Iranian Jews in Israel: Between Persian Cultural Identity and Israeli Nationalism 9780755609130, 9780857727886

Table of contents :
Cover
Author Bio
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
1. Zionism and the Birth of Israel
2. Jews: Their History, Education and Social Status
3. The Rise of Political Zionism in Iran
4. International Factors
5. Domestic Factors: The Pull Factors in Making Aliyah in both 1951 and 1979
6. Iranian Jewry’s Process of Making Aliyah and their Integration in Israel in 1951 and 1979
Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Back cover

Citation preview

Alessandra Cecolin is lecturing at the Department of History, Goldsmiths, University of London. She holds a PhD from the Department of Languages and Culture of the Near and Middle East, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

‘Alessandra Cecolin succeeds admirably in bringing to life the fate of Iranian Jews who had lived in Iran for centuries relatively free of persecution. In two waves of immigration (1948–55 and in the years following the advent of the Ayatollah Khomeini), they went to the West (if they were middle class) or to Israel (if they were poor). Those who went to Israel, cut off from their distinctive Iranian-Jewish roots, had to assimilate, with varying degrees of success, into an Israeli society then dominated by Ashkenazi Jews. Paradoxically it was at times easier for these Iranian Jews to integrate in the West than in Erez Israel. The author, in a balanced and judicious way, traces this history with an intelligent mix of archival work and oral history. A remarkable achievement.’ Donald Sassoon, Emeritus Professor, Queen Mary University of London ‘The difficulties which Jews from the Shah’s Iran experienced in immigrating to Israel during the 1950s have been lost in the mists of time – partly due to the ongoing hostility between Teheran and Tel Aviv since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Alessandra Cecolin’s account of the many challenges which Iranian Jews faced is a remarkable document for those who regard Iran as a far-away country, almost outside of Jewish history and only given prominence in recent times due to the Ayatollahs’ pronouncements and policies. This is an important first book.’ Colin Shindler, Emeritus Professor, SOAS, University of London

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL Between Persian Cultural Identity and Israeli Nationalism

ALESSANDRA CECOLIN

Published in 2016 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2016 Alessandra Cecolin The right of Alessandra Cecolin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of Modern Middle East Studies 179 ISBN: 978 1 78453 311 3 eISBN: 978 0 85773 841 7 ePDF: 978 0 85772 788 6 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

To Sandro, Tommaso and Arianna

CONTENTS

Foreword

viii

Introduction 1. Zionism and the Birth of Israel 2. Jews: Their History, Education and Social Status 3. The Rise of Political Zionism in Iran 4. International Factors 5. Domestic Factors: The Pull Factors in Making Aliyah in both 1951 and 1979 6. Iranian Jewry’s Process of Making Aliyah and their Integration in Israel in 1951 and 1979 Conclusion

1 8 32 60 82

Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

105 126 148 153 155 173 180

FOREWORD

The issue of nationality versus cultural identity became an increasingly relevant question for Iranian Jews who decided to emigrate to Israel in 1951 and again after the Khomeini revolution in 1979. The central aim of this book is to analyse the socio-political processes of these two Iranian Jewish emigrations to Israel and determine whether Iranian Jews integrated themselves into the Israeli mainstream or not. It is important to address these two emigrations that occurred in these years because both periods were meaningful defining moments in Iranian Jewish history: the birth of Israel in 1948 gave diaspora Jews the first opportunity to become citizens of the Jewish state whilst the Khomeini revolution in 1979 nominally identified Iran as an Islamic state that officially rejected any diplomatic relations with Israel. Thus, this is an attempt to investigate Iranian Jewish status in Israel by comparing these two Iranian Jewish emigrations and therefore understanding in what social-political and cultural environment Israeli immigrants from Iran presented themselves as Iranians or as Jewish. These two Iranian Jewish emigrations to Israel in 1951 and 1979 impacted on the cultural differences between Iranian Jews and Israelis. Whilst the first Iranian immigrants dealt with more cultural difficulties when they settled in Israel, the latter had to cope with Khomeini’s anti-Zionist policy and more volatile international relations between the two states.

FOREWORD

ix

The birth of Israel in 1948 represented for Iranian Jews, and for all the diaspora Jews in general, the first opportunity to become citizens of a Jewish state without being a religious minority in a host country. However, in 1948, Israeli society was primarily dominated by Ashkenazi Jews, who influenced the organisation of the society with European and secularised principles.1 The majority of Iranian Jews who decided to move to Israel in 1951 were motivated more by traditional values than by political ones. Iranian Jews were also culturally Iranians and therefore they had habits, a cultural way of expressing emotions, food preparation, respect and honour, prominence of the family in social relations and certain distinct interactions that were completely different from the rest of Israeli society. These differences in values and cultural practices generated a clash of cultures that affected the integration of Iranians into Israel, and it therefore took them longer to recognise themselves as Israelis. The Islamic revolution in mid-1978 shattered any kind of formal ties between Iran and Israel. Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, publicly declared anti-Zionist sentiments and strongly opposed any relations between Iran and Israel. With his rise to power, about threequarters of Iran’s 80,000 Jews left the country.2 Some preferred to move to Europe and the United States whilst others decided to make aliyah (to emigrate) to Israel. The political friction between these two states at that time did not help Iranian Jewish integration within Israel and generated more difficulties amongst the Iranian Jewish minority living in Israel. Iranian Jews who decided to migrate to Israel in 1951 and in 1979 moved to a completely different culture, and the cultural gaps that existed between their Iranian identity and Israeli one were exacerbated. However, these normal cultural difficulties that Iranian Jews, like other Jewish immigrants, had to cope with were aggravated by the unique hostility of the Iranian government. The second important aspect, which makes this topic original, is that there is minimal literature on the Iranian Jewish settlement in Israel and whether a successful integration within Israeli society occurred. There is also a distinct shortage of information on the Iranian Jewish condition in Iran during these periods, due to the shortage of

x

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

written records about their history and status in Iran. The Iranian Jewish community kept a sporadic record of its historical excursus in the country prior to and during the twentieth century. The literature which refers to Iranian Jews generally omits persecutions that the Iranian Jews suffered under the Islamic government and tends to simplify the Iranian Jewish condition in Iran.

INTRODUCTION

The Jewish community is one of the oldest communities to inhabit Iran, dating back to 587 BC , when Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylonia, destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem and subsequently brought a large number of Jews with him on his return to Persia. Indeed, the author of the book of Jeremiah reports the abduction of 4,600 Jews in three groups by Nebuchadnezzar. Since that time, Iranian Jews have been able to settle in Iran and allowed to prosper within Babylonian society as a religious minority. The Iranian Jewish community evolved over the centuries in Iran, developing peculiar socio-cultural aspects that deeply entwined an Iranian cultural identity in a number of ways, ranging from habits to specific ways of expressing emotion, preparing food, the place of respect and honour and the prominence of the family in social relations. The number of Jews living in Iran has changed through the years in relation to the persecutions and emigrations of its members. The earliest report of the population of the Jews of Iran dates back to the twelfth century. According to Benjamin of Tudela’s document, the Jews of Iran numbered 600,000.1 During the Safavid dynasty (1501– 1736) the Jews of Iran numbered around 100,000; as reported by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, this number became 50,000 in the twentieth century.2 According to unofficial data the number of Iranian Jews living in Iran during the late 1940s and early 1950s was between 100,000 and 120,000.3 After the first mass emigrations to Israel in

2

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

the 1950s, the number of Jews diminished to 60,000 in the late 1960s. It is estimated that in the first years of the Islamic revolution the number of Jews who remained in Iran was around 20,000. They remained in the principal Iranian cities: Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan. The Jewish community of Iran today numbers around 25,000.4 It is the biggest Jewish community in the Middle East living outside Israel. The number of Iranian Jewish immigrants to Israel between 1948 and 1951 was 24,822,5 and between 1951 and 1955, 27,660.6 Immigration from Iran in the years 1949– 50 consisted of 10,000 people.7 Before and during the Islamic revolution in the late 1970s, the number of Jews who migrated to Israel was 9,550.8 In the same years, Iranian Jews also settled in Los Angeles and they were estimated to be between 15,000 and 17,500, whilst an additional number of 2,500 arrived in New York.9 Around 5,000 Iranian Jews decided to migrate to Europe, mainly England, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.10 Political Zionism, a European Jewish movement that first rose to prominence at the end of the nineteenth century, was a term coined to label one form of Jewish nationalism. The goal of political Zionism was, and remains, to secure the right to found the Jewish state in Palestine and to return to ‘Zion’, a biblical term for Jerusalem, and the Holy Land. This definition has its roots in the ancient patrimony of the Jews, which, according to Jewish tradition, was promised by God to Abraham and his descendants, the children of Israel. Zionism legitimated Jewish settlement in Israel, appealing to the religious sentiment of the mythical function of the land of Israel as the only possible place for the realisation of the Covenant between God and His people. This nationalist ideology succeeded in creating the state of Israel on 14 May 1948. Zionism became the ideological mainstream, and determined Israel’s social, political and economic identity. It sought to implement a melting pot philosophy to create an Israeli people from the many different Jewish groups that migrated. The most crucial part of this book will evaluate the choice Iranian Jews had to make between their cultural origins and their new

INTRODUCTION

3

national identity. I combine an historical approach to Iranian Jewry and its settlement in Israel with a political analysis of Iranian– Jewish relations. There are two reasons for this approach. Firstly, these two Iranian Jewish emigrations to Israel in 1951 and 1979 juxtaposed cultural differences between Iranian Jews and Israelis with the controversial international relations between Iran and Israel since the birth of Israel in 1948. In fact, while the first Iranian immigrants dealt more with cultural difficulties when they settled in Israel, the latter had, in addition, to cope with Khomeini’s anti-Zionist policy. The second important aspect is that virtually nothing has been written on Iranian Jewish settlement in Israel and there has been little on whether there was a genuine integration within Israeli society for Iranian Jews. Regarding this lack of information on Iranian Jewish settlement in Israel, a further shortage of information on the status of Jews in Iran did not facilitate an understanding of the community. The literature, which refers to Iranian Jews generally, omits the persecution that Iranian Jews suffered under the Islamic government and tends to over-simplify the conditions for Jews in Iran. This book will demonstrate that political Zionism, when applied to the Iranian Jewish emigrations in both 1951 and 1979, was unsuccessful in its aims. Political Zionism amongst Iranian Jews did not validate its basic principle of affirming that Jews were a nation and therefore entitled to settle in Israel and construct a Jewish society. Zionism was not an ideology rooted in Iranian Jewish cultural traditions, and when it emerged in Iran in the early 1940s it clashed with the experience of everyday Jewish life in Iran. It went on in the late 1970s to struggle to convince Jews to leave Iran and to return to Israel, their homeland. The affirming principle of the unity of the Jewish people failed to be realised as a central tenet upon which Israel existed: Iranian Jews suffered from forms of discrimination that were different from the rest of the Jews who settled in Israel, and from profound cultural differences. The Iranian Jewish emigrations to Israel in 1951 and 1979, whilst motivated by different reasons, both failed to be successfully absorbed into mainstream Israeli society. The birth of Israel in 1948 represented for Iranian Jews and all the diaspora Jews in general the first opportunity to become citizens of a

4

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Jewish state without being a religious minority in a host country. However, in 1948, Israel was dominated by Ashkenazi Jews, who influenced the nature of Israeli society with European and secularised values. Iranian Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel en masse in 1951 and later in 1979 effectively collided with Israeli society and Jewish nationalist ideology, which was culturally foreign to them despite shared religious beliefs. These differences impacted upon Iranian Jewish assimilation into Israeli society. Although Iranian Jews were now citizens of a Jewish state, they were nevertheless confronted by fundamental cultural differences that were not easily accommodated by the powerful idea of Jewish nationhood expressed by political Zionism. Jewish identity is defined both by Judaism and by the cultures of the lands in which different diaspora Jews settled. There is no form of Jewish identity that has not been deeply marked by the conditions in which Jews have lived. Political Zionism was unable to provide a unifying framework for the different cultural identities and failed to absorb the diverse Jewish ethnic minorities. Iranian Jews suffered from forms of bigotry and prejudice from the majority of Ashkenazi Israelis. Between 1979 and 1983 Khomeini’s supporters took power from what had been a multiparty revolution and state. The revolution saw the clerical forces organise their pogroms in order to remove their opponents as well as the old leadership and sympathisers of the Shah. During the years between 1979 and 1981, Khomeini created and institutionalised Iran’s Islamic Republic, which was legitimised on the ideas of anti-imperialism and a single religious national identity: the supremacy of Shi’a Islam provided the legitimacy for a clerically run state. The precise nature of the effects of the revolution on the Iranian Jewish population in Iran, and indeed Khomeini’s own view of the religious minority, remain unclear. In public at least, Khomeini talked about protecting the Jewish population, recognising them as a religious minority, and allowed them a representative in the Majlis, whilst also identifying the dangers presented by Zionism. The Islamic revolution in mid-1978 shattered all formal ties between the two states and the anti-Israeli propaganda of Iran impacted on the status of Iranian Jews in Israel.

INTRODUCTION

5

However, despite the increased precariousness of their situation, the Jewish community in Iran did not seek to make aliyah in large numbers. Indeed the response of the Jewish community to the political situation in Iran and the possibility of migrating to Israel was mixed and controversial. Broadly speaking it could be argued that there was a minimal move by the Jewish community at large to emigrate to Israel, with other destinations, or even remaining in Iran itself despite rising insecurity and risk of persecution, deemed more attractive. This position can be attributed to a number of factors; firstly, the Jewish intellectuals and the young students started a strong information and propaganda campaign against the rise of any form of nationalist Jewish identity. Hence, despite the domestic upheaval that was exerting pressures on the Iranian Jewish communities in 1979 and the Zionist policies that were supposed to attract Jews to return to their homeland, the reality was that a very small number actually did so. Potential Iranian Jewish immigrants in 1979 were simply not ready to risk not being able to go back to Iran. Zionist ideology and its nationalistic dream were not as appealing as the pragmatic necessities Iranian Jews had to face in 1979 such as economic stability, the attachment to Iran and the possibility of being free to go back to Iran whenever they wanted. Several representatives of Iranian Jewish immigrants from this wave of emigration reported during their interviews that they suffered from homesickness, and expressed the profound desire to return to Iran. Secondly, the process of absorption of these Jewish immigrants in Israel was even more problematic than the previous emigration, as Iranian Jews did not encounter a young state still building a national identity but an established state and its own citizens: Israelis. Almost 30 years after its birth, Israel had shaped its identity and raison d’eˆtre into something different from a purely Jewish identity. Iranian Jewish immigrants coming to Israel were mostly well educated; especially the young, and the rest were mainly middleclass businessmen who came to Israel in the hope of restarting businesses that had been hindered by the regime in Iran. These immigrants did not come to Israel for ideological reasons related to Zionist beliefs but because their normal lives and freedom in Iran

6

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

were curtailed by the Islamic regime. Moreover, they knew little or nothing about Israel and Israeli society, and on arrival had little grasp of everyday matters or process. The consequence for Iranian Jews was cultural shock and alienation on their arrival in Israel. These educated Jews felt their status of an ethnic minority keenly when they arrived in Israel and were often ridiculed because of their accents and their social behaviour. If, in Iran, Jews were a religious minority, in Israel they were treated as an ethnic minority and the social and economic detachment that occurs in a country with a strong sense of nationalism. Stereotypes became common, with the Iranian Jews viewed as miserly by the rest of the Israelis. Political Zionism as an ideology succeeded in creating a territory for the Jews and realising the return of Jews to Israel. However, political Zionism was not a motivating ideology rooted in the Iranian Jewry’s cultural heritage; the majority of Iranian Jews migrated to Israel for practical rather than ideological reasons. While Zionism actuated the Jewish dream of returning to the Holy Land, it did not always free Iranian immigrants from their condition of being a minority group. The majority of Iranian Jews remained very much attached to their original cultural heritage even when living in Israel, as their cultural behaviour was intrinsically linked to long traditions, whilst Zionism and Israeli identity were for them foreign constructions to which they had to adapt. For those who migrated to Israel, the reality of everyday life there was far from the mythical and positive belief of being part of the same Jewish nationhood that Zionism had conveyed. Israel was a multicultural state composed of many Jewish groups with their own culture, languages and traditions. Once arrived in Israel, Iranian Jews were one of the many Middle Eastern Jewish minorities that suffered from the process of absorption within Israel. In the 1950s Israel was experiencing the growing pains of the rapid process of creating its own identity based on Zionism. Iranian Jews were particularly vulnerable as they were composed of small communities that lacked proper organisation and a leadership who could assist with the process of integration. From the first emigration Iranian Jews were often considered as simply Iranians with peculiar ‘exotic’ features.

INTRODUCTION

7

Over time, however, and despite the social barriers, they became a feature of Israeli society through accessing public institutions such as the army and the universities. They became Israelis but never subscribed to Zionist ideology, having moved for practical reasons, and still harbouring hopes of one day returning to Iran. The latter group of immigrants in 1979 arrived in Israel with a strong Iranian heritage and was equally shocked. This wave of immigrants decided to go to Israel because of the circumstances in Iran and the increased risk of persecution. However, such was their connection to their homeland that, despite the danger, some others preferred to remain in Iran. Those who did make aliyah realised that Israel was not the Holy Land of their dreams but a state with its own social and economic problems, in a permanent state of war. Iranian Jews found Israeli society far from having any similarity to their own culture, with many preferring to move to the United States, with its greater economic opportunities and a much longer history of multiculturalism and integration. It was for those for whom emigration to the United States was not economically possible that Israel became the only vehicle to rescue themselves from persecutions by the Islamic regime. A sense of frustration arose among the new Iranian migrants who, whilst they attempted to integrate themselves with the rest of society, still proudly maintained their Iranian cultural identity.

CHAPTER 1 ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

The rise of political Zionist ideology The turning point in western and central European Jewish history came in the nineteenth century when an industrial and secularised society with a uniform legal system replaced a more traditional medieval organisation.1 The wave of socio-political modernisation brought several reforms that improved the social status of the Jews: their condition changed between the French Revolution and the restoration of the ancient regime in the early nineteenth century when ideals of freedom, justice and fraternity strongly influenced the formation of nationalism.2 Ernest Renan suggested, with regard to the development of these Romantic nationalist beliefs, that the nation was a great achievement for humanity in that it served the common cause of civilisation and guaranteed freedom.3 Georges Bensoussan defined this form of nationalism as a shallow copy of the motives behind humanism, based on the assumption that the first wave of nationalism in Europe was influenced by romantic ideals of fraternity.4 At this stage, nationalism was intended as a passionate form of patriotism that exalted humanism, internationalism and freedom. As such, the status of western and central European Jews benefitted from this wave of nationalism, which was based on a humanistic ethic. In the early decades of the nineteenth century

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

9

Jewish communities experienced rapid progress up the socialeconomic ladder and began to enjoy a cultural assimilation into the rest of the society. Gabriel Riesser, a German Jewish politician, welcomed this humanism in western Europe: he became the voice for the emancipation of German Jews as well as one of the emblematic proponents of the spiritual marriage between Judaism and German civilisation.5 The emancipation and patriotic ideals based on the romantic concept of nation saw the Jews embracing integration within nonJewish society. This led to radical changes within the structure of Jewish communities. Jews became members of the European common nation but western and central Europe also saw the increasing prevalence of Jews who no longer recognised the traditional Jewish community as a satisfactory framework for their everyday life.6 Jewish identity until the nineteenth century was constantly kept alive by the strong community life that often existed within the ghettos but emancipation, combined with a romantic vision of nationalism, liberated them from the ghettoised condition. The Jews were now free to share with the rest of the nation secular values, which were profoundly different from traditional Jewish culture. The social emancipation of the Jews in western and central Europe indeed produced new problems for the leaders of those Jewish communities. The dilemma of Jewish identity emerged because of a potential assimilation into nonJewish society. If some Jewish intellectuals, such as Moses Mendelssohn, saw emancipation as a chance to reform Judaism, the common reaction among some Jewish leaders was that integration would challenge the essence of Jewishness.7 The fragmentation of the community, and the secularisation of Jewish life alongside new habits gained as a result of assimilation, saw an inevitable duality arise in the Jewish identity: the secular citizen of a common nation and a Jew in personal dialogue with him- or herself as individual.8 The concern for the future of western European Jewry was centred on how this dichotomy might cause this Jewish community to disintegrate.9 Although the future of the Jews of Europe seemed to be threatened by the increasing process of assimilation, especially

10

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

among those joining the German Jewish enlightenment of the Berlin Haskala’, the optimism brought about through emancipation was swept away by a new wave of anti-Semitic restrictions that were the consequence of patriotism evolving into a conservative nationalism throughout the 1850s.10 The era of Romantic idealism was being superseded by a more realistic political approach. With the collapse of the goals of the Vienna Congress in 1815 and the fragmentation of Europe into nationstates, a new series of revolutions took place that led to the unification of Germany under the government of Bismarck in 1871. Bismarck’s new Germany and other, increasingly aggressive, European nation-states such as France and Austro-Hungary, were embracing a nationalist ideology that fed into suspicion of the ‘other’ and the foreigner: the Jews became the easiest target to attack since they did not have any legal protection. New antiSemitic attacks such as the notorious blood libel in Damascus in 1840 and the publication of Gobineau’s ‘Essai sur l’Ine´galite´ des races humaines’ in 1853 shocked those Jews who believed they had found a solution to the Jewish problem through assimilation and emancipation.11 A general disillusion deepened, and concern about the future of European Jews persuaded intellectual Jews to initiate a discourse about Jewish resettlement in Palestine. It was in this climate of disenchantment regarding the Jewish condition in Europe that Theodor Herzl’s political Zionism must be contextualised. The rise of political Zionism towards the end of the nineteenth century as a Jewish nationalist movement has often been seen as the result of Herzl’s diplomatic efforts. However, other scholars viewed Herzl’s initiative mainly as the culmination of a Jewish national revival that had been taking place throughout the entire nineteenth century amongst European Jewish intelligentsia.12 Theodor Herzl’s principal contribution to Zionism was to codify its ideals into a political manifesto and organisation that led to the birth of Israel in 1948. In fact, when Herzl founded the Zionist Organisation during the first Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897, Zionist discourse had already reached its final form, having been already crystallised

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

11

into a comprehensive political programme and structured movement: political Zionism was clearly a diplomatic attempt to create the necessary political prerequisites for the birth of the State of the Jews in Palestine under the auspices of a cultural programme of Zionists.13 Political Zionism was thus the result of the intellectual discourse that arose in both the eastern and western European Jewish community at the end of the nineteenth century. Both western and eastern European Jewish communities had experienced the failure of integration into non-Jewish society. As such, they developed Zionist visions based on their experiences in European countries. In the history of eastern European Jewry, and in particular Russian Jewry, their social and cultural conditions differed from those in western Europe since they did not experience any form of secular humanism; hence they had never been exposed to integration into eastern European societies. Eastern European Jewry did not develop a positive attitude towards assimilation as a solution to the ‘Jewish Problem’. Indeed the pogroms in Russia in the early 1880s and the strong anti-Semitic policy of the Tsar Alexander III were a shattering blow for those Russian Jews who had hoped for a progressive integration into Russian society.14 Many Jewish thinkers therefore reacted to the pogroms of the 1880s with a growing disillusionment towards assimilation. In the 1870s, exponents of Jewish cultural nationalism such as Peretz Smolenskin and, later, Moses Leib Lilienblum argued that assimilation would never have solved the problem of European Jewry. Instead they started to develop Zionist theories based on the perennial desire of Jewish people to return to Israel.15 Leon Pinsker, a Russian Jewish physician, wrote his ‘Auto-Emancipation’ in 1882 as a prompt reaction to the pogroms.16 Pinsker offered his personal diagnosis of the Jewish problem, advocating auto-emancipation as the solution. Pinsker’s innovative analysis stated that ‘Judeophobia’ was a hereditary form of ‘demonpathy’ peculiar to the human race and therefore impossible to eradicate.17 He believed that no form of civic assimilation would have been able to remove anti-Semitic behaviour from humanity. The only solution to the Jewish problem was, for Pinsker:

12

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

The formation of a Jewish nationality, of a people living upon its own soil, the auto-emancipation of the Jews, their emancipation as a nation among nations by the acquisition of the home their own.18 Leon Pinsker’s understanding of Jewish nation is similar to Clifford Geertz’s notion of a nation-state. The latter defined a nation-state as being achieved only when the whole nation had become the sovereign of its own territory.19 Pinsker believed that the formation of a Jewish nation-state in which the Jews governed their own land would finally give human dignity back to the European Jewish diaspora. Pinsker actively worked for the formation of a Jewish national body and the convocation of a ‘Jewish national congress’ that would be responsible for finding a territory that could provide refuge for all European Jews. Pinsker became the leader of the new Hibbat Zion movement in 1884.20 He was one of the first pioneers to try to transform Zionism into a political and structured movement that worked to settle Jews in Palestine and paved the way for figures such as Theodor Herzl. The latter’s approach to Zionism came from Pinsker’s similar reaction to anti-Semitic mobs in Russia. Theodor Herzl was a secular Austrian-Hungarian Jew who had successfully assimilated into society. Towards the end of the nineteenth century he began to feel the effects of the virulent antiSemitic policy fostered by Karl Lueger, the leader of the Christian Social Party. Herzl’s first reaction to anti-Semitism remained moderate and, unlike Pinsker, he believed that it could be eradicated from contemporary society. The anti-Semitism and injustice revealed in France by the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus had a radicalising effect on Herzl, who moved towards Zionist beliefs. The Dreyfus affair made Herzl re-evaluate his views on the condition of the Jews in Europe and led him to believe that the problem was intractable, especially given that the Dreyfus affair had taken place in France: ‘home to the principles of equality, freedom and fraternity’.21 In 1896 Herzl published a pamphlet called ‘The Jewish State’ in which he arrived at a similar conclusion as had Pinsker in his ‘AutoEmancipation’ whereby the only solution to European anti-Semitism

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

13

was to find a territory where Jews could settle and prosper under Western political and civic principles.22 Although from different cultural European backgrounds, both Herzl and Pinsker supported the urgency of creating a Jewish state as the only possible solution to European anti-Semitism. Herzl’s innovative approach to the Jewish problem was that it was political: according to him, the ‘Jewish problem’ could only be solved by overt diplomatic action in the international political arena. Herzl’s goal was to obtain a charter recognised by the world leadership, granting the Jews sovereignty in a Jewish-owned territory. In order to establish a Jewish state, Herzl concentrated his efforts almost exclusively on diplomatic efforts to gain international recognition for the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine.23 Theodor Herzl’s political Zionist activity and beliefs, as stated by Simon Dubnov, can be interpreted through the achievements of the First Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897.24 The First Congress was attended by 200 delegates from the European Jewish diaspora and it institutionalised political Zionism with the formation of the World Zionist Organisation, chaired by Theodor Herzl and begun as an autonomous federation.25 The goal of the First Congress was to: ‘Lay the foundation stone of the house which is to shelter the Jewish nation.’26 The first congress declared the existence of the Jewish nation and the necessity for it to form a Jewish state. The impetus that followed the First Zionist Congress focused on the diplomatic effort of Herzl and the Zionist Organisation to set up a network of offices in European powers, primarily in Great Britain, that would help support the creation of the Jewish state.27 In the summer of 1903, Joseph Chamberlain, Britain’s Colonial Secretary, asked Herzl about the possibility of settling the Jews in Uganda, at that time under British control.28 The pragmatism of Herzl and the urgency that he brought to his task of rescuing European Jewry persuaded him to consider this offer. Palestine, however, remained the ultimate objective of Zionism for the majority of political Zionists. Political Zionism’s pragmatism differed from any other type of philanthropic or religious Zionism in that it refused to accept any form of religious

14

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

mysticism and messianic interpretation of the return to the Holy Land. The emancipated European Jews were no longer waiting for messianic redemption in the Holy Land, but instead tried to take action by themselves, in response to persistent European antiSemitism, through the creation of a modern Jewish state. As such, Herzl’s pragmatism aimed to form a national Jewish community that would have been able to claim the rights of a political society through the creation of a state. Political Zionism aimed to construct a political society rather than an ethnic community, in which Jews would have been free to express their Jewish identity. The innovative aspect of political Zionism in the twentieth century was that Zionism was able to create a nationalism based not on imaginary common Jewish roots but on the political contingency of European Jews and the necessity for them to create a Jewish state. The Jewish nation was the product of a political Zionism that attempted to create a category of national citizens eligible to settle in the Jewish state. Although the creation of a nationalist Jewish identity was challenged by different cultural approaches and interpretations of the Jewish identity and Jewish state, political Zionism succeeded in its goal to establish the State of Israel in 1948.

