An Instagram page where every day is Mizrahi Heritage Month

Ciara Shalome has been filming Jews from all over the Mizrahi Jewish world and uploading their stories to Instagram since 2022. She’s interviewed people from countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen.

In sharing their stories on her Instagram page, The Mizrahi Story, the 27-year-old Londoner has created an unmatched living archive of Mizrahi Jewry.

Shalome tells The Jewish Independent her favourite clips are the ones which capture coexistence between Jews and Arabs. She gives the example of Sammy Benisty, whose Moroccan Jewish family adopted an abandoned Muslim boy named Salah, and insisted on raising Salah as a Muslim. They sent Salah to the local Muslim Arab school, Sammy’s father took Salah to the nearest mosque and asked the Imam to teach him so Salah wouldn’t lose his identity, and he arranged Salah’s marriage to a Muslim bride.

Another of Shalome’s favourites is her post about Nessim Dawood, an Iraqi Jew responsible for the most famous translation of the Quran into English.

She loves these types of clips most because “they really inspire the idea of hope”. Indeed, Shalome is drawn to telling positive stories. “We shouldn't just be telling stories about death, because then it just defines the Jewish people as this group who've only ever suffered,” she says.

The Mizrahi Story certainly doesn’t shy away from stories of suffering. For example, a recent post is about Yemen’s Orphans Decree of 1922, which mandated the forced conversion of Yemeni Jewish orphans to Islam. And Shalome is clear that at times, life was very difficult for Jewish people across the Middle East and North Africa.