About this episode
The 20th century brought major disruptions, displacement, and annihilation to Jewish communities all over the world. In the Middle East and North Africa, over one million Jews fled or were forced out of places where Jewish communities had existed for over 2,000 years. The San Francisco-based organization JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) works to preserve the cultural memory and heritage of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, and ensure that this history is part of the record of Jewish life. In this episode, producer Asal Ehsanipour and JIMENA's Executive Director Sarah Levin share highlights from some of the oral stories preserved in JIMENA's archive and talk about their own family histories.