Rare international efforts to save remnants are not enough to preserve what is left of a once-thriving Jewish community

Dr. Sahar Karim al-Ta'i, recently in running to become a minister, says she is ready to give it all for normalization: 'We can live under repression or we can die with courage'

PM praises gathering of hundreds of Sunni and Shiite notables, says 'recognition of the historical injustice done to the Jews of Iraq is especially important'

At Erbil conference, participants also call for rebuilding ties with the country's dispossessed Jewish diaspora; normalization remains a crime under Iraqi law

A community that once thrived is all but gone; Baghdad's lone synagogue only opens occasionally and has no rabbis

Dr. Thafer Eliyahu, 61, continued to receive patients even when country was being bombed in 2003 Gulf War

Iraqi-born Daniel Sasson recounts firsthand how in the early 1940s, Hitler-emulating dictator Rashid Ali al-Gaylani sent Jews to ghettos and firing squads in the Middle East

Ancient custom of letting the first customer of the day name their price, once practiced by Jews and Muslims alike, helps keep the balance in country's busy markets

Journalist and novelist Sigal Samuel honors her Iraqi Jewish heritage with picture book about Osnat Barazani, whose life was a real-life early Yentel story set in the Middle East

Some 400 families of Jewish descent still live in Iraqi Kurdistan, once home to a thriving community; some now practice their faith in secret, while others have converted to Islam