Kurdish Jews in Israel

Kurdish Jews in Israel include immigrants from different parts of Kurdistan and their descendants. The geographic label encompasses communities from areas now within Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, whose histories, languages, and customs were not identical.[2][4] Iranian Kurdish Jews in Israel maintained organizations distinct from those of other Kurdish origins, observed related festivals under different names, and shared a communal periodical with other Kurdish Jews.[2]

Settlement in the Land of Israel predates both the state and the mass migration of the mid-20th century. Accounts identify Safed as an early destination and describe later arrivals in Jerusalem.[8][3] Kurdish Jews subsequently lived in urban neighborhoods, rural settlements, and agricultural communities, with Jerusalem remaining an important center.[9][10]

A study indexed by the National Library of Israel broadly describes Kurdistani Jews as having retained their identity, culture, and traditions after migration.[11] Cultural continuity did not mean that practices remained unchanged: language transmission, festival dates, occupations, and artistic expression adapted to Israeli life.[4][5] Research among immigrants from Zakho found traditional oral forms continuing alongside creative incorporation of Israeli and Zionist themes.[12]

The history of Jewish settlement in Kurdistan is sparsely documented. The earliest substantial documentary evidence identified in one reference comes from two Jewish travelers in the 12th century, while another study says evidence concerning Kurdistani Jews and their relations with Kurdish neighbors becomes more substantial from the 16th century onward.[10][11] A 2003 account likewise notes the scarcity of written records before the 12th century.[13]

Accounts of much earlier origins are generally presented as tradition rather than documentary chronology. Traditions connect Kurdish Jews to Israelites deported by Assyrian rulers or to the Ten Tribes; some scholars have considered the Assyrian-exile tradition at least partly valid, while distinguishing it from the later documentary evidence.[10][14] A separate account traces the community to the Babylonian exile but does not provide supporting detail for the claim.[15]

Migration to the Land of Israel began centuries before the establishment of the modern state. One account dates Kurdish Jewish settlement in Safed to the 16th century and records migration to Palestine beginning in 1812, while another describes arrivals in Jerusalem around 1895.[9][3] These accounts may concern different destinations or migration waves, but the sources do not resolve them into a single chronology.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, migrants settled in poorer western Jerusalem quarters, including the area known as the Tin Quarter and later as Shevet Tzedek. Kurdish Jews built a synagogue there in 1908, and some helped Second Aliyah settlers establish communities in the Lower Galilee.[16]

Between 1920 and 1929, 1,900 migrants from Kurdistan arrived, followed by another 2,500 in 1935; a 1971 encyclopedia says the number of settlers ultimately reached 8,000. It links increasing migration to periodic persecution and notes that entire villages, including Barashe near Amadia, left.[9] Migrants came from Iraqi Kurdish communities such as Mosul, Erbil, Zakho, Amadia, Kirkuk, Akra, and Dehok, as well as places in Persian and Turkish Kurdistan. Early travelers used official passports, while others followed routes through Baghdad, Syria, and Lebanon to reach Safed secretly. After the anti-Jewish riots of 1941, an underground Iraqi pioneer movement persuaded hundreds to leave illegally for Palestine.[9]

Before mass emigration, approximately 25,000 Jews lived in Kurdistan across roughly 200 villages and small towns; a separate estimate gives a range of 25,000 to 50,000 for 1948.[10][14] These figures are estimates rather than a unified census and may use different geographic definitions.

After Iraq legalized Jewish emigration in 1950, the Jewish Agency and Israeli government organized Operations Ezra and Nehemiah. Approximately 110,000 Jews were airlifted from Iraq between May 1950 and August 1951, including 18,000 Kurdish Jews.[1] The operation began on May 18, 1950, and another contemporary estimate placed the number of Iraqi Jewish arrivals at about 120,000 within a year.[17] A prepared statement at a 2007 U.S. House hearing estimated that approximately 14,000 Jews from the mountainous Kurdish territories joined the 1950 emigration; this is a later historical estimate, not a separate count of Kurdish Jews living in Israel.[18]

The broader Iraqi figures should not be confused with the Kurdish component. Since 1948, 129,539 Iraqi Jews emigrated to Israel, including 123,371 between 1948 and 1951.[1] Those totals concern Iraqi Jews as a whole.

