metrical form. Her poems are among the few examples of the early modern Hebrew texts written by women. Kurdish Jews had lived in Kashan, Iran and many Jews migrated to Turkey during the 1700s to 1800s. They were active in trade in rural villages in Turkey, regions like Gaziantep and Malatya had a substantial Jewish populations. They were usually quite concealed but did not have any negative interactions with other communities. Immigration of Kurdish Jews to the Land of Israel initiated during the late 16th century, with a community of rabbinic scholars arriving to Safed, Galilee, and a Kurdish Jewish quarter had been established there as a result. The thriving period of Safed however ended in 1660, with Druze power struggles in the region and an economic decline. Modern times Since the early 20th century some Kurdish Jews had been active in the Zionist movement. One of the most famous members of Lehi (Freedom Fighters of Israel) was Moshe Barazani, whose family immigrated from Iraqi Kurdistan and settled in Jerusalem in the late 1920s. The vast majority of Kurdish Jews were forced out of Iraqi Kurdistan and evacuated to Israel in the early 1950s, together with the Iraqi Jewish community. Almost all the Kurdish Jews of Iranian Kurdistan relocated mostly to Israel as well in the same period. The Times of Israel reported on September 30, 2013: "Today, there are almost 200,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel, about half of whom live in Jerusalem. There are also over 30 agricultural villages throughout the country that were founded by Kurdish Jews." On October 17, 2015, the Kurdistan Regional Government named Sherzad Omar Mamsani as the representative of the Jewish community at the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, but he was dismissed following assertions by the Jewish community in Israel that there were no Jews remaining in the Kurdistan Region. However the sending of Hanukkah kits to Jews in arab countries including Kurdistan indicate there may be Jewish rements hiding there. Historiography One of the main problems in the history and historiography of the Jews of Kurdistan was the lack of written history and the lack of documents and historical records. During the 1930s, a German-Jewish ethnographer, Erich Brauer, began interviewing members of the community. His assistant, Raphael Patai, published the results of his research in Hebrew. The book, (Jerusalem, 1940), was translated into English in the 1990s. Israeli scholar Mordechai Zaken