“An exceptional exposé of the sufferings of the Iraqi and Mizrahi Jews in Israel during the 1950s.” —Övg Ülgen, Shofar Between 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to the newly established Israeli state. Lacking the resources to absorb them all, the Israeli government resettled them in maabarot, or transit camps, relegating them to poverty. In the tents and shacks of the camps, their living conditions were squalid and unsanitary. Basic necessities like water were in short supply, when they were available at all. Rather than returning to a homeland as native sons, Iraqi Jews were newcomers in a foreign place. Impossible Exodus tells the story of these Iraqi Jews’ first decades in Israel. Faced with ill treatment and discrimination from state officials, Iraqi Jews resisted: they joined Israeli political parties, demonstrated in the streets, and fought for the education of their children, leading a civil rights struggle whose legacy continues to influence contemporary debates in Israel. Orit Bashkin sheds light on their everyday lives and their determination in a new country, uncovering their long, painful transformation from Iraqi to Israeli. In doing so, she shares the resilience and humanity of a community whose story has yet to be told. Praise for Impossible Exodus “Orit Bashkin sheds light on a case of historical injustice. Impossible Exodus will greatly enhance our understanding of the pain, discrimination, and struggle to survive in a different culture that those immigrants had to endure.” —Abbas Shiblak, University of Oxford “A marvelously clear-eyed and compassionate recovery of the experience of Iraqi Jews forced to seek a new life in Israeli transit camps. Orit Bashkin gives these people voice, agency, and sympathetic understanding in their complex struggles against discrimination and cultural loss.” —Roger Owen, Harvard University “What is distinctive about Bashkin’s book on Iraqi Jews is the many stories she recovers that describe not only the difficulties encountered by immigrants but also the humiliations imposed by thoughtless and prejudiced officials put in charge of people whose culture they neither understood nor respected.” —Donna Robinson Divine, Middle East Journal

Between 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to the newly established Israeli state. Lacking the resources to absorb them all, the Israeli government resettled them in maabarot, or transit camps, relegating them to poverty. In the tents and shacks of the camps, their living conditions were squalid and unsanitary. Basic necessities like water were in short supply, when they were available at all. Rather than returning to a homeland as native sons, Iraqi Jews were newcomers in a foreign place. Impossible Exodus tells the story of these Iraqi Jews' first decades in Israel. Faced with ill treatment and discrimination from state officials, Iraqi Jews resisted: they joined Israeli political parties, demonstrated in the streets, and fought for the education of their children, leading a civil rights struggle whose legacy continues to influence contemporary debates in Israel. Orit Bashkin sheds light on their everyday lives and their determination in a new country, uncovering their long, painful transformation from Iraqi to Israeli. In doing so, she shares the resilience and humanity of a community whose story has yet to be told.

Although Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi patriots, their community—which had existed in Iraq for more than 2,500 years—was displaced following the establishment of the state of Israel. New Babylonians chronicles the lives of these Jews, their urban Arab culture, and their hopes for a democratic nation-state. It studies their ideas about Judaism, Islam, secularism, modernity, and reform, focusing on Iraqi Jews who internalized narratives of Arab and Iraqi nationalisms and on those who turned to communism in the 1940s. As the book reveals, the ultimate displacement of this community was not the result of a perpetual persecution on the part of their Iraqi compatriots, but rather the outcome of misguided state policies during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sadly, from a dominant mood of coexistence, friendship, and partnership, the impossibility of Arab-Jewish coexistence became the prevailing narrative in the region—and the dominant narrative we have come to know today.

Trusting God is harder than it sounds. Especially when it comes to things like money, career, marriage and health. In this twenty-four session LifeGuide® Bible Study on Exodus, you'll see that Israel faced similar struggles to trust God completely. In this story of hardship and hope, you'll discover that God alone is worthy of our trust.

Countering scholarly tendencies to fragment the text over theological difficulties, this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume contends that Exodus should be read as a unified whole, and that an appreciation of its missionary theme in its canonical context is of great help in dealing with the difficulties that the book poses.

Trusting God is harder than it sounds. Especially when it comes to things like money, career, marriage and health. In this twelve-session LifeGuide® Bible Study on Exodus, you'll see that Israel faced similar struggles to trust God completely. In this story of hardship and hope, you'll discover that God alone is worthy of our trust.

Trusting God is harder than it sounds. Especially when it comes to things like money, career, marriage and health. In this twelve-session LifeGuide® Bible Study on Exodus, you'll see that Israel faced similar struggles to trust God completely. In this story of hardship and hope, you'll discover that God alone is worthy of our trust.