Cultural Zionism: Ahad Ha-Am Political Zionism was a dynamic movement that perceived the creation of the Jewish state as the only solution to improve the Jewish condition in Europe. However, one repercussion of the drive for this goal was that it subordinated the formation of a Jewish national culture to diplomatic efforts to secure the formation of the Jewish state in Palestine. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe, when continuous anti-Semitic persecutions seemed to make an immediate solution to the condition of the Jews more urgent, a large portion of Jewish intellectuals seemed to waver about the effectiveness of political Zionism. Among them, Ahad Ha-Am was one of the most prominent Zionist figures to oppose it. According to Joseph Fraenkel, his ‘cultural Zionist’ ideology became a practical alternative to Herzl’s Zionism.29 Cultural Zionism succeeded in

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

15

offering a shelter to those Zionists who did not believe in Herzl’s ‘messianism’ and in the immediacy of a Jewish state; hence they believed in the priority of forming a Jewish national consciousness among the European Jewish masses. Ahad Ha-Am was born as Asher Zvi Ginsberg in Skvira in the Russian Ukraine on 18 August 1856.30 His family belonged to the upper echelons of society in the Jewish community and his education was keenly encouraged, ensuring that he was strictly devoted to religious studies and biblical tradition. Since adolescence he had been considered a celebrated scholar of not only Talmudic literature but also Hasidic traditions and texts. Although his education was based on the pillars of traditional Judaic principles, he later came across Jewish philosophers such as Maimonides and Russian intellectuals who profoundly widened and changed his intellectual horizons. He then started a journey, which was influenced not only by an appreciation of Jewish enlightenment thinkers but also by Russian literature, contemporary philosophy and historical canon.31 This was a lonely process not just because he was entirely self-taught but also because he silently developed a criticism of the Jewish tradition and of Hasidism, which were the only forms of culture allowed by his parents, who had supervised his education. Therefore, Ahad Ha-Am formed and developed his Jewish identity through his modernist rejection of the religious tradition that influenced the formulation of his cultural Zionist thought. A defining moment in Ahad Ha-Am’s life came in 1891 when he went to Palestine for the first time and was fully exposed to the activity and the status of the colonies of Hibbat Zion, a proto-Zionist movement that encouraged the settlement in Palestine of Jews and the revival of the Jewish nation at the end of the nineteenth century via practical labour. He documented his experience in Eretz Israel in an article entitled ‘Truth from Eretz Israel’, in which he partly criticised the activities of the Jewish settlers. He understood that it was a land with harsh economic potential that could not easily absorb a mass emigration.32 The core of his thesis was that the Hibbat Zion movement and political Zionism were based on a misconception of Jewish national rebirth in Palestine, since he believed that those

16

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

settlers in Palestine did not form a homogeneous group because they did not share the same traditions and the same nationalist culture.33 Although Ahad Ha-Am was aware that one of the causes of European anti-Semitism was that European Jewry lacked the legal protection of a state, he also believed that it was necessary first to find the cultural and spiritual means to protect and strengthen the Jewish nation. The main problem for Ahad Ha-Am was not trying to save the Jews simply by ameliorating their physical existence but also through the preservation and development of the Jewish spirit.34 We must revitalize the idea of the national renaissance and use every possible means to strengthen its hold and deepen its roots, until it becomes an organic element in the Jewish consciousness and an independent dynamic force.35 According to Ahad Ha-Am, Jews, first and foremost, should have created a national identity on the basis of tradition that could be understood not only as a set of religious rules but as a collection of Jewish cultural habits and traditions that would have nourished and preserved the Jewish spirit. Ahad Ha-Am believed that Judaism in the diaspora communities was in a critical condition. The Jews in Europe were an ethnic minority at the mercy of European governments and therefore unable to practise freely and develop a Jewish national life. Diaspora Jews were facing the spiritual disintegration of Judaism and it was therefore vital for the sake of the community to find a spiritual centre from where Judaism could flourish once more, and then spread throughout the diaspora communities in Europe. This spiritual centre for the Jewish nation could only be Palestine and, according to Ahad Ha-Am, although it should not become the sole shelter for the Jews, it could become the home for Judaism. Palestine as a home for Judaism and not for Jews became Ahad Ha-Am’s motto in opposing the settlement and the ideals of the members of Hibbat Zion. In contrast to Hibbat Zion’s project of mass emigration of Jews to Palestine, he believed in the settlement of a small elite group that could have revived the Jewish spirit. Ahad Ha-Am stressed the importance of an emigration of the

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

17

elite rather than sheer volume of numbers. It would be this select group, through the revival of Hebrew language, Jewish art and culture, that would rebuild a spiritual Judaism that could naturally evolve into a Jewish nationalism. His theory was soon put to the test as he organised the Bnei Moshe, a semi-secret elite group that set itself the task of raising the moral and cultural tone of the Jewish national revival.36 Ahad Ha-Am, in his critique of Hibbat Zion and by the formation of Bnei Moshe, stressed the importance of cultural work in Palestine of a small intellectual elite community rather than the practical work and mass emigration of the whole European Jewry. In fact, despite the rapid and forced emigration supported first by Hibbat Zion and then by Herzl’s Zionism, Ahad Ha-Am in fact encouraged a slow process of emigration to Palestine that should have been accompanied by the reinforcement of Judaism in the diaspora.37 Ahad Ha-Am attended the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, where his vision of Zionism dramatically contrasted with Herzl’s political Zionism. Ahad Ha-Am aimed at a gradual cultural colonisation of Palestine, which was very different from the ‘Herzlian Zionism’ that focused mainly on the diplomatic and practical requirements to create a Jewish state.38 The depressing effect that the Congress of Basle had on Ahad Ha-Am can be clearly seen in his pronouncement at the end of the Congress: ‘Salvation will come from the Prophets and not from the diplomats.’39 With regard to Jewish settlements in Palestine, Ahad Ha-Am considered them only ‘stones’ in comparison to the Jewish spirit that would have been a fundamental achievement in Jewish history. For Ahad Ha-Am, if forming a nation based on the cultural heritage of Judaism was at the core of his conception of Zionism, Herzl conceived Jewish culture and Judaism as the natural consequence of the formation of the Jewish state, since the establishment of the Jewish state would allow a new Jewish spirit to flourish. However, history has shown that it was Herzl’s subordination of culture to political pragmatism that succeeded in establishing a Jewish state in Palestine in 1948. Although Ahad Ha-Am’s vision of Zionism found many sympathisers and much support in Jewish intellectual circles, the force of cultural Zionism seemed to have

18

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

become weaker since the successful formation of the Zionist Organisation and its branches after 1897. Its idea virtually vanished with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The reasons behind the failure of cultural Zionism have been much researched over the years from a range of different angles and perspectives; for instance Hertzberg highlights that its effective demise was because of Ahad Ha-Am’s nature, which was by inclination moralist and perfectionist. The profound idealism and pessimism of his nature and his revulsion at imposing his will on others are considered by Hertzberg as the effective causes of his lack of success.40 In fact, if we consider his personality separately in relation to Herzl’s political Zionism, it is possible to trace how it actually undermined his work and goals. His faith in the possibility of creating a Jewish spiritual centre and his mistrust of political Zionism would not let him reconsider that perhaps the work of the Zionist Organisation was an opportunity for him to contribute to the creation of Israel. During the emigration from Tsarist Russia to Palestine as a consequence of the continuous pogroms, Ahad Ha-Am still retained his belief in a qualitative emigration. This brought him into conflict with Herzl’s project of mass emigration of European Jews to Palestine.41 Ahad Ha-Am’s integrity and his profound disappointment regarding the political focus of Zionist organisations excluded him from Herzl’s project of the making of the Jewish state, even when the newly appointed cultural commission offered him membership. His lack of cooperation with the major Zionist leaders and his opposition to their work increasingly isolated him from the rest of the Zionist Organisation. The ideological differences between Herzl and Ahad Ha-Am on the understanding of the Jewish nation distanced the latter from contributing to the cultural evolution of the Jewish society in Palestine. Giving priority to the formation of the ‘Jewish cultural spirit’, Ahad Ha-Am understood the formation of a cultural Jewish centre in Palestine not as a mass emigration but as the elite movement of selected people. His belief in a small cultural centre in Palestine formed by select Jews, who could have revived Judaism, has been criticised by several scholars and intellectuals of his time such as Shimon Dubnov

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

19

who, after quoting passages of the Apocrypha and the Talmud, proved to Ahad Ha-Am that Judaism belonged to the whole of Jewry and not just to a select group of people: ‘Ahad Ha-Am was out of tune with the entire spiritual and historical development of Judaism.’42 Ahad Ha-Am did not believe in the creative potential of the masses and he sought to forge this elite of intellectuals as the starting point for the making of a Jewish identity belonging to the Jewish people as a whole nation. Unfortunately, his methods did not meet the urgency of the time, which required an urgent solution to the persecution of European Jewry. Although it could be argued that he ultimately lacked the fundamental populist approach that was at the heart of any romantic nationalist ideology that arose in Europe in the nineteenth century, he indeed foresaw the crucial issue within the future Israeli society: the birth of Israel in 1948 and the aspiration to reunite the Jewish nation under the umbrella of Zionist ideology showed its mistaken premise in that it did not gather together all Jewish ethnic identities in Israel. Ahad Ha-Am was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of his time; he gave great importance to the role of culture and the formation of a Jewish spirit as a fundamental step in the process of the making of Israeli identity. His thought and intellectual contribution to the Zionist discourse influenced not only many Zionists such as Chaim Weizmann, but also inspired the formation of a cultural thread within Zionist ideology.43 Later, scholars used to refer to Herzl as the leader of his generation and to Ahad Ha-Am as its teacher.44 His intellectual contribution to modern Hebrew writing and his thought became a cultural patrimony for the Jewish people in Palestine, and large sections of the Jewish population in Palestine attended his funeral in Tel Aviv in 1927.

Jewish settlements in Palestine before 1948 If the cradle of ideological Zionism and the intellectual battle over the formulation of the Zionist ethos took place within the European Jewish diaspora, Palestine became the location where Jewish colonisation developed. From the end of the nineteenth century

20

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

onward, groups of European Jews, mainly from Russia and eastern Europe, went to Palestine and settled there. Groups of Jewish pioneers had begun to colonise Palestine after 1882 as a consequence of the pogroms that occurred in Russia. These first immigrants were strongly motivated by utopian ideals and the desire to settle in the Holy Land. However, they soon realised that both the harsh conditions in Palestine and the lack of coordination between the national groups rendered life in Palestine very difficult. The bulk of the Jewish nation in Palestine had already demonstrated the difficulties of organising the Jewish settlements in the Holy Land. The coexistence of different Jewish visions of Israel, combined with the harsh socio-economic conditions, which these pioneers had to face in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century, transformed the utopian and romantic vision of the Jewish nation into a daily struggle.45 The most successful group was the one founded by high school and university students in Kharkov in 1881. This group called itself Bilu,46 and its members strongly believed in idealistic and philanthropic ideals as well as the socialist utopia of establishing agricultural settlements in Palestine. The enthusiasm that drove these young settlers to go to Palestine provided relief from their difficult living conditions. This first group of pioneers created what would become the social framework for the majority of the first settlers at the beginning of the twentieth century.47 Between 1904 and 1914, new waves of Russian Jews fled to Palestine as a consequence of increasing persecution against them: the suppression of the 1905 revolution had forced many Jews to abandon any hope of freedom under the Tsar. These groups of immigrants became known as the ‘second aliyah’.48 They brought socialist ideologies to Palestine, and their understanding of the Zionist project was according to socialist principles. Their understanding of the Zionist dream was profoundly permeated by the Russian socialist utopian dream of creating an autonomous society in Palestine based on the idea that a collective society would form an egalitarian society without differences of class. These settlers improved the organisation of the existing Jewish community in Palestine, and they formed the

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

21

framework of the Yishuv. In contrast to the first group of Jewish immigrants, the second group of olim came to Palestine not only better organised but also with a deep political consciousness. They belonged mainly to two different parties: the Poale Zion, ‘Workers of Zion’, and Hapoel Hatzair, ‘Young Workers’. Both these parties were socialist, although the former was closer to Marxist ideology. Poale Zion promoted its own way of cooperative urban settlement that differed from previous agricultural settlements. A successful example of this type of cooperative was firstly offered by kvutza called Degania in 1909 as it developed both as a social organism and economic unit.49 The success of Degania as an agricultural cooperative influenced the growth of other settlements based on its model and by 1914 the number of Jewish settlements in Palestine had increased. These settlements constituted the framework of the future State of Israel and they became independent.50 Although Degania and other kvutzot at this stage still lacked the social structure to be considered a proper kibbutz, their development did contribute to the emergence of the kibbutz as they combined the community’s consumption with communal production. Moreover, Degania became a permanent settlement with its own hierarchy and stable community that, since 1907, had tried to establish a close-knit group for the foreseeable future and distinguished itself from the other farms and cooperatives. The progress made by Degania’s members and by other agricultural cooperatives meant that the number of Jewish settlements in 1914 was around 43, with a total population of c.80,000.51 Their persistence and the strong socialist ideology that nourished them gave these first Jewish settlers the ability to remain in Palestine in order to fulfil their Zionist dream. The success of these settlements hastened the process of detachment from European Jewry and was proportional to the improvement in social structure of these settlements. A turning point in the process of the sovereignty of these Jewish communities was, by the first half of the twentieth century, a deeper consciousness of ‘national honour’ that arose among those settlers who had decided to control the Jewish communities, and the consequent aim to defend their cooperative. A new movement of Jewish ‘guards’ called

22

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Hashomer came into existence and the movement began to establish settlements on its own, based on the agricultural collective farm of Degania. The peculiarity of these settlements was that they were based more on a model of military management, which trained its members in the duties of security of the settlements. Despite the economic difficulties that followed World War I, the condition of the settlers went on to improve. If the social and economic situation for the Jews in Palestine seemed to worsen during World War I, as they received less support from European Zionist organisations and suffered from economic stagnation under the Ottoman Empire’s rulers, it received a major fillip from the Balfour Declaration in 1917. The Balfour Declaration proclaimed to worldwide Jewry that a national home in Palestine under the protection and control of the British government would be established.52 The diplomatic triumph of the Balfour Declaration was followed by the arrival of the British Army in Palestine, which was welcomed by the Jewish settlers with phrases such as ‘salvation’, ‘fulfilment of the words of the prophets’ and other biblical references to Zionism.53 By 1917, the number of members of Degania increased; hence by 1919 Degania and other small kvutzot established on the model of the former agricultural cooperative were recognised as respected elements in the labour movement and in the Yishuv as a whole.54 The improving condition of Jewish settlers in Palestine as well as the achieved diplomatic recognition favoured a new wave of immigrants from east Europe also known as the ‘third aliyah’. The members of the third aliyah – arriving in Palestine between 1919 and 1923 and numbering around 35,000 – mainly originated from eastern European countries and had been profoundly affected by the rise of Bolshevism in Russia.55 They strengthened the political and economic framework of the Yishuv. The principal contribution of these immigrants to the Yishuv was ideological. This new generation of immigrants replaced the agrarian cooperative system with the collectivism of the kibbutz, and agrarian socialism with avant-garde Leninist ideology and a political party based on the latter.56 The majority of these immigrants, who left spontaneously for Palestine,

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

23

changed the nature of the Yishuv through the irresistible force of the Hechalutz, the pioneer movement. This movement, which had previously begun in eastern Europe to promote primarily agricultural settlement in Palestine, developed around its charismatic figure Joseph Trumpeldor, a Zionist pioneer from Russia. Trumpeldor, who was heavily influenced by Marxist ideology, aimed to train all the Jews as agriculturalists in their eastern European homelands before they reached Palestine. The aim of these training groups in Europe was to ensure that future Jewish settlers conformed to the rest of the Yishuv. The majority of the third aliyah’s immigrants became commonly known as the halutzim, ‘pioneers’ in Hebrew, since the majority of them came from these formative camps in eastern Europe. These new immigrants shared with the members of the second aliyah the ideology of communalism and worker unity. As part of this strong ideological orientation the foundation of the Histadrut in 1920 must be understood. The Histadrut was a body that embraced the whole of the labour movement and took on the necessary administrative responsibilities. It was governed by a system of coalitions, although it must be acknowledged that Ahdut Ha’Avoda, the Labour Unity Party founded in 1919, initially formed a considerable majority of its members.57 The pioneers’ improvements not only politically framed the Yishuv with the creation of the Histadrut and other social welfare, but they became the principal organisation of Jewish emigration from Europe to Israel. The pioneer movement had a semi-official status as a department of the Zionist movement and was responsible for administrative duties in the Yishuv related to the selection of immigrants to Israel. Its tasks included the distribution of immigration certificates to young working-class Jews who had been previously trained by the movement’s camps.58 These preparatory camps had the technical function of training young diaspora Jews in agricultural and other manual activities together with educational activities such as Hebrew classes. Halutzim organised themselves into a new type of collective organisation also known as the kibbutz movement. This organisation shared with the kvutzot the ideology of communalism, although it differed from the

24

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

traditional kvutzot because, from its establishment, it did not restrict its interest to the agricultural sector but extended its activity to infrastructure and industrial sectors with the creation of a complex system of activities. The kibbutz movement expanded both in Palestine and among the European diaspora communities as a consequence of the Young Pioneers movement’s coalition with the kibbutz ideology. By 1924, the kibbutz movement was established and properly recognised as part of the Yishuv.59 The Young Pioneers movement saw in the collective settlement the fulfilment of the whole complex of dreams and hopes. The process of living in the settlements gave rise to political splits among the young settlers and in 1927 two principal federations were founded: on the one hand Kibbutz Artzi, under the ideological umbrella of Hashomer Hatzair and, on the other, the Kibbutz Me’uhad, which was associated with Poale Zion principles. The Kibbutz Me’uhad opposed the principles of selection of its members. Moreover, it strongly supported a Marxist ideology based on the ideal of turning the Yishuv into a proletarian society. The Kibbutz Artzi, however, remained closer to the Young Pioneers movement and its ideological policy was to select young Jewish immigrants. It is thus evident that, although the two kibbutz movements shared the same Zionist and nationalist beliefs, they differed in the practical aspects of delivering and interpreting Zionist ideology in both the Yishuv and the diaspora. During the 1930s, ideological differences between the two kibbutz organisations were further emphasised by the creation of the religious kibbutz movement, which further divided the Jewish community living in the Yishuv. The religious kibbutz movement came into existence as a consequence of the growing pressure from a religious party in Jerusalem called the Ha-Poel Ha-Mizrahi, which combined Judaism and Halakhic tradition with the principles of Jewish settlements in the Yishuv. As scholars stated, the religious kibbutz movement was based on three pillars: Jewish nationalism, labour Zionism and Judaism.60 The intrinsic religious characteristic and its Judaic conduct distinguished the religious kibbutz movement from the other two organisations: the Torah encompassed the moral life,

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

25

the family and the social relations of the religious kibbutzim who considered themselves an organic whole believing in the foundation of a Halakhic authority for guidance in the interpretation of the law. The kibbutz movement offered a religious alternative to those settlers who believed that the Jewish nation in Palestine should create favourable conditions not only for a Jewish national revival but also for the renaissance of Judaism. In the early 1940s, the religious kibbutz movement expanded considerably and, along with the other two movements, started to send its representatives to diaspora Jewish communities in order to attract their attention and gain more members.61 The appearance of the religious kibbutz movement further increased the fragmentation of Jewish settlers in the Yishuv and exacerbated ideological differences. If on the one hand ideological clashes were the dividing forces within the Yishuv, on the other hand these distinguishing ideological features, once exported, radicalised diaspora Jewish communities. For instance, in the early 1950s the Iranian Jewish community became ‘the battleground’ of the ideological hasbarah62 between emissaries of the religious kibbutz movements, the Kibbutz Artzi and the Kibbutz Me’uhad. The strong politicisation of the activity of recruitment within Iranian Jewry divided the community since its members understood the reasons behind Jewish settlements in Palestine differently. The priority for Jewish envoys in Iran seemed to be the need to increase the number of their adherents rather than to offer Iranian Jews a clear political vision regarding the State of Israel and the pathway to making aliyah.

From the Yishuv to the state of Israel The creation of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 was not only a success of both political and practical Zionism, it was also a convergence of Ben Gurion’s political and diplomatic manoeuvres with foreign powers, with the growth of the Jewish population in Palestine. The overall number of Jewish settlers in 1922 was between 85,000 and 90,000, but by 1931 the Jewish population numbered 175,000 people. By 1939 it had reached 460,000.63 The rapid

26

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

growth of the Jewish population in Palestine was a direct consequence of Hitler’s ascendency in central Europe. These immigrants, known as the fourth and fifth aliyah, escaped from a worsening of anti-Semitic laws in Europe. This wave of immigrants, described by the Labour Party as ‘capitalists without capital’, was a watershed for the existing Yishuv, as they challenged them socially and economically. Since the socio-economic structure of the Yishuv was principally centred on rural cooperatives, it lacked a central infrastructure to both absorb a large number of immigrants and to include them within the economy of the Yishuv. The majority of the newcomers mainly belonged to the European middle class, such as the fourth aliyah from Poland, as well as not having particular Zionist ambitions.64 Unlike the efforts of previous immigrants, these olim were rather more interested in carrying on with their usual urban and ordinary life in Palestine and when they arrived their sociocultural habits clashed with the existing Jewish community. As such, they preferred to settle in different areas and they developed urban settlements like Tel Aviv. The absorption of the latest Jewish immigrants within the existing Jewish community was slower and more difficult since these Jews did not always share any ideological beliefs with the kibbutzim or the pioneers. The idea of building a Jewish national home in Palestine and settling there was interpreted differently: if the first three aliyot saw in Zionism the opportunity to realise the utopian project of forming a perfect Jewish socialist society, these latter immigrants were more middle class and urban. The arrival of these immigrants in Palestine also had an impact on the political scene of the Yishuv. They tended to represent the interests of the property-owning classes and they infiltrated the ranks of the right-centre Zionist parties in order to gain in political influence.65 A major turning point in the political scene of the Yishuv occurred in 1930 when the domestic and international assessment of the Yishuv changed. On the domestic level, Hapoel Hatzair, which had joined Ben Gurion’s Achdut Ha’avodah to form Mapai, allowed the labouring working class to emerge as the fundamental pillar for the creation of the Jewish society in Palestine. The important political

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

27

bodies that belonged to Mapai were the Histadrut and the Jewish Agency, and the latter became the organism in charge of the distribution of emigration certificates among potential diaspora Jewish immigrants. Although Mapai remained the principal political party, other groups appeared on the political scene of the Yishuv and strongly challenged its stability. One was the radical leftist group called Hashomer Hatzair kibbutzim, which established an umbrella organisation called Kibbutz HaArzi and was based on a strong Marxist ideology.66 The ideology of this group also spread among the diaspora communities through its envoys, who operated in order to bring young Jews to Palestine in order to work in their kibbutz. Then there was the religious Labour Party, Hapoel HaMizrahi, which remained separated from the rest because of religious differences. Despite shifts within the Labour Party, the political movement that represented a real challenge for Ben Gurion’s Mapai was Jabotinsky’s revisionist party. During the Zionist Congress held in 1931, every fourth delegate at the Congress represented Jabotinsky’s movement. The Revisionist movement: Evolved into a radical right political party after failing to incorporate the conservative and the religious within its ranks, and being unable to jettison the maximalist right, which pushed it toward extremism.67 Although the tension between the two parties seemed to have taken the Jews of Palestine towards a civil war, the Revisionist movement ultimately suffered a setback due to a reaction to the European countries’ moves towards right-wing political parties, and in particular Germany, which saw Hitler elected as chancellor of Germany in 1933.68 In addition to domestic difficulties caused by the process of adjustment for different cultural and social groups in Palestine trying to integrate into the Yishuv, tension generally increased between the Jews and the Arabs living in Palestine as a consequence of the growth of the Jewish population in the region. In 1931 the population of Palestine numbered 175,000 Jewish inhabitants and 880,000 Arabs,

28

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

with a percentage decrease of the Arab population from 82 per cent to 70 per cent between 1931 and 1939.69 Although Arabs benefited economically from the Jewish presence in Palestine by working in the agricultural settlements, the Balfour Declaration in 1917 in favour of a ‘Jewish home in Palestine’ implemented an increase in the number of European Jews to the detriment of the Arabs.70 Moreover, despite the White Paper of 1922 restricting the interpretation of the Balfour Declaration, in 1929, after a long-running dispute between Jews and Muslims over access to the Western Wall, a series of riots and violent demonstrations started between them.71 Since Palestine was still under the British Mandate, a commission led by Sir John Chancellor was sent to monitor the situation in Palestine. The disorder of 1929 focused international attention on the Palestinian problem and the increasing demands from both Jewish and Muslim parties. In fact, although the Federation of American Zionists became actively more interested in promoting the Jewish settlement in Palestine, David Ben Gurion began to assume a leading role within the Yishuv and he therefore began to make it more independent from the World Zionist movement by leaving the political and diplomatic activity to the latter and the practical action to the former.72 This strategic move produced different expectations from both the World Zionist movement and the Yishuv and contributed to the finalisation of the creation of the State of Israel. The relations between Jews and Arabs worsened until 1936, when the Arab riots erupted and radically disrupted both Zionist plans and proposals for a solution to the Palestinian question.73 In fact, before the Arab riots of 1936, I would agree with scholars who claimed that the political situation in Palestine and the relation between Jews and Arabs was still open to finding a middle ground that would have enabled them to solve internal territorial disputes. On the contrary, the Arab Revolt in 1936, which took place as a consequence of the rejection by the British government of three demands of the Arab Higher Committee –stopping Jewish emigration, prohibiting the sale of land to the Jewish immigrants and creating a ‘national representative government’ – radically aggravated the situation in Palestine since it showed that the British government also vacillated in taking full

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

29

control of the situation. Moreover, a month after the beginning of the revolt a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Lord Peel, a former Secretary of State for India, was announced in order to: Inquire into the manner in which the Mandate of Palestine was being implemented in relation to the obligations of the Mandatory towards the Arabs and the Jews respectively; to ascertain whether, upon a proper construction of the terms of the Mandate, either the Arabs or the Jews had any legitimate grievances upon account of the way in which the mandate had been implemented.74 The Peel Commission approached Jewish emigration in the same way that would be addressed later by the White Paper of 1939: both agreed that Jewish emigration should be reviewed and that British policy should be based on political, social and economic reasons. It argued that a politically acceptable upper level should have been fixed at 12,000 every year for the following five years. The Peel Commission elucidated two fundamental statements proposed in its report. Firstly, the Commission recognised that the Mandate failed to ensure public security in the region and therefore it should terminate. Secondly, on the basis of this recognition, the Commission suggested the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state that would include Transjordan with a port at Jaffa, and Great Britain should have a permanent mandate on Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth.75 The content of the Peel Commission’s report was discussed at the twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich in 1937 and there was a split within the Zionist Organization: Chaim Weizmann and the more ‘realistic faction’ accepted the English proposal whilst the Revisionists, along with the religious faction, opposed a proposal that suggested partition. Later in 1939, the British Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald’s White Paper implemented the Zionist dream of creating a Jewish state in Israel, allowing the admission to Palestine of only 75,000 Jewish immigrants over the next five years.76 According to the report, after five years no further emigration would be permitted unless the Arabs agreed to it.

