Damaged House In Mosul's Old City Is Remnant Of Old Synagogue

A century ago, the Iraqi city of Mosul was one of the region's most prosperous and religiously diverse cities. Jewish history there goes back almost 3,000 years to ancient Nineveh. The battle against ISIS heavily damaged the oldest part of the city. NPR's Jane Arraf tells us the violence laid bare a piece of Jewish heritage.

ZAID AHMED: (Speaking Arabic).

JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: "This is the house where I was born," Zaid Ahmed tells me. We're in Mosul's historic old city, high stone walls on either side of a twisting, narrow alley, leading to what's left of a grand, old house. Ahmed, like almost everyone in Mosul now, is Muslim. His family home is huge, with marble arches and colorful, decorated pillars in the old Jewish quarter. In fact, the house Ahmed's grandfather bought in 1956 from the Iraqi government was a synagogue.

AHMED: (Through interpreter) This room is where the cleric sat. He taught in Hebrew. And this was their only church in the neighborhood.

ARRAF: By church, he means synagogue. Mosul's Jewish community has been gone for so long, most people don't know the word for rabbi anymore. But Ahmed remembers from his father and grandfather the Jews who worshipped there prayed facing west, the direction of Jerusalem. And they told him that when Iraqi Jews were forced to leave the country after the creation of Israel, they left a big gap.