raqi Jews have been immigrating to the United States since the beginning of the 20th century, with sharp increases after the Ottoman Empire dissolved in the 1920s and the state of Israel was established in 1948. One estimate suggests there are 15,000 Iraqi Jews in the U.S. today, with major hubs in Southern California and New York City, with only a few dozen left in Baghdad. With most Iraq-born New Yorkers identifying as Jewish, religious and cultural institutions — the Congregation Bene Naharayim in Jamaica Estates and the new Babylonian Jewish Center in Great Neck — are helping to keep the community intact. Some families also settled in Manhattan. Over 400 families belong to the Queens synagogue, which has offered weekly services following the Babylonian Jewish minhag (practice) since it was inaugurated in 1986. The Jewish community of Baghdad long spoke a distinctive variety of the local Arabic, sometimes called haki mal yihud ("speech of the Jews") and now highly endangered, but Jews from the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq, of whom there may be some in New York, have traditionally spoken distinctive Jewish Neo-Aramaic varieties.