Sudanese Jews recall lost world

Effort to record migrants' stories evokes nostalgia for African life

Lily Ben-David gets emotional when she talks about her childhood in Sudan. She still dreams of her school, the courtyard, the balcony and frolicking on the banks of the Blue Nile, even though it has been more than 50 years since she saw any of it.

Sudan's Jews once made up the smallest Jewish community in the Middle East, a close-knit group of 1,000 people who enjoyed warm relations with their Muslim neighbors. But the establishment of Israel in 1948, followed by a series of Arab-Israeli wars, forced them to flee in the 1960s.