Baghdadi Jewish Networks in the Age of Nationalism

Baghdadi Jewish Networks in the Age of Nationalism traces the participation of Baghdadi Jews in Jewish transnational networks from the mid-nineteenth century until the mass exodus of Jews from Iraq between 1948 and 1951. Each chapter explores different components of how Jews in Iraq participated in global Jewish civil society through the modernization of communal leadership, Baghdadi satellite communities, transnational Jewish philanthropy and secular Jewish education. The final chapter presents three case studies that demonstrate the interconnectivity between different iterations of transnational Jewish networks. This work significantly expands our understanding of modern Iraqi Jewish society by going beyond its engagement with Arab/Iraqi nationalism or Zionism/anti-Zionism to explore Baghdadi participation within Jewish transnational networks.

S.R. Goldstein-Sabbah, Ph.D. (2019), Leiden University. She has contributed to and edited numerous works on Middle Eastern and Northern African Jewry, including Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the Middle East (Brill, 2016).