THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD.(Iraqi Jewish families in New York City)

Photographs of Baghdad the day the American troops took control of the city

A portfolio of photographs of the fight for the Iraqi capital

Photographs of Baghdad taken before the coalition troops entered the city

An archive of NewYorker.com's coverage of the war in Iraq

Framed posters of men wearing head scarves and long black beards cover the walls of the anteroom at 85-34 Midland Parkway, a converted brick ranch house in a leafy enclave of Jamaica, Queens. In a hallway two maps of Iraq--pre- and post-1900--hang side by side. They identify the locations and dates of significant incidents in the eradication of the country's Jewish population, from a raid on Baghdad synagogues in 1333 to the public hanging of nine accused spies, by the newly ensconced Baath Party, in 1969.

"I call them the Talibans,"David Shohet said the other day, gesturing toward the posters. "Because of those beards. Don't they look like they would be Talibans?"They do, perhaps, but he was careful to explain that the men in the pictures are actually eminent Babylonian rabbis, from the past couple of hundred years. Shohet, who wore an American-flag pin on the lapel of his suit jacket, is the vice-president of Congregation Bene Naharayim, a synagogue that has a membership of more than four hundred Iraqi Jewish families. (By last known count, there are only thirtysix Jews left in Baghdad.) In New York City, where the population of Iraqi-born immigrants is about twelve hundred, it is Jews who constitute the largest and most organized Iraqi presence, and Bene Naharayim's ranch house of worship is the capital by proxy.

Shohet was at the synagogue, along with seventy or so other Iraqis, for regular Sabbath services, and also for a memorial service for a longtime member, Simha. In the sanctuary, which had been created out of two bedrooms, worshippers passed around a photograph of Simha taken in Baghdad, in 1941, while the cantor conducted prayers in an Aramaic-inflected dialect particular to Iraqi Judaism. Midway through the service, a woman addressed the group in English, delivering a sort of congregation news briefing. When she finished, a man shouted out, "You forgot to give us the weather in Baghdad!”