DISPIRITED IRAQI JEWS TRY TO CELEBRATE PASSOVER (newsobserver.com)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - "Next year," they say, "in Jerusalem."

The rallying cry of centuries of Jews is a fading echo this Passover in Baghdad, among a disappearing, dispirited remnant of an ancient and important Jewish community.

"Somebody used to know how to make 'seder'" - the traditional Passover dinner - "but not me," a sad young woman, at 37 one of youngest Iraqi Jews in Baghdad, said Thursday, first day of the seven-day holiday commemorating the Jews' flight to freedom from Egypt.

...

What of Baghdad's Jews? Will they leave now that they're freer to do so?

"They're too old," he [Sasson Salah] said. "I think in five years, at the most, there will be no Jews left in Baghdad."

If so, it will sound the knell for a community that stretches back millennia, to the "Babylonian captivity" of 10,000 Jews seized from the conquered kingdom of Judah and brought here in 597 B.C.