Migration was not one uniform journey. A Kurdish-Iraqi Israeli recalled leaving his village for Mosul, remaining there for a year and two months, and then spending two months in Baghdad before flying to Israel around Passover in 1951.[13] Other families arrived by air and were sent to tent camps, with one family that arrived in 1951 living in military tents.[19] Rabbi Haim Yeshurun and his family arrived at a tent camp in Binyamina in 1950 after escaping through Iran.[14]

The airlift formed part of the near-total departure of the Jewish community of Iraqi Kurdistan. Almost all Jews of Iraqi Kurdistan and many from other Kurdish regions emigrated to Israel, and the organized Jewish community of Iraqi Kurdistan disappeared.[2][11] Later migration continued: around 4,500 Kurdish Jews reportedly moved from Iraq to Israel in the early 1990s. Some found adaptation to Israeli culture, language, and social life difficult, and community members said several hundred later returned to Kurdistan.[20]

Jerusalem became a major center of Kurdish Jewish life before 1948. More than 6,000 Kurdish Jews reportedly lived there before statehood, including in Zikhron Yosef, Zikhron Ya’akov, and Sha’are Rahamim, where they bought land and built homes. Kurdish Jews also lived in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Safed, Beit She’an, and other locations.[9]

Kurdish arrivals from around 1895 lodged temporarily in Shaarei Rahamim in the Nahlaot neighborhood. Residents initially lived in poor conditions, including tents and large empty gasoline cans covered with tin, and Kurdish workers were sought after as porters and quarry laborers. Theodor Herzl met Kurdish Jewish men in Jerusalem in 1898 and reportedly praised their physical strength and capacity to help build the country.[3]

Communal associations organized religious and mutual-aid life. A Committee of the Kurdish Community was established in Jerusalem in 1924 and renamed the Union of the Jews of Kurdistan in 1935. Separate committees and synagogues were organized around towns and districts of origin; in 1945, the committees were merged under the Union, which maintained a burial brotherhood.[9] Organizations based on immigrants’ provinces and towns of origin continued after migration.[2]

Settlement extended beyond the cities. Kurdish Jews who had worked as stonecutters in Jerusalem settled at Kefar Uriyyah in 1943. The village was evacuated after attacks during the War of Independence in 1948, and Bulgarian immigrants established a moshav there in 1949.[21] Kurdish Jews also established agricultural communities in Judea and Samaria and the Galilee. Alroy was settled entirely by Kurdish Jews, while later rural settlements included Agur, Elkosh, Even Sapir, Mivtahim, Nes Harim, Yardena, and Zekharya.[9]

The community was difficult to count even in early Israeli records because many Kurdish Jews were registered as Iraqi Jews and internal movement further complicated estimates.[9] Employment differed by location. Some immigrants continued farming near Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, while urban settlers initially entered manual occupations: women often worked as maids and men as porters, masons, or stonecutters.[10] Other early occupations included camel driving, quarry work, construction, peddling, and small trade.[9]

Some workers later became owners of hotels, restaurants, and supermarkets, and Kurdish Jews played a major role in Jerusalem’s construction business.[10] Their occupational history therefore included both rural continuity and urban labor that contributed to the construction and commercial life of Israeli towns.

Jewish Neo-Aramaic varieties were among the languages of Kurdish Jewish communities, although usage differed across regions and families. Jewish Neo-Aramaic was spoken in areas now within northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey; dialects include Lishana Deni and Lishan Didan. One 2023 estimate placed the number of speakers at about 20,000.[4] In Israel, the language is commonly called Kurdi, although it is linguistically distinct from Kurdish, the Iranian language spoken by Muslim Kurds.[22]

Some Jews from places where Aramaic was still spoken in the 19th century did not retain it as their main everyday language in Israel. Immigrants from Irbil, for example, used both Arabic and Aramaic among the older generation.[22] Kurdish Jewish communities historically had limited contact with the wider Jewish world, partly because of difficult terrain and oppressive rulers. Rabbi Haim Yeshurun spoke Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, and two Aramaic dialects, translated the Bible into the community’s Aramaic, and served as a teacher, school leader, kashrut supervisor, and ritual scribe.[14]

The shift to Hebrew after migration affected intergenerational transmission. Pressure on Middle Eastern Jewish immigrants to adopt Hebrew contributed to children ceasing to speak their parents’ languages.[4] Aramaic nevertheless remained a marker of identity and a practical link to relatives and contacts in Kurdistan. Kurdish Jews used it to communicate with contacts there, sometimes writing the language in different scripts.[23] Sima Levy, who came from Qamishli, Syria, in 1962 at age 18, transmitted her dialect and customs to her 11 children.[23]

