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In Israel, Iraqi Jews Reflect on Baghdad Heritage
(New York Times) James Glanz and Irit Pazner Garshowitz - During a Passover Seder with her extended family in Givatayim, Israel, Sabiha Ziluf, 75, paused and said she could still see the Baghdad streets of her childhood. Ziluf is one of countless Iraqi Jews in Israel taking fresh interest in their heritage. A Babylonian heritage center near Tel Aviv has drawn daily crowds of more than 1,300 people during Passover, and its number of yearly visitors has increased by more than 50 percent since 2011. As of 2014, there were 227,900 Jews of Iraqi descent living in Israel. An Ottoman census in 1917 counted 80,000 Jews in Baghdad out of 202,000 residents, a community described as "perhaps the wealthiest, and certainly the best educated" in that era. In the first half of the 20th century, Jews were not only major forces in Iraq's financial institutions, but also produced the nation's most renowned historian, most famous singer and most influential composers. A pogrom in June 1941, the Farhud, killed nearly 200 Jews in Baghdad.