Members of Iraq's Kurdish Jewish community celebrated the final night of the religious holiday of Hannukah on Sunday in the Iraqi town of al-Qosh, 50 kilometers north of the city of Mosul.

Hannukah, an eight night holiday, began on December 22 this year. Otherwise known as the Festival of Lights, Hannukah is commemorated by lighting one of nine branches of a candelabra (a menorah) every night.

The holiday commemorates the rededication of the holy temple in Jerusalem after the 165 BC Jewish victory over the Hellenistic Seleucid armies of Antiochus IV Epiphanies, who had outlawed Jewish rituals and ordered Jews to worship Greek gods and adopt their customs.

Between 1948 and 1951, over 121,000 Jewish people left Iraq and Kurdistan for the newly-established state Israel. In the so-called Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, Israel airlifted tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews from Iraq, where they faced intensified persecution.

Numbers continued to dwindle in the following decades. Some 1,000 Jews currently live in the Kurdistan Region, according to the Kurdish Ministry of Religious Affairs.

In continued fear of persecution, the small remaining community often keep their Jewish identity hidden. Religious celebrations like Hanukkah and Passover are often celebrated privately, inside the home of someone within the community.

Photos by Safin Hamed / AFP