Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center is a museum and research center in Or Yehuda, Israel. It was founded in 1973 as a non-profit to collect, preserve, and celebrate the heritage of Babylonian Jews. The center runs a research institute, a publishing house, a library, and archives. The Museum of Babylonian Jewry opened in 1988 and has permanent and temporary exhibitions.

The historic wing tells the history of Babylonian Jewry, while the Ethnographic Division shows daily life, customs, and clothing of Iraqi Jews and preserves related items. The Plastic Arts Gallery hosts changing exhibitions about Babylonian Jewish culture. The Babylonian Jewry Museum presents artifacts and photographs about Iraqi Jewish immigrants to Israel, covering more than 2,600 years of history. Permanent exhibitions highlight the community’s spiritual leaders and the Exilarchs, and how the community interacted with governments and society over time.

There are special exhibitions about major 20th‑century events in Iraqi Jewish life, such as the 1941 Farhud, the Zionist movement, and immigration to Israel. The museum also offers youth classes in poetry and dance to pass on the heritage. The building is designed to resemble a traditional Iraqi Jewish home, with an inner courtyard. An alleyway in the Baghdad Jewish Quarter and the Great Synagogue in Baghdad were restored as part of the center.