Judaism in Iran

Iranian Jews, Yahudiyan or Kalimiyan, ‘people of Moses the interlocutor’, belong to one of the oldest Jewish communities outside the Land of Israel. The Bible records that Israelites deported by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE were settled ‘in the cities of the Medes’. After Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 587 or 586 BCE, many Judeans were taken to Babylon. When Cyrus the Great took Babylon in 539 BCE he allowed them to return and rebuild the Temple, and the Bible speaks of him with rare warmth.

Many stayed. The Book of Esther is set at Shushan, the Persian royal city of Susa, at the court of King Ahasuerus, often identified with Xerxes I. Esther, a Jewish queen, and her cousin Mordecai save their people from the plot of the minister Haman, and the deliverance is celebrated every spring at Purim. In Hamadan a domed building over two cenotaphs is venerated as the tomb of Esther and Mordecai and is a place of pilgrimage. At Shush, the tomb of the prophet Daniel is honoured by Jews and Muslims alike.

Judeo-Persian

Iranian Jews wrote Persian in Hebrew letters, a tradition called Judeo-Persian. Some of the earliest surviving documents of New Persian are Judeo-Persian, among them an eighth-century letter found at Dandan-Uiliq in Central Asia and inscriptions from Tang-e Azao in Afghanistan. In the fourteenth century the poet Shahin of Shiraz retold the books of Moses and the story of Esther in Persian verse modelled on the epic style of Ferdowsi, and the poet Emrani followed him. Related traditions live on in Bukhori, the Persian of the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia, and in Juhuri, the Iranian language of the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus, whose town of Qırmızı Qəsəbə in the Republic of Azerbaijan is one of the last all-Jewish towns outside Israel.

Hard times and long roots

The community’s history has known both prosperity and persecution. Under Shah Abbas II in the seventeenth century Jews in several cities were forced to convert, and in 1839 the Jews of Mashhad were forcibly converted; many kept their faith in secret for generations. The twentieth century brought new freedoms, schools and wealth, and many Jews moved to Tehran. After the 1979 revolution, the prominent businessman and community leader Habib Elghanian was executed, and many Jews emigrated, chiefly to Israel and the United States, where Los Angeles has a large community. In 1999 thirteen Jews from Shiraz and Isfahan were arrested on espionage charges; Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticised the fairness of their trial. The Islamic Republic of Iran recognises Jews as a religious minority with one reserved seat in parliament.

Iran’s Jewish community is often described as the largest in the Middle East outside Israel. Tehran has synagogues, kosher butchers and the Dr Sapir Jewish hospital, and Isfahan, Shiraz and Hamadan keep congregations. In homes in Tehran and Los Angeles alike, the Passover table still carries Persian charoset and the custom of lightly striking one another with spring onions while singing Dayenu.