30

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

The White Paper called for the creation of a Jewish national home in a Palestinian state. The British Government wanted to develop self-governed institutions with shared proportionally between its Arab and Jewish inhabitants. As such, the rigid British policy of ‘certification’ seemed to have interrupted the Zionist plan for the creation of the Jewish national home in Palestine, and it provoked immediate reactions among representatives of the Yishuv. The feeling that arose among the Jewish community in Palestine can be summarised throughout the Jewish Agency’s statement, which declared that the White Paper was a denial of the right of the Jewish people to settle in their homeland. As such, the Arab majority would have ghettoised the Palestinian Jewish community and it would have been weakened by acts of Arab terrorism.77 Although the process of the creation of the Jewish homeland in Palestine during the 1930s suffered from severe setbacks, caused both by Arabs riots and diplomatic accords, World War II and the Nazi occupation of central Europe emphasised the urgency of ‘the Jewish problem in Europe’. The destruction of European Jews changed everything: many felt that they had nowhere to go apart from Palestine. In 1938, the Jewish Agency asked the British authorities for the implementation of visas for Palestine for at least 100,000 German Jews and 22,000 children who were then considered refugees.78 The tragic events of the Holocaust found the Zionist movement and the Jewish Agency completely unprepared to offer immediate shelter to European Jewry, then suffering from Nazi persecution. The Congress of Evian, held in June 1938 by 32 different countries, tried to find a solution for the Jews who were escaping from Europe.79 Unfortunately the Congress did not come to any practical solution since the British government refused to concede any more certificates for Jews to emigrate to Palestine. In consequence, representatives of the Yishuv decided to start an illegal project called Aliyah Bet, which would have rescued European Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution. The Aliyah Bet was able to organise an illegal emigration to Palestine of 12,000 European Jews.80 At the end of World War II the Nuremberg Trials of 1945– 6 revealed to the world the atrocities of

ZIONISM AND THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL

31

the Nazi regime. Europe, which had been the place where civil wars were fought in the name of egalitarian ideals, silently admitted its participation in the Holocaust massacre. The profound sense of guilt as well as the increasing tension in Mandatory Palestine, that inaugurated a period of political instability culminating in the King David hotel bombing in 1946 by the Irgun, seemed to have prepared the ground for the recognition of the Jewish state in the post-war geopolitical panorama. In 1947 Great Britain, whose Foreign Secretary at the time was Ernest Bevin, implemented the withdrawal of British troops from Palestine and entrusted the United Nations with defining the future status of Palestine. Eventually the United Nations proposed partition to establish two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The UN Resolution was, however, rejected by the Arabs.81 The end of the British Mandate on 14 May 1948 coincided with the proclamation of the State of Israel. In the beginning, the new-born Jewish state underwent a difficult transition from a contained group of Zionist settlers who experimented with a new social and political structure, to a state that had to construct an economic and social basis to sustain its population and to provide for the influx of diaspora Jews. Nevertheless, the new state of Israel developed its national bodies around the institutions and organisations already operating in the Yishuv. It realised both the utopian efforts of the first Zionist settlers and the work of European Jewish diplomats who were able strategically to orchestrate Jewish nationalist demands within the international scene of World War II and the subsequent Cold War.

CHAPTER 2 JEWS:THEIR HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

Pre-Islamic period The history of the Jews of Iran, especially regarding their first settlement, has often been the object of historical generalisation and folklore amongst scholars in the field. Although Iranian Jewish history commonly begins with Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC , it is difficult to trace the precise date of their appearance, with scholars disagreeing as to the exact periods.1 The Bible for instance traces the beginning of the history of the Jews of Iran as follows: In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Halah and by Habor, the River of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.2 Haideh Sahim and Daniel Spector in fact both consider it most likely that the Jews of Iran were the progeny of Israelite exiles after the conquest of Samaria in 722 BC by the Assyrian king Sargon II, who forced their resettlement in the region of the Medes that today corresponds geographically to western and central Iran.3 Other scholars such as Houman Sarshar, author of Esther’s Children, prefer to place

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

33

the history of the Jews of Iran as originating on 15 March 597 BC when, following the conquest of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar II took some Jews with him to Babylon.4 Vera Basch Moreen and Karen L. Pliskin agree with Sarshar in aligning the history of the Jews with the Babylonian captivity, because the Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth and seventh centuries BC included part of modern western Iran, and therefore the exiles most probably spread throughout the country.5 The Babylonian exile and the forced emigration of the Jews to Babylon require further clarification, since Sarshar places the exile in 597 BC while the majority of other scholars placed it in 586 BC. This confusion arises from the existence of two campaigns to Judah carried out by Persia. The Persian engagement in Judah occurred over a long period of time during which there were many deportations but also a great deal of integration. There were two sieges of Judah at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, in 597 BC and 586 BC. Both bore witness to the exiling of large numbers of Jews to Babylon. Jerusalem was first occupied by Nebuchadnezzar’s troops in 597 BC as a consequence of the revolt of Judah’s king Jehoiachin against Nebuchadnezzar.6 Following the occupation, the king Jehoiachin, was exiled along with approximately 10,000 Jews to Babylonia. The deportations of the Jews occurred between 597 and 582 BC with the majority belonging to the upper and most educated classes of the Judean population.7 With regard to the precise number of exiles, estimates vary. According to Sarshar the number of deported Jews was 10,000, whilst the author of Jeremiah counted 4,600 who were deported in three different waves.8 Other estimates go as high as 45,000.9 This difference in estimates could be attributed to the fact that Jeremiah only saw fit to record the number of male adults. Leaving aside the precise numbers of exiled Jews who arrived in Babylon, it became clear that their condition was not so severe as to prevent them prospering and engaging in activities enjoyed by the rest of society. Many of them became so established that they preferred to remain in Babylon when, some years later, Cyrus the Great gave them the opportunity to return to Israel.

34

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

After the deportation that started in 597 BC , Zedekiah took the throne of Jerusalem, with the backing of the Babylonian king. As Spector states, Judah attempted to maintain its independence from Babylon and looked for an alliance with Egypt against her occupier.10 In direct response to this attempt at independence, Nebuchadnezzar entered Jerusalem once more, in 586 BC, and in July proceeded to pull down its walls before destroying the Temple in August and deporting the remaining population of Judah to Babylon to join the rest of the Jewish exiles.11 The captivity of the Jews seemed to come to an end when, on the 29 October 539 BC, Cyrus of Anshan, founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, invaded Babylon, and in 538 BC his edict permitted Jews to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple.12 Cyrus believed that all people should be free to worship their own god and live where they wished, and for this reason many Jews thought he was the person designated to fulfill Jeremiah’s prophecy: that Jews would be liberated from captivity and allowed to return to the Holy Land.13 At that time Cyrus was the king of Babylonia in Babylon, the king of Elam in Susa and Pharaoh of Egypt. It was because of his extensive empire in the Middle East that Ezra believed that Cyrus had been chosen by the God of Israel to take the Jews back to their homeland.14 As far as the Jews were concerned, the Book of Ezra records the pronouncement allowing them to go back to Israel and to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem under the vassal Sheshbazzar.15 Thus, the Book of Ezra referred to Cyrus as the ‘King of the world’ and his magnificent career was predetermined by God ‘who rose up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings’.16 During the Achaemenid period Judah became a part of Samaria, and under King Artaxerxes between 450 and 440 BC more Jews from the Persian Empire returned to Israel from Babylonia. Others preferred to remain in Persia and continued to prosper as part of the Persian Empire.17 It appeared that Artaxerxes appointed Ezra as the priest who had to rule Jerusalem and its people and to organise religious affairs in Judah, whilst in 445 BC Nehemiah, who became the fifth satrap of the Persian Empire, became the governor of Judah.

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

35

Satrap was an official title given to the ruler of the districts of the Persian Empire for administrative purposes and they were answerable only to the king. Once arrived in Judah, Nehemiah and Ezra discovered that the Jewish people were living in a state of laxity and corruption, and to combat this they started a series of reforms that restored religious identity in Jerusalem.18 The Achaemenid period instigated a period of tolerance between opposing religious and ethnic minorities and paved the way for political dialogue between the Persians and the Jews. The fact that a Persian Jew had been named as a governor of Judah represented a clear example of how these two different cultures had started to merge. Even some of the most important figures from the Judaic tradition such as Ezra and Nehemiah belonged to the Achaemenid period and are intrinsically connected with this first juncture of Iranian Jewish history. The story of Esther and Mordecai, which is still recited every spring during Purim, commemorates Persian Jews’ deliverance from extermination and provides a vivid picture of the Jewish people under the rule of King Ahashuerus. During the Sasanian Period (224– 650 AD ), Iranian Jews were mainly located in and around Mesopotamia, which was part of the larger Babylonian Empire.19 The Book of Kings placed many Jews in Media, the Sasanian satrapy Mad.20 The term ‘Media’ generated some ambiguities, but archaeologists have given Parthia the same boundaries as the most eastern Jewish settlements in Iran. However, under the Sasanian Empire, Iranian Jewry produced one of the most important biblical texts for Judaism: the Babylonian Talmud (c.600 AD ).21 The Babylonian Talmud is, with the Jerusalem Talmud (c.400 AD ), the authoritative body of Jewish law and doctrine accumulated in Israel and Babylonia.22 Both Talmuds incorporate the Mishnah and the rabbinical discussions of the Mishnah known as the Gemara.23 The two Talmuds, however, differ significantly in language, style, content, scope and range of subject matters. According to the rabbinic tradition, the Babylonian Talmud includes much material that actually originated in the academies of Israel. The Babylonian rabbis however, composed an exegetical text more critical and detailed than those of Jerusalem. The richness of the Babylonian

36

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

body reflects the vibrant activity of the Babylonian Jewish academies, which under the Sasanian dynasty became the most important centres of Jewish scholarship. The Babylonian academies gained rapidly in influence and reputation because the political, social and economic situation in Israel was dramatically deteriorating.24 The Babylonian academies of Sura, Nehardea, Nisibis, Mahoza and Pumbeditha became very active Jewish centres, which subsequently influenced the Rabbinic tradition. To quote Houman Sharshar: The Jews of the Sasanian Empire not only produced one of the world Jewry’s greatest textual achievements with the Babylonian Talmud, but that through it they became the single most influential community of Judaism before or since.25 Moussa Kermanian, Secretary of the Jewish Community of Iran, comments in a document that he wrote in 1977 that: The history of Jewry has been linked with Iran for 2500 years and many parts of the Tanach were written in Iran (Ezra, Esther, Daniel, parts of Chronicles, Isaiah) and they mention not only Persia but also Koorosh and Darius. This long sojourn in Iran and the blend between their religious roots and their culture led them to identify themselves both as Iranians and Jews.26 The status of Iranian Jews in the Parthian time (238– 228 AD) was characterised by another period of very favourable relations. The Parthian dynasty, founded by Arsaces, reclaimed the old domain of the Achaemenids excluding Egypt and western Anatolia and the Mediterranean coast.27 The Parthian rulers, like the Achaemenids were not religious fanatics and therefore allowed the Jews to prosper. The Jews were allowed to exercise considerable local autonomy that led to the creation of an important centre called Nehardea, which became a collective point for gifts directed to Jerusalem. The Jews thereby enlarged the number of religious tracts. Spector confirms that the ‘major Jewish intellectual endeavour at the time centred around religion and in particular around the development of the Mishnah’.28

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

37

Proof of the intellectual richness of the Parthian Jews is the assignation of Babylonia as the birthplace of the great Jewish scholar Hillel, and of Rav and Samuel who, in the third century, were responsible for transferring Talmudic studies to Mesopotamia. Parthian Jews developed an active intellectual nucleus in Babylon, which had numerous cultural exchanges with the centre of Jewish culture at that time – Jerusalem. Even though the activity of the Jews of Parthia did not flourish as much as in Palestine, it had a relevant role in the forming of Judaic tradition in general and the Judeo-Persian in particular.

The beginning of the deterioration of Iranian Jewish status in Persia The condition of the Jews in ancient Persia started to deteriorate with the advent of Islam in the mid-seventh century when the Arabs conquered Iran and the Abbasid Dynasty started to rule Persia from 634 until 1255.29 In Iran, the Arabs introduced Sunni Islam and a new political organisation that assigned Jews to the role of dhimmis (non-Muslim citizens).30 A sort of contract was stipulated between Muslim rulers and dhimmis: they were recognised as a religious minority and in exchange for the protection of the government, dhimmis had to pay a tax to the Islamic authorities. With regard to their economic status, Iranian Jews could enjoy the financial positions considered by the Qu’ran to be usury. Therefore Jews occupied these positions and with the growth of international commerce they became active and wealthy merchants and bankers in the empire. The subsequent conquest of Iran by the Mongols in 1258 ended the Abbasid era and the prominence of Islam. Moussa Kermanian comments on the Arab conquest of Iran as follows: ‘The Arabs have destroyed the great and mighty civilisations of Ancient Persia hundreds of years ago and despite the common religion it will never be forgotten.’31 Under the Mongol leader Hulagu the dhimmi status was abolished and all religious minorities acknowledged as equal. Jews could be employed in the government and were more involved in the social

38

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

and economic life of the Empire. This more favourable period in Iranian Jewish history gave Jews the opportunity to enrich their Judeo-Persian literature. Through this period of Iranian Jewish history, Jews were faced with different categories of discrimination, which had been defined and formulated by the different governments and political situations. Jews adapted themselves to the political reality by converting and occupying a number of particular positions in society. The advent of the Safavid era (1501– 1731) was the turning point in determining the worsening of the status of Iranian Jews. The Safavid Empire originated from Ardabil in Iranian Azerbaijan in northern Iran.32 It was a Turkic-speaking dynasty whose classical and cultural language was Persian. To establish political legitimacy in Persia, the Safavid rulers claimed to be descended from Imam Ali and his wife Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, and the founder of the Safavid Dynasty, Isma’il (1501– 24), claimed to be a Husaynid.33 To further legitimise his power, Isma’il added claims of royal Sassanid heritage after becoming Shah. The Safavid dynasty began in July 1501 with the capture of Tabriz and its declaration as the new capital of the Safavid dynasty, inaugurating one of the darkest periods in the history of the Jews because Shi’ism became the state religion and a religious hierarchy was instituted with unlimited power and influence in every sphere of life.34 The government’s manoeuvre was a forcible conversion of the Sunni population to a Shi’ite form of Islam. This new repressive policy based on religious motives reduced the tolerance shown towards other minorities. Its cornerstone was the introduction of the concept of najis, which means the ritual uncleanness of the Jews, Christians and other religious minorities: Shi’ite clergy sought to purify the country from unbelievers. The Jews as a minority were defined as impure and therefore had to pay a special taxation to the Shah.35 The culmination of the deterioration in the situation of the Jews under the Safavids took place towards the end of the reign of Abbas I. 36 Fischel emphasises that in the first part of the Safavid reign the Persian Jews still seemed to have relative freedom both economically

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

39

and in religious practice, and only later did the condition of the Jews worsen. The fate of the Jews was hastened partly because of internal conflicts within the Jewish community, which led to a denunciation by an embittered renegade, Mulla Abu Hasan Lari.37 During the reign of Shah Abbas I (1571 – 1629), known as ‘the Great’, numerous reforms to consolidate Iran led to the Jews and Christians experiencing several forms of oppression and being pressured into converting to Islam.38 According to the Ketab-e Anusi (The Book of a Forced Convert), written by Babai ben Lotf, under the reign of Abbas I Jews were persecuted as a consequence of squabbling Jewish factions in Isfahan who accused each other of casting spells on the Shah. The Shah offered them the opportunity to convert to Islam instead of being put to death but some Jews preferred martyrdom. Despite this, some Jewish communities, such as Yadz, survived this wave of forced conversion and maltreatment with the help of their Muslim neighbours who recognised their own dependence on the benefits that the Jews brought to their economy.39 Nevertheless, according to Bahgat, segregation became a reality for all the religious minorities: Jewish ghettos were reinforced. Jews in Persia were relegated to live in specific areas called ‘Mahall alYahud’ (Makhaneh Israel).40 They were separated from the rest of society. In addition to segregation, the Jews in Iran experienced persecution and harassment, which continued under the last Abbas rulers.41 The overthrow of the Safavid dynasty by Nader Shah in 1736 saved the Jews of Iran and they were given a respite from the threat to their spiritual and physical existence.42 Although such oppressive attitudes were relaxed under Nadir Shah (1736– 47), new forms of discriminations afflicted the Jews of Iran later, from 1794 under the Qajar dynasty, which weakened the already fragile structure of the Jewish community.

Persecutions during the Qajar dynasty The Qajar dynasty was the ruling family in Iran from 1781 to 1925. It was one of many Turkish tribes that emigrated from central Asia

40

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

to the Middle East during the fourteenth century.43 It was only in 1779 that Agha Mohammed Khan, the leader of the Qajar tribe, set out to reunify Persia under his control by defeating other local tribes. Although Persia was nominally under the control of the ruling dynasty, the government was unable to create a stable administration that legitimated the authority of the Qajars. With regard to this, Abrahamian Ervand stated: ‘The Qajar State dominated society not so much because it was itself strong but because its society was remarkably weak.’44 The Qajar kings were unable to create a centralised administrative structure and therefore minorities were left at the mercy of local administration.45 The absence of a centralised administration was exploited by various social elements that favoured the increase of the socio-economic power of some religious provincial power such as the local ulemas.46 The ulemas took advantage of this situation to benefit from religious taxes and donations and they therefore felt free to threaten their local Iranian religious minorities – the Jewish community in particular. Despite the Shi’ite legal recognition of the Jews as dhimmis, Iranian Jews were at the mercy of local administrators, Shi’ite ulemas and all who wished to discriminate against the Jews. The social and political insecurity of the Jewish community under the Qajars depleted the Jewish population in the eighteenth century. In the early period of the Qajar dynasty, while the Muslim population of Iran was increasing, the number of Jews declined, and by the end of nineteenth century the number of Persian Jews in Iran was estimated at 70,000.47 Political insecurity was not the only reason for the halving of Iran’s Jewish community. Other factors contributed. On one hand the ghettos had poor social and sanitary conditions that caused frequent epidemics and, on the other, a new wave of forced conversions and harassment carried out by the Muslims in the period between 1786 and 1848 greatly reduced the Jewish population.48 The early decades of the Qajar dynasty were particularly hard for the Jews of Iran, who had to survive harsh discrimination as a defenceless religious minority. They often suffered at the whim of the local clergy who had the power to incite the local population.

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

41

The record concerning different forms of persecution that occurred in these years is detailed and offers the opportunity to understand how difficult life was for the Jews in Iran. Daniel Tsadik reported that entire Jewish communities were massacred in towns such as Maraghah and Tabriz.49 In 1830 the latter community was accused of using the blood of Muslims to make matzo. The Shi’ite clergy in Iran not only ordered the cutting of the water supply to its Jewish community but they were also forbidden to leave their neighbourhood, and therefore were implicitly condemned to death. Correspondence indicates that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Iranian Jewry faced several persecutions and was repeatedly threatened by the Islamic authorities. In a telegram dated 24 September 1892 Chief Rabbi Cohen of Hamadan reported that Moolaah Abdullah, the Mullah of Hamadan, ordered the massacre of the Jewish Community in Hamadan.50 Although Moolaah Abdullah went on to be dismissed from office, the persecution continued unabated under his successor Mullah S Abdlmejid. One can suggest that their complete isolation from worldwide Jewry did not help Iranian Jews to resist discrimination. Another anonymous letter, addressed to Alliance Israelite, suggested that, during another persecution, in 1897 under Sayd Rahyan ‘Affafa’, there was a plan to exterminate all Iranian Jewry. They therefore asked for help from the Alliance Israelite, which had been founded in 1860 by Moses Montefiore.51 It appeared that the only way to escape from persecution under the Qajar government and to obtain equal rights in Islamic society was to convert to Islam. Conversion was the main vehicle through which Persian Muslim society accepted the new Muslims, called ‘Mohammedans’. For some Jews conversion was the only way to save their lives, thus the Jews of Mashed, a city in the north-east of Iran, decided to convert to Islam in 1839, as a consequence of harsh and humiliating restrictions.52 Following the first conversion in Mashed, other cases of forced conversion occurred in the same area, as was reported by an Afghani Jew during a visit there in 1927.53 Although some of these Jews preferred to go to Herat in Afghanistan instead of converting to Islam, the majority of the Jews of Meshed adopted Persian costumes and habits, although

42

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

they secretly kept the Jewish faith. They were also apparently fervent Zionists and many of them prospered because as Muslims they were free to keep their business and properties. The Qajar dynasty, because of its weakness and its incapacity to centralise political power, experienced periodic revolts, which turned into destructive conflicts and factional struggles between the beginnings of the twentieth century until the coup d’e´tat of 1921.54 The chaotic domestic situation in Iran permitted foreign countries to influence and control Iran easily. In fact, the Anglo-Russian Convention signed in 1907, nominally recognised the influence of these two foreign powers in the country.55 British political control in Persia made Anglo-Jewish organisations aware of the situation of Jews in Iran. A letter sent to the Foreign Secretary of the AngloJewish Association (AJA) in 1910 mentioned that the Jewish community of Shiraz had suffered persecution and maltreatment. It resulted in an effort by the AJA to provide some relief. Furthermore, it was reported that in 1922 Jews in Shiraz had to show certain marks on their garments and were confined to their houses on rainy days. Those who did not follow these proscriptions faced the confiscation of their property.56 The available evidence suggests that during this period all appeals made by Iranian Jewry were directed to Jewish organisations abroad, bypassing the local Jewish leadership. In fact, from these fragmented letters Iranian Jews themselves seem to have been completely politically impotent.

The social status of Iranian Jewry until the 1950s The social status of the Iranian Jewish community between the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century has been clearly described by Dr Isaac Kleinbaum, a representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in his report dating back to 1946. Despite the discrimination that Iranian Jews had experienced as a religious minority since the advent of Islam in Iran, Kleinbaum reported that, compared to European Jewry, the Jewish community in Iran had always been treated with more tolerance by the majority of the Muslims and that their legal status was defined by their title,

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

43

‘Nutiel Islam’ – subordinated to Islam.57 Their status was in some degree protected by the dhimma regulations and because of this legal recognition they suffered less than Jewish communities in other countries. In his survey, he emphasised that until the nineteenth century, Iranian Jewry had no formal contacts with world Jewry and many communities were scattered across the country. This condition of isolation from worldwide Jewry seemed to have improved in the twentieth century as a consequence of the emergence in the country of Western Jewish institutions and the fact that Jewish philanthropists, for the first time, became aware of the Jews of Iran. Joseph Wolff, who visited Persia, reported that in the second half of the nineteenth century American Christian missionaries were actually the only group who cared about the Jews by opening schools for them.58 The new fervent interest in the status of the Iranian Jewish minority demonstrated by American and European powers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was encouraged by both humanitarian concerns and imperialist interests in the area. British intervention on behalf of religious minorities was no more than an attempt to keep its influence in the country.59 The British government’s awareness of the Jews of Iran and their fragile condition as a religious minority became known briefly to British Jewish philanthropists and organisations. For instance, Sir Moses Montefiore took interest in the situation of the Iranian Jewish community and sent a considerable amount of money in 1872 to the Anglican bishop in Isfahan to distribute among them.60 Montefiore’s actions increased European Jewry’s interest in the condition of the Iranian Jewish community. Thus, in 1878, representatives of the French Jewish community took the opportunity to write a petition to Nasir al-Din Shah, the king and the Shah of Persia at that time, while he was in Paris, in order to inform him about the condition of Iranian Jews. With the proclamation of the Iranian Constitution in 1906, Iranian Jews formally achieved equal rights with the Muslims and trade was finally opened to them. The Jews joined the economic life of Iranian bazaaris (merchants and workers in the bazaars) and they became small traders dealing with carpets, textiles, antiques and luxuries. Despite this political recognition by the government,

44

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

the majority of Jews remained anchored to the poor social status of small peddlers who went from house to house, from city to city and to the shopkeepers in the bazaars.61 The coup d’e´tat of Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1921 subsequently induced interest in the social condition of the Jews of Iran. He introduced reforms aimed at modernising Iran that both weakened the political position of the clergy and culturally emphasised the history of preIslamic Iran. Reza Shah forged a new national identity in which marginal importance was given to religion and to the ulemas. No difference was made between Iranian citizens of different creeds and Iranian Jewish civil status was now equal to that of Muslims.62 The Jews were no longer considered to be simply a religious minority and they moved into the main Iranian cities, which were undergoing a new era of industrialisation. These Jews were still a minority compared to the overall number of Iranian Jewry, which was still scattered around the countryside, but they embraced the mood of rapid modernisation and they soon became part of the new Iranian middle class. The resulting benefits of this were that the Iranian government adopted a secular attitude towards religious minorities and offered more mobility to the Jews who could assimilate and join the ruling Muslim class.63 During Reza Shah’s regime and his chauvinistic ideology, the small group of an emerging Jewish middle class embraced the new wave of ‘Iranisation’ ideology. Thus, any form of Jewish identity or even Jewish nationalism, such as political Zionism, did not find a reason d’eˆtre under such circumstances. Reza Shah decided to reform the army by eliminating ethnic and linguistic restrictions and therefore Jews were now entitled to join the Iranian army.64 Reza Shah’s nationalism forced Iranian society to face a series of economic, political, cultural and social changes that affected its understanding of statehood and national cultural identity. This form of nationalism was based on the European model of statesociety relations, which required a modern economic and social framework that Iran did not have; instead, it reinforced internal ethnic and social divisions. Reza Shah’s nationalism further shaped its concept of the Iranian nation based on the concept of the purity of the ‘Aryan race’, which gave rise to concern among Iranian Jews.

