Israel Mizrachi was delighted to have stumbled across a copy of Megillat Antiochus, which tells the Hanucah story in Judeo-Persian. The booklet was printed in Jerusalem in 1903 by Bukharan Jews who settled in the city. Read his article in The Jewish Press:
Megillat Antiochus is not part of our Tanach, yet it has long held a peculiar and beloved place in Jewish life. Somewhere between history and legend, between Midrash and memory, it retells the saga of the Maccabean uprising against the tyrant Antiochus IV. The familiar motifs are all here: the savage decrees outlawing Torah observance, the forced cultural assimilation, and the fiery defiance of Mattathias and his sons as they set into motion the revolt that would forever define Jewish resistance.
The text lingers admiringly on Judah Maccabee – his courage, his battlefield prowess, the way he rallies a bruised and battered nation and leads them, step by step, toward the liberation of Jerusalem. And at its heart lies the moment we all know so well: the rededication of the Beit HaMikdash, cleansed from Seleucid defilement, which gives rise to the celebration of Chanukah – eight days of light to mark military victory, spiritual renewal, and the unbroken Jewish spirit.
What makes this particular edition especially captivating is the language in which it speaks. Judeo-Persian – the literary tradition of Persian-speaking Jews who wrote in Persian using Hebrew characters – is among the most remarkable cultural inheritances of the Jewish world. For over a thousand years, from medieval poets to community scribes, Judeo-Persian authors documented not only religious devotion but the everyday rhythms of Jewish life across the Iranian plateau.
Its earliest surviving texts date to the eighth or ninth century.
It is no surprise that no sooner had the blood of the Bondi beach victims been spilt that the victim-blaming would begin. It was therefore refreshing to see Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign minister push back, by invoking the plight of her mother from Morocco, against the argument that ‘the Israeli government’s conduct in Gaza’ contributed to the massacre. She was appearing with Piers Morgan, who hosts a show with over 4 million subscribers, ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored.’ It was one of the rare occasions when Israeli spokespersons have mentioned Jews from Arab countries.
Haskel’s mention of Arab countries begins 15 minutes into the video
Morgan accuses Israel of causing large numbers of civilian casualties including children. After responding that war is a horrible thing and that no war is without casualties, Sharren Haskel says, 15 minutes into the conversation:
” If I look back in history, Jews have always been a symptom of a deeper disease.” Haskel refers to the Holocaust:’how many people died in the pursuit of the extermination of the Jews?’ she asks.
“If I look back at my own family history, my mum’s from Morocco. A million Jews were expelled from Arab countries – from Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan. There were pogroms where Jews were murdered. In the farhud pogrom, women were raped…Now that there are no Jews in these countries, who are the most persecuted: Yazidis, Christians….”
Haskel is one of the few Israeli spokesmen to have mentioned the expulsion and persecution of Jews from Arab countries. Other high-profile speakers of Mizrahi background like Danny Danon and Eylon Levy, whose roots are from Egypt and Iraq respectively, have passed up on the opportunity to raise this essential piece of context.
In what has been described as a ‘low-cost way’ to signal change, two synagogues and a locked Jewish school in Aleppo were opened up to a visiting Jewish delegation including two rabbis from Israel. The visit coincides with a broader policy shift by Syria’s new authorities, who have just granted a formal licence to a Jewish organisation, the Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation, to work on cataloging and returning Jewish property confiscated by previous governments. Jewish Breaking News reports (with thanks: Flor):
The Great Synagogue of Aleppo before it was damaged in the 1947 riots
Two rabbis from Israel have quietly joined a Jewish delegation in Aleppo, entering synagogues and a former Jewish school that have been locked for decades – a scene that would have been unthinkable under the old Assad regime. Activists say it is one of the most unusual Jewish communal events the city has seen in generations.
