shlomo Shamash founded. A brass menorah sits above archival documents, and another seven-branched candelabrum is displayed against polished wooden panels.
Framed black-and-white portraits line the walls, among them an image of Sassoon Heskel, a Baghdad-born Jew who served as Iraq’s first finance minister after the modern state was founded in 1920.
The museum also pays tribute to prominent figures from Iraq’s Jewish heritage, including celebrated singer Salima Murad. Born into a Jewish family in Baghdad, Murad rose to fame in the 1920s and 1930s as one of Iraq’s most acclaimed vocalists, known for performing the traditional Iraqi Maqam, a classical Arabic musical form, and lighter popular songs.