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

45

The concept of ‘Aryan race’ was used to refer to the ethnic group of Indo-Iranian origins. After this statement on race the Jews perceived their situation to be fragile, since an unofficial anti-Semitic discrimination now became the policy of the administration, which was under Germany’s political and cultural influence.65 Isaac Kleinbaum reported that under Reza Shah members of the small group of emergent Jewish middle class were unable to progress in either the army or government careers because, at a bureaucratic level, Iranian Jews were considered an ethnic minority. Jews were now exposed to acts of violence, both at the government level and from local persecutors. In addition, Nazi anti-Semitism influenced Reza Shah’s policy towards Iranian Jews. An example of this is recorded in a letter dated 25 July 1934 when the Jewish Central Information Office in London reported that the first anti-Semitic weekly had just begun to appear in Iran.66 The weekly Iran-e`-Bastan was an organ of German anti-Semitic propaganda. The publisher of the paper was Seif Azad, who had lived in Germany but had returned to Iran after being declared bankrupt. In one instance he rejected a letter from a German insurance company, Stuttgarter Versicherung Sverein, because a Jew who had converted to Islam had written it. The newspaper called itself the ‘co-fighter of his majesty the Shah’ and the ‘champion of the greatness and glory of Persia’. He also suggested the introduction of a distinguishing mark for Jews in Iran. Fortunately, the influence and the importance of this paper were not very great and its circulation was limited, but the programme and the principles that it steadily propagated represented a real threat for Iranian Jews. The presence of Allied forces in Iran since 1941 and the increasing influence of the Great Powers on the Iranian government as well as on Iranian society provided an opportunity for European and American Jewish associations to go to Iran and start to set up their agencies there. Once in the country, envoys from international Jewish organisations saw the generally low level of Iranian Jewish education in Judaism. They therefore started to establish schools around the country. The final years of World War II represented a turning point in the history of the Jews of Iran, as their cultural isolation from world Jewry came to an end as they came into contact both with the

46

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

reality of Nazi persecutions against the Jews and with political Zionism. Iran became a transit station for Soviet and other European Jews who were escaping from Nazi persecution in an attempt to reach Palestine. The Shah Muhammad Pahlavi showed a positive attitude towards European Jewish refugees and offered them a sanctuary whilst they were trying to obtain visas and escape to Palestine. The most extraordinary episode regarding European refugees’ arrival in Iran was that of the ‘Tehran children’, which occurred in 1943. Around 981 children between the age of 18 months and 17 years old arrived in Tehran in 1943 as refugees from Nazi persecution.67 Numerous international Jewish organisations such as the Joint Committee for Polish Jewish Relief, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Agency not only provided first aid support to the young Polish refugees in the camps in Tehran but they also became more informed about the Iranian Jewish condition in Iran and small villages around the country. In fact, on 6 May 1943, while he was in Jerusalem, Mosheh Yishay was asked to move to Tehran in order to inquire about the situation of Polish refugees in Iran.68 Following this request, on 26 June 1943 an agreement to help these refugees was signed in Tehran between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Agency opened its office in 1943 in order to help European Jewish refugees to migrate to Palestine, whilst other Jewish organisations opened their offices in the country later; they sent envoys around the country in order to build a bridge between all the Jewish communities scattered around the country.69 Both European refugees and representatives from Jewish organisations abroad had a strong impact on the Iranian Jewish community on different levels as well as contributing to the spread of Zionism within the community. Despite the influence and support of foreign organisations, as well as the emancipation of those Jews who benefitted from the economic reforms in Iran, the situation of the entire community at the beginning of the 1950s was described by an internal Jewish Agency document as ‘still problematic’: 90 per cent of the community was on the ‘borderline of starvation and in a condition of terrible poverty and squalor in 1946’.70

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

47

Benoit Gabbay, a representative of the Alliance Israelites in Isfahan, reported on the social and cultural status of one of the largest Jewish communities in Iran, which was in Isfahan. The city of Isfahan, because of the high number of Jews, was renamed ‘dar alYahood’, city of the Jews.71 The community was reported still to live in the mellah in miserable conditions, with a majority working as occasional peddlers or small merchants.72 Despite this, a few Iranian Jews, especially with the help of the AIU (Alliance Israelite Universelle) schools, improved their social status, although none of them could be defined as well-to-do. Moshe Yishay drew a portrait of the Iranian Jewish community as follows: ‘The social classification of Iranian Jews was based on two facts: those who have money and those who do not, the wealthy and the poor.’73 According to unofficial statistics released by the Jewish Agency in Tehran and later published in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the overall number of the community living in post-war Iran was between 100,000 and 120,000.74 A report on the condition of Iranian Jews dating back to 27 October 1949 described the Jewish community of Iran as living on the periphery of large cities: almost 70 per cent of its members were living in ghettos and in wretched conditions.75 Between the end of the 1940s and the mid 1950s, Iranian Jews were mainly located in Tehran (25,000), Shiraz and surroundings (14,000), Isfahan (7,500), Hamadan (6,000) and Meshed (4,500).76 Most of them – even those in the cities – were living in modest conditions and fewer than 1 per cent could be considered wealthy, whilst the middle class only composed 10 –15 per cent of the overall Iranian Jewish population and the rest of them were extremely poor.77 Research conducted by Dr Stuart Eizenstat from the Hebrew University in 1953 confirmed the previous analysis of the general miserable condition of the Jews of Iran and that Jews exhibited a traditional lifestyle that was inferior to any other north African Jewish communities.78 The majority of them were traders in carpets, textiles and antiques with very little profit. Yehuda Dominitz, who was a delegate of the Jewish Agency, travelled across Iran in 1957 to visit Iranian Jewish communities and confirmed that what made Iranian Jews naturally gifted as

48

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

businesspeople was this long tradition as small traders and hawkers.79 By the beginning of the 1950s, Iranian Jews benefitted from new economic growth in the country and their economic situation improved. An increasing number of Iranian Jews were able to leave the villages for cities such as Shiraz and Tehran. The general economic progress achieved during this phase was accompanied by a further significant development in the education of the Jews.80 Once more, the general economic growth and the improved education level only affected those Iranian Jews who had previously left the mellah and already joined the wave of assimilation under Reza Shah. This reopened former divisions between rich and poor. In fact, the emancipated Jews’ lack of solidarity with their impoverished compatriots, plus the geographical isolation of Iranian Jewish communities around the country, left the majority of Iranian Jews, until the first half of the 1950s, in an extremely poor condition and anchored to a traditional way of life.

Iranian Jewish education in the 1950s Up to the first half of the 1950s, Iranian Jewish cultural identity had not been shaped around the modern interpretations of Jewishness that were being debated in Europe alongside a Zionist discourse. Iranian Jews were distanced from such a debate owing to both their isolation from European Jewry and a growing lack of interest in keeping Jewish traditions. Two main factors contributed to the loss of Jewish traditions within the Iranian community. Firstly, the insistent nationalist information propagated by the Pahlavi government did not facilitate the reawakening of Jewish identity among the community, which became further assimilated into the rest of Iranian society. Secondly, the activity of Jewish envoys actually worsened Iranian Jews’ understanding of Jewish roots and customs, since they were solely driven by political aims. Instead of offering a uniform Jewish education to Iranian Jewry, Jewish representatives interpreted Judaism and Judaic habits according to a political perspective. Among international Jewish organisations working in

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

49

Iran, the Alliance Israelites Universelle was one of the oldest institutions to oppose both the development of Judaic traditions as well as political Zionism. The Alliance Israelites Universelle began its educational programmes in Iran and, between 1894 and 1904, founded modern elementary schools in the main Iranian cities.81 The schools’ impact on the intellectual development of the Jews of Iran was enormous, since they offered free education to Iranian Jews: its schools also provided food and clothes to poorer children annually.82 Up until the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, the AIU schools were the main cultural centres not only for Iranian Jews, but also for all the non-Jewish experts who, as a consequence of the growing European interest circulating in Iran, joined cultural activities organised by the Jewish organisations.83 The relevance of the AIU in the emancipation of the Jews of Iran was fundamental as, through it, Iranian Jews had the opportunity to improve their education and their status in all respects. The schools’ curricula provided a modern education based on secular rather than traditional Jewish principles. Thus, the ideological distance from Jewish culture practised by the AIU and its teachers favoured the relegation of Jewish heritage.84 AIU schools set the principal educational tone for the Iranian Jewish community and its ideological position regarding Judaism and political Zionism influenced pupils’ knowledge of Judaic traditions. The lack of Jewish cultural pillars within Iranian Jewry did not create the prerequisites for the emergence of Zionism, which rooted its cultural reason d’eˆtre in the Biblical tradition. However, the AIU was not the only association that distanced Jews from Zionism. Other Jewish institutions sponsored by international Jewish organisations were established in Iran. Otzar Ha-Torah, for instance, became the main institution to offer a traditional Jewish education in Iran after World War II. The founder of the school was Rabbi Isaac Meir Levi, who was of eastern European origin. He arrived in Iran in 1943 to help in rescuing World War II Jewish refugees.85 Rabbi Levi became aware of the low level of Jewish education of Iranian Jewry and, in 1947, he founded a school called Otzar Ha-Torah. He was a member of Agudat Yisrael and therefore a convinced anti-Zionist.

50

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

During his period in Iran, he fought against the rise of any political Zionist movement. The goal of his schools was to provide Iranian Jews with a religious curriculum based on the pillars of traditional Ashkenazi orthodoxy. Thus, his schools obtained support from several European organisations that understood the necessity of reviving Judaic traditions amongst the Jews of Iran. The main weakness of the Otzar Ha-Torah schools lay in their religious profile based on European Judaic traditions, which, of course, did not reflect Iranian cultural features. Moreover, Otzar Ha-Torah suffered from a lack of qualified staff able to teach Judaic subjects and the Hebrew language. Hence the level of Judaic studies remained low, and in most cases pupils failed to acquire a satisfactory knowledge of Talmudic tradition. Along with Otzar Ha-Torah, the ORT (Russian: Obshestvo Remeslenofo zemledelcheskofo Truda, The Society for Trades and Agricultural Labour) schools were another institution that focused on Jewish traditional culture. Although ORT schools also lacked staff able to teach Judaic subjects, as well as being initially unpopular within the Iranian Jewish community, they succeeded in becoming considered one of the more successful Jewish schools there as they were sponsored by the JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee).86 The Iraqi community living in Iran founded another important school, the Itrifak School, in Iran in 1946, aiming to offer Iraqi Jews an appropriate education.87 The school also began to be popular amongst Iranian Jewry because of its good reputation for English courses. The evidence suggests that the reputation and popularity of these Jewish educational institutions was based not on their Jewish religious curricula but rather on their secular approach and relevance to the demands of the local economy. After the establishment of the first Jewish schools, the educational level of the Iranian Jewish community improved measurably in the first half of the twentieth century, albeit the overall number of pupils was still low; records show that in 1949 only 16,400 Jewish children attended schools.88 Many envoys of the Jewish Agency still referred to the Iranian Jewish community of the early 1950s as ‘traditional’. Although the Jews of Iran were aware of their ‘inner Jewish identity’, as Freud

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

51

defined it in his early approach to Judaism, Judaism was not shaped into a conscious form of collective identity but rather it remained relegated to an empirical and personal sphere.89 This lack of a collective identity was reflected in the absence of authoritative leadership. For the inhabitants of every Jewish neighbourhood, Jewish life was centred on its own boards of deputies called the ‘Chevrah’, which were in charge of communal affairs such as kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) and synagogues. Nonetheless, these boards were functional only nominally as in reality they were very neglected and inefficient, and were ideologically divided from within. The principal weakness of the Chevrah was the lack of an authoritative spiritualcommunity leader: the local rabbis did not possess any halakhic authority and did not have any effective religious power.90 Also, the lack of a Chief Rabbinate in Iran did not provide a sufficient legal and administrative authority regarding religious matters. The result was that Judaism in Iran was characterised largely by superstitious practices and beliefs.91 For example, as late as 1950, Jewish women in Iran were making and selling magic charms for superstitious purposes and local rabbis did not have the knowledge to decide whether or not Jewish law allowed these practices. Moreover, evidence from the 1950 edition of Ha Boker, an Israeli publication, confirmed that the Iranian Jewish community lacked knowledge of the Torah and Judaic tradition.92 The general picture of the socio-cultural status of the Iranian Jewish community in the early 1950s shows peculiar characteristics that rendered that community culturally and socially unique in comparison to worldwide Jewry. The geographical isolation from Europe as well as the lack of community ties distanced Iranian Jews not only from their Judaic heritage but also from the discourse around political Zionism that had been taking place in Europe since the end of the nineteenth century. With the arrival of international Jewish organisations in Iran in the first half of the twentieth century, Iranian Jewish communities’ reality still remained fractured in its social structure, and Jewish identity did not mature into a collective and political consciousness as preached by political Zionism. Hence, the activity of Zionist and Jewish envoys within Iranian Jewry

52

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

highlighted these social differences, and the attempted politicisation of some Iranian Jewish social strata further alienated the community.

Iranian Jewish community in the late 1970s The beginning of the 1980s represented, for Iran in general and for the Iranian Jewish community in particular, a crucial period in their history since the success of the Islamic revolution profoundly changed the socio-cultural references of Iran. Although several scholars of Iranian politics referred to the Islamic regime as a mere replacement of a ‘royal reign of terror’,93 the religious-political paradigm of the new government shaped the state identity of Iran: that identity was now legitimated by religious means. Consequently the process of the islamisation of Iranian society affected private and public spheres as well as Iranian religious groups living in the country.94 The making of an Islamic nationalist identity based on Shi’ite precepts created the opportunity for the development of processes for the segregation of the different social strata and ethnic groups. Under these circumstances, the Iranian Jewish community responded to the Islamic regime in different ways according to their social and economic positions, which determined their participation in that revolution. The Iranian Jewish community in 1978 consisted of 75,000 – 90,000 Jews, which could be divided into three principal social groups. The very rich consisted of 10,000, the poorest around 15,000– 20,000 people and the remainder, and largest group, the middle class.95 Moshe Katzav, at that time the envoy for the Jewish Agency in Iran, portrayed Iranian Jewry in 1978 as an integrated community within non-Jewish society, resulting from the economic prosperity and intellectual achievement during the Pahlavi monarchy.96 Contrary to the situation of European Jewry, Iranian Jewry’s high degree of emancipation determined the absence of a sense of solidarity, and thus they felt no necessity to form a Jewish body or organisations parallel to the government to protect their community’s interests. Moreover, as reported by a survey for the year 1971, Iranian Jewish cultural awareness and knowledge of Judaism

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

53

was still regarded as ‘alienated’ and they did not nurture any form of communalism around Jewish identity.97 The lack of a deep-rooted tradition of Jewish culture and isolation from worldwide Jewry had taken their toll. By the 1970s, the Jewish community lacked either a cultural or religious authoritative central organisational body. Even though attendance in local synagogues was high and the Anjoman Kalimian, as well as the Association of the Jews of Iran, were active, they both operated at a local level, and Iranian Jews were incapable of creating an umbrella organisation for the community. Jewish representatives in Iran who tried to reorganise the community through the activities of the Jewish Agency, ORT and JDC raised the demands for the formation of an Iranian Jewish leadership and for the revival of Jewish culture.98 The growing political insecurity of Iranian domestic politics at the beginning of 1979 exposed the Jews and required them to form a leadership. However, it seemed that such demands for a leadership were an imperative more for Jewish international organisations than for the Jews living in Iran. According to Moshe Gilboa, of the second Israeli mission in 1978, the complete lack of Jewish leadership became an issue that had to be solved in order to build up a community structure as well as providing a reference point for the Jews living in Iran. The discourse around the making of an Iranian Jewish leadership investigated several possibilities, although only a few seemed to have any potential. Since there was a complete lack of Judaic authority, the first suggestion was to form a religious leadership in France from members of the Sephardic community and then send them to Iran through the French embassy. Evidence suggests that Jewish envoys realised that such a resolution was just too difficult in practice: it remained a utopian project confined to a letter found in the archives in Jerusalem – it appears that it was never realised. Two attempts came from within the community: a new small group led by Aziz Daneshrad emerged from within the circle of Jewish intellectuals. Aziz Daneshrad was a former member of the Tudeh Party and sources reported that he secretly remained more loyal to the Iranian Communist Party than to the Jewish community.99 The loyalty shown by the Iranian Jewish leadership

54

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

to the Iranian government aroused suspicions among international Jewish organisations. Although they agreed with the general critique regarding the leadership’s work, they acknowledged that this leadership had been working from within the community for the previous two years. As such, they had some credibility amongst Iranian Jews and they became the representatives of the community. Another attempt within the Iranian community came with the emergence of a Jewish committee in Iran in the late 1970s. However, this Jewish body demonstrated its fragility and vulnerability, since its representatives feared to reveal themselves as leaders of the community: the general trend was that once a Jewish committee had been created it normally ceased to exist the day after. In the effort to build up a leadership, international Jewish organisations paid particular attention to the Iranian Jewish middle class: they were educated and part of the Iranian intelligentsia. Jewish representatives in Iran considered them to have the most potential to lead Jewish communities. In spite of the interest of international Jewish organisations in Iranian youth, the emerging Jewish intelligentsia not only distanced themselves from the possibility of becoming the reference point for the Jews in Iran but they also publicly supported the Islamic revolution. The young intellectuals embraced the revolution’s ethos and created a revolutionary committee along with Islamic revolutionary groups. They stated: ‘The intellectuals of the Iranian Jewish community together with the true movement of Iranian people declare once again their connection to the Iranian nation.’100 And again: The Iranian Jewish intellectuals, believing completely in the genuineness and nobility of the struggle of the people of Iran and recognising the role of the clergy in their struggle, attended on the day of 23 December, 1978 the residence of his highness Ayatollah Said Mahrnoud Taleghani and declared before him their connection with the Iranian people. They remember that the Jewish community of Iran had been and will be with the people in all periods and stages of the fight of the nation and feel the same way as the nation.101

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

55

It seems from the sources that the Jewish intellectuals remained very loyal to the Iranian nation and then to the Islamic regime: One cannot separate the Jewish community from the entire Iranian community. The great Revolution of Iran which was crowned with success in Bahaman 1357 [January– February 1979], was a turning point in Iranian struggle for freedom . . . The Jewish circles, the wishes of the majority of the Jews were in complete harmony with those of the Revolutionary elements.102 As little research has been carried out on the impact of the Islamic revolution on Iranian Jewry, it is difficult to state whether the intellectuals decided fully to support the revolution because they believed in its ideology or because they were trying to preserve the Jewish community from possible persecution. However, their political stand did not help to reinforce the internal framework of that Jewish community. The public support they gave to the Islamic revolution reinforced the general trend amongst Iranian Jews that, after a period of adjustment, Iranian domestic politics would return to what it had been during the Pahlavi regime.103 Despite the position of young Iranian Jews, Jewish conservative groups led by Rabbi Yedidia Shofet in Tehran preferred to keep a low profile without exposing themselves and giving a clear position regarding the Islamic revolution.104 The social status of Iranian Jewry in Iran was officially defined once Iran turned itself into an Islamic Republic. Following the referendum of 30 and 31 March 1979, the Islamic Republic in Iran was approved. Already on 11 February 1979, Ayatollah had succeeded to take control of Iran.105 On 11 February 1979 Iran became the Islamic Republic under Khomeini. ‘Islamic’ political revolution was henceforth based on Shi’ite ideology and symbolism. Between 1979 and 1981, Khomeini legitimised religious authority through perennial criticism of the secular, authoritarian Pahlavi state that had subjugated the Iranian people. Khomeini intertwined populist rhetoric of the revolution with religious precepts such that he obtained consensus from the Iranian

56

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

nation. The religious tenets of Shi’ite Islam officially defined the government position towards the religious Jewish community. Khomeini’s constitution ‘governance of the jurist’ (velayat-e-faqeeh) in article 13 officially recognised Jews as a religious minority in Iran: Jews were People of the Book belonging to the Jewish faith as well as legitimate inhabitants of Iran. As such, they had the right to be represented in the Majlis.106 Dr George E Gruen, director of Middle East Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, reported that Khomeini had stepped up his efforts to reassure the Jewish world that Iran’s Jewish community had nothing to fear from the Islamic government. As part of his multifaith dialogue with the Jewish community, Khomeini met the rabbis of the Jewish community in Tehran, as well as receiving a large delegation of Iranian Jewish families. Despite Khomeini’s attempts officially to reassure the Iranian Jewish community, their actual condition in Iran deteriorated, with reported cases of harassment taking place in the outlying provinces. New cases of harassment and violations of human rights were conducted principally against notable representatives of the Iranian Jewish community. The accusations against them were political rather than religious or based on race. The charges against notable Jews were often of being spies of the Israeli government as well as Zionist activists in Iran. At the beginning of May 1979, Habib Elghanian, a plastics manufacturer, was sentenced to death on charges of spying for Israel as well as having invested there.107 Although it appeared that Elghanian had previously been to Israel in 1978 and had attended several Zionist meetings in order to give an account of the situation of the Iranian Jewish community in Iran, his execution affected the community profoundly.108 Further incidents against the Iranian Jewish community’s representatives increased as a consequence of intertwined sentiments of anti-Zionism and ‘European’ anti-Semitism based on concepts of race. The rise of antiSemitic sentiments came as a consequence of the spread of the publication of the Tsarist forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This book, which takes the form of an instruction manual to a new member of the ‘elders’, describes how the Jews will run the world through control of the media and finance and will replace the

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

57

traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation.109 As such, the spread of this pamphlet within Iran helped to incite hatred in the Muslim community for Jews and Zionists.110 Later, on 8 March 1984, the press and information department of the Islamic Republic of Iran dedicated a section to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in which it strongly linked Zionism with the Jews. Intellectual speculations about the fraudulent document were intertwined with Islamic propaganda against both the State of Israel and the West. The frequent confusion between Zionism and Judaism among Iranian political leaders fomented new acts of violence against notable Jews. Sixty Iranian Jews were jailed and Albert Danielpour, a representative of the Jewish community, along with Mrs Nosrath Goel, a mother of four children, were executed in Tehran. Both were found guilty of being ‘Zionists’ and ‘American spies’.111 The same happened to Avraham Boruchim, a member of a prominent Iranian Jewish family, who was executed at the beginning of June 1980 by an Iranian firing squad in Evin prison on a charge of spying for Israel.112 Following his execution, other members of the Boruchim family were executed on the same charges of being Zionists. In the same year, the Iranian Majlis expelled its only Jewish member, Eshaq Farahmandopur, after a two-hour debate in the form of a trial: 70 members of the parliament voted against Farahmandopur for ‘collaborating with the Regime of the late Shah and with Zionism’, teaching until 1969 at the ORT International school and tutoring the Shah’s nephew.113 Although these charges of Zionism principally targeted the richest and most influential representatives of the Jewish community, it is still difficult to discern whether these accusations were merely of a political nature or were framed by ‘European’ anti-Semitic feelings against Iranian Jews. In spite of these charges against representatives of the Iranian community, which considerably threatened its social organisation and confidence, the Jews of Iran did maintain a form of organisation, as reported in a document dated 1981.114 The general attitude of the Iranian Jewish community towards the new Islamic regime was to accommodate itself and, in particular, accommodate themselves individually to the new government and leadership. The attitude of

58

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

the majority of Jews appeared to be one of optimism combined with anxiety: the whole community did not feel trapped in Iran and they did not demand to be rescued by worldwide Jewish organisations. The Jewish community seemed to have fully adjusted itself to the new Iranian Islamic regime by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Today, the community counts 25,000 members and it is still the largest Middle Eastern Jewish community living outside Israel. Little is known about the social status of the Iranian community today. However, the trend amongst Iranian Jewry seems to reflect the situation adopted at the end of the 1970s. If, on one hand, some of the representatives of the Jewish community confirm that they have been excluded from ‘sensitive’ senior positions in the military and the judiciary, on the other hand they have acknowledged that the overall situation in Iran has been relatively tolerant and far better than in European countries. The Iranian Jewish community has been confronted with contradictions marked by its condition of being a religious minority in Iran. Nevertheless, its long residence in the country as well as its isolation from worldwide Jewry have forged Iranian Jewry’s cultural identity around the pillars of Iranian culture. As such, owing to the full recognition of Iranian culture, Iranian Jews have understood and accepted the socio-political dynamics that were created by the religious parameters of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The sociopolitical limits imposed by their status as a religious minority were understood and accepted by them as a defining aspect of their Iranian cultural identity rather than a penalising factor of their citizenship: Many customs and traditions of the Jews of the world, particularly the Jews of the East, such as Iranian Jewry, are influenced by the tradition, culture and way of life of the nations in which they live. This is particularly true of Iranian Jews. Many of our customs are influenced by the Iranian national traditions; the Islamic and the Iranian culture are deeply rooted in the morals of the mentality of Iranian Jews. They have a common culture with their Muslim brothers that they had shared for many centuries.115

HISTORY, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS

And again: Therefore Iranian Jews are made of the same fibre as Muslim and other religious minorities in Iran . . . At the present the Jews of Iran are a group of hard-working and needy people. Some are engaged as employees in the private sector and they live on their own salaries; a high proportion relatively to the size of the community is engaged in the medical professions and they serve the people whilst some others are in small trades and retail business.116

59

CHAPTER 3 THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

The cultural difficulties in the formation of Iranian political Zionism in the mid 1940s The emergence of political Zionist organisations in Iran seems to have been the direct consequence of the ending of the long isolation of Iranian Jewry from the rest of worldwide Jewry. Through cultural encounters with worldwide Jewry, many Iranian Jews understood that the exile from their homeland was coming to an end owing to the ideology of political Zionism. In the 1940s, two historical events marked the history of the Jews in Iran. They came to understand the political construction of Zionism through the return to the Holy Land and the right for the Jews to make aliyah in order to fulfil their Jewish identity. Firstly, by the end of World War II diplomatic relations between the Shah and Western countries had strengthened and he decided to help the transit of Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution to Palestine. Towards the end of 1941 Jewish refugees from Poland began to stream in across the Soviet–Iranian borders. The transit of Polish Jews to Iran on the one hand consolidated relations between Iran and the Jewish communities in Palestine and on the other hand inaugurated Zionist activities amongst the Jews of Iran.1 Jewish organisations opened their agencies in Iran in order to monitor the emigration of Jews to Eretz

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

61

Israel (the Land of Israel): the living testimony of these Jewish refugees, persecuted by the Nazi regime, had a great impact on the Jewish community of Tehran. Iranian Jews became involved in the rescue operation of European Jewry as well as beginning to learn more about Jewish settlement in Palestine. An editorial board of five Iranian Jews produced a journal in Farsi entitled Latest News from Palestine, which informed Iranian Jewry about Eretz Israel.2 Prior to the arrival of Polish Jewish refugees and the subsequent appearance of Zionist activities in Iran, Iranian Jews’ relationship with Israel was understood through the biblical tradition that denied the Jews the return to their homeland without the coming of the Messiah.3 Thus Iranian Jews’ relationship with Israel developed into a mythical nostalgia for their Holy Land rather than a political one: in distinction to European Jewry, who had been victims of antiSemitic persecutions, Iranian Jews never experienced mass persecution in Iran that would have urged them to find a political solution to their socio-political status; Iran remained their tangible home whilst Israel was their mythical homeland. To quote Yitzik Pourostamian during his interview: ‘Israel is our motherland but Iran has always been our fatherland.’4 Iranian Jews perceived their permanent existence in Iran not as a condition that conflicted with their Jewish identity but as a defining aspect of it. It was only after the establishment of international Jewish organisations in Iran that Iranian Jews came to learn about political Zionist ideology and issues related to the return to Palestine. In the first half of the 1940s, emissaries from the kibbutz organisations in the Yishuv began their hasbarah amongst the Jews of Iran. The interest of the kibbutz’s emissaries was part of a broader project of rescuing Middle-Eastern Jewish communities carried out at that time by the Jews of the Yishuv. Representatives of the kibbutz movement started to organise clandestine routes through Syria in order to set up branches of the Nehzat-e Halutz (Pioneer movement) in countries such as Syria and Iraq. Zionist activities were therefore already established in Iraq by 1946.5 The initial interest in the Iranian Jews came at the same time as the White Paper of 1939, which restricted the number of visas to Israel for European Jewry.

