their religion but were prohibited from holding jobs in state enterprises or joining the army. Immediately prior to the Gulf War, the U.S. State Department noted that there was no recent evidence of overt persecution of Jews, but travel, particularly to Israel, was restricted, as was contact with Jewish groups abroad. In 1997, the Jerusalem Post reported that in the previous five years, some 75 Jews had fled Iraq, of whom about 20 moved to Israel and the rest mostly went to the United Kingdom and Netherlands. The community's only ordained rabbi died in 1996 and the last shochet, or kosher slaughterer, left in 2002. In 2003, one community member, Emad Levy, became the community's leader, functioning as its sole rabbi, kosher slaughterer, and advisor on all Judaism-related issues to those in the community. The last active synagogue closed in 2003, a few weeks before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the Jewish Agency launched an effort to track down all of the remaining Iraqi Jews to present them with an opportunity to emigrate to Israel, and found a total of 34 Jews in Baghdad, half of whom were over the age of 70. While the community was largely elderly and poor, some were middle class including two doctors. Six chose to emigrate, among them Ezra Levy, the father of Emad Levy. After the defeat of the Ba'ath regime, the process of establishing a new democratic government began. Among the subjects for debate over the Iraqi constitution was whether Jews should be considered a minority group, or left out of the constitution altogether. In October 2006, Rabbi Emad Levy announced that he was leaving for Israel and compared his life to "living in a prison". He reported that most Iraqi Jews stay in their homes "out of fear of kidnapping or execution" due to sectarian violence. However, Levy remained in Iraq for four more years. He emigrated to Israel in 2010 after receiving death threats, where he subsequently married and started a family, becoming the last Iraqi Jew to emigrate. Levy remained in touch with the small Jewish community left in the country. In a 2018 interview, he said that there were five Jews still in Iraq, with one woman serving as the community director. There are numerous estimates for the number of Jews living in Baghdad. They include thirty-four (2003) (of whom six