Place
Baghdad בגדאד
The city of the Geonim and, a thousand years later, of the Ben Ish Chai: a community unbroken from the Talmud to the mid-twentieth century.
After the centre of the Babylonian yeshivas shifted from Sura and Pumbedita, Baghdad became the city of the Geonim and the head of the Jewish world: from here answers went out to communities from Spain to India.
The community lived here unbroken for more than a thousand years. In the nineteenth century R. Yosef Chaim, the Ben Ish Chai, joined halacha to kabbalah in a book that became everyday reading for the whole of Eastern Jewry. In 1950–51 over a hundred thousand Baghdad Jews left for Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.
On the timeline
4510 · 750 CEThe Flowering of the Geonic Age and the Sheiltot of Rav Achai4527 · 767 CEThe Karaite Schism5708 · 1948 CEThe Exodus from Arab Lands: Magic Carpet, Ezra and Nehemiah
Sources
Rishonim
- Responsa of the Geonim — the answers sent out from here to every community
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Ben Ish Chai, first year — weekly lessons of halacha with kabbalah — the book Eastern Jewry lived by
Basis: documents and evidence.