62

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

The White Paper restrictions, which temporarily stopped the mass emigration of European Jewry to Palestine, simultaneously directed Jewish interest towards the Iranian Jewish community. While the primary interest of the Yishuv was to move Jewish settlers into Palestine, the White Paper policy prevented European Jewry from doing so. Hence, representatives from the Yishuv decided to increase their activities amongst Iranian Jews for several reasons. Despite the immigration restriction imposed by the British government on European Jewry, its position on Iranian Jewish emigration to Palestine was not as severe. The majority of the envoys from the Yishuv were therefore free to travel in the region, and the majority of the Jews who arrived in Iran during this time were actually serving in the British Army in Baghdad.6 Evidence suggests that the British in the Middle East favoured cultural encounters between the Jews of Palestine and Iran.7 For this reason, representatives from the kibbutz movement arrived in Iran in 1942 wearing British uniforms, and crossed the Iranian border without any difficulty.8 Once in Iran, since they were considered to be part of the British Army, they began to circulate documentation freely about the Zionist activities in Palestine at this time.9 According to Meir Ezri’s biography, one of these envoys, called Israel Ilneah, came to Iran with a short film entitled Eretz Israel Today, which had been produced in order to offer Iranian Jews an overview of the social and economical situation in Israel.10 The documentary’s purpose was to highlight socialist ideology in the kibbutzim and amongst agricultural workers, promoting irrigation projects and settlement programmes in Israel in order to encourage them to emigrate and contribute to the buildingup of Israel. This type of information on the condition of Jews in Palestine began to influence sectors of Iranian Jewry, who developed the first cultural Zionist organisations in the country. However, these first Zionist organisations failed to become political, as they remained culturally orientated.11 In the early 1940s, before the establishment of Israel, two groups of Jewish intellectuals comprising young students and liberal businessmen founded two cultural associations called Kanun-e-Jawadanan (Club of the Youth of Iran) and Agudat

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

63

Bnei Zion (Society of the Sons of Zion), headed by Moshe Kermanian.12 These organisations had a cultural approach to Zionism and the revival of the Jewish tradition neither managed to gain mass response from Iranian Jews nor were they able to organise a political framework that would have enabled Iranian Jews to make aliyah. The first proper Zionist organisation with a clear political purpose came into existence at the beginning of 1944 under the name Ze’irei he-Halutz (Union of Young Pioneers). At the beginning of 1945 this organisation was incorporated with the Tnu’at ha-No’ar ha-Ivri (Movement of the Hebrew Youth).13 On the 1945 Simchat Torah, the first branch of the Nehzat-e Halutz, the Halutz movement in Iran, was formed and the group organised its first convention in southern Tehran in one of the schools of the Alliance Israelite.14 Between 1946 and 1947 the Nehzat-e Halutz was officially formed and opened branches in the main Iranian cities.15 In 1947 Tehran could count four branches, which included 41 groups. In 1949 the movement reached five branches with 1,320 members in Tehran, three branches with 500 members in Isfahan, 600 members in Hamadan and 600 members in Shiraz.16 Each group ran its own cultural activities; they began to publish newspapers in Hebrew and they organised training on Zionist ideals and courses in Hebrew. According to an exchange of information between representatives of the Jewish Agency and Natan Shadi, a member of the kibbutz movement in Israel, the Nehzat-e Halutz organised the first Zionist Congress for all the Iranian representatives in the Vanguard House, the headquarters of the movement in the Iranian capital.17 The goal of the congress was to implement the number of Jewish envoys from Palestine in Iran with the purpose of keeping the organisation linked to Jewish organisations in Palestine. The need for more envoys was crucial to the survival of organised Zionist activities within Iran: to guarantee a future for the movement, it was vital to have more envoys from Israel to both guide the already existing members training and assist Iranian Jews’ emigration to Israel.18 In a document dating back to 9 March 1948, Meir Ezri, the Secretary of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran at that time, implored the United Kibbutz Organisation of the Yishuv to send more representatives to Iran because the organisation

64

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

was strongly disadvantaged by a shortage of people.17 Despite the continuous requests for support from Iranian Jewish leaders to the representatives of the kibbutz movement in Israel, the lack of envoys from the Yishuv, as well as the isolation of each Jewish community, retarded the movement’s growth in the early 1950s. To overcome these structural obstacles, from 1947 onwards young representatives of the Zionist movement decided to travel around Iran in order to raise Jewish and Zionist consciousness amongst Iranian Jewry.19 In both its structure and its ideology the Nehzat-e Halutz very much reflected the socialist stance of the kibbutz movement, and its beliefs became the cultural and political pillars of the Halutz movement in Iran.20 At this time, the main purpose of the kibbutz movement was to train Iranian Jewish Youth in the ideology of Zionism. Thus it promoted the idea of Jewish settlements in Palestine based on cooperative principles as well as the adoption of a collectivism-pioneering model.21 The love for Zion, education in Hebrew and Jewish culture were all emphasised by envoys as essential requirements for the new settlers.22 All this challenged the Iranian Jewish social structure. The Iranian Jewish community was based on traditional values and family ties, thus this ‘togetherness’ amongst members of the Jewish community did not facilitate adhesion of young Jews to the Nehzat-e Halutz.23 Traditional family and community-based relations clashed with the Nehzat-e Halutz’s goal to persuade young Iranian Jews to resettle in Israel. The Nehzat-e Halutz’s programme aimed to raise Jewish and Zionist consciousness amongst young Iranian Jews and thus encouraged them to spend time in Palestine apart from their families and eventually to make aliyah. Moreover, the Nehzat-e Halutz stressed the importance of pioneering, communal organisation and the togetherness of men and women. The traditional structure of Iranian Jewry, as well as their complete lack of information about their Judaic heritage and roots in Israel, was an evident impediment to the immediate success of Zionism amongst Iranian youth. In order to gain consensus amongst the Jews, the representatives of the Nehzat-e Halutz had to educate Iranian Jews about Jewish heritage and the important role of Israel in Jewish

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

65

history. To neutralise the Iranian cultural barriers was therefore a priority for the representatives of Zionist organisations in Iran. Yehuda Dominitz, a representative of the Jewish Agency in Iran in the mid 1950s, reported that Israeli envoys failed to make a positive impact on Iranian Jewry because they were unable to consider the importance of their traditional values and the centrality of family in their social structure.24 With regard to this, Baruch Duvdevani, the representative of the Jewish Agency in Tehran at the beginning of the 1950s, also reported that Iranian Jewish emigration to Israel was not successful because the idea of separating parents from their children could not be contemplated.25 Up to the first half of the 1940s the majority of Iranian Jews were still very traditional, especially in regard to the condition of women, to whom many restrictions were still applied. Shimon Hanasab, a member of the movement in Iran, remembered that during one of the movement’s meetings in the local synagogue, the rabbi interrupted the meeting because of the ‘promiscuity’ of the event, since men and women were sharing the same space in the synagogue. The Nehzat-e Halutz’s representatives took a particular interest in the condition within the Iranian Jewish community because they believed that emancipation of the women was a fundamental issue to be solved. Later in the 1940s, the movement organised summer camps outside Tehran to train young women to learn a job such as sewing and using sewing machines.26 Although great achievements had been made by 1950 in Isfahan as the majority of Nehzat-e Halutz’s representatives there were women, emancipation remained a difficult issue to solve amongst small Jewish communities, which were very much anchored to conservative values.27 In addition to cultural clashes between the Iranian Jewish community and the Nehzat-e Halutz, the fragmented structure of the Jews of Iran also delayed the onset of Zionist activism. In the mid 1940s, Iranian Jewish communities were organised into small groups of people scattered around the country. Such provincialism had previously deterred existing Jewish organisations in Iran from rallying dispersed Jews through an educational programme and prevented the formation of Zionist awareness amongst the Jews. This

66

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

lack of unity did not help the representatives of the Nehzat-e Halutz to reach all the Jewish communities dispersed in Iran and only those who lived in urban centres such as Tehran became involved in Zionist activities. Nevertheless, Zionist organisations seemed to have begun to achieve more popularity amongst Iranian Jewry, although a new challenge undermined the survival of Zionism in Iran considerably. In the mid-1940s the establishment of a youth section of the Iranian Communist Party in Tehran attracted many young Jewish intellectuals.28 The appearance of the Communist Party and its visible expansion were a consequence of Moscow’s strategy of reinforcing its presence in Iran.29 As well as support from Moscow, the success of the Communist Party, now called the Tudeh Party, amongst Iranian Jews was aided by the Communist credo of battling against class oppression, Western imperialism and nationalist sentiments.30 Many young Iranian Jews faced the dilemma of whether to support Jewish nationalism or to join the Iranian Communist Party.31 Although a large number of young Jews were torn between Jewish nationalism and Communism, a majority of the Jews leading the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran eventually joined the Tudeh Party. Hence the leadership of the nascent Zionist movement in Iran was once more left without any support. The socio-cultural model offered by Zionist pioneers was still at odds with the cultural habits of Iranian Jewry.32 Iranian Jews’ lack of confidence towards political Zionism not only estranged Iranian Jews from Zionism culturally but also failed to attract financial support from private donors. The suspicions of Iranian Jews prevented them from giving financial support to their activities. For instance, Abraham Cahanka, head of the Alliance Israelite in Tehran, due to his personal aversion to political Zionism, decided not only to obstruct any cultural Zionist activity in Iran but also hindered the exchange of funds between the kibbutz movement in Israel and the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran.33 Despite the interest of the kibbutz movement in maintaining the operation of Zionist organisations in Iran, it could not guarantee a stable income to youth organisations in the country for its branches

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

67

in Tehran. The lack of regular funding given by both the local Jewish communities and Jewish organisations in Israel preoccupied the representatives of the Halutz movement. Notwithstanding the lack of financial support and solidarity, a few wealthy Iranian Jews become involved in the Zionist cause in Iran and contributed to its survival. The principal supporter of the Zionist cause in Iran was Moshe Taub, a wealthy Jew of Iraqi origin, who moved to Iran and made his fortune as a pharmacist.34 Moshe Taub’s interest in Iranian Zionist activities was an opportunity to express gratitude to the Iranian Jewish community that had welcomed him and offered him the chance to prosper. His contribution to the rise of Zionist activities in the country was not only financial but also practical. Along with his sponsorship of the Youth Movement’s activities, his tasks within the organisation were aimed at improving both its educational programme and coordinating its activities.35 He took responsibility for Zionist organisations, and in the 1948 became a member of the Zionist Organisation, and later representative of the Histadrut in Iran. The long history of the Iranian Jewish community’s isolation from the rest of the diaspora Jewish community, together with the peculiar socio-cultural structure of the Iranian Jewish community, did not facilitate the formation of Zionist Jewish organisations in Iran. Zionist beliefs and the Zionist model for living, which was based on the importance of community organisations, political awareness and education in Jewish identity, did not have a positive impact upon Iranian Jewry. The Zionist programme of the national revival of the Jewish people in their homeland was the product of the sociopolitical and economic experience of European Jewry and thus alien to Iranian Jewry, which was still profoundly anchored to the values of traditional Iranian culture.

The adverse effect of Iranian politics on the Nehzat-e Halutz Up to the first half of the 1940s, the development of the Zionist organisation in general, and of the Nehzat-e Halutz in particular in Iran, was strengthened by the Iranian government’s positive attitude

68

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

towards them. After the abdication of Reza Shah in favour of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1941 a period of political activity and greater freedom encouraged the emergence of new political parties, most of which had a nationalist agenda.36 In this respect, the Zionist movement in Iran benefited from the enhanced political activism and social mobility that Iran experienced under the Pahlavi reign.37 In spite of Reza Pahlavi’s personal sympathies towards political Zionism, there were several developments that caused the Peacock regime to reconsider its official position towards the Yishuv. Success in creating an independent Jewish state in 1948 had modified the geopolitical balance of the Middle East. The problematic status of the Palestinian Arabs became a political issue that could not be ignored, and it changed geopolitical alliances: the Israeli – Palestinian conflict clearly divided the world between those supporting Israel and those supporting the Palestinians. Although the Arab and Muslim world did stand by the Arabs, the position of Iran towards the Israeli – Palestinian conflict had always been controversial, since Iran vacillated because of a deep fear of the possibility of political isolation from both Arab countries and the Western world. The controversial position of Iran towards Israel and its nationalist advocacy amongst Iranian Jews explained the Shah’s unpredictable stance towards them. If, on one hand, he recognised de facto the existence of Israel in 1951, on the other hand he supported the Palestinian cause and banned Zionist activity within Iran. Thus, the positive climate for political Zionism in Iran began to worsen early in 1946 when Arab–Jewish revolts in Palestine began in earnest. Political Zionism was no longer understood by the Iranian political leadership as an Iranian nationalist movement but as a potential menace to the geopolitical stability of Iran in the Middle East.38 The Iranian government then moved against political Zionist activities in the country in two different ways. Firstly, in 1948, just after the birth of Israel, the government tried to make Jews declare their anti-Zionist feeling and publicly deny the existence of any Zionist activity in the country.39 However, the community’s exponents declined to take any further position in regard to the matter, as they preferred to maintain a low profile. Secondly, the government banned Zionist

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

69

activities from Iran, yet the Jewish Agency and other international Jewish organisations were able to operate behind the scenes and maintained their offices in the country.40 In fact, unlike the Nehzat-e Halutz, the Jewish Agency could still work in the country as it assisted Kurdish Jews in the north.41 Even so, the real political interests in keeping informal relations with Israel were at the core of deliberations. The Jewish Agency was an official representative and organism of the Israeli state, and organised and finalised the emigration of diaspora Jews to Israel. To have a branch of the Jewish Agency in Iran implied informal support of Israel by the Iranian government. To counterbalance this decision, the Shah decided to penalise non-government Zionist activities such as the Nehzat-e Halutz. The latter became illegal, yet still carried out its activities in Iran clandestinely.42 Reports of the activity of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran in 1948 confirmed the Iranian government’s aversion towards its Zionist hasbarah, which led to a clear reduction of its activities. In 1948, the Iranian Nehzat-e Halutz drastically reduced the number of its representatives, which was no more than 600 people around the whole country. A letter from Ben Yitzhak, a former delegate from the Halutz movement in Tehran, confirmed that, following anti-Israeli demonstrations in Tehran supported by Ayatollah Kashani, the Nehzat-e Halutz feared for its survival in Iran. Moreover, its representatives decided to work locally: they ceased communicating with each other in order to maintain a low profile within the country.43 The necessity to maintain the Nehzat-e Halutz’s activities underground also affected its income. Prior to 1946 the Keren Keyemet L’Yisrael (KKL) office was in charge of receiving the money from Jewish donors and redistributing it amongst each Zionist organisation. Later in the same year, each branch had to count on its own resources and only the larger branches continued to exist.44 Nevertheless, the KKL office in Tehran decided to collect the money via private donors.45 This way of collecting money from the wealthy donors of the Iranian Jewish community did not contribute to the good management of the organisation. Money was not distributed equally amongst Zionist branches because of the lack of communication between the Youth Movement’s headquarters and the small centres.

70

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Despite this difficult period, Zionist organisations did continue their activity of education amongst Iranian Jewry and the process of the emigration of young Iranian Jews to Israel did not cease.46 In 1949 the leadership of the Nehzat-e Halutz organised a general meeting to discuss the possibilities of restructuring and reconnecting all the sections of the organisation in order to give the movement the chance of survival in the country.47 In order to improve the contract between organisations, the meeting agreed to further develop its programme of seminars for Jews living on the periphery as well as to increase emigration to Israel.48 Along with the Halutz movement, the Histadrut, chaired by Moshe Taub, shared the same uncertain future in Iran, even though its chairman was close to the Shah.49 However, although he preferred to suspend any formal Zionist organisation in the years during this period of the struggle for survival, privately he continued to work quietly to keep the Nehzat-e Halutz active.50 The sense of insecurity generated by the declaration of illegality of the youth movement’s activities provoked fear amongst its leaders. With communication between its representatives cut off, misunderstandings and confusion arose. For instance, in 1949, representatives of the kibbutz movement in Israel, Joseph Cohen and Natan Shadi, were secretly invited by representatives of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Isfahan to organise training, together with the local branch of the movement.51 The meeting took place in one of the rooms of the Alliance Israelite and, in order to keep a low profile, they decided to keep the group small. However, the Iranian police interrupted the meeting and arrested the two Israeli envoys as they had entered in Iran illegally. The Shah refused to allow any Israeli representatives to come into Iran.52 While the interrogation was taking place, Zion Ezri, one of the leaders of the Youth Movement, informed the police about the presence of Israeli envoys, to bring about their imprisonment and to obtain recognition as the leader of the organisation, as well as more influence and power amongst its representatives.53 Such disagreements and divisions became a characteristic of Iranian Zionist organisations. Moreover, once in Israel, Iranian Zionist representatives decided to maintain their branches separately from each other: four different organisations of

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

71

Iranian Zionists were eventually founded in Tel Aviv in the 1960s and their offices worked independently.54 The subsequent improvement of diplomatic relations between Israel and Iran that culminated in the de facto recognition of Israel by Iran in 1950, improved Iranian Jewry’s knowledge about Israel and political Zionism.55 Through the publication of a periodical called Sinai, the Nehzat-e Halutz revamped political Zionist ideology within Iranian Jewish communities. After the 1950s, 98 per cent of the Jews of Iran had become familiar with Zionism and the majority of them could now at least read Hebrew.56 Although the Nehzat-e Halutz attempted to organise Iranian Jewry under the umbrella of Zionist ideology, it failed to turn its beliefs into a broad political movement for several reasons. Firstly, due to its unstable position in Iran, the Halutz movement struggled to develop into a mass organisation. In 1950 it had only 3,000 members all around the country.57 Secondly, it suffered from lack of cohesion because of its illegality, which forced its representatives to work independently.58 The scattered nature of Zionist groups made the work of its envoys operating in Iran much more difficult. Individual representatives of the movement worked within the Iranian community according to their personal interests and political beliefs. Thus much of the history of political Zionism in Iran can be understood in this fashion. Members of the movement were strongly influenced by different visions of Zionism. The arrival of envoys from Israel to Iran introduced new approaches to Zionism that further divided its representatives. The appearance in Iran of envoys of the religious Zionist movement from Israel in the early 1950s profoundly affected the existence of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran and generated further rivalries.

The appearance of religious Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran The principal difference between religious and secular Zionist movements was focused on a vision of the Jewish homeland and the understanding of Jewish settlement in Israel. If the Nehzat-e Halutz was allied with the credo of the kibbutz movement, which

72

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

emphasised combining secular and socialist values, the religious Nehzat-e Halutz was defined by three fundamental principles: religion, Jewish nationalism and socialism.59 The birth of the religious Nehzat-e Halutz came as a consequence of the pressure of religious leaders who were concerned about the lack of religious consciousness among the Jews of Iran. Rabbi Ibrahim Meir Levi, who was then the head of the Otzar Ha-Torah schools in Iran, and Yehuda Weinstein, who was the head of the Jerusalem Aliyah office, were convinced that Iranian Jewry needed specifically religious envoys to strengthen their knowledge of Judaism and their Jewish identity.60 The Jewish Agency subsequently decided to send envoys to Iran in order to solve the issue. Following a meeting between Chief Rabbi Ibrahim Meir Levi and Rabbi Isaac Herzog who was the Chief Rabbi of Israel in late 1949, it was decided to convince Yonah Cohen to come to Iran as the religious representative of the Jewish Agency.61 Cohen, who was from Jerusalem, was chosen to become the first religious envoy sent by the Jewish Agency to Iran in 1950 and eventually became the leader of the religious youth movement.62 Once in Iran, Cohen acknowledged the peculiarity of the Jewish communities of Iran and their two principal difficulties: the fragmented status of each community and the lack of knowledge of Judaism. In order to create a new Zionist movement, he was ready to tackle these problems and to challenge the existing nonreligious branch of the Halutz movement. The existing Halutz movement had already influenced Iranian Jewry’s understanding of Zionism and imbued young Iranian Jews with secular visions of the life in Israel. Young representatives of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran were trained in accordance with the pioneering project of the kibbutz movement in Israel and with the rejection of any religious explanation and the involvement of the religious Jews in the Israeli cause.63 Thus, the majority of young Jews found it odd to consider a return to their homeland from a religious perspective. Representatives of the Nehzat-e Halutz prioritised political ideology over Jewish cultural heritage in their project to resettle Iranian Jews in the Holy Land. The relevance given to socialist

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

73

Zionist ideology was, according to Rabbi I.M. Levi, a consequence of the Nehzat-e Halutz’s representatives’ lack of familiarity with traditional Judaism; they did not follow any traditional practice – for example they smoked during the Sabbath.64 Any interest in constructing a Jewish identity by stressing traditional customs such as eating kosher food was relegated to the margins. Hebrew was, for the Nehzat-e Halutz, the official language of Israel and the fundamental connection between Iranian Jews and Israeli citizens. The aim of religious representatives was to offer a different perspective of Zionism that synthesised an identity based on religion and nationalism, between the essence of being an Israeli citizen and halakhah.65 They believed that by respecting halakhah, Jews would have embraced a true Jewish identity, which legitimised their being in the Holy Land. From the time the two movements started their hasbarah activities amongst Iranian Jews, they created clashes not only over their different ideologies but also over a search for members. The adherents to these movements also differed in social status. If, on one hand, the majority of the members of the religious Nehzat-e Halutz came from a poor background, on the other, non-religious Zionists came from a wealthier background, in particular from those families that had moved to large Iranian cities during the economic reforms under the Shah Pahlavi.66 The differences between these two groups were exacerbated by the places of origin of the movements. While the Nehzat-e Halutz was founded in Tehran in 1946 by a small number who were already part of the urbanised group of Jews that had initiated their activities among the working-class and young middleclass intellectuals, the religious Nehzat-e Halutz developed in rural locations. Thus, it trained poor people living on the periphery to develop agrarian skills.67 For example, in 1951 the religious Nehzate Halutz opened a training farm in which 50 boys between the age of 16 and 20 were trained.68 As a matter of fact, in 1952 the religious Nehzat-e Halutz became the dominant organisation in these areas.69 The different socio-economic orientations of these two organisations further divided Iranian Jewry through their specialisations. Different socio-economic backgrounds, as well as ideological divergences

74

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

between members of the two movements, caused the already fragmented structure of Iranian Jewry to deteriorate. Ideological clashes became a battle over potential adherents. Hence, religious envoys started to define the general movement as ‘secular’ by stressing that its members could not be considered ‘proper’ Jews since they did not respect halakhic tradition.70 Religious representatives claimed that representatives of the secular Nehzat-e Halutz missed the real significance of living in the Holy Land by not following Jewish law such as eating kosher food, keeping Shabbat and celebrating Jewish festivities.71 This approach influenced many members of the secular Zionist movement, and several joined the religious movement in the early 1950s. Although ideological dispute was at the core of clashes between the two Zionist organisations and their leaders, the consequences of it affected not only the number of their adherents but also their financial support. The economic aspect was indeed fundamental for the survival of both organisations in Iran since they struggled to receive funding from Israel: the Jewish Agency in Tehran was in charge of dividing the money received from the central office in Israel between all the different Jewish organisations in Iran.72 If Yonah Cohen and the religious movement employed Otzar Ha-Torah facilities while he was collecting money from private donors and members, the movement wished to receive state aid. Later in 1950, the religious movement asked to share the funds that the Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency had allocated to the Nehzat-e Halutz. In spite of the negative answer by the Israeli department, which had already given the money to the Nehzat-e Halutz, religious representatives could rely on the full support of Rabbi I.M. Levi and all the donations that he had collected in the synagogue.73 The growing tension between the two parties worsened rapidly; their respective representatives carried out defamatory campaigns against each other within the Jewish community. The tense relation over ideology as well as financial support from Israel did not enhance the reputation of either movement. The secular Nehzat-e Halutz accused the religious envoys of being anti-Semitic British spies who worked not for the good of the community but for the benefit of the

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

75

British government.74 The religious movement responded to these accusations by spreading equally inaccurate rumours about the affiliation of the Nehzat-e Halutz to the Communist Party.75 This accusation had its roots in the history of the secular Nehzat-e Halutz, when some of its leaders had left the movement to join the Tudeh Party in Iran. In fact, by the middle of the 1950s, the Iranian Communist Party tried hard to infiltrate both the religious and the secular Nehzat-e Halutz to gain more adherents to their cause.76 The attempts made by the communist representatives were addressed at a meeting by representatives of the Jewish Agency with Joseph Cohen, a delegate of the Nehzat-e Halutz. The influence of left-wing leaders within both youth movements was becoming a real threat for the two Zionist organisations since their views were gaining support amongst their members.77 The increasing challenge of the communists pushed their leaders to take steps against them. The leaders of both movements put forward two suggestions: firstly, they considered the possibility of expelling the communists. The idea was dropped since such a drastic move against them would have caused a split within the two Zionist organisations.78 Secondly, they believed that an acceleration of the emigration to Israel of Jewish communists would reduce the ideology’s influence in the community. Since these two options seemed to be difficult in reality and the importance of maintaining active political Zionism in Iran was a shared goal for both organisations, the Nehzat-e Halutz and the religious Nehzat-e Halutz decided to collaborate for the sake of Zionism in Iran. For the first time Zionism emerged as the unifying ideology against communist influences: in order to weaken the communist fringe members of the Nehzat-e Halutz sought a partner in the religious Halutz movement.79 The two organisations made several diplomatic attempts to go beyond ideological difference to find political agreement: between 1951 and 1952, the two movements began cooperation on how training and emigration of young Jews to Israel could be possible. Later in 1951, the religious Nehzat-e Halutz offered an agreement between the two movements that was finalised at a meeting three months from the date of the first meeting.80 The religious Nehzat-e

76

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Halutz proposed reconciliation with the secular movement as they both wished to continue the emigration of Iranian Jews. The agreement stated that they would agree to compromise but that there should be a unified leadership. In the process of establishing a new joint Zionist Youth Movement, a more radical stream of religious youth movements emerged, led by Zvi Veingrod, an Israeli, who decided to split from the rest of the movement.81 Veingrod was an influential presence within the religious movement since he had fomented disagreement regarding any sort of reconciliation with the secular counterpart. The secular youth movement reacted negatively and hesitated to compromise with the religious leaders. Although further clashes between the two leaderships seemed to have stopped the dialogue between representatives of the two movements, after Veingrod’s departure the Nehzat-e Halutz and the religious movement cooperated with each other in order to help Jews to migrate to Israel.82 In late 1951, following Mohammed Mossadeq’s election as Prime Minister of Iran, new economic reforms were introduced.83 The government decided to initiate a nationalist hasbarah that emphasised the necessity for Iran to achieve independence from the economic control of the European powers with respect to Iranian natural resources.84 The government decided to nationalise its oil reserves in order to free Iran from Western countries’ control of Iranian oil and to reaffirm Iranian patriotism.85 Whenever Iranian leaders legitimated their power in the country through a nationalist policy, as happened in the early 1940s under Reza Shah, other nationalist movements were strictly forbidden. Under Mossadeq, Iranian nationalism intensified to oppose any foreign penetration in the country, which was seen as the main cause of economic and social problems. In this struggle against Western control of Iranian resources, the National Front Party and the Tudeh Party began to oppose Israel and Zionism openly.86 Hence, while the Nehzat-e Halutz was trying to find a compromise between its two branches, it simultaneously suffered from severe obstruction by the government. Once again envoys and representatives from the Nehzat-e Halutz were harassed.87 A new period of clandestine activities organised by

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

77

the Hechalutz movement was initiated. Shimon Hanasab reported that during those years, they used to organise secret meetings in the Alliance Israelite’s schools. One night, they organised a play about Israel and the Iranian police arrived to check whether they were Zionists and what was the nature of the play. Shimon Hanasab and other members were quickly able to inform the actors and made them improvise a totally different play without any reference to Israel or Zionism.88 Although the activity of the Halutz movement in Iran suffered from several setbacks because of this situation, the internal friction between its religious and secular representatives prevented the expansion of the movement. Religious and secular Zionists not only clashed over ideology but they also battled to recruit more adherents and financial support from Israel. The ideological distances between the two groups strengthened the already existing fragmentation of the movement due to the lack of structural organisation of its representatives.89 Yet ideological divergences seemed to have been relegated when Communist elements tried to divide the two Zionist organisations even further. Nevertheless, although the fragmented structure of the Iranian Jewish community remained a peculiar characteristic, the political instability of Iran and the vacillating relationship between Iran and Israel continued to be the central factor in compromising the existence of the movement. The most difficult period for the movement only arrived under Khomeini’s revolution and after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, when Iranian nationalism was, for the first time, shaped into a Shi’a religious identity. This excluded Jews and Zionism from any recognition within the new state’s identity.

