The violent persecution and near genocide of Iraq’s Yazidis and Christians have made headlines around the world. Less well-known is the story of Iraqi Jews, who face near eradication. As millions flee Islamic militants in Iraq, one man has emerged to help rebuild the Jewish remnant.

When I met with Sherzad Omar Mamsani, the Jewish representative to the Kurdish government, in December 2015, he proudly wore his kippah in public — an act of bravery and defiance against those who would see him and his people wiped out in Iraq. He told me that, contrary to reports of only a half dozen, there are as many as 430 Jewish families left in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Although most of these Jews have kept a low profile in public, they experienced a renewed sense of hope with Sherzad’s appointment by the Kurdish government. Sherzad is working in the relative safety of the Kurdish zone to rebuild Iraq’s remaining synagogues and Jewish holy sites, and is helping rewrite the Jewish portion of Kurdish school lessons on Iraq’s religious history.

That history matters because Iraqi history is Jewish history, too.

Iraq has been home to Jewish people since the destruction of their first temple — 2,600 years ago — and their subsequent exile to Babylon. Considered the center of Jewish learning, Babylonia — modern Iraq — was home to Ezra the Scribe, a priest who led a group of exiles back to Jerusalem in the sixth century b.c.e.. Babylonia is also where the Talmud was compiled. By the mid 20th century, the Jewish community in Iraq numbered approximately 150,000. But with the rise of Arab nationalism and the end of the British mandate in Iraq, a pro-Nazi coup ushered in an era of violence toward the Jewish community. In 1941, a pogrom in Baghdad during the festival of Shavuot killed 180 Jews and injured 1,000. By 1948, with the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism had become a crime in Iraq — punishable by death.

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Source: Tina Ramirez, www.nationalreview.com