Shamash Jewish Museum opens in Baghdad, the first museum of the Jewish community in Iraq

3 November 2026

The Shamash Jewish Museum opened in the previous month in central Baghdad, in a building that once housed the Shamash Jewish School, and visitors have begun coming to it. The school was started by Yaqub Shlomo Shamash and dates from 1928, and it stands on al-Rashid street. The museum is run by the committee of Iraqi Jews, whose lawyer Ammar al-Tamimi says it is the only museum in Iraq belonging to the Jewish community. Displays honour figures such as Sassoon Eskell, the first finance minister of Iraq, and the physician Dhafer Fouad Eliyahu. The community numbered more than 130,000 people in the 1940s and only a few dozen Jewish residents remain, with fewer than 50 synagogues and Jewish sites left. The school property was taken by the state in the 1970s and returned to the community by a court ruling in 1992.