Oral literature was another important inheritance. Before migration, Jews of Iraqi Kurdistan maintained a tradition drawing on Jewish, linguistic, Islamic, literary, and historical sources. A study of songs and tales collected among Zakho immigrants in Israel from 1971 to 1974 found that migration had not simply weakened the tradition: performers continued older forms while creatively introducing Israeli and Zionist themes.[12]

The National Library of Israel holds Haya Gavish’s research collection on the Jewish community of Zakho. Covering 1948–2004, it contains 163 files, approximately 20 photographic files, 68 audio interviews, documents, correspondence, oral histories, transcripts, and maps.[24] The library also catalogs Gavish’s 1999 University of Haifa dissertation on religious ties to the Land of Israel, exposure to Zionist activity, and migration from the late Ottoman period through 1951.[25]

Saharane, also rendered Seharane or Sahrane, is a prominent Kurdish Jewish festival and an important means of transmitting community traditions in Israel. In Kurdistan, it marked the beginning of spring and included several days of camping, dancing, feasting, singing, and walks in nature; preparations began on the night Passover ended.[26] Celebrations also featured riverbank picnics, traditional clothing, and music competitions, while Muslim neighbors celebrated Newroz.[19]

The festival’s date changed after migration. Kurdish Jews initially continued celebrating during Passover but worried that Saharane would be overshadowed by Mimouna, celebrated by the larger Moroccan community. One account says community leader Aviv Shimoni moved the observance to Sukkot in 1975.[23] Another says community leaders and politicians moved it in 1972 because of the concentration of holidays around its original date.[5] More recent organizers have sought to restore its Passover timing through intergenerational events and a written festival “seder” intended to preserve a tradition previously transmitted orally.[5]

At a 2013 celebration, more than 13,000 people attended the main gathering, with smaller events in Yokneam, Mevasseret Zion, and Yardena.[19] The gatherings bring together descendants living in different places and preserve folklore, memory, music, costumes, customs, food, and ties to Kurdistan.[23] Celebrations include special prayers, Torah scrolls, picnicking, singing, dancing, and elders sharing stories with younger participants.[5]

Grandparents and other elders tell the story of the Exodus alongside family and community narratives. Gatherings also include folktales and legends, dancing and singing accompanied by instruments identified as the dula and zurna, and sometimes matchmaking and engagement ceremonies.[5]

Leil Purim was a Kurdish Jewish women’s gathering on Purim eve. Women in Zakho, Amedi, and other towns gathered by a river; mothers bathed their daughters, and the women sang wedding songs, danced, and decorated one another with henna. The custom continued until the mid-20th century. Surviving descriptions were written by outside ethnographers rather than by the women who participated.[27]

Food traditions also carry family memory into Israeli life. Kubbeh are dumplings made with semolina or bulgur wrapped around meat and either fried or cooked in sour soups. Miriam Persi, from a Kurdish Jewish family from Duhok, prepares her grandmother’s green hamusta, a dish said to take four days to make.[28] These dishes became part of the broader Middle Eastern Jewish foodways carried to Israel by immigrant families.

Music has made Kurdish heritage audible in public settings. Singer Itzik Kala has performed in Hebrew and Kurdish, while Naim Eliyahu, whose family arrived in 1951 and settled in Moshav Agur, served in the air force, formed a Kurdish band with his wife, and performed Kurdish folk songs at Saharane.[19] The Israeli band HULAULA performs in Jewish Neo-Aramaic.[4]

Historical relations between Kurdish Jewish communities and their neighbors remain part of the community’s identity and later connections with Kurds. A 2022 study describes positive Jewish-Kurdish relations maintained in part by Kurdistani Jews until their displacement to Israel in the mid-20th century. It says oral traditions and records produced by both communities, travelers, and scholars transmitted accounts of those relations.[11]

The study identifies parallels in Jewish and Kurdish oral traditions and linguistic and literary practices while acknowledging the scarcity of historical documentation about both societies.[11] It argues that historic ties helped shape relations between Israel and the Kurds after 1948, characterizes secret relations between Israel and the Kurdish movement in Iraq from 1960 as strategically important, and maintains that Kurdish Jews influenced Israeli policy toward the Kurds. These are the study’s interpretations of political influence and strategy.[11]

