Patrick Comerford
The recent Israeli and US attacks on Iran have made day-to-day life even more precarious for Jews living in Iran today. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has not been an easy place for Jews to live in, nor is it for Christians either. Both minorities seem to have been lost in the news coverage in recent days, yet Iran has Jewish and Christian communities that have called Iran, and before that Persia, their home for centuries.
After Israel, Iran has the largest number of Jewish people in a Middle East country. According to estimates, between 17,000 and 25,000 Iranian Jews are living mostly in larger cities such as Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Hamedan and Tabriz. Iran's parliament, the Majlis, has one reserved seat for the Jewish community, currently held by Dr Homayoun Sameyah Najafabadi (61), a Tehran-born pharmacist first elected in 2020.
Iranian immigrants in Israel are referred to as Parsim, meaning Persian. In Iran, Persian Jews and Jewish people in general are both described with four common terms: Kalīmī, the most proper term; Yahūdī, which is less formal but correct; Yīsrael, the term Jewish people use to refer to themselves as descendants of the Children of Israel; and Johūd a term with highly negative connotations that many Jews find offensive.
Iranian or Persian Jews, or Parsim, are one of the oldest communities of the Jewish diaspora. According to one Jewish legend, the first Jew to enter Persia was Sarah bat Asher, granddaughter of the Patriarch Jacob.
Jews have been living in Persia continuously since ca 727 BCE, having arrived in the region as slaves captured by the Assyrian and Babylonian kings. The biblical books of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles and Esther refer to the lives of Jews in Persia and their relations with the Persian kings. The historic Jewish sites in Iran include the tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Hamadan, and the tombs of Daniel and Habakkuk, as well as the tombs of several outstanding Jewish scholars.
The Book of Esther are set entirely in Persia. Haman, a senior official in the court of King Ahasuerus, identified as Xerxes the Great, plotted in the 6th century BCE to kill all the Jews in ancient Persia. The plot was foiled by Esther, the Jewish Queen of Persia, Haman and his sons were hanged. The events are celebrated in the holiday of Purim.
Cyrus the Great led the Achaemenid conquest of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and later freed the the Jewish exiles rom the Babylonian captivity. According to the biblical account, Cyrus the Great was ‘God’s anointed’, and he granted all the Jews citizenship. Various biblical accounts say over 40,000 Jews returned ca 537 BCE, but many chose to remain in Persia. Scholars believe that Jews may have comprised as much as 20% of the population at the peak of the Persian Empire.
The Second Temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem, ‘according to the decree of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia’ (Ezra 6: 14). The prophets Haggai and Zechariah encouraged this work, and the Temple was ready for consecration in the spring of 515 BCE, more than 20 years after the Jews returned to Jerusalem.
Persian loan words in Hebrew include: pardes (פַּרְדֵּס), orchard, from which we get the word for Paradise; Etrog (אֶתְרוֹג), a green-yellow fruit; lilach (לִילָךְ), lilac, a lighter shade of purple; shoshana (שׁוֹשַׁנָּה), rose, from the name of the former capital of the Persian Empire, Shushan; sukar (סֻכָּר), sugar, from the Persian word shakar); and bazar (בָּזָאר), from bāzār in Persian.
The Pharisees were one of the most important Jewish groups in the late inter-testamental and New Testament periods, and their name is said to come from Hebrew word that means ‘to separate,’ indicating a ‘separatist’ or a separated person. But a plausible alternative finds the origin of the name in the Aramaic word for Persian, and some scholars claim the Pharisees adapted some Zoroastrianism ideas, such as their ideas about resurrection and the future life, and their angelology and demonology, making them ‘Persianisers.’
With the fall of Jerusalem, Babylonia became a kind of bulwark of Judaism, and the number of Jewish refugees in Babylon increased after the collapse of the Bar Kochba revolt.
In the third century CE, Zoroastrianism became the official state religion and other religions, including Judaism, were suppressed. But later Shapur I was friendly to the Jews, Shapur II’s mother was half-Jewish, and this gave the Jewish community relative freedom of religion and many advantages.
After the Islamic conquest of Persia, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians lived with a number of discriminations. At times, they even enjoyed significant economic and religious freedom compared with Jews in Europe, and many were doctors, scholars and craftsman, or held positions of influence.
During Mongol rule in the late 13th century, Arghun Khan appointed Sa’d al-Daula a Jew as his vizier. But al-Daula was murdered in 1291 and Persian Jews in Tabriz suffered such violent persecutions that the Syriac Orthodox historian Bar Hebraeus wrote that ‘neither tongue can utter, nor the pen write down’ how violent the events were. Synagogues were destroyed, there were forced conversions and Jews were forced a distinctive mark on their heads.
