Heritage project to platform untold stories of Sephardi–Mizrahi Jews

The National Library of Israel and Sephardi Voices are collaborating on a public event in Jerusalem, honouring an archive of testimonies representing the untold stories of Sephardi–Mizrahi Jews.

Taking place on November 30, it marks the official day of the departure and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and Iran (Yom HaPlitim or “Day of Refugees”).

The event will include a symposium where testimonies will be given by members of the last generation of Sephardi–Mizrahi Jews born in North Africa, the Middle East and Iran; liturgical singer Rabbi David Menachem performing piyyutim (poems) handed down from his grandfather in Iraq and a special exhibition of items from Sephardi–Mizrahi Jewish communities.

For some 2,000 years and up until the end of the 1940s, approximately 1 million Jews lived in Iran and Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Today, only 15,000 remain, the majority having fled in the years following the establishment of the State of Israel. This mass expulsion and exodus is now recognized as a memorial day in Israel.

On that date, 30 November in 1947, the day after the UN Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted, many Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa began experiencing significantly increased hostility and violence from within their home countries that ultimately resulted in mass exodus of one million refugees, loss of property, and collective, generational trauma.

Sephardi Voices is an international heritage project that collects testimonies from the survivors of these communities; its digital archives consist of nearly 450 oral history interviews in English, Hebrew, Judaeo-Arabic, French, and Italian, as well as portraits, documents, and photographs chronicling the life stories of the world-wide Sephardi–Mizrahi community.

• The collection is now available online via the National Library of Israel website.