The religious-cultural gathering took place in Aleppo’s Al-Jemayliyah neighborhood, inside a long-closed synagogue and school, with a second stop at another historic synagogue in the Bab al-Nasr district. The sites, long sealed and largely forgotten, were opened under tight security: streets were blocked off, movement was restricted and local authorities heavily guarded the visit.
Footage published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and shared by Jewish outlets shows a small group standing at the entrance of the synagogue, with the rabbis in traditional dress. According to SOHR, the delegation’s mission was not only symbolic prayer but also to survey Jewish communal property and other assets once owned by Aleppo’s Jews.
The visit coincides with a broader policy shift by Syria’s new authorities, who have just granted a formal license to a Jewish organization, the Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation, to work on cataloging and returning Jewish property confiscated by previous governments. Its president, Henry Hamra – son of the last chief rabbi to leave Syria – recently met the country’s social affairs minister in Damascus and prayed in the restored al-Franj synagogue. He says the group aims to document Jewish assets, reclaim what was seized and preserve holy sites so they can be reopened to Jews worldwide.
SOHR reports that during the Aleppo event, the city’s governor pledged to address long-standing claims over Jewish communal property and to safeguard those rights after years in which corrupt local networks allegedly grabbed synagogues, schools and homes. The Aleppo gathering was organized together with a northern Syria–based association and framed as part of a wider religious-cultural outreach effort.
Communities differed in their celebration of Hanucah across the Muslim and Sephardi world. INSSEF has produced a comprehensive piece explaining traditions from Afghanistan to Turkey. Wishing all those celebrating the festival a safe and happy Hanucah.
A 1,500 year-old pendant in the shape of a menorah, found in Jerusalem on 15 December 2025
Morocco
On the first day after the eighth day of the festival, it was customary among Moroccan Jews to celebrate “Shamash Day.” Children went from house to house collecting leftover Hanukkah candles, which they used to build large bonfires around which they danced and sang. Many jumped over the fire, believing it to be a segula (a ritual involving a specific type of magic): for young, single women, the aim was to help them find their future life partner; and for married women without children, it meant they would soon become pregnant.
Since the miracle revolved around the oil that burned for eight days, on this occasion, housewives fried makhriud (a type of pancake) and sfinge (a type of fritter). Immediately after lighting the candles, family members dipped the treats in sugar and enjoyed them, accompanied by sips of brod datei (a refreshing mint drink).
Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, Jews did not use Hanukkah menorahs; in fact, they were unaware of their existence! To light the Hanukkah candles, they used eight small bronze, silver, or clay dishes arranged in a row, and one smaller dish for the shamash (lighter). The reason for this custom was that the Jews of Afghanistan were mostly Anusim (forcibly converted to Islam), originally from the city of Mashhad, Iran. As in the region, starting in 1839, Judaism was prohibited. If a Muslim entered a Jewish home unannounced, the inhabitants could claim the lights were for general illumination—since there was no electricity—without arousing any suspicion about their faith. Even after emigrating to Afghanistan, the Jews of Mashhad continued to maintain this custom.
Nineteeth century silver Iraqi circular menorah
Iraq
In Iraqi communities, the tradition is to eat dairy-based dishes in honor of Yehudit, who succeeded in saving our people and defeating Holofernes, the powerful Greek general and commander of the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid emperor, by offering him a piece of cheese. Furthermore, it was common for children to read the heroine’s story. In Baghdad, many families used circular Hanukkah menorahs, rarely seen in other countries, where the type with the candles arranged in a straight row is preferred. Rabbi Yosef Chaim, one of Iraq’s greatest sages, in his response regarding the use of this type of Hanukkah menorah, stated that preference should be given to straight ones, but he did not disqualify the use of circular ones, as long as there was a space between the candles.
The halakhic problem with flames burning in a circle is that they might appear as a single flame, thus invalidating the Hanukkah menorah. The highest code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, addresses this issue by stating that each wick can be considered a candle, provided they are separated from one another (Orach Chaim, 67, 1:4).
