Let's visit Baghdad of the 1920s, a city with a higher percentage of Jews that modern New York. We will meet local politicians like Menahem Saleh Daniel, economic leaders like Sasson Hezqel and the part each played in Iraqi national project. We will see the Iraqi juggernaut families like the Sassoons and Kadoories who fought for dominance as far away as China and will hear the convulsing debates over Zionism that eventually resulted in the Humiliations and Expulsions.

Your presenter for this talk is Richard Sassoon, an Iraqi-American of Jewish heritage who graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Fordham University Law School with a J.D. with an LL.M. in European Business Law from Madrid’s Universidad Pontificia Comillas. He currently works at UnitedLex as a Contract Manager, but has previously held roles at Samsung Engineering, J.P. Morgan, and several law firms. Richard is an American Sephardi Federation Broome & Allen Fellow. Richard has a long-standing interest in diverse cultures and regions, having visited over fifty different countries, meeting various high-level diplomats with Jewish organizations, working on three continents, and handling legal documents in five languages.