Zionism in the 1970s After the beginning of the Islamic revolution in 1978, Zionist activities as well as any formal tie with Israel were officially forbidden in Iran. Thus, all the Israeli emissaries in Iran and representatives of the Jewish Agency in Tehran were forced to leave the county in the middle of January 1979.90 The American Jewish Joint Distribution

78

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Committee was the only Jewish organisation still allowed to remain in Iran since its activities in the country were not focused on Zionist training courses. Although the political situation did not encourage Jews to develop Zionist activities, the Jewish intelligentsia not only discarded any specifically nationalist ideology, but many of them openly supported the revolution. During the tumultuous period of the Islamic revolution, Jews’ interests in political Zionism clearly decreased and the majority of its representatives became involved in the political ferment in Iran. Knesset member Moshe Katzav, who returned from a special mission in Iran to 1978, portrayed the Jewish community as follows: ‘Most of the Jews are not Zionists, have never received any Zionist education, and to the extent that there exists “Jewish education” it is primarily religious.’91 Both youth movements terminated their ideological Zionist activities. The attempts to form a movement around Jewish beliefs vanished in the early 1970s; political Zionists’ previous attempts to form a strong movement in Iran that could have been able to face the challenging political situation in the late 1970s had clearly failed. The Jews remained distant from the movement for a variety of reasons. By the 1970s a majority of Iranian Jews was mainly middle class as a result of a period of tolerance under the Shah. Between 1957 and 1978, the Iranian Jewish middle class improved its economic status and embraced a secular lifestyle.92 Until the outbreak of the revolution, they increasingly distanced themselves from political Zionism because they were not interested in leaving Iran for Israel. The economic prosperity prevented them from transforming the Nehzat-e Halutz into a mass organisation that prepared Jews for an emigration. Although the Jews of Iran enjoyed a positive socioeconomic climate in Iran and were free to travel from the country, Israel was not particularly interested in encouraging a migration of Iranian Jews to Israel.93 According to the Jewish Agency, Iranian Jews were not in danger of their lives in Iran; hence their emigration was not a priority. Israel itself and the Jewish Agency downgraded the implementation of a robust Zionist programme amongst the Jews of Iran. Israel was lax for two decades and the Jewish Agency ‘had been sleeping’ for 25 years.94

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

79

These factors caused a break between political Zionist activities and Iranian Jews. An article from the Israeli newspaper of the leftwing Mapam, Al Ha-Mishmar,95 reported that the Jews of Iran remained distant from political Zionism and from the idea of going to Israel because they had heard that it was not as they had expected. Israel was not the Holy Land of their dreams and the Iranian Jews were not treated properly there by the rest of society.96 Hence the Nehzat-e Halutz and its activities effectively disappeared from the early 1970s as they lost their ideological raison d’eˆtre. The persistent absence of a strong Zionist organisation in Iran, as well as the fragmented characteristic of the community, resulted in severe problems on the eve of the Islamic revolution.97 According to an envoy for the Jewish Agency, the lack of a leadership was peculiar only to the Iranian community. In 1978, Jewish international organisations tried to find a spokesperson for the community who was ready to cooperate with the new regime. Representatives of Zionist organisations in Iran feared that the strict Islamic identity projected by the Iranian revolutionaries onto their country would affect the community’s status. Thus, Zionist representatives from Israel began to urgently consider a migration to Israel in order to prevent a future crisis for the community. International Jewish organisations tried to locate possible community leaders from amongst the intelligentsia. However, the lack of Zionist awareness amongst the Jews of Iran, as well as the lack of interest in the matter, generated considerable difficulties. The so-called community leader was at that time Aziz Daneshrad, who was on the far left and more a sympathiser with the revolution than an ally of the Jewish Agency.98 The group of Jewish intellectuals in Iran remained in general very much against the spread of political Zionism during the years both before and after the Islamic revolution. They warned Jews not to leave the country. The position of the Jewish intellectuals to Zionism can be summarised as follows: ‘Zionism is a political theory contrary to the very long history of Judaism . . .’99 And again:100 Zionism is an utterly western trend of thought due to severe anti-Semitism. This mainly originated in Europe and it has

80

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

been successful in misusing the religious love and fervour expressed by the Jews towards their sacred places in Mount Zion and the idea of re-establishment of their sacred temple . . . Zionism negates the principle of our nationality as Iranian subjects. Zionism distorts the picture of Jewish nationality and since it cannot solve any problem in reality is dragged after the ‘wandering Jew’ policy.101 At the very beginning of the Islamic revolution Jewish intellectuals began a strong campaign against the promotion of Zionist ideas in the Iranian Jewish community. They published papers called Nissan and Bnei-Adam in which they strongly expressed their opposition to political Zionism, on the grounds that it only fomented anti-Jewish sentiment amongst the rest of the Iranian population. Moreover, they tried to clarify the long brotherhood between Jews and Muslims and remarked on their peaceful co-existence in Iran. They proudly affirmed that Zionist ideology did not exist in Iran.102 Jewish intellectuals did not change their position regarding Israel even after the revolution as was stated in a pamphlet dated 1981 in which Khosrow Naghi, the newly elected representative of the Iranian Jews to the Majlis, strongly condemned the annexation of the Golan Heights by the ‘Zionist regime’. He argued that it was an act of aggression against the rights of the deprived people of the area.103 The strong position taken by Jewish intellectuals against Zionism between 1978 and 1981 was influenced by the political situation faced by Iran during the revolution. The anti-Zionist ethos was an integral part of the revolutionary propaganda and one of Khomeini’s tenets. Khomeini firmly suppressed any Zionist activity, although he also declared that Iranian Jews would not be affected by his antiZionist policy. Despite his statement assuring protection for the Iranian Jewish community, several representatives of the Jewish community were charged with affiliation to the Zionist movement and connections to the Israeli government and were executed. The fine line between being Zionist and Jewish was often misunderstood by the local Iranian authorities. Hence the Jewish leadership probably preferred to maintain a low profile without

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM IN IRAN

81

exposing themselves and the community. Although it is arguable that Iranian Jews did not want to release any public statement regarding criticism of Israel, their aversion to the Jewish homeland seemed to go far beyond being merely a measure of protection for the community. Several documents written by representatives of international Jewish organisations proved that this hostility against Zionist political ideology and Israel was genuinely shared by the majority of the community. The number of Iranian Jewish immigrants to Israel between 1978 and 1979 was extremely low. It is estimated that in 1979 the potential number of immigrants identified as being eligible to make aliyah was 5,391, yet only 462 carried out the move to Israel.104 The total number of immigrants from Iran to Israel between 1972 and 1979 was 9,550 suggesting that 1979 saw a less-thanaverage number of migrations to Israel.105 The antagonistic policy of Iran towards Israel after the establishment of the Islamic Republic put an end to any possibility of forming a Zionist movement in Iran: if, on one hand, political Zionism’s aims were not socio-culturally compatible with the characteristics of the Iranian Jewish community, on the other hand the possibility of emigration to Israel in times of danger was never considered to be the first priority, as it was for other Middle Eastern Jewish communities.106

CHAPTER 4 INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

Great Britain’s influence on Iranian Jewish emigration in the 1950s Orna Almog has described the role of Great Britain in the Middle East in the 1950s as ‘A combination of traditional economical interests and attitudes with contemporary political strategic requirements.’1 Britain has been one of the major actors in the region since the latter consisted of a fundamental economic and political resource, especially since the independence of the British colonies of India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon during the years 1948– 9.2 Hence, the growing interest of Britain in the affairs of the Middle East during the 1940s was to guarantee itself both a sufficient supply of energy such as oil and to maintain international power after the beginning of the collapse of the British Empire. In the struggle to maintain political prestige and economic security through the control of the Middle East, Palestine and Iran had always been the two spheres of British imperial interest. The former was located in the cradle of the Mediterranean area whilst the latter had been Britain’s main supplier of oil since the late 1920s.3 The strategic control exerted by the British government on Israel and Iran not only guaranteed Britain’s position in the Middle East but also affected diplomatic relations between the two states. The British government manipulated the activities of the Nehzat-e Halutz and other political Zionist organisations in Iran in accordance

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

83

with its political position in both countries: it had coordinated the migration of Iranian Jews to Israel since early 1917 and it influenced the Iranian government’s attitude to Zionism from 1946.4 With the Sykes – Picot Agreement signed in 1916 by France and Great Britain, Palestine inaugurated a long ‘period of direct protection’ by the British government, lasting until 1948 with the establishment of Israel.5 With this agreement the British government guaranteed a position in the domestic affairs of Palestine from the early 1920s: the Balfour Declaration of 1917 sealed British support for Zionism as well as recognising Jewish settlement in Palestine. From 1917 onward, Britain became the principal European power to support Jewish settlement in Palestine. The diplomatic support given by the British to the Yishuv was aimed at strengthening colonial aspirations in the region. For this reason, the strong relationship between political Zionism and the British Foreign Office in the first half of the 1940s was criticised by Hannah Arendt who considered political Zionism a mere instrument of British imperialist politics.6 The British and the Russians had always been the principal exploiters of Iranian energy sources. Several agreements seemed to have privileged the British position in forming the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1939, the largest British overseas economic asset.7 During World War II, as a consequence of the increasing diplomatic relations with Hitler’s Germany, British and Soviet forces invaded and occupied Iran, forcing Reza Shah to abdicate.8 His son, Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, replaced him on the throne on 16 September 1941. The abdication of Reza Shah in favour of his son inaugurated a period in the history of Iran in which the British influence was consolidated within the Iranian government. In the first half of the 1940s that influence profoundly not only affected the status of the Iranian Jewish community, but also encouraged it to develop political Zionism and to connect Iranian Jewry culturally with the community of the Yishuv.9 British involvement in both the affairs of the Iranian government and the Yishuv in Palestine implemented an exchange of Zionist emissaries between the Yishuv and the Iranian Jewish community that favoured the formation of Zionist organisations as well as educating Iranian Jews about Zionism.

84

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Under the aegis of the British Army, Zionist emissaries from the Yishuv began to travel to Iran. Employees of the Jewish Palestinian infrastructure company Soleh Boneh were employed by the British Army in either Iran or Iraq to work on projects such as the oil refinery at Abadan. These Jews, who numbered 1,700, started Zionist activities amongst the local Jewish community in Isfahan.10 Another envoy arriving in Iran as a British soldier was Israel Ilneah, who worked for the Jewish National Fund while serving in the British Army. Shimon Hanasab, a representative of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran, reported that Zionist activities in Iran operated using the British government as a conduit between the Jewish community of Iran and the Yishuv in Palestine.11 The extensive cultural influence of those emissaries in the formation of the Zionist activities has been described by both Shimon Hanasab and Meir Ezri as of fundamental importance in the process of training young Iranian Jews to become ideologically committed to make aliyah.12 This connection between Zionism and the British government influenced Shah Pahlavi’s benevolent policy towards the Jewish nationalist cause, which was manifested in his policy towards Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe. Between 1942 and 1943 the Shah offered shelter to 871 Jewish refugees who made their transit through Iran to Palestine. This was not only a cultural connection with regard to Zionism but also symbolised the end of isolation from worldwide Jewry. The Zionist Organisation began to be involved in the life and history of the Jews of Iran, and took a particular interest in the condition of the Jews of Meshed, a community living in the north of Iran that had been forced to convert to Islam in order to preserve their lives.13 The community was formed in the eighteenth century as a consequence of Nadir Shah’s resettlement of several Jewish families of Qazvin in Meshed.14 The community prospered and their economic condition was much better than that of other Iranian Jewish communities. Relations with the local Muslims were good despite several outbreaks of anti-Semitism. They were based on the doctrine of najis, which considered Jews to be impure.15 In 1839 riots against the Jews occurred during the commemoration of Ashura for Shi’ite

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

85

Muslims. These disturbances ended in bloodshed and the community decided to convert to Islam.16 After this forced conversion, the Meshed Jews gradually started to prosper as they traded with Shi’ite Muslims. However, they were able to maintain their Jewish traditions in private. The Jews of Meshed were particularly interested in the activities of Zionist activists in Iran in the early 1940s.17 As the political and economic influence of the British in Palestine began to weaken, Zionist activities in Iran diminished. Despite predictions to the contrary, Jewish settlement in Palestine increased: after World War II it began to seek recognition from foreign powers. Zionist Jews in Palestine fought against the British. The relationship between the Zionists and the British reached its lowest ebb in 1946, with the attack on the King David Hotel.18 The worsening of relations induced the British government to reduce the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, which between 1946 and 1948 comprised 17,000 legal immigrants and 39,000 illegal entries.19 The difficult relations between the Jewish Agency and the British government had its repercussions on Iranian Jewish Zionist activities. The British government, through the Iranian government, enforced a ban on any Zionist activity in Iran and strongly opposed any emigration of Iranian Jews to Palestine. According to the records of the Jewish Agency, on the eve of the birth of Israel the number of Iranian immigrants was less than 5,000.20 The Nehzat-e– Halutz went underground and started to organise illegal activities. Shimon Hanasab reported that he moved his office to his home and all activities of the Nehzat-e Halutz were severely reduced because they had to be carried out clandestinely. The British not only opposed any cultural Zionist activity in the country but also limited the emigration of Iranian Jews.21 The policy of reducing the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine affected those Jews who had been trained by the Nehzat-e Halutz to become settlers in the Yishuv; members of the Iranian Nehzat-e Halutz were thus denied the possibility of making aliyah by the British restriction of the ‘Certificatim’.22 Britain’s interest in maintaining an anti-Zionist policy in the Middle East ceased after the establishment of Israel in 1948, since the new-born Israeli state then took responsibility for the

86

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

control and management of the influx of diaspora Jewish immigrants. Moreover, in Iran, the British government again adapted its policy towards Zionism by monitoring the emigration of some Bukharin Jews to Israel.23 In 1949 the British influenced and directed the emigration of a small community of the Jews of Bahrain, an island in the Persian Gulf, to India rather Israel in an attempt not to increase the number of new Israelis.24 British influence in Iran and within the Iranian government declined after the rise of the National Front in 1950, which initiated criticism against the Shah and the British. Prime Minister Mossadeq’s nationalist sentiments led finally to the nationalisation of the oil industry. The precarious status of the Youth Organisation in Iran in the early 1940s undermined the emigration of Iranian Jews between 1946 and 1948.25 Following oil nationalisation in 1950 and the weakening of British power in Iranian affairs, Zionist organisations looked to other international powers as possible allies and supporters of their activities in Iran.26 The beginning of the Cold War seemed to be the right time for Zionists in Iran to consider the support of the Soviet Union and America, the new global powers.

The Russian interest in the affairs of Iranian Zionism The other major international actor in the political and economic affairs of Iran had always been Russia, which, along with Great Britain, had economic interests in the area. The presence of the Soviets came after the occupation of Iran in 1941 by Soviet and British powers; Iran formalised an alliance with the Allied Forces in January 1942.27 According to the agreement, Great Britain and the Soviet Union would safeguard the Iranian economy during World War II and would withdraw their troops within six months after the end of the conflict.28 Although Stalin agreed at the Potsdam Conference to leave Tehran in June 1945, the economic interests of the Soviets in the Persian oil refinery was still one of the principal factors for remaining in the region.29 Nevertheless, the Kremlin’s interest in maintaining this position lay in seeing it as the way to weaken Great Britain’s influence in the Middle East:

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

87

Russia’s ultimate objective in 1945 and 1946 did not concern the Arab– Zionist issue, but rather the grandiose plan to bring Greece, Turkey and Iran into the same satellite status to which the USSR was reducing the countries of Eastern Europe.30 As part of the Soviet Union’s goal to reduce Great Britain’s position in the Middle East, Stalin supported the first stage of the formation of the Jewish state in Israel despite his personal hostility to Zionism.31 Between 1946 and 1948, the more Great Britain lost ground in the affairs of Palestine and Iran, the more Russia took advantage. Stalin’s aim to gain more economic and political control in Iran as well as in Palestine directed the Soviet Union’s international affairs in Iran in two different ways: if, on one hand, the Kremlin encouraged the rise of national separatist movements in Iran in order to destabilise central government, on the other hand its relations with the Iranian Jewish community and its nationalist movement was a consequence of the relation between Moscow and the Yishuv. The more the Soviet Union lost control in the Israeli political arena the more it tried to influence the Iranian Jewish community through Communist ideology. In the year before Israel’s birth, Stalin fully supported the Jews in their struggle for independence from British supremacy: in 1947, during the Jewish revolt against the British, the Soviet Union was an ally of the Jews.32 Subsequently, relations between the USSR and the Jews in Palestine began to deteriorate; and in 1949 the desire of Soviet Jews to migrate to Israel appears to have been one of the reasons to oppose close relations with Israel, as well as the recognition of the growing independence of the Jews in Palestine. The end of formal diplomatic relations between Stalin and the Yishuv coincided with the beginning of the ideological opposition to Zionism in Iran. Meanwhile the Soviets bolstered their support of separatist movements of Iranian ethnic groups, such as the Azerbaijanis and the Kurds, in 1945 and 1946, and took the opposite position towards Zionism.33 The interests of the Soviets in disrupting the activity of political Zionism in Iran was a consequence of both their loss of political control in Palestine and their need to increase control in Iran.

88

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

By the end of 1946, the growing influence of the Tudeh within the Nehzat-e Halutz threatened to end the movement in Iran.34 The Tudeh Party’s strong nationalist propaganda attracted some Jews, who left the Nehzat-e Halutz, recognising themselves more in the nationalist ideals of Iran.35 Due to its ideological manifesto, which combined Communist precepts with social freedom and equality, the Iranian Communist Party made noticeable inroads amongst the Jews of Iran, both in the 1940s and especially in the late 1970s, to the detriment of political Zionism. The Halutz movement’s ideology, which was based on Jewish nationalism, was therefore at odds with the majority of Iranian Jews, whilst Iranian nationalism had strong cultural roots among them. Until the first half of the 1940s Iranian Jews, owing to their isolation from the rest of European Jewry, found Iranian nationalism, which was profoundly rooted in their cultural traditions, more appealing. Between 1945 and 1946 the number of the Jews who joined the Tudeh Party was around 3,000.36 In the late 1940s the Tudeh Party had fewer Jewish adherents than from other ethnic Iranian minorities such the Azeriis, but the support given by intellectual Jews to the Tudeh political programme was profound in the 1970s and detached them from Zionist ideology.37 The role of the Soviet Union in the events of the Iranian revolution that began in 1978 was remarkably different from that of post-World War II. Although Soviet aspirations to include Iran in its sphere of influence dated back to the beginning of the twentieth century, the role of Moscow within Iranian domestic affairs suffered several setbacks that preceded the Islamic revolution.38 The Soviet government seemed to have adopted a more neutral position towards the Iranian revolutionaries, due to the lack of a well-organised network of supporters within the Tudeh Party at the beginning of the turmoil. Hence the Iranian Communist Party looked to China as a possible ally. Despite this hesitant beginning, the Soviets seemed to agree with the Tudeh’s support of the Islamic revolution as a revolutionary act against imperialism. Communist ideology shaped the beginning of the revolution and influenced the ideas of the Iranian students who actively participated at the revolution in 1978.39 Amongst the

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

89

student movement, young Jewish intellectuals adhered to the new nationalist agenda of the Islamic revolution. These young Iranian Jews and university students took control of the existing Jewish community institutions, which worked under the leadership of Aziz Daneshrad, chairman of the Andjomane, the community representative committee.40 Although at the beginning of the revolutionary turmoil only a few hundred young Jews marched in demonstrations supporting Khomeini’s followers, their position became representative of the Jewish community.41 The Jewish intelligentsia for the first time wrote official statements on behalf of the Jewish community. In these respects they were representative of all Iranian Jews: they formally took a stance towards the revolution in the name of the Jews. From within the Jewish community, however, Iranian Jewish intellectuals did not represent the whole of Iranian Jewry. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the reason lies in the structure of the community itself: Iranian Jews were still not structured around a leadership and they reacted to the revolution according to their personal necessities. The supportive role played by Jewish students and intellectuals towards the Islamic revolution was a genuine manifestation of their strong attachment to the Iranian nation and desire to create better circumstances for Jews living in Iran. Jewish intellectuals wanted to participate actively in Iran’s political and social life in order to liberate the country from foreign dominance and to consolidate the role of the Jewish community within it. A clear statement signed by the representatives of the Iranian Jewish intellectuals stated: ‘One cannot separate the Jewish community from the entire Iranian community. The great revolution of Iran, which was crowned with success in January – February 1979, was a turning point in the Iranian struggle for freedom.’42 Iranian Jewish intellectuals’ support for the Islamic revolution was not only a response to the despotic political situation in Iran under the Shah and Bakhtiar’s government, but also as a complete identification of Iranian Jews with the Iranian nation.43 They considered themselves Iranians and they were in complete harmony with the wishes of the Iranian revolutionary elements.44 With regard

90

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

to the latter, Jewish loyalty to Iran thereby excluded Iranian Jewish sympathy and eliminated support for political Zionism. During the Islamic revolution, the majority of the intelligentsia and students of the Iranian Jewish community not only actively supported the Islamic revolution but also condemned the existence of the State of Israel and Zionism.45 The strong opposition to Zionism by intellectuals Jews was expressed in several statements that clearly followed the direction of Soviet propaganda against Israel: ‘Religions of God come from God and we believe that political Zionism is a section of imperialism and international exploitation. And imperialism will protect Zionism for as long as it finds it useful.’46 In a different pamphlet dated 1980, a group of Jewish intellectuals released a long analysis of the motives behind the Iranian revolution and said: ‘In the Jewish circles, the wishes of the majority of the Jews were in complete harmony with those of the Iranian revolutionary elements.’47 And again: We believe that Zionism is an utterly western trend of thought which is the repercussion of severe anti-Jewish feelings and has been mostly originated in Europe, and it has been successful in misusing the religion love and fervour expressed by Jews toward their sacred places in Mount Zion and the idea of reestablishment of their sacred Temple.48 Jewish intellectuals and the supporters of Iranian Jewish intelligentsia conducted an anti-Zionist campaign within the Iranian Jewish community, which was influenced by the discourse of Soviet antagonism towards Israel. The anti-Zionist campaign also shared the same nationalist beliefs of the Tudeh Party in Iran during the turmoil of the Iranian revolution. The anti-Zionist publicity that was fomented by intellectual members of the Jewish community opposed the effort of Zionist representatives to organise the emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel. Jewish intellectuals not only became vehement anti-Zionists inside the community but they also hampered any attempt at organising the emigration of Jews threatened by the advocacy of Islamism.49 It can be suggested that this wave of

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

91

anti-Zionism led by the Jewish leadership was a strategic move in order to preserve the community from possible harassment during the revolution, yet evidence seems to confirm the opposite: that most of the Iranian Jewish leadership were distant from Zionism.50 They believed that Zionism not only negated the principles of Jewish nationality as Iranian subjects but it also distorted the picture of Jewish nationality. On the contrary, these Jews wanted to create social organisations and institutions for the Jews in Iran, cooperate with the existing Jewish organisations to adapt themselves to the prevailing conditions in Iran and utilise all the possibilities for the creation of better circumstances for the Jewish community.51 Although Jewish intelligentsia were representative of the whole Iranian Jewish community, the Iranian Jewish community did not have any real structure or leadership and the general confusion regarding the future of the Jews in Iran prevailed. As such, the position taken by young intellectuals was influential within the community but not pivotal. This confusion was reflected in the community itself: the trend was that everybody cared about themself and reacted according their socio-economic position within Iranian society. Those Jews who supported the Iranian nationalist campaign led by the Tudeh Party discouraged Jews from migrating to Israel during the years of the Islamic revolution and partially contributed to the resulting lower number of Iranian Jewish immigrants to Israel – in 1979 only 7,000 people out of 20,000 immigrants.52

The American interest in the Iranian Zionist affairs Although the history of American– Iranian relations goes back to the beginning of the twenty-first century, American interests in the domestic affairs both of Iran and of Israel increased between 1947 and 1948 as a consequence of the Truman Doctrine.53 This officially stated that it would assist economically, militarily and politically all the democratic nations in their battle against Communist presence and influence within their government.54 The American government therefore reoriented its foreign policy in overseas ideological activity against Soviet penetration. The world was quickly divided into

92

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

two blocs. This new geopolitical power structure targeted the Middle East, and Iran and Israel became the principal areas of interest of both the USSR and the United States, thanks to their strategic position. Moreover, the beginning of the Cold War had a severe impact on Iranian politics and this is particularly true with regard to the period between the beginning of the Azerbaijan crisis in 1946 and the royalist coup against Prime Minister Mossadeq in 1953: these events indicated the extent to which the American government had penetrated Iran’s domestic affairs and benefited from its strong commitment to the Shah and the Iranian government.55 The emergence of the Zionist movement in Iran during the late 1940s was affected by the presence and influence of the Americans on the Iranian government. The White House was interested in supporting Zionist activity in Iran for two main reasons. Firstly, since the separatist revolt of the Azerbaijan nationalists in northern Iran in 1946 was supported by the Kremlin, the US government saw the Iranian Zionist movement as a possible target for the Soviet Union, due to the fact that it was deeply influenced by socialist beliefs.56 Secondly, the Iranian Zionist movement was not simply an Iranian separatist movement but also a ‘Jewish nationalist movement’ that was supporting the emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel, America’s other principal interest in the Middle East. The Truman administration’s sympathy for the Zionist cause was supported by the presence of the advocates of Israel within the United States, who kept up pressure for American recognition and support of Israel. In 1946, Truman announced that: ‘America would have supported increased Jewish immigration into Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish State there.’57 The supportive stance of the US government towards political Zionism persuaded it to improve diplomatic relations with Iran and Israel through the Iranian Zionist movement. It seemed that the US government’s position towards Zionist organisations had supplanted British machinations in the Middle East. The decreasing influence of British power in the affairs of both Iranian and Israeli subjects was replaced by an American one. Official diplomatic exchanges between the Shah and the US government were sealed by the Shah’s

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

93

visit to the US embassy in Tehran in the 1950s.58 The growing dependence of the Shah on the United States was a consequence of a period of political disagreement between the Shah and both the clergy and the Tudeh Party. All this culminated in an attempt to assassinate him in 1949.59 Thus, his growing unpopularity in the country forced him to look to foreign powers for support. From then on, Iran’s alignment with the United States and its pro-Western position in the geopolitical balance of power affected Iranian Jewish citizens in the country. The establishment of the SAVAK, the domestic security service, in Iran in 1957 not only increased American influence within Iran but also encouraged further diplomatic meetings between representatives of Israel and Iran in order to strengthen their relationship.60 As part of the Shah’s pro-American stance, Zionist activities in the country benefited from the positive atmosphere and began to flourish.61 Once again the emigration of the Jews of Iran through the Zionist movement was ‘the sealer’ of a triangle between Iran, Israel and the United States. In 1949, a diplomatic effort to increase the migration of the Jews of Iran to Israel was invested in the offices of the Jewish Agency in New York, and in Tehran through the US embassy. During the 1950s the growing American presence and influence in Iranian domestic affairs, as well as the strategic support of Zionist activities in the country, did not automatically contribute to the successful existence of Zionist activities in Iran. In both the 1950s and later in the 1970s, many within Iranian Jewry perceived Zionism as strongly interlinked with American politics and it therefore caused controversial reactions from the community. The impact of the Iranian alignment with the United States exacerbated the social and economic differences within the community. If the improved relations between Iran, Israel and the United States had a positive impact on the activity of Zionism in Iran and also on the social status of Iranian Jewry, it had a reverse impact on the emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel. The wave of modernisation and secularisation brought about by the Shah expanded the Iranian Jewish middle class, which appreciated a more Western lifestyle.62 The Iranian Jewish middle class was not interested in political Zionism but was more interested in pursuing a career in Western countries than in settling in Israel. Since the early

94

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

1950s, the Iranian Jewish middle class began to send its children to American schools in Iran as well as to study abroad in the United States.63 As a result, emigration to Israel became more a class choice rather than an ideological one because only the Iranian Jewish lower class took an interest in making aliyah to Israel in the hope of improving their social status. The social division within Iranian Jewish communities was further aggravated by the presence of American Jewish organisations in Iran that tried to organise emigration for those Iranian Jews in danger.64 American Jewish organisations limited their activities to rescuing the poorest class of Iranian Jews who were unable to progress within Iranian society. Israel became a refugium peccatorum for those for whom it was the only way to improve their social status, and who did not have the possibility to migrate to the United States or Europe. The activity carried out by American Jewish organisations amongst Iranian Jews radicalised social differences as well as distancing Jews from Zionist ideology. The sense of identity given by the Zionist movement failed to unite Iranian Jews – rather, it divided them. Since it prioritised emigration over nationalist ideology, Zionism was emptied of its significance and Israel seemed to have become a shelter for poor Iranian Jews rather than the place to fulfil Jewish identity. Members of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran faced the challenge of the activity of American Jewish organisations that prioritised the emigration of Jews according to their socio-economic condition.65 The activity of American Jewish organisations, as well as the possibility for well-to-do Jews to travel between the United States, Israel and Iran, only accentuated the lack of solidarity and unity within the community.66 The opportunity of travelling between the United States and Iran did not encourage Iranian Jews to cultivate Zionism in Iran. Between the 1948 and 1953 a total of 30,000 Jews out of 100,000 left Iran for Israel, albeit the majority of them were of Kurdish and Iraqi origins rather than Iranian-born, who preferred to remain in Iran or went to the United States.67 Although diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States were interrupted during the Islamic revolution, the Iranian Jewish middle class preferred the

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

95

United States to Israel. Comprising a total of about 50,000, they maintained contact with the United States through business, language and overseas education programmes.68 These Jews felt they had more connection with the Western world rather than with Israel and when their conditions started to deteriorate under the pressure of Islamist propaganda, they preferred to migrate to the United States. In 1978 40,000 wealthy Iranian Jews emigrated to the United States; later, in 1979, according to the World Jewish Congress held that year, between 12,000 and 13,000 Jews left Iran for Israel whilst only 7,000 actually settled there.69 Amongst those who went to Israel, a large percentage of them accepted Israel as a transit country before going to the United States. Up to the time of writing, the Iranian Jewish community has prospered in the United States, mainly in Los Angeles, where the Jews maintained a strong connection with the rest of the Iranian diaspora.70 American interest in Iran’s political affairs increased in the late 1940s as a consequence of the application of the Truman Doctrine. The Shah’s growing dependence on American power in the early 1950s had a strong impact upon the existence of Zionist activities in Iran. Although the strategic control of American power over both Iranian and Israeli affairs could have contributed to the development of Zionist ideology in Iran, evidence suggests the opposite. Since Iran benefitted from the diplomatic protection of the US government, Iranian Jews were granted the right to move freely between the two countries. This new trend strongly challenged the Iranian Jewish Zionist activities in the country in both the late 1940s and the 1970s. The new-born Iranian Jewish middle class was encouraged to develop economic relations with America and so became more familiar with Western culture rather than considering Zionism and Israel a valid alternative. The opportunity for prosperity and equality offered by the American model further exaggerated social and economic differences within Iranian Jewry and affected the dynamics of the Zionist movement. Zionism became an appealing ideology only for the poorest members of the Jewish community in Iran whose only motivation was practical rather than ideological. This explains the low percentage of Iranian Jewish immigrants in both the 1950s and later in the 1970s.

