Encyclopedia Judaica:
Dehok, Iraq

Iraq: Virtual Jewish World | Iraq & Israel| Baghdad

DEHOK (Dihok), a town in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan. According to the official census of 1930, there were 843 Jews in the entire Dehok region. Their language was the *Aramaic spoken in the mountains, Jabalī. They were farmers, artisans, and weavers. The ḥakhamim who headed the community included Joseph b. Isaac, who in 1888 completed a book of homilies, and the kabbalist ḥakham Elijah Abraham Mizraḥi, who translated Kurdish-Aramaic poems into Hebrew. When the State of Israel was established, the entire community migrated there.

Sources:A. Ben-Jacob, Kehillot Yehudei Kurdistan (1961), 56f.; Brawer, in: Minḥah le-David (1935), 248; Rivlin, in: Zion Me'assef, 4 (1930), 109–21.

[Abraham Haim]

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