As we all did, Aurèle Tobelem woke up to the horrific news of the Hanucah massacre on Bondi beach in Sydney, Australia. He wrote this Substack Militant Sephardi piece on the story that inspired the festival of lights, and explains what lessons we might draw from it. The article’s title Seven Shepherds alludes to the verse in the Hanucah hymn Maoz Tzur: these are Biblical figures who will precede the Messiah and bring redemption :
Aurèle Tobelem urges : Light your Hanukiah with pride
Today, there is one empire that many leaders seem all too eager to placate: the expansionist empire of hatred and cultural erasure embodied by the Islamic Republic of Iran: a regime that has spent decades cultivating and financing Islamist internationalism in pursuit of Jewish death. It is a government that crushes dissent with ferocity, exploits communal fractures wherever they appear, and channels vast resources through its Machiavellian collaborators in Qatar to advance its ambitions. Its ideological project is nothing less than a campaign to cloak free peoples, especially women, in suffocating darkness.
The ultimate lesson of Hanukkah is that resistance to imperial forces intent on our destruction requires leadership that is both courageous and united—leadership that embodies the virtues of each of the Seven Shepherds. And yet, as a community, we persist in elevating charlatans rather than cultivating genuine leaders; in rewarding those who claim our platforms without understanding our long struggle for liberty and national sovereignty; in stifling principled dissent for fear it might “rock the boat,” without recognising that the ship is already sinking.
In a struggle between value systems, those who celebrate light and cultivate true leadership will always prevail. The great Talmudic sage Rav Huna taught that one who is accustomed to kindling the Hanukkah lights will merit children who illuminate the world with Torah. This is not merely a reward for observing a commandment; it reflects the transformative power of the ritual itself. By lighting the Hanukkah candles, we create an environment in which the values of joy, liberation, and collective resistance to the inevitably anti-Jewish machinery of global oppression are impressed upon the next generation—conveyed through the simple, enduring medium of light and warmth.
So I say to all who will be celebrating Hanukkah in the coming eight days: do so with pride. Place your hanukkiot where their light can be seen clearly—on the windowsills of your homes—and let your neighbours contemplate the miracles that have carried our people through history. Invite your non-Jewish friends, and those who may yet become friends, to witness the candlelighting and partake in the light we are commanded to share. Sing Ma’oz Tzur with full awareness that the task of raising the next generation of Seven Shepherds rests upon us. It is our best answer to darkness. Our best answer to pain. May we merit salvation in our days, and may we always possess the strength and courage of those who fought millennia ago so that we might illuminate the world now.
One of the last Jews to leave Iraq, Emad Levy tells Elhanan Miller of the People of the Book project what it was like to live in Baghdad before and after the American invasion of 2003 and the fall of Saddam.
Levy felt a sense of liberation after the Americans toppled Saddam in 2003. He helped organise the airlift of six Jews to Israel, including his father Ezra.
He stayed behind to look after his diabetic uncle, administering injections every six hours. The uncle ended up with gangrene and having his leg amputated.
Until his own departure for Israel, he busied himself cleaning up the new Jewish cemetery at Sadr City and identifying the dead. The Jews hanged in 1969 were buried in unmarked graves. Their public execution served as an example to the rest to the Muslim population.
To protect the synagogue and its priceless Torah scrolls, Levy closed the building and stationed a guard outside. He bought the guard a weapon and obtained the necessary permit from the Americans for him to use it.
Saddam’s regime denied events such as the Farhud, the 1941 massacre in which at least 179 Jews were murdered. Today, the younger generation are much more interested in Iraqi Jews and reach out via social media.
