Mizrahim, the Jews of the East

Image: Persian Jews in Iran, 1917. Public Domain, via Wikimedia.

Some of the longest-thriving Jewish communities in history are the Mizrahi communities of the eastern Mediterranean and northern Africa. Their stories have gone largely ignored by Western Jews, which is a real shame.

The first big Mizrahi community goes back to the first diaspora of Jews: the Babylonian captivity. When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple in 587 BCE, they carried off many of the educated Jews to be clerks in their vast bureaucracy. To this day we hear their grief and pain in Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy.
They said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” – Psalm 137:1-3

Seventy years later Cyrus of Persia…