“Put That Stamp On It”: Sustaining Iraqi Jewish Heritage and Arab Cultural Identity After the Farhud

I was excited to learn that the South Korean boy band BTS would be returning with a new album after a hiatus. Beyond romantic love, their music addresses self-doubt, societal pressure, and cultural identity-themes I was not used to hearing from mainstream American boy bands. Raising two sons, I am drawn to their version of masculinity: strong yet capable of vulnerability, moral reflection and honoring individual differences while finding strength in togetherness. I am a fan of BTS music going back to their first album, but through the newest album, Arirang, named after a traditional Korean folk song, I realized much of my admiration is connected to my father, of blessed memory, and my role as a bearer of Iraqi Jewish history and culture. Arirang is widely understood to symbolize unity, resilience, resistance, cultural identity, and nostalgia. This resonated with me-not because BTS's experiences mirror mine, but because it reflects longing for culture, inheritance, and carrying tradition across generations.

My father, Hikmat Rabia, was born in Baghdad in 1938. Iraq had a thriving Jewish community whose roots in Babylonia date back to the 6th century BCE, after the destruction of the First Temple.  This community developed a rich religious and intellectual culture. Notably, the Babylonian Talmud, the foundational work of Jewish law and interpretation, originated there.  Later Jews played prominent roles in Iraqi society, including in music, medicine, universities, banking, media, and government. My grandfather Nissim served as a Jewish liaison to the Iraqi Parliament and oversaw mail and telegraph offices in his region.

The beginning of the end of the community's presence in Iraq was the Farhud, a violent dispossession against Baghdad's Jews in 1941, during Shavuot. Over the course of the two days, at least 180 Jews were killed, more than 1,000 injured, hundreds of Jewish homes were destroyed, and Jewish business were vandalized, looted and destroyed. Nazi propaganda had gained traction in Iraq as Germany sought influence in the region.

After the Farhud, many of my father's cousins left Iraq in the 1940s and migrated to India, then under British rule, before eventually settling in Australia. Following Israel's establishment in 1948, conditions for Iraqi Jews worsened. Jews were only allowed to leave Iraq if they renounced citizenship and left their property behind. Between 1951 and 1952, nearly the entire community emigrated: 120,000 to 130,000 people were airlifted to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, including my father's family. His name was changed from Hikmat Rabia to Daveed Rabi, from Arabic to Hebrew, also changing its meaning. Government absorption policies for Jews from Islamic countries set a precedent for ongoing political, cultural, and social tensions, often pressuring them to assimilate into secular, European norms. As a result, Jews from Arab lands and Iran frequently experienced a form of double erasure, first through displacement from their countries of origin, and then through marginalization in Israel and other countries where they resettled.

While some Sephardi and Mizrahi communities preserved traditions across generations, I inherited mine in fragments. American-born and half Ashkenazi, I was raised largely in Ashkenazi institutions and knew few people with similar backgrounds. My father wrote books: historical analysis, poetry, historical fiction and memoirs about Iraq, Israel, and immigration to the United States, for which I am grateful. Still, I mourn what was lost - language, music, and custom passed down incompletely. Culture is hard to sustain alone, and I often struggle with imposter syndrome as a culture bearer shaping what will continue. "Culture bearer" is a term I learned to use through my collaborations with Cantor Leslie Goldberg '26 (Mazel Tov, Mabrouk!) at Congregation Beth Elohim, where she and Cantor Josh Breitzer '11 began integrating Sephardi Mizrahi melodies into services with a small group I founded and co-lead. They intentionally introduced music to the broader community reflecting the Sephardi Mizrachi backgrounds within CBE. Together, we balanced the group's wishes by introducing melodies in their cultural context, and as they became familiar, integrating them naturally into synagogue life without comment and at other times as teachable moments.

Through a small role in Cantor Goldberg's senior cantorial recital, Living the Judaism of Our Time: Honoring Our Complex Identities Through Shared Musical Traditions, I met Yoni Avi Battat, who is of mixed Ashkenazi and Iraqi Jewish heritage and works to bring Arabic music into American Jewish spaces. In speaking with him, I felt a deep sense of recognition and less alone. Through Hebrew Union College's Jewish Language Project, I later listened to an interview with Director Sarah Bunin Benor, Ph.D., and Battat on carrying culture through musical fragments. In a separate interview with memoirist Samantha Ellis, the daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, in which she and Benor reflected on the loss of Judeo-Arabic and, more broadly, on how culture is passed on across generations. I felt seen in how Battat described celebrating one's own culture while still feeling, in some ways, like an outsider. I also felt recognition in Ellis's words, as demonstrated in her amba story, where she describes how the famous Iraqi sauce, itself a product of trade routes and intercultural exchange, has changed over time and across generations.

Enduring cultures bridge past and present while adapting to change. In Baghdad, my father studied in Baghdad's Alliance School, where he studied in French alongside Hebrew and Arabic. He spoke Arabic in broader society and Judeo-Arabic within the Jewish community. After immigrating to the United States, he became David Rabeeya (the spelling chosen to assist non-Arabic speakers with pronunciation), blending identities once more. When I asked if he felt more like David or Hikmat, he said Hikmat-rooted in his formative years even as his life changed. I once asked him why he ensured I knew Hebrew well and not Arabic. He explained he loved Semitic languages. This passion reflected his lifelong engagement with Semitic languages as demonstrated in the degrees earned from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, and a Ph.D. on Arabic dialects among Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities in Baghdad from Dropsie University.

A resonant tension between continuity and change is evident in BTS, whose global success emerges from blending Korean language and musical traditions with global genres, universal themes, and English while remaining rooted in their distinct cultural identity. Their openness about navigating this balance has helped me reflect on my own sense of responsibility as a culture bearer. Through my work at CBE, including with Cantor Goldberg and through my encounters with other culture bearers, I am working to accept that continuity is not all or nothing. Music carries memory even when incomplete. When Iraqi melodies are sung in services, I am moved even when I know parts of them or have learned them slightly differently from my father. Cultural continuity cannot be understood without contextualizing history and rupture. In this context, co-leading a Tikkun Leil Shavuot session with Cantor Goldberg, exploring Iraqi and Moroccan piyyutim while marking the Farhud, highlights the enduring contributions of Sephardi and Mizrachi traditions. The Farhud was a profound historical and emotional break that must be named- not just on Shavuot, but within the history of the Jews of the Middle East, and more broadly within Jewish and world history. Fragments endure, and their reengagement can benefit not only those directly connected, but the wider community.

Read more from Naomi Rabeeya: "The Farhud and the Enduring Legacy of Iraqi Jews"