The team
Maia Zelkha, Founding Editor
Maia Zelkha is an Iraqi-Jewish writer and artist. She is the founding editor of Yad Mizrah Magazine. She has published poetry, fiction, and essays for publications such as the Jewish Book Council, Parabola Magazine, Furrow Magazine, the Times of Israel Blogs, Vision Magazine, and most recently, David Hazony’s anthology Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out and Judith Magazine.
Maia lives on a moshav in central Israel.
Our Advisory Board
Sarah Sassoon
Sarah is an Australian born, Iraqi Jewish writer, poet, and educator. She is the author of the award winning picture book, Shoham’s Bangle and This is Not a Cholent. Her poetry micro chapbook, This is Why We Don’t Look Back was awarded the Harbor Review Jewish Women’s Poetry prize. She is an editorial advisor for Distinctions: A Sephardi and Mizrahi Journal. She is also the co-author of the The In-Between, a literary dialogue about identity and belonging published by Verlagshaus Berlin. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and four boys.
Dyusa Chapiro, Operations Editor
Dyusa Chapiro is the Operations Editor of Yad Mizrah, where she helps bring the magazine’s vision to life by coordinating its creative and editorial processes. Outside the magazine, she has a background in Jewish and Indigenous education, creating curricula that explore themes of identity and heritage. As an artist, she blends beadwork with Judaica through her jewelry brand, Star Bead Amulets, celebrating ancestral traditions through her craft.
Carol Isaacs
Carol Isaacs is a keyboard player & accordionist in the pop and world music fields, recording and touring worldwide with many international artists including Sinéad O’Connor (Ireland), The Indigo Girls (US), Ahmed Mukhtar (Iraq), Phongsit Khampee (Thailand). She is a founder member of the London Klezmer Quartet (UK).
Also known as award-winning cartoonist The Surreal McCoy(published in the New Yorker, Private Eye, Spectator) Carol drew The Wolf of Baghdad graphic memoir based on her own family’s recollections of life in Iraq and then turned it into a motion comic with music. She also plays Arabic accordion on the soundtrack. The book itself was published by Myriad Editions (UK) in January 2020 and was one of the Guardian’s best graphic novels. She won the inaugural Jewish Children’s Book Awards in 2021 for her story Samira’s Stars based on family memories of Shabbat in Iraq. Carol was also awarded funding by UK Jewish Film to produce two short documentary films, Growing Up Mizrahi (2023) and Torn (2024).
Eliyahu Harkham
Eliyahu Harkham is an Iraqi-Jewish artist based in Los Angeles. He studied under his father, oil painter Jonathan Harkham, and as a fine art student in Rome, Italy. Largely influenced by renaissance and pre-renaissance works, to impressionist and modernist painters such as Tiziano to Giacometti to Cezanne, Harkham incorporates jewish themes for a majority of his recent works. He currently works and teaches in his studio, While heavily influenced by his time studying in Rome and previously, under his father, Harkham often incorporates Jewish themes in his work. He currently works and teaches out of his studio, Shamash Fine Arts.