96

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

In addition to this, the Zionist movement lacked an intellectual leadership and therefore remained a fragmented and confined. ‘The American dream’ became the alternative to Zionism, and it invalidated the Zionist practical goal of settling in Israel as well as its ideological pillar based on the fulfillment of the Jewish nation in the Holy Land.71

Israeli – Iranian connections Diplomatic relations between Israel and Iran formally began in 1950 after Iran’s official recognition of Israel as a state.72 Nevertheless, their relations have been changeable and, despite the profound impact that these two countries had on the geopolitical power structure of the Middle East, their political relations have been regarded as ‘a mystery to most of the analysts’.73 The inaccessibility of Israeli and Iranian political documentation from the early 1950s bears out this assumption and precludes an extensive analysis of the topic. However, it is possible to explore Iranian– Israeli ties between the late 1940s and the 1970s by looking at the activity of the Jewish Agency and Zionist organisations in Iran. The existence of Israeli organisations in the country reflected the official position of the Iranian government towards Israel in both the 1950s and the 1970s. Although evidence suggests that the activity of Zionist organisations such as the Jewish Agency in Iran represented the official relationship between the two countries, informal connections were maintained as well through other Zionist organisations in both periods. Unofficial relations were also kept alive through the clandestine activity of the Nehzat-e Halutz, which organised illegal Jewish emigration to Israel. The necessity for both states to keep a connection derived from their uncertain position in the Middle East: they were both non-Arab countries in the region and they shared political and economic aims in maintaining stability.74 These common interests, combined with the mutual need of Iran and Israel to rely on each other in order to avoid possible isolation from Arab countries, forced the Ayatollah Khomeini to look to Israel in 1985 as a possible vendor of arms after the inception of the Iran– Iraq war in 1980.75 Khomeini’s move towards Israel confirmed the ambiguous relations between the two

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

97

states: he officially supported the PLO’s struggle against the Israelis whilst, wishing to break through Iran’s political isolation, he began unofficial negotiations with the Israeli government.76 In this respect, the Iranian Jewish community – with its activities such as the Nehzat-e Halutz and its migratory activity within Iranian Jewry – became an instrument for secret negotiations that both the Shah and the Ayatollah utilised as a channel to Israel. The two Iranian leaders, the Shah and the Ayatollah, took advantage of the Iranian community to reaffirm their relationship with Israel through both public statements and private negotiations, via Zionist activities in the country. The years under the Shah The development of official political ties between Iran and Israel from the late 1940s was a consequence not only of pre-existing contacts between Iran and Israel through the framework of Zionist organisations, but also of Shah Pahlavi’s personal attitude towards the existence of a Jewish state.77 Diplomatic relations between Iran and Israel were a consequence of the Shah’s political insecurity both within Iran and in the international arena. An alliance with a nonArab country in the Middle East would have improved security in the region, although it would also have led to isolation from the geopolitical affairs of Arab countries in the Middle East as well as disagreements within the opposition. Thus, in order to keep a neutral position the Shah adopted a changing relationship with Israel that profoundly affected the existence of Zionist activity in Iran and the emigration of Iranian Jews in the years at the beginning of the 1950s. The contradictory policy of the Shah towards the Jewish state began even before the establishment of Israel in 1948. In 1947 he decided to support the Arab position and voted for the minority United Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) plan, which wanted a federal state of Palestine composed of two autonomous areas, one Jewish and the other Arab, and Iran voted against Israel’s entry into the United Nations.78 In spite of his anti-Israeli position in the international arena, between 1946 and 1948 the Shah counterbalanced this stance by allowing the activity of Zionist

98

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

organisations. From 1946, the Nehzat-e Halutz spread in Iran, along with an increase of its hasbarah activities amongst Iranian Jewry.79 Later in 1947, the Shah let the Aliyah Department open an office in Tehran in order to organise the emigration of Iraqi Jews to Palestine through Iran.80 Although the Iranian government hesitated to support Jewish settlement in Palestine, it accepted its existence in Palestine through the acceptance of Zionist activities in Iran and the emigration of Jews to Israel. However, as suggested by representatives of the Aliyah Department in the late 1940s, the Pahlavi government accurately monitored the process of the Iraqi Jewish emigration since it did not authorise the emigration of Iranian Jews to Palestine.81 All Zionist activities, including the activity of the Nehzat-e Halutz, were free to prosper but only Iraqi and, later, Kurdish Jews were eligible to make aliyah. The restriction applied by the Iranian government to its Jewish citizens regarding emigration to Palestine discouraged both the Iranian Jews and the representatives of the Nehzat-e Halutz from making aliyah because they were discriminated against by government principles based on ethnicity.82 From the late 1940s, the Iranian government exploited the pivotal role of the Jewish community and its link with Israel through Zionist activities for diplomatic reasons. The Nehzat-e Halutz and the entire Zionist project in Iran suffered from being exploited by the Iranian leadership for the sake of Iranian geopolitical assets in the Middle East. As the domestic political scenario of Iran worsened with the assassination attempt on the Shah in 1949, his legitimacy in Iran was shaken; Israel and the United States appeared to remain his last resort.83 Outside the Tudeh circles, the new Iranian middle class and some intellectuals were supportive of, or at least lukewarm towards, Israel.84 The fact of having diplomatic relations with Iran was a meaningful achievement for Israel’s existence and stability in the region. Israel acknowledged the crucial position played by Iran in the affairs of both the Iranian and Iraqi Jewish communities. The influx of Iraqi Jews to Iran as well as other Central Asian communities was a source for aliyah to Israel. For this reason, it was in the interest of the state to have good relations with Iran in order better to manage the situation of Iraqi Jews. Late in 1949 the Shah both visited the US

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

99

embassy in Tehran and planned a trip to the United States in order to discuss the situation of the Iraqi Jews with US and Israeli authorities.85 Although the condition of the Iraqi Jews living in Iran interested both Iran and Israel, it was not the principal reason behind the foundation of diplomatic relations between Iran and Israel in the early 1950s. The new-born state of Israel was preoccupied with finding stability in the region, since its existence caused not only internal conflict with the existing Arab Palestinian population but also conflict with the other bordering countries. In order to consolidate itself in the Middle East, Israel attempted to create a strategic partnership with non-Arab countries such as Iran and Turkey.86 Although Iran and Israel did seem to share the same political and economic interests in the Middle East in the early 1950s, the recognition of Israel by the Iranian government became official in 1951 owing to the international scenario of the Cold War. This, in the early 1950s, brought about a bipolar system of alliances, which progressively led Iran and Israel to be aligned with the United States.87 Formal diplomatic relations between Iran and Israel were reversed on the domestic level: in the aftermath of the establishment of the State of Israel, while the Shah supported Israel, his government counterbalanced it with a strong anti-Zionist campaign that officially declared Zionist propaganda illegal. From the early 1950s, the Iranian government banned any Zionist activity in the country and the activities of the Halutz movement in Iran as well as the emigration of Iranian Jewry were severely penalised. The Nehzat-e Halutz in Tehran struggled to keep its offices connected to each other, due to its status of illegality. The principal concern of the Halutz movement was to be able to maintain a connection between all its branches and to guarantee them economic and ideological support. The funds from donations from private donors and from Israeli organisations had to be distributed amongst all its representatives in the country.88 Moreover, the lack of cohesion of the Zionist movement’s offices in Iran not only provoked the closure of the smaller branches in the country but also contributed to the development of corruption and insecurity amongst its representatives. They found themselves in the

100

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

position of often being accused of fraudulent activities regarding donations.89 The climate of insecurity generated by this status of illegality was complimented by the government’s attempt to convince Iranian Jewry to declare their anti-Zionist sentiments publicly.90 The government’s opposition to Zionism prevented many Iranian Jews from considering political Zionism as a possible nationalist alternative to that of Iranian. The increasing opposition to political Zionism by the Shah impeded the emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel. Although the government tolerated illegal emigration of Iraqi Jews for political purposes, it did not allow any Iranian Jews to leave the country.91 The Shah’s opposition to any Iranian Jewish emigration to Israel was not only a direct consequence of his opposition to Zionism but also a political statement designed to demonstrate that the Iranian Jewish community was well integrated within Iran. To have the biggest Jewish diaspora community in the Middle East outside Israel outwardly indicated that Iran had a very tolerant policy towards its Jews, in addition to their remaining a potential instrument for diplomatic negotiations with Israel. The need to counterbalance the position towards the Jews was acknowledged by the Mossadeq government in the early 1950s: he brought Iran into a period of reform and change that affected diplomatic relations with Israel and the Iranian Jewish community. Although the government officially recognised de facto Israel in 1950 and legalised Jewish emigration to Israel, several events made Mossadeq reconsider his position towards Israel. The growing pressure from Arab states to end diplomatic relations with Israel as well as the increasing national resentment against foreign exploitation of Iranian natural resources forced the government to close the Israeli consulate in 1953.92 The oil crisis was a watershed in deciding to ban any Zionist activity from the country: it was a move against the Shah, whose sympathies for Israel and the United States were heavily criticised by the Tudeh leadership.93 The association of the Shah with American power and Israel became the political manifesto of the opposition and the basis for the revolt of the late 1970s. Following the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Iranian authorities adopted a conflicting policy towards Israel, although this

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

101

attitude never officially paralysed communications and relations between the two states. The exploitation of Zionist activities by both the Iranian and Israeli governments as a pivotal factor in their diplomatic relations caused different reactions amongst Iranian Jewry. Two trends were generated within the Iranian Jewish communities by the beginning of the 1950s and they followed specific socio-economic patterns. On the one level, the Iranian Jewish middle class was increasingly assimilated into the Iranian middle class. As such, Iranian Jews enjoyed the socio-economic benefits of being part of the wealthy elite that distanced them from political Zionism. Moreover, Iranian Jews were able to travel freely between Iran and Israel as long as their diplomatic relations allowed them to do so: to them political Zionism lost any ideological significance. Furthermore, the relative freedom of Iranian Jews to travel to Israel from Iran after the de facto recognition of Israel did not persuade Iranian Jews to migrate to Israel. On another level, the lower class of Iranian Jews looked at the Zionist project of resettling in Israel as an opportunity to improve their social status. However, both Israel and Iran considered the activity of the Nehzat-e Halutz in Iran as a mere instrument for their political negotiations. Political interests prevailed over ideology and emptied Zionism of the significance of making aliyah. The emigration of the Jews of Iran to Israel was piloted by political manoeuvres that overwhelmed the ideological activity of the Nehzat-e Halutz amongst the poorer class of Iranian Jews. The lack of interest in Iranian Jewry in favour of Iraqi Jewish immigrants weakened the position of the Halutz movement in Iran. Zionism seemed not to interest the majority of Iranian Jewry, since Israel was perceived not as the Jewish homeland but rather as a shelter for diaspora Jews in danger. Furthermore, the strategic diplomatic ambivalence that both the Shah and Mossadeq displayed with regard to the Halutz movement in the first half of the 1950s contributed to the low response by the Iranian Jewish community to the return to Israel. The fact that between 1948 and 1955 the official number of Iranian Jewish immigrants was 27,660 demonstrates that the response of Iranian Jews to Zionism was low.94

102

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

The years under the Ayatollah Khomeini The 1979 Islamic revolution and subsequent rise to power of its leader Ayatollah Khomeini formally altered the geopolitical system of alliances both in the Middle East and the rest of the world. The new regime’s ideological pillars were defined in both religious and counter-Pahlavi terms: ‘the process of Islamisation’ of Iran was combined with condemnation of Pahlavi’s alignment with Western powers and Israel in particular.95 Although the Shah tried to keep the nature of his connections with Israel separated from Iranian public interests, Khomeini’s hasbarah targeted Pahlavi’s relations with Israel and the Shah’s affiliation with Zionism. Khomeini’s attack on Israel was partially the result of the regime’s new propaganda, since it combined both anti-Pahlavi denunciations and pro-Islamic beliefs through support for the Palestinians. To seal the alliance between Iran and Palestine symbolically, Arafat, the leader of the PLO, went to Iran after the revolution, becoming the first Arab dignitary to visit the leader of the Iranian Islamic Republic. In 1979, the tightening of relations between Khomeini and Arafat offered the opportunity to representatives of the PLO to become active in the country, and they collaborated with the government in informing the Iranian population about the Israeli – Palestinian conflict.96 The presence of the PLO in Iran generated opposing reactions within the Iranian Jewish community: on one hand, Iranian Jews feared that the presence of the Palestinians would contribute to the rise of anti-Semitism based on the confusion between Judaism, Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.97 On the other hand Palestinian advocacy found supporters among Iranian Jewish leftist groups, which not only supported the cause but also helped the organisation to develop in the country.98 The activity of the Zionist emissaries in the country was strongly undermined by collaboration between Khomeini’s groups and the Palestinian groups. However, evidence suggests that among the supporters of the PLO there were also Iranian Jews who identified themselves more with the Palestinian people’s cause than with the Israelis, and therefore did not support any attempt made by Iranian Jews to migrate to Israel.

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

103

However, Iranian ties with the PLO did not last. Shortly after Arafat’s visit to Tehran, the Iran– Iraq war broke out, loosening ties between the PLO and Iran. At that point in 1980, Khomeini’s government realised it had inherited from the Shah’s policy a political isolation from the other Arab countries: it was a priority for Iran to find allies among Middle Eastern countries. Khomeini’s Islamic leadership carefully considered possible allies: Syria and Lebanon shared with Iran common political and economic interests and seemed to be the more realistic option. With this in view, Khomeini increased his military and economic support to the Lebanese Shi’ite militant groups. His move suggests that the Iran–Iraq war divided Arab nations with a majority of Sunnis from those with a predominance of Shiites. Unlike the official anti-Israeli position taken by Khomeini, the political instability of Iran brought about by the conflict with Iraq suggests that Khomeini was interested in maintaining a certain connection with Israel. Khomeini realised that to be a non-Arab country in the Middle East was a challenging position during a war. As such, he seemed to reconsider the position the Shah had taken in respect of Israel, and in the early 1980s he reinstated military cooperation with Israel against Iraq. ‘Though the methods and justifications of the Pahlavi and Khomeini regimes differed considerably, their strategic goals were remarkably similar regional leadership and primacy.’99 In the early 1980s, a few months after the hostage crisis, Prime Minister Menachem Begin approved a shipment of arms to Iran.100 This was a cause of disappointment to President Carter, who did not want this to be carried out before the US hostages were released. The link between Iran and Israel followed the underground connection based on the common interest of establishing military and economic connections. Common interests between Iran and Israel subsequently led to the Iran– Contra scandal in 1986.101 After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the status of Iranian Jewry was legally defined in terms of Sharia law and the Jews thus experienced socio-economic restrictions. Nevertheless, Khomeini reaffirmed their status in Iran by clearly distinguishing between being a Jew and being a Zionist. In this respect he maintained a strong

104

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

position against any form of Zionist association in Iran.102 All Zionist activities were banned in Iran, as well as any political activity supporting Israel. However, to claim that Zionist organisations in the late 1980s did not succeed in the organisation of emigration of the Iranian Jews to Israel would be a simplistic analysis. The emigration of Iranian Jews was certainly influenced by the harsh anti-Zionist propaganda of Khomeini’s regime. Although the emigration of the Jews to Israel was considered illegal, the issue was used as part of the informal negotiations between Khomeini and Begin. Despite the initial reluctance towards Israel, Iranian Jewish emigration to Israel increased in the early 1980s. As had the Shah, Khomeini realised the importance of having a large Jewish community living in Iran and he took advantage of them for diplomatic purposes. After the eruption of the hostage crisis, Khomeini, as a part of his policy of strengthening relations with Israel, let a large number of Jews migrate to Israel through Pakistan.103 Khomeini’s relations with Israel seemed to parallel the Shah’s ambiguous policy towards Israel. Khomeini was aware of Israel’s strategic position in the Middle East and of the shared economic goals with Israel in the area. Therefore, it was crucial for him to maintain an open channel to Israel by means of the Iranian Jewish community. When the Iraq–Iran war broke out in 1980, the leader of the Islamic Republic thus acknowledged the importance of restoring economic relations with Israel. Accordingly, the Iranian Jewish community and its high number of potential immigrants played a crucial role in the Iranian–Israeli Contra affair.

CHAPTER 5 DOMESTIC FACTORS: THE PULL FACTORS IN MAKING ALIYAH IN BOTH 1951 AND 1979

The political factor Political Zionism was an effort at bringing back diaspora Jews to their ancient homeland: it was an ideological movement rather than a unified system of social, political and economic organisation.1 As such, the ways in which Zionism were put into practice changed according to the political interpretations of it. Before the birth of Israel in 1948, the settlers’ understanding of practical Zionism was influenced by both their political ideologies and their religious, antireligious and non-religious sentiments. Several central Zionist traditions emerged in the Yishuv, including religious Zionism, socialist Zionism and nationalist Zionism.2 Although these ideological trends were theoretically compatible with each other, as they advocated Jewish settlement in Palestine, their interpretation of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land differed. Before 1948, an informal socio-political arrangement of the Jews of Palestine was made according to these different visions of Zionism: Jews settled and organised themselves in accordance with their own beliefs. Thus, the fragmented structure that the Jewish settlements assumed before the birth of Israel was a consequence of these different approaches to Zionism. The sectarian character of the Jewish community in Palestine was determined by the

106

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

different interpretations of Zionism, and this became the cornerstone on which Israeli society was founded. Such differences not only generated ideological friction in Israel but they were pivotal factors that, once projected within the Iranian Jewish community by Israeli emissaries, affected Iranian Jewry’s understanding of Zionism on one hand, and on the other strongly discouraged the Jews of Iran. Since the beginning of the 1940s, representatives of different Jewish organisations had come to Iran to train Iranian Jews in accordance with their own approaches to Zionism. Moreover, the Iranian Jewish community identified Zionism not as a unifying Jewish nationalist ideology but as a signifier of ideological discrepancies. Zionist representatives from both Israel and international Jewish organisations coloured Zionism with their own political views and thereby generated a chaotic situation in Iran in the late 1940s. The majority of the Jews of Iran misunderstood Zionist institutions in Israel because they were not properly presented in Iran. The lack of a clear political agenda, as well as the frequent interruption of communication between emissaries and the Israeli headquarters in Iran, favoured informal political partnership between envoys that went beyond the political line of their organisations. The organisation of Iranian Jewish emigration in the early 1950s followed two main streams: one legal, controlled and supported by the Israeli government through the Jewish Agency, and the other illegal; both were facilitated by the Mossad Aliyah Beth and other Jewish organisations. The Jewish Agency was in charge of the organisation of the legal emigration of Iranian Jews and other ethnic Jewish communities living in Iran since the late 1940s. Before the birth of Israel, the Jewish Agency acted as one of the principal organisations promoting aliyah amongst diaspora Jews. On 26 June 1943, the organisation made its appearance in Iran, as a result of an agreement with the Joint Distribution Committee, to help the emigration of Polish refugees from Nazi Europe through Iran.3 From then, the Jewish Agency began to be involved in the affairs of Iranian Jewry. This continued until 1947 when its representatives formally began to work for the Jewish communities.4 The Mapai leader David Ben Gurion had headed the political departments of the Jewish Agency and the

DOMESTIC FACTORS

107

Histadrut, the general federation of labour, since 1933.5 The two organisations, which were the principal organisations involved with the emigration of Jews, were supposed to collaborate on the organisation of the Iranian Jewish aliyah. The Histadrut was principally in charge of the collection of donations from local Jewry to facilitate the emigration of Iranian Jews. Moshe Taub, an Iraqi Jew who headed both the Histadrut and the KKL, the office of the Jewish National Fund in Tehran, complained about the fact that representatives of the Jewish Agency tended to use the KKL’s financial resources for their personal purposes.6 The political relationship between the Histadrut representatives and the Jewish Agency envoys worsened throughout the late 1950s. In addition, representatives of the Histadrut organisation such as Moshe Taub began to be affiliated with Mossad, and at that time strongly influenced the activities of the Jewish Agency in Iran.7 Moshe Taub complained to the Jewish Agency headquarters in Israel that the political ideology of the organisation in Iran had moved away from that of the ruling party, Mapai. Hence, he distanced himself from representatives of the Jewish Agency in Tehran. The main accusation against the envoys of the agency was that, due to the increase in the number of religious representatives, the new ethos had become a dominant factor in the organisation.8 For instance, representatives of the Histadrut in Iran accused Avraham Hazroni, a Jewish Agency representative in Iran, of having corrupted the activity of the latter as he selectively favoured the emigration of religious people to Israel.9 The ideological clash that arose between representatives of both organisations affected Iranian Jewish candidates for aliyah in two different ways: firstly, the Jewish Agency gave priority to assisting Iranian Jews from religious groups such as the religious Nehzat-e Halutz, and left behind the rest of the candidates. Secondly, following the split between the organisations in Iran, the Histadrut gave less money to the Iranian branch of the Jewish Agency and penalised its activities. The Jewish Agency’s headquarters in Israel adopted a policy of changing its representatives in Tehran repeatedly due to their inability to organise mass emigration from Iran. This was a direct consequence of such mutual political resentments. The overall operation of resettling the Jews of Iran in Israel therefore resulted in

108

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

inefficiency and was often quite inactive. Complaints about the inactivity of the Jewish Agency office reached the head of the Jewish Agency’s office in Jerusalem, Dr Yehuda Weinstein, who was forced to investigate the situation in Iran since no mass emigration from the country was taking place. Among the Iranian Jewish community, at that time 90,000 strong, only a few well-to-do Jews were able to make aliyah on their own and they organised a journey with the help of the government of Cyprus.10 This trend blackened the already poor reputation of the Jewish Agency in the community. Political and economic clashes between the Histadrut and the Jewish Agency were not the sole divergences that occurred between Jewish organisations in Iran in the early 1950s. The Jewish Agency was supervising the activity of the Aliyah Beth, which was part of the Haganah, the Jewish defence force.11 Although the Aliyah Beth was fully included in the Jewish Agency once the state of Israel was established, the two organisations maintained separate offices and duties amongst Iranian Jewry.12 The Jewish Agency and the Mossad Aliyah Beth made an informal agreement to divide duties concerning the emigration of the Jews of Iran. While the Mossad’s task was to provide false documentation and passports for the emigration of the Jews, the Jewish Agency offered all the social infrastructure that was required: medical examinations, contact between local Jewish communities and applications for emigration.13 Tensions between the two organisations became evident in the early 1950s. Although both organisations were supposed to be under the umbrella of Mapai ideology, as they were both part of the Israeli government, those working for them were more loyal to their own beliefs. Baruch Duvdevani, the secretary of the Jewish Agency in Tehran in the early 1950s, strongly opposed the activity and the existence of the Mossad office in Tehran when the Jewish Agency was active in the region.14 He reported that the activity of the Mossad was not required in Iran, as the Jewish Agency would have taken over its duties. Duvdevani’s opposition was based on political clashes with representatives of the Jewish Agency in Iran such as Zion Cohen and Yonah Cohen and those of the Mossad: Duvdevani was a member of Mizrahi, the religious Zionist party whose political goals in Israel

DOMESTIC FACTORS

109

differed from those of Mapai. Hence, Duvdevani began a campaign against representatives of the Mossad in Tehran who worked with the representatives of the Histadrut in Iran.15 The head of the Mossad in Iran, Moshe Cherbinsky, questioned the Aliyah office in Jerusalem as to whether the presence of religious representatives working for the Jewish Agency in Iran would therefore have been of benefit the Iranian Jewish community. According to him, the Jewish community in Iran was already traditional and therefore the presence of Mizrahi representatives would have further distanced the Jews of Iran from the socialist ideas carried out by the Histadrut and the Mossad. Envoys and representatives of both religious and secular Halutz movements began their training activities amongst Iranian Jews in accordance with their vision of Zionism.16 While the former offered Iranian Jews emotional connections to both Jewish religious culture and the history of Israel, the latter provided an infrastructure for the emigration of the Jews.17 The importance placed by the Nehzat-e Halutz on the labour training camps was ideologically close to the programme of the kibbutz movement working in Iran. Moreover, representatives of the Halutz movement in Iran worked closely with the representatives of the kibbutz movement. As such, in 1950, the main issue regarding the restriction of the number of licences for emigration to Israel was disputed between the members of the religious Nehzat-e Halutz and those of the secular Halutz movement. According to Joseph Cohen, a representative of the Nehzat-e Halutz, the Nehzat-e Halutz, due to its religious inclination, did not receive a sufficient number of licences for its members: the overall number given to the Nehzat-e Halutz representatives for August 1950 was still low: only 85 out of 1,200 Jews were eligible to make aliyah.18 Of this allocation only a small number was given to the religious branch of the movement. Moreover, later in 1950 the same issue happened again as 100 licences were assigned to the Nehzat-e Halutz and only 25 went to the religious organisation for the same political reasons.19 The number of Iranian Jewish immigrants in 1951 was only 7,322. This was partly due to the inactivity of Zionist representatives in Iran, which affected the entire project and was not beneficial to

110

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Iranian Jewry’s expectations of making aliyah.20 Political manoeuvres between Israeli representatives discouraged Iranian Jewish members of the Nehzat-e Halutz to make aliyah.21 The promotion of both Zionism and the emigration to Israel in Iran in the early 1950s was exploited by Israeli envoys, whose activities were designed to promote their personal interests and the influence of their political party in the region. Such lack of genuine faith in Zionism inhibited the emigration of the Jews of Iran, who distanced themselves from the ideology and the movement.

