Lighting the Menorah under the Shadow of Saddam Hussein’s Tyranny

In the 1990s, a UN inspector tasked with making sure Iraq was not engaged in efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction stumbled upon Baghdad’s last functioning synagogue—the surviving remnant of a Jewish community that, at the beginning of the last century, made up a third of the city’s population. He managed to film a menorah lighting that took place there. While the footage was badly damaged, it has since been restored and digitized by the American Sephardi Federation. Here a congregant says the prayers over the candle lighting, and then recites Psalm 30. (Video, 2 minutes.)