Hanucah, the festival of lights, begins tonight, 14 December 2025. For North African Jews, Hanucah is also the time to celebrate Hag Habanot (Eid al-banat), a holiday celebrated by Mizrahi communities on Rosh Hodesh of the Jewish month of Tevet. The festival takes place on Hanucah to honour the story of the Jewish heroine Judith and the important role of women in Jewish life. It is customary to sing, dance, and light the night’s menorah candle in honour of women.We reprint this JTA piece by Cnaan Liphshiz:
JTA — As a child growing up in Tunisia, Peggy Cidor and her sister would count the days to Hanukkah.But the traditional lighting of the menorah and the eating of fried foods was only part of the excitement.The other part was Rosh Chodesh el Benat, or “head of the month of daughters,” a holiday that North African Jews would celebrate on the sixth day of Hanukkah, the first day of the Hebrew month of Tevet.
Sometimes called by its Arabic name Aid al Benat, the holiday celebrates daughters, who would be gifted exquisite pastries and expensive gifts by their families.
In Cidor’s case, the gifts came from her father’s jewelry shop in the capital, Tunis.fter her family immigrated to Israel when Cidor was 10, the holiday was mostly abandoned, as it was by many North African Jewish families after they immigrated to Israel. But in recent years, Cidor has made an effort to bring it back.
“We do it on and off for now,” said Cidor, 69, a journalist and mother of three who lives in Jerusalem.
“But we finally have a granddaughter in the family and it’s coming back.”
Cidor is not alone in seeking to revive a tradition that is scarcely observed anymore even among Jews living in Tunisia, its country of origin. The World Federation of Tunisian Jewry in Israel has celebrated the day for the past 15 years, producing a festive event for about 200 participants that culminates with an homage to prominent female members of the community.
On 30 November, the day to remember the exodus of Jews from Arab countries, Edy Cohen who was born of a family that was four generations in the country, told the story at the Israel National Library of his childhood in Lebanon and how he fled the country following the abduction and murder of his father. The occasion marked the donation of hundreds of Sephardi Voices oral testimonies to the library. Report in The Librarians (with thanks: Nancy):
From left to right: Edy Cohen, Levana Zamir and Edwin Shuker being interviewed by Tamar Morad of the Sephardi Voices project. The image of his father’s handkerchief can be seen in the background. (Photo by Alina Nisnoversh)
“The civil war broke out in ’75 and ended only in ’91. That means I experienced the war from age three until age nineteen, so I remember it very well – like every other Lebanese person… First of all, there were the noises, the bombings, the shelling, the shelters.”“My mother always wished, asked, and demanded from my father that we go, that we immigrate. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese left Lebanon, Christians and Muslims, some to Canada, some to the United States. We had many opportunities to come to Israel, to travel to the United States, to Canada. We even had visas for Canada. I vaguely recall that France was also an option, but my father, may his memory be a blessing, did not want to leave.”
In the end, it was the abduction and murder of his father in 1985 that led Edy’s family to finally leave Lebanon, first for France, before eventually making their way to Israel.As Edy explained during the November 30 event at the National Library, that terrible episode in the mid-1980s largely marked the end of the Jewish presence in Lebanon, which had stretched all the way back to antiquity. In 1948, there were estimated to be some 20,000 Jews living in the country. In 2020 they numbered 29. The situation is similar across many countries in the Middle East.That evening, Edy also shared an image of a handkerchief which was used to the cover his father’s eyes during his time in captivity. Edy sat onstage alongside two other “witnesses” who recalled memories from their childhood and youth – 87-year-old Levana Zamir who grew up in Cairo, Egypt, and 70-year-old Edwin Shuker, who spoke of his years in Baghdad, Iraq. Their video testimonies are also part of the Sephardi Voices Collection.
Today Edy is a researcher and journalist. He is also a commentator on Arabic social media with over 900,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter). He says: “Even though I have Israeli citizenship, I feel like a refugee, because I was born in a country and forced to leave out of fear for my life. I am Israeli, but I have another identity.”
Watch the rest of Edy’s video testimony here (an English transcript is available).