INSS describes Israeli assistance to Iraqi Kurdish forces in the 1970s, including training and weapons, as part of efforts to facilitate the northward smuggling of approximately 5,000 Jews who remained in Iraq. Much of the assistance reportedly passed through Iranian territory with the knowledge of the authorities there.[7]

Some Kurdish Jews in Israel have visited Iraqi Kurdistan for historical, cultural, and business reasons.[6] A 2015 memorial event in Erbil invited residents of Iraqi Kurdistan and descendants of Kurdish Jews, many of them Israelis, and displayed documents, Judaica, and photographs of Kurdish Jewish life. A Jewish-affairs office established by the regional administration was intended to help restore community life and sites such as synagogues and tombs; government sources estimated that about 400 Jewish families lived in the autonomous region.[29] That estimate concerns Iraqi Kurdistan, not Kurdish Jews in Israel.

Some Israeli Kurdish Jews have publicly supported Kurdish causes. In a 2023 interview, Kurdish General Hussein Yazdanpanah urged people in Israel to support Kurdish freedom and statehood and raise the issue in Israeli politics.[30] The report presents his appeal but does not quantify the response among Kurdish Jews in Israel.

There is no single reconciled population figure for Kurdish Jews in Israel. Estimates range from approximately 100,000, including descendants born in Israel, to more than 300,000.[10][30] Publications use different dates, geographic scopes, and definitions and generally do not disclose a common counting method.

A 2008 feature estimated 100,000–150,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel.[14] A 2013 report described the population as almost 200,000, about half in Jerusalem, while a 2022 blog post estimated 250,000–300,000 and likewise placed around half in Jerusalem and its outskirts.[19][31] These are published estimates rather than official census figures.

The Washington Institute gives an estimate of around 200,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel, without stating a method, while INSS refers to a 150,000-strong Jewish community that emigrated from Kurdistan without specifying a date or geographic scope.[6][7] Encyclopedia.com estimates 100,000 in Israel including descendants, whereas the Jewish Virtual Library, citing a Kurdish regional representative appointed in 2015, reports close to 300,000 people of Kurdish Jewish origin, mostly in Israel.[10][2]

A Jerusalem Center article estimates more than 150,000 and describes the largest concentration as being around Jerusalem.[8] Another article quotes Aso Qaderi as saying that more than 300,000 Kurds, “mainly Jewish,” lived in Israel, without explaining how the figure was calculated.[32] A 2023 article states that more than 300,000 Jewish Israeli Kurds live in Israel.[30] The categories “Kurds,” “mainly Jewish,” and “Jewish Israeli Kurds” do not necessarily describe identical populations.

Historic migration figures are distinct from current population estimates. The 18,000 Kurdish Jews counted within the Iraqi airlift and the approximately 14,000 Jews from mountainous Kurdish territories cited in a House hearing concern migration around 1950, not the present population or its descendants.[1][18] An estimate of 100,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel following the 1991 Kurdish uprising is likewise tied to a particular period.[32]

The principal uncertainty concerns population size and scope. Published estimates variously count “Kurdish Jews,” “people of Kurdish Jewish origin,” or broader groups of Kurds in Israel, often without explaining whether descendants or non-Jewish Kurds are included.[6][10] Claims exceeding 300,000 likewise lack a stated methodology.[30] The figures should therefore be treated as estimates rather than directly comparable totals.

Accounts of ancient origins require a distinction between inherited tradition and documentary evidence. Descent from Assyrian-exiled Israelites or the Ten Tribes is presented as a community tradition, although some scholars have regarded the tradition as partly valid.[10][14] Descent from the Babylonian exile is also reported as an origin account rather than a continuously documented genealogy.[15]

The earliest migration chronology is not fully aligned: some accounts describe settlement in Safed from the 16th century and migration beginning in 1812, while another reports arrivals in Jerusalem around 1895.[9][3] These may concern different routes or waves. Accounts of the mid-20th-century departure also emphasize different factors, including Israel’s establishment, Arab nationalism, and expulsion by the Iraqi government; the cited sources do not fully reconcile these descriptions.[33][29]

Claims about clandestine Israeli assistance to Iraqi Kurds and Kurdish Jewish influence on Israeli policy concern politically sensitive episodes. They are presented as the interpretations or accounts of the cited studies rather than as independently reconciled conclusions.[7][11]