Ethnicities around the world (beta)

Jews have been living in the historical Persian Empire for more than 2,700 years, exiled by both the Babylonians and Assyrians to what was called "the ends of the earth," today's Iran and Iraq. Some 1,700 years ago, the descendants of those exiles were key players in creating the Babylonian Talmud, attesting to a Jewish community that thrived until the Middle Ages, when Jewish well-being fluctuated, depending on the government in power. In the early 1950s, more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Jewish community left for Israel, escaping anti-Jewish legislation. Thousands of Iranian (also called Persian) Jews also migrated to Israel when the state was created in 1948. On the eve of the 1978 Islamic Revolution in Iran, some 80,000-100,000 Jews lived there. Since then, the majority have emigrated to the United States, Israel, Canada and elsewhere, but today some 20,000 Jews still live in Iran. Mizrahi (which means Eastern in Hebrew) Jews are also found in Afghanistan, India, Uzbekistan and other regions. Some scholars include Mizrahim in the broadest definition of Sephardim, but there is no connection to Iberian origin, although similarities exist in liturgy, food and other cultural aspects.