Prominent Iraqi-British Jew says urgent action is needed to save Mosul's last synagogue

The interior of the dilapidated Sassoon Synagogue in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. outside the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. Iraq's Jewish community was once one of the largest in the Middle East but has now shrunk to a handful. Photo: ZAYD AL OBEIDY/AFP

Urgent action is needed to help save one of Iraq's last remaining synagogues from destruction. renovations, warned an Iraqi-British Jewish philanthropist.

Mosul's Sassoon Synagogue, built in 1902 and once the center of a thriving local Jewish community of 6,000, has turned into a dumping ground, according to Edwin Shuker. The ritual bath — or «mikvah» — is now a barn for horses.

Mr Shuker, who was born in Baghdad but fled to Britain to seek asylum in 1971, is campaigning to raise funds for the desperate preservation of Iraq's Jewish history.

“The synagogue is one of the few remaining landmarks which testify that my community has been in this country for 100 generations. Its removal destroys the history of Jews in this part of the world,” he told The Telegraph.

“It can be restored and preserved as a living symbol of more than 2,500 years of Jewish presence in Mesopotamia.

The Sassoon Synagogue, located in the center of the city's former Jewish quarter, has suffered the same fate as the rest of Mosul's architectural heritage, 80 percent of which, according to UNESCO, has been destroyed in successive wars over the past two decades. /p> Jews' Precious heritage, including the synagogue, is under threat in a country torn by decades of war and corruption. Photo: ZAID AL OBEIDY/AFP

But it is also part of a pattern of deliberate neglect of Jewish sites in a country once home to some 150,000 Jews whose presence dates back 2,600 years. Today, fewer than a handful of Jews remain.

Political impasse

The Switzerland-based International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Zones (Alif) launched a project to reconstruct the Sassoon Synagogue in 2021, raising tens of thousands of dollars.

But the work stalled in 2022 when the Iraqi parliament passed a law called «Criminalization of Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity» regarding Israel, where the majority of Iraqi Jews now live.

«The official response of the central government to efforts to restoration is that it would inevitably require contact and consultation with the Israelis, which is prohibited,” explained Mr Shuker, a senior member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

That means one thing. Of the three known surviving synagogues in the country, it is now in irreversible decline.

There is only one Meir Twigg synagogue left in Baghdad, but it is permanently closed and crumbling, and there are not even enough Jews left in Iraq to form a quorum of 10 for prayers.

A third synagogue in the south of the district has been turned into a warehouse .

Edwin Shuker

“Over the past two decades there has been a relentless and systematic program to misappropriate and destroy all Jewish sites throughout Iraq,” Mr. Shuker said.

“But we are determined to do something to save the last the remains that we have there contain our ancient past.»

«A vital part of Iraqi society»

Eli Barzani still remembers sitting on the windowsill of the Sassoon Synagogue as a child and watching thousands of Iraqi Jews gather for festivals and major holidays. His father and grandfather, Yamin and Eilahu, were rabbis in the synagogue. He and his family left in 1950 when he was just six years old. He now lives in Israel.

“We must preserve the history of our past there,” he said. “I would like to go to Iraq. Jews were an important part of Iraqi society, they built much of the infrastructure, the banking system, and we cannot forget our past there.”

Israeli Asaf Hovav, both of whose parents were born in Baghdad, says the diaspora is helpless. “The local people in Iraq are afraid to have any communication with us, so even fundraising is not an option to support conservation efforts,” he said.

Hebrew relief from the Synagogue of the Prophet Nahum (in its current form dating from 1796) in northern Iraq. the city of Al-Qosh, about 50 km north of Mosul. Photo: ISMAEL ADNAN/AFP

There were once 54 synagogues in Baghdad alone, and dozens more throughout Iraq, serving the country's Jews.

But in 1941, the Nazi-led pogrom known as the Farhud , was accompanied by explosions and attacks on the community. Many had their property confiscated and sold, and synagogues were converted into mosques.

After the creation of Israel in 1948, the situation worsened and the vast majority of the community fled — mainly to Israel, but also to Britain. USA, Canada and Europe.

According to a study by the London-based Jewish Heritage Foundation and ASOR, the nonprofit American Society for Overseas Studies.

Most of them are in a state of “no return.”