The representative of the Iranian-Jewish community has published a statement on his Telegram channel warning fellow Jews to delete comments or ‘likes’ on Israeli social media content in Persian after he was summoned by security agencies. Since the 12-day Israel-Iran war, dozens of Iranian Jews have been arrested on charges of “collaboration with hostile regimes.” Kamran Hekmati, a 70-year-old Jewish man from New York, a grandfather who runs a jewelry business and holds dual American-Iranian citizenship, is currently detained over a trip to Israel 13 years ago, Iran International reports:
Homayoun Sameh Yah Najafabadi, the Jewish representative in Iran’s parliament
Homayoun Sameh Yah Najafabadi, the Jewish representative in Iran’s parliament, said on Monday that he had been summoned by security agencies over Jewish users’ likes and comments on Israeli content.
“Unfortunately, in the past two weeks, I was summoned to these agencies because some fellow Jews posted comments and liked false content, causing misunderstandings among the country’s intelligence agencies,” Najafabadi said in an open letter published on his Telegram channel.
Update: the president of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (Switzerland), David Coen, has welcomed the Syrian decision as ‘a great advance for our cause’, ‘amazing’ and ‘exceptional’.
According to AFP, Syria has announced that they have licensed a new organisation dedicated to preserving the country’s Jewish heritage. This is an initiative by Jews of Syrian origin living in the US. The organisation will also seek to restore seized Jewish properties. Cynics would see this as a PR move by the Syrian regime, which is anxious to be seen as legitimate by the US, even as war might soon break out between Syria and Israel (with thanks: David):
The al-Franji synagogue, one of the few preserved Jewish sites in Damascus
The decision comes as Syria’s small, historically rooted Jewish community seeks to restore a presence in the country following the arrival of the new governing authority in Damascus more than a year ago.
Minister of Social Affairs Hind Kabbawat told AFP that the government officially approved the formation of the Syrian Jewish Heritage Organization, making it the first officially licensed body focused on the country’s Jewish legacy.
“This is a strong message from the Syrian state that we do not discriminate between religions,” Kabbawat said.
She added that Syria “supports all Syrians—of all faiths and sects—who want to build our new state.”
Henry Hamra, one of the organization’s founders and the son of Yosef Hamra—the last rabbi to leave Syria—told AFP that the group’s mission extends beyond cultural preservation.
“We will work to register Jewish properties and restore those that were confiscated during the previous regime,” he said, noting that the organization also intends to protect, maintain, and rehabilitate Jewish religious sites to make them accessible to Jewish visitors from around the world.
Hamra, who lives in the United States, joined the first Jewish delegation to visit Syria last February alongside his father.
Since then, multiple groups of Syrian Jews have visited Damascus, and President Ahmad al-Shara met a delegation of Syrian Jews in New York during the UN General Assembly.
Syria once hosted a vibrant Jewish community whose roots stretch back centuries before the Common Era. But regional wars and political tensions significantly affected their presence.
The Arab-Israeli conflict, particularly the aftermath of the 1967 war, cast a long shadow over Jewish communities across the region, including Syria.
Under the rule of the Assad family:
-Jews were allowed to practice their religious rituals freely
-They maintained friendly relations with surrounding communities
However, the regime of Hafez al-Assad imposed severe travel restrictions, barring Jews from leaving the country until 1992. After restrictions were lifted, the community’s population dwindled from around 5,000 to only a handful.
According to Moaz Mustafa, Executive Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, who accompanied the recent visiting delegation, dozens of Jewish-owned homes have already been identified as seized by the Bashar al-Assad regime.
“There are dozens of houses we have counted so far from Jewish properties that were taken from them by the regime,” Mustafa said.
The licensing of the Syrian Jewish Heritage Organization marks a significant departure from the policies of the previous regime, signaling an effort by the new Syrian government to highlight inclusivity and address historical grievances. Whether the initiative will successfully restore confiscated properties or revive a centuries-old community remains tied to the broader political transformation underway in the country.
This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, of the Middle East and North Africa, documenting the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution.
Point of No Return
Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries
One-stop blog on the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees - updated daily.
