Did you know that the first beauty queen in Iraq was Jewish? Renée Rebecca Dangoor was crowned Miss Baghdad in 1946 and made history in 1947 as the first and only Jewish Miss Iraq.
Renée was born to a Jewish Baghdadi family in December 1925. Her father, Moshe, was the son of Ezra Dangoor, the Chief Rabbi of Iraq.
Iraqi Jews are one of the longest-surviving and historically significant Jewish communities, tracing back to the Babylonians in the 6th century BCE. By 1948, the year of Israel’s independence, Iraq was home to approximately 150,000 Jews. Today, nearly every Jew has been forced to leave the country.