Under the Safavid dynasty (1502-1794), Shi’a Islam became the state religion, Isfahan became a new capital, and Jews were forced to wear distinctive badges, clothing and headgear. But many Jews were traders, and they prospered through trade along the Silk Road with Central Asia and China.
The persecution of Jews in Persia resumed under the Qajar dynasty in 1794, and many Jews were confronted with two options: conversion to Islam or death. Throughout the 19th century, the European powers noted numerous forced conversions and massacres. However, European travellers reported that many Jews in Tabriz and Shiraz continued to practice Judaism in secret.
By the late 19th century, Jews were the most significant minority in Tehran. The Jewish quarter of Shiraz was looted and plundered in 1901, and 12 Jews murdered. Thousands of Iranian Jews emigrated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to what is now Israel but then in the Ottoman Empire and to present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
The Pahlavi dynasty improved the life of Jews and many of the restrictions on Jews and other religious minorities were abolished. During the Allied occupation of Iran in World War II, some Polish and Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi-occupied Poland settled in Iran. After World II, the state of Israel was formed in 1948 and about 140,000 to 150,000 Jews were living in Iran, but over 95% of them have since migrated abroad.
About 70,000 Jews, or one-third of Iranian Jews, most of them poor, emigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1953. But many Jews who remained in Iran prospered during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were 80,000 to 100,000 Jews in Iran, mostly in Tehran (60,000), Shiraz (18,000), Kermanshah (4,000) and Isfahan (3,000).
Ayatollah Khomeini met Jewish community leaders in Qom when he returned from exile in Paris, and issued a fatwa decreeing that the Jews were to be protected. But since 1979, 13 Jews have been executed in Iran, accused of connections with Israel, and Jewish emigration increased dramatically: 20,000 Jews left within months of the revolution, and 60,000 more emigrated in the aftermath.
Jews have become more religious in recent years. Families that had been secular in the 1970s started following kosher dietary laws, observed the Shabbat and made the synagogue the focal point of their social lives.
Some estimates say there are still 60,000 to 85,000 Jews in Iran; other sources put the figure at 25,000, and even as low as 8,500. But, after Israel, Iran is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East, with large Jewish communities in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz. President Mohammad Khatami visited Yusef Abad Synagogue in 2000, the first time a President of Iran had visited a synagogue since the revolution.
There are 25 synagogues in Iran, and most Jews live in Tehran, where there are 11 active synagogues, some Hebrew schools, two kosher restaurants, a Jewish library, an old-age home and a cemetery. Dr Sapir Jewish Hospital is Iran’s largest charity hospital of any religious minority community. It caters for all patients regardless of religious affiliation and most of the patients and staff are Muslim.
Traditionally, Shiraz, Hamedan, Isfahan, Tabriz, Nahawand and Babol have been home to large Jewish populations. Isfahan has a Jewish population of about 1,500 and 13 synagogues.
Rabbi Yehuda Gerami has been the Chief Rabbi of Iran and the spiritual leader of the Jewish community of Iran since 2011. Following the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, a senior Iranian military intelligence figure, in 2020, the Chief Rabbi visited his family and condemned Israeli attacks, saying the attacks had stoked tensions in the Jewish community in Iran.
Opinions about the condition of Jews in Iran are divided. Some reports say the majority of Iranian Jews prefer to stay in Iran. Other sources say that while Jews are allowed to practice their religion, they live in fear of being accused of spying for Israel and that they distance themselves from Israel and Zionism to ensure their own security.
Privately, it is said, many Jews complain of ‘discrimination, much of it of a social or bureaucratic nature.’ The last remaining newspaper in the Iranian Jewish community closed in 1991 after criticising government control of Jewish schools.
Jewish emigration from Iran increased dramatically after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the fall of the last Shah. Today, the vast majority of Iranian Jews live in Israel and the US, with Iranian Jewish communities in Paris, London, Australia, Canada and South America.
Outside Iran, the largest group of Persian Jews is found in Israel, with an estimated 135,000 people. In Israel, Persian Jews are classified as Mizrahim, and they include former President Moshe Katsav and former Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz.
The US is home to 60,000-80,000 Iranian Jews, most of them in the Greater Los Angeles area, Great Neck, New York and Baltimore, Maryland. In particular, Persian Jews make up a sizeable proportion of the population of Beverly Hills. The community is credited with revitalising Beverly Hills, where Jimmy Delshad, a Persian Jew who emigrated to the US in 1958, has been the Mayor in 2007 and 2010.
Iranian-born Jews or Jews of Iranian descent include: David Alliance, Baron Alliance, a British businessman and Liberal Democrat politician; the US politician, Anna Kaplan; Moshe Katsav, former President of Israel; the peace activist Abie Nathan; the co-founders of Tinder Justin Mateen and Sean Rad; and the actor Sarah Solemani.
One prominent Jew in Iran said in recent years, ‘We are not tenants in this country. We are Iranians, and we have been for 30 centuries.’
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