The economic factor Although political interests and alliances amongst the Israeli envoys in Iran were the leading causes affecting the emigration of the Jews of Iran to Israel, the financial side of the Zionist enterprise in Iran became an element of conflict between different Jewish organisations operating in the country. One of the principal tasks of the Zionist representatives in Iran was to collect funds from both the Israeli government and the Iranian Jewish community, since they did not have financial resources for a large-scale emigration from Iran. The economic insecurity of these organisations not only adversely affected Iranian Jewish emigration to Israel but also revealed that Zionist representatives exploited the system of private donations for their own interests. Members of the Iranian Jewish community denounced Zionist envoys for corruption. Iranian Jews were dissuaded from making aliyah and only a few preferred to organise their journey to Israel independently from Israeli organisations. From the 1950s, Zionist envoys in Iran had two modes of collecting money to finance their activities in Iran: one through the Israeli government and its systems and the other through private donors. The trend amongst some Zionist representatives was to take advantage of this informal way of collecting money for personal interests and purposes. Moreover, the lack of control by the people in charge of the emigration of Jews to Iran increased the possibilities of corruption amongst Zionist representatives. Every year the Jewish Agency in Israel allocated a fixed amount of funds for the rescue mission in Iran. The head of the Jewish Agency’s

DOMESTIC FACTORS

111

office in Tehran was in charge of distributing the money to the different Israeli organisations, both government and non-government based. Among them, the principal group was the KKL, which was charged with the distribution of the money to Zionist organisations in Iran.22 However, the criterion for distributing money were not impartial and quite often there were delays in sending the money from Israel.23 Despite the effort to collect and finance Zionist activities in Iran since the middle of the 1940s, the methods of collecting donations encouraged the rise of corruption amongst Zionist representatives. It was in March 1950 that a letter from the head of the Histadrut in Israel reported that several envoys complained that money from the KKL donations did not arrive, and therefore their organisations were greatly disadvantaged in organising the emigration of Jews. The economic instability of the majority of the Jewish organisations working in Iran at that time affected their activity in the region as well as their reputation amongst the Iranian Jewish community. The Nehzat-e Halutz, charged with the education of Iranian Jewry in Zionist ideology and Hebrew, had to cancel its educational activities several times due to the lack of funding and its representatives also had to withdraw promises made about making aliyah. In these circumstances the lack of a secure income forced representatives of the Nehzat-e Halutz to base the selection of candidates on their wealth and their ability to pay for their journey rather than on their ideological convictions.24 The situation became even more complicated when envoys’ political manoeuvres intermingled with economic interests. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, head of the KKL, had been accused of having used the money for his personal medical treatment.25 Although some of these allegations against him were based on the political resentment of some representatives of the Alliance Israelites in Tehran, there is evidence to suggest that he took advantage of the position he held in Tehran. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was not the only person who benefited economically from his position, as other envoys of the Jewish Agency similarly abused their authority.26 Zionist representatives’ use of the budget that was supposed to be used for Iranian Jewry’s emigration to Israel not only damaged the reputation of their organisations

112

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

amongst Iranian Jewry but also delayed the whole process of emigration. Moreover, the political differences between Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Natan Shadi, representative of the Jewish Agency in Tehran, were exacerbated through such accusations of bribery. Since the former was a member of Mapai whilst the latter was from Mapam, they both tried to inhibit each other’s activities, along with issuing slurs about stealing money from the budget of the KKL. The opportunity to persist with illegal actions was favoured by the mass emigration of Iraqi and Kurdish Jews in Iran between the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s.27 Iraqi and Kurdish Jews who arrived in Iran were temporarily located in Tehran before migrating to Israel. The presence of these Jewish immigrants in Tehran mobilised international Jewish organisations such as the JDC to help finance their immediate emigration to Israel. The urgent need to resettle a large number of Iraqi and Kurdish refugees in Israel forced representatives of the Jewish Agency as well as other international Jewish organisations to raise large sums of money. Moreover the Aliyah Office in Tehran decided to charge each immigrant 100 rials for legal expenses and the air ticket to Israel.28 Those Jews who could not afford to pay for their travel expenses were supposed to be sponsored by the wealthier Jews and international Jewish organisations.29 Accumulating funds in Iran for the immediate emigration and departure from the Jewish camps in Tehran favoured a tendency towards illegal actions by the Zionist envoys. They took advantage of the chaotic situation: cases of bribery occurred during the process.30 Although the situation in the refugee camps worsened quickly as a consequence of poor hygiene conditions, some Zionist representatives saw in the existence of the camps in Tehran a way to further their personal interests. Such envoys tended to maintain the situation unchanged as they could exploit it economically. The nature of private donations, collecting money secretly, together with their distance from Israel made it easier for Israeli envoys to commit misdemeanours. Iranian Jewish immigrants denounced the first case of public embezzlement in early 1950.31 The main accusations raised against the envoys of both the Mossad and the Jewish Agency concerned the money that was requested from the

DOMESTIC FACTORS

113

Iranian Jewish emigrants before leaving Iran. Their assets were taken with a promise of returning them once they reached Israel, yet this never happened. Moreover, some Iranian Jews who decided to cross the border between Iran and Iraq were asked by representatives of the Mossad to pay additional fees before leaving Iran. In both cases representatives of the Mossad and the Jewish Agency seemingly swindled the Iranian Jewish community and took advantage of its trust and confidence in them: for instance, it was reported that one of the representatives of the Mossad gave receipts for payment, written in Hebrew even though the majority of Iranian Jewish immigrants could not read it.32 Additionally, representatives of both organisations made the best of the opportunity to add people to the list of emigrants in order to gain more money illegally.33 As a consequence of the Iranian Jewish immigrants’ accusations that followed the cases of fraud in the early 1950s, Ben-Rafael, head of the Aliyah department in Jerusalem, decided to establish a special committee in order to investigate whether these accusations against envoys of the Jewish Agency and the Mossad were valid. According to the commission’s report, when the emigration of Iranian Jewry was illegal, the emigrants had to finance their journey to Israel and sign a declaration of agreement.34 The climate of secrecy facilitated the envoys’ illegal actions in Iran. Amongst the envoys who took advantage of the situation in Iran, the local Iranian Jewish community accused two representatives of the Mossad, Zion Cohen and Meir Ezri, of robbery. Both of them were collecting money from donations from Iranian Jews around the country. Although they both denied accusations of extortion by claiming that the money was used to bribe the authorities in order to help Jews to emigrate, it seemed that both of them had used the money for personal purposes. In fact, the amount of money taken from the immigrants never appeared in the accounts of the Mossad. Due to these allegations, Iranian Jewry became much more suspicious of Zionist activities in Iran, and in the early 1950s they founded the Central Committee of Iranian Jewish Immigrants in Iran. The purpose of the committee was to finance the affairs related to the emigration of the Jews of Iran as well as to control the economic activity of the representatives of Zionist organisations in the region. The committee

114

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

was in control of the budget donated to finance the emigration of the community. The committee did encounter difficulties in proving the legitimacy of accusations against Zionist envoys. Moreover, in order to solve the dispute, the committee decided to start a court case over whether Zionist emissaries stole money from the Iranian Jewish community or not. The trial lasted until the beginning of 1952 and did not result in any clear verdict.35 It was deeply marked by unfavourable comments about Iranian Jewry. Zion Cohen had a hostile attitude towards Iranian Jewry and he considered them to be inferior to him because of their lack of understanding of the Hebrew language and Zionist ideology. His aversion to Iranian Jewry became clear when he openly admitted his hostility towards them.36 The urgent need to establish a special committee that would protect the interests of Iranian Jews from Israeli envoys seemed to clash with the ideological assumption that the Jews were a nation: the cultural difference between Iranian Jews and Israeli envoys questioned the existence of Jewish people as whole and caused conflict between the two parties. The nation-building project was an ambitious task that demonstrated its fragility once cultural differences and economic interests collided. After these accusations of embezzlement and a subsequent visit to Tehran in 1950, Yitzhak Rafael, the Head of the Aliyah Office in Israel, understood the necessity of replacing envoys in Iran with new representatives, since all the complaints and accusations heightened the mistrust of the local Jewish community.37 The lack of confidence in the activities of Zionist representatives in Iran and in their behaviour towards Iranian Jewry drove some of members of the community to leave Iran by themselves: it was reported that an entire group of 700 people organised itself independently of Zionist envoys and left the country.38 In order to stop this trend, Jacob Weinstein, a Jewish Agency official and emigration expert, decided in 1950 to increase the number of ‘certificatim’ per month in order to obtain the trust of the community. Thus, the arrival of Iranian Jewish immigrants during the early 1950s was only between 500 and 2,000 immigrants per year, depending very much on the available funds.39 In 1951 the Jews of Shiraz drew up a petition against the Nehzat-e Halutz and the Jewish Agency’s offices in Tehran because they were

DOMESTIC FACTORS

115

denied emigration to Israel even though they had been trained by Zionist emissaries.40

The selection of Iranian Jewish immigrants In the late nineteenth century, many European nationalist movements were fighting for liberation, in the same way that Zionism was fighting for the liberation of the Jewish people. The concept of brotherhood was strictly connected to the idea of the nation’s liberation from foreign control and loss of identity.41 Political Zionism’s success in realising the cultural and historical aspiration of the Jewish nation to resettle in Israel, the Jewish homeland, highlighted the problem of defining the concept of ‘Jewish people’. The argument that the Jews were an ethnic group based on ‘the unique and unbroken connection, extending back some 4,000 years between the people of the Book and the Land of the Bible’ expressed the connection and continuity between Israel and the Jews.42 Thus, any Jew living in diaspora who wished to go to Israel and reconnect with their nation was entitled to do so. The Law of Return of 1950 gave Jews the world over the right to settle in the land of Israel.43 However, evidence suggests that the opposite happened. The freedom to return to Israel was very much limited in the case of Iranian Jews who wished to make aliyah, since the principle of selection was applied to Iranian Jewish immigrants in the 1950s. At that time, the Jewish Agency and the Nehzat-e Halutz subjected those Iranian Jews who were strongly motivated to make aliyah to selection criteria. The Jewish Agency decided to select the candidates for emigration according to two main rules: firstly, priority was given to Jews in need of being rescued either because they were victims of persecution or because they were extremely poor. Secondly, in 1951 the executive of the Jewish Agency decided to apply restrictions to the emigration of Oriental Jews and in particular to Iranian Jewry. It decreed that 80 per cent of the immigrants should come from candidates of the group ‘Youth Aliyah’ and in general from skilled workers and healthy people up to the age of 35:44

116

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

The Israeli Government and the Jewish Agency labelled ‘Rescue Countries’ those countries where Jews were in severe danger or where there was an imminent threat of closing the exits and, in a sort of logical paradox, where the Jews might settle and immigration lose its momentum.45 For this reason, between the late 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, Iranian Jews were rejected by the Jewish Agency in favour of another ethnic Jewish group labelled ‘to be rescued’: Iraqi Jewry. The Iraqi government’s support of the Palestinians in the Arab– Israeli war of 1948 and the subsequent defeat of Palestine Arab and Iraqi troops in the conflict, as well as the Iraqi government’s renewal treaty with Britain, exacerbated popular discontent and instigated riots in the country.46 Anti-Zionist resentment and anti-Jewish legislation led almost the entire Jewish community of 123,371 people to leave the country between 1949 and 1952.47 The exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel was organised through Iran, since the Iraqi authorities did not permit Jews to travel directly to Israel. In 1950 the Iraqi parliament finally legalised emigration to Israel, and between May 1950 and August 1951 the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government succeeded in airlifting approximately 120,000 Jews to Israel in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah. This figure included 18,000 Kurdish Jews, who have their own distinct traditions and customs. Some 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran.48 When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Tehran they were stationed in transit camps in the Jewish cemetery in Tehran.49 However, the transit of Iraqi Jews through Iran was not an easy task for the Mossad since diplomatic impediments slowed down the distribution of ‘laissez-passer’ for the Iraqi Jewish refugees.50 They remained in the camps longer than expected and their general conditions worsened owing to the arrival in the camps of yet another ethnic Jewish group: the Kurdish Jews. The Kurdish Jews arrived in Iran from northern Iraq in the early 1950s and they joined their brethren in the same camps.51 The Kurdish Jewish exodus to Iran differed from the Iraqi one in both motivation and composition. Kurdish Jews came to Iran via the Iraqi/Iranian north-eastern border. They were a close-knit

DOMESTIC FACTORS

117

community. Unlike the Iranian community, Kurdish Jews were structured around the figure of the rabbi and the role of the religious leadership: Kurdish Jews were aware of their Jewish roots and traditions and they were ideologically motivated to make aliyah.52 Entire communities, led by their religious leaders, moved to Tehran wishing to be able to go to Israel as soon as they heard that the Jewish Agency and the Mossad were financially supporting Iraqi Jews’ exodus to Israel via Iran. The mass emigration of entire communities of Kurdish Jews slowed down the rescue operation of the Iraqi Jews. The refugee camps were overcrowded and the overall hygiene situation among the immigrants deteriorated.53 The Israeli authorities prioritised the condition of Kurdish and Iraqi Jews as urgent and they began to give emigration licences in order to be able to close the camps. At intervals, those Iranian Jews willing to make aliyah decided to converge on the refugee camps in order to migrate to Israel. Up until the middle of 1949 the wave of Iranian Jews to the refugee camps was still controllable and, with a fake Iraqi passport, they emigrated with the Iraqis.54 At that time the number of Iranian Jews in the camp was around 1,000, most of whom came from very poor backgrounds.55 It was reported that 700 people were in need of evacuation as soon as possible due to their precarious state of health.56 For this reason, Iranian Jews who were still in the camps, especially Jews from Meshed, were moved outside the ‘Tehran Ghetto’ by envoys of the Nehzat-e Halutz operating in Iran.57 By the end of the 1940s, Zionist ideology and the activity of its representatives became popular amongst Iranian Jewry, who started to leave peripheral areas of Iran, hoping to migrate to Israel with the rest of the Jewish refugees.58 The number of Iranian Jews who began to arrive at the refugee camps in Tehran increased. Some were young Iranian Jews who wanted to escape from compulsory army service.59 To be able to get into the refugee camps and make aliyah, Iranian Jews had to disguise their Iranian identity. Due to the fact that the identity of Iranian Jews was absorbed into that of Iraqi refugees, it has been almost impossible to estimate the number of Iranian immigrants who left the country for Israel during that year.

118

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Iranian Jews were disappointed by the application of the principle of selection that considered Iraqi and Kurd Jews in greater need of being rescued. Young Iranian Jews in particular could not understand the rationale of selecting Jews suitable to become Israeli citizens, especially since the majority of them had been trained by envoys and given a Zionist education. Iranian Jewish members of the Nehzat-e Halutz who were declared ineligible for emigration actually organised demonstrations outside the offices of the Jewish Agency. It was not only the Mossad and the Jewish Agency who created such problems. The Iranian government also contributed by exercising tight control so that its own Jewish citizens could not easily leave the country: strategically, the Shah wanted to keep the Jewish community in Iran since it exerted an influential presence in the country. Moreover, the Israeli organisations wanted to foster good diplomatic relations with Iran and therefore were not predisposed to encourage Iranian Jews to emigrate.60 Thus, Iranian police periodically surveyed the camps in order to check the situation.61 Nevertheless, a few Iranian Jews succeeded in leaving the country incognito under Iraqi identities in order to avoid army service in Iran.62 Although the Iraqi government legalised the immigration of the Iraqi Jews, in 1950 representatives of the Mossad continued to bring Iraqi Jews to Tehran until the middle of the same year.63 Along with the Iraqi camps, the Kurdish camp was officially closed at the beginning of the 1951. After the official closure of both the camps, small groups or families of Iranian Jews remained, mainly from the periphery, who were waiting to make aliyah after the mass emigration of Iraqi and Kurdish Jews. Since they had sold everything in order to be able to travel to Tehran they were marooned in the camps waiting to obtain a visa to go to Israel. Notwithstanding, the Middle East Department of the Jewish Agency took an interest in their situation. By June 1951 it decided to organise the emigration of the Iranian Jews to Israel: 2,500 Jews from Iran and from the border area with Afghanistan left the country through Turkey.64 Although it seemed that a mass emigration of Iranian Jews was about to happen, Iranian Jews were again subjected to the policy of selection imposed by the state of Israel: the selection rules were adopted by the

DOMESTIC FACTORS

119

Executive of the Jewish Agency on 18 November 1951, aimed at reducing the simultaneous migration of worldwide Jewry to Israel. In spite of Ernest Stock’s argument that the rules of selection did not contravene the Law of Return, since under it every Jew had the right to emigrate, their application to Iranian Jews involved both ideological and technical setbacks, which prevented aliyah.65 The process of selection of Iranian Jewish immigrants followed specific criteria. Firstly, 80 per cent of the immigrants were selected from young candidates, young families and skilled workers able to commit themselves to work in agriculture for two years. Among this group only those candidates selected from those who underwent a medical check by a physician from Israel were able to emigrate.66 Old people wishing to make aliyah could emigrate only if someone could provide for them economically. The majority of them had to pay their travel expenses and only the poor were fully supported by the Jewish Agency after recommendation by the local committee of emigration. Additionally, a family with a disabled child was denied a visa to Israel, as were a family whose parents were above the age of 50.67 These criteria greatly restricted the wave of potential Iranian immigrants to Israel: potential Iranian Jewish immigrants lost motivation in Zionist ideals and were at odds with Israel’s socio-cultural structure. These rules were in direct opposition to the traditional family structure of Iranian Jews. The entire project of favouring the emigration only of young Iranian Jews without their families prevented many from making aliyah. Yehuda Dominitz, who served as general director of the Jewish Agency’s Department of Immigration and Absorption, admitted that the specific rule of considering only young candidates under the age of 35 without their parents and relatives fiercely contradicted their traditional values and actually dissuaded Iranian Jews from migrating to Israel.68 Although young Iranian Jews did join the Halutz movement in Iran in the second half of the 1940s, the majority of them were still profoundly connected with their Iranian cultural traditions and was opposed to the Zionist requirements to leave their family behind. The practical limits imposed by the Jewish Agency on 18 November 1951 created a hierarchy amongst potential Jewish immigrants in Iran.

120

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

This very idea of priority was at odds with the ideology of the state of Israel, which was considered to be the homeland of the Jewish people. On one hand Iranian Jewry was excluded from the emigration to Israel because it was not considered to be in ‘an emergency situation’ or in ‘extreme danger’, and, on the other hand, only the youngest members of the Iranian Jewish community were considered possible candidates. However, these criteria of selection seemed to be applied harshly to Oriental and Mizrahi Jews in general and Iranian Jews in particular. If one considers that the total number of immigrants from Europe in the period between 1950 and 1955 was 342,898, the total number of Iranian Jews settling in Israel in the same period was 27,660.69 Although some Iranian Jews migrated to Israel using an Iraqi identity, the disproportion between the two Jewish ethnic groups confirmed that ethnic differences were utilised. According to the report of the Jewish Agency in 1951 the estimated number of Iranian Jews suitable for aliyah was around 20,000 out of a total of 80,000.70 However, the number of Iranian Jews who applied to the Jewish Agency for their licences was between 300 and 400 per year.71 The total number of Jewish immigrants in the years between 1948 and 1951 was 21,910.72

The cultural factor in 1979 The emigration of the Jews of Iran to Israel in the years that immediately followed the Khomeini revolution in late 1979 exhibited completely different patterns to those of the early 1950s. When the revolution broke out in 1978 in Iran, social turmoil arose along with discrimination against the Jews. With the increase in economic difficulties, the Iranian Jewish community was now considered a religious ethnic minority in Iran and experienced cases of violence, becoming the scapegoat for the increasing social disorder in the region. Amongst Iranian Jews, the social class that was most affected by such a changes were middle-class Jews.73 The nationalisation of the banks caused the loss of jobs for many of them, in addition to which they became an easy target for anti-Semitic persecution: the execution of one of the Iranian Jews’ prominent exponents, Habib Elghanian, in 1979, caused panic not only in the

DOMESTIC FACTORS

121

Jewish community but also in Israel. Although Khomeini gave assurances guaranteeing the lives and property of religious minorities, the World Zionist Organisation Executive decided to send special emissaries of the Aliyah Department to Tehran to lead the rescue operation for the Jews of Iran.74 Even if they were given priority of emigration this time, the number of the Jews who left for Israel was not as high as expected: in 1979, 20,000 Jews left the country but only 7,000 went to Israel, whilst the rest preferred to go to the United States or Europe. Additionally out of the 7,000 who went to Israel, some of them returned to Iran.75 Iranian Jews’ low response to the Zionist call was a consequence of their cultural distance from Israeli society. When the Islamic revolution broke out in 1978, the general reaction of Iranian Jewry towards the new Islamic nationalist propaganda reflected their longstanding condition as a religious minority in Iran. Iranian Jews believed that, as had previously happened in the history of the Jews living in Iran under Islamic authorities, their position would not be drastically altered by the political turmoil and by the change of leadership.76 Alternatively, some Jews thought that the revolution would not succeed and that the Shah would return. Evidence suggests that Iranian Jews preferred to adapt themselves to the new political conditions rather than move to Israel. Their refusal to make aliyah was not only a consequence of a positive attitude towards the overthrow of the Shah but also the result of their socio-cultural identity and perception of Israel. Iranian Jews drifted away from Israel and from the affairs of the Jewish state: such a loss of interest therefore contributed to a trickle of Jews leaving for Israel. Israel was also perceived as an unsafe place since there was no end in sight to the longstanding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab world. In the 1970s the Israeli– Palestinian conflict was an important deterrent for Iranian Jewry because it affected the socio-economic condition of the Israelis. Iranian Jews’ concerns about the conflict were a consequence of their social status, which had changed dramatically from the 1950s. During the reign of the Shah many of them had become wealthy and were highly educated. In general, they participated in the Iranian middle-class lifestyle.77 Iranian Jewry not

122

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

only shared Iranian traditional cultural values but the majority were integrated into the Iranian middle class. They learned English rather than Hebrew and they went to American universities rather than yeshivot. The relevance that Iranian Jewry gave to their social status was measured in terms of a ‘Western education’ as well as in a materialist framework, by their possessions, properties and other goods. The importance given to their social status was a heritage from Iranian traditional society that determined that status and communicated it to others within a social hierarchy. The desire to be able to maintain the same social conditions prioritised a decision to go to Western countries rather than to Israel. Moreover, the majority of them would only leave the country if a way could be found of bringing their fortune to Israel or of having the same lifestyle there that they were used to.78 Many wanted to stay in Iran and protect their properties until they were sold.79 Moshe Katzav, in Tehran in the late 1970s, described the community as follows: The Jewish Communities in Iran are suffering a tragedy: one the one hand, they live at the time of economic prosperity and intellectual achievement along with their freedom to immigrate to Israel; and on the other hand, fear and danger entail their very being there. Since the first aliyah, the state of Israel has not known this type of problem in the area of immigration.80 However, after Khomeini succeeded in becoming leader of the Iranian Islamic Republic, things changed drastically for the worse for the Iranian Jewish middle class. Moreover, the pattern of leaving emigration until the last possible moment generated further problems with regard to their properties. As soon as their economic and social status worsened, the Iranian Jewish middle class tried to move all its assets into foreign currency deposited abroad. However, even in this case the majority of them did not have the confidence to recycle assets and most of them were victims of the black market: many Muslim debtors took full advantage of the situation, particularly in cases of interest rates and loans.81 In the worse case, Muslims were

DOMESTIC FACTORS

123

urged not to buy properties from Jews, and other forms of boycott were adopted with regard to Iranian Jewish goods.82 Since the procedure of transforming Iranian Jewish assets into foreign currency was exploited by the change of leadership, their plans to emigrate became more realistic. Due to the worsening of their economic condition, Iranian Jews considered the possibility of making aliyah: Jewish organisations put forward proposals that included the establishment of a fund for compensating these people with a loan or leaving their properties in the charge of an agency that would look after them until they could hand them back to their original owners. Many who wanted to emigrate to the United States had to be selfsupporting. In 1979, due to the tense political climate between Iran and the United States owing to the hostage situation, restrictions on obtaining a visa to the United States were applied to Iranian Jewry.83 However, attempts were being made to ease these restrictions and the Anjoman Kalimian (the Jewish Association of Iran since 1974) waited to see if these channels were re-opened. However, the easiest way for Iranian Jews to go to the United States was as students, who needed a visa that would have allowed them to work there either in American universities or to join the ultra-orthodox yeshivot. The latter solution was called the ‘Lubavich channel’.84 Once there, students were entitled to invite their families over. Alternatively, those Jews who could afford it could ‘sit it out’ in Europe. Iranians could enter several European countries without visas. Their route was to travel to Rome or Athens as tourists and from there to apply for a visa for either European countries or the United States. It was reported that in 1979 the number of Iranian Jews who left the country for Rome or Athens was about 500.85 Once in Europe they could have had a three-month visa for Britain or France. Travelling to England or France in late 1979 served as a first base where they could temporarily wait in safety until the political situation in Iran stabilised. As the situation deteriorated, their temporary visas were extended and through the Central British Fund they acquired work permits and some of them applied for refugee status.86 According to the Central British Fund, in 1979 449 Iranian Jews applied for refugee status or for visa extensions.87 This figure excluded Iranian Jewish students who had studied in England since before the revolution.

124

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

However, after Khomeini’s forces took power in Iran the political scenario became more stable: Khomeini officially declared that Iranian Jews were accepted and tolerated in Iran. While he condemned Zionists and Israelis as enemies of the Iranian nation, he reassured those Jews who remained that they would be treated as a respected minority in the country. Indeed, he welcomed Iranian Jews back to Iran: some who had left the country now decided to return. Despite this, the majority of the Iranian Jewish middle class decided either to remain abroad or planned to leave Iran as they still felt targeted by the Islamic authorities. Between January and April 1980 the number of Iranian Jews who had left the country as tourists with the aim of reaching Europe and the United States was 2,502.88 The Iranian Jewish community’s response to the Islamic revolution was therefore mixed and it depended very much on the economic and social status of its members. However, the general reaction of the Iranian Jewish community to the Islamic revolution was to reject the possibility of going to Israel. While the majority of rural dwellers and small city dwellers were neither equipped nor had the inclination to go to the West or to Israel, the general feeling towards the Islamic revolution was to consider it as a transitional phase between the old regime and a new political stage in Iran. Their attitude was to wait until the political and economic situation changed and they saw no urgency to leave the country. The group of Iranian Jews belonging to the middle and upper-middle classes shared with the rest of the Iranian Jewish community the hope that the Islamic government would not damage their position in Iran. Their attachment to Iran, and their confidence in their socio-cultural position there conferred by their longstanding presence in the country, prevented them from considering emigration to Israel. However, there were documented cases that anti-Semitism did exist. However, it was the economic crisis as well as examples of harassment against prominent members of the Jewish community that drove middle-class Jewry to leave Iran. Israel, however, was not considered a valid possibility: in 1979 the number of Iranian Jews who left the country was in the region of 20,000. Some 12,000–13,000 went to Europe or the United States whilst the rest made aliyah.89

DOMESTIC FACTORS

125

Although the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government activated a rescue operation for the Jews of Iran, Iranian Jews in general and the Iranian Jewish middle class did not consider Israel a place to relocate to. The problem was more financial than psychological: at that time Iran was still an open country, even though there were strict limits on the amount of money that could be taken out of the country. The Iranian Jewish middle class’s main concern was to be able to settle in a country that would offer them the possibility of setting up their business once more and having the same standard of living. In this respect Israel did not meet their expectations, while Western countries did. Iranian Jewish immigrants in the late 1970s culturally distanced themselves from Israel as a country: it was not a Jewish homeland that was required but rather a shelter from the Islamic revolution in Iran. The preference for Europe and the United States rather that Israel demonstrated the ineffectiveness of Zionist ideology amongst the Iranian Jewish middle class. Although one could argue that the Iranian Jewish middle class distanced themselves from Zionism as a consequence of a process of integration into the Iranian middle class during the Pahlavi era, the lack of information on and activity of Jewish organisations and Zionist movements in Iran caused them to lose interest in Israel. The social status of Iranian Jews, however, was the determinant in their distancing themselves from Israel and Zionism: Iranian Jews remained sentimentally connected to their Jewish roots but without having any interest in Israel as their homeland. Therefore, when the political and economic situation in Iran became dangerous for them to stay, their choice was Western countries rather than Israel. After the beginning of the protests in Iran in the middle of 1978 until the middle of 1979, the number of Jews who left Iran was around 30,000, almost a third of the entire Jewish population of Iran at that time; 15,000 Jews left for Europe and the United States, 10,000 went to Israel and 5,000 wandered in Europe without a clear idea of where to settle.90

CHAPTER 6 IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH AND THEIR INTEGRATION IN ISRAEL IN 1951 AND 1979

The aliyah of Iranian Jews in 1951 The emigration of the Iranian Jewish community in the 1950s constituted the dominant group of the Iranian community living in Israel. According to other data the number of Iranian Jewish immigrants to Israel between 1948 and 1951 was 24,8221 and between 1951 and 1955 was 27,660.2 Immigration from Iran in the years 1949– 50 consisted of 10,000 people.3 In addition to the official data on Iranian Jewish immigrants, an indeterminate number of Iranian Jews left Iran through the Iraqi and Kurdish refugee camps and they arrived in Israel with Iraqi passports. It is therefore not possible to give a detailed estimate of the number of immigrants from Iran during those years. The majority who arrived and settled in Israel in the early 1950s were either young individuals or nuclear families. About 85 per cent of all these immigrants between 1948 and 1953 were less than 45 years old.3 The majority of them came from the periphery of Iran and most were not professional people and had little or no education and wealth. Only a few were merchants.4 The high percentage of immigrants from

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

127

this sector was a consequence of the economic reforms that the Iranian government had launched in the early 1950s. It centralised the economy and administrative power in the main cities. The exclusion of the periphery from the plans for economic modernisation forced its Iranian Jews to look to Israel as an opportunity to improve their socioeconomic status. Although in the early 1950s this drove many young Iranian Jews to make aliyah, it was also the necessity to escape compulsory Iranian military service that convinced many of the younger members of the community to come to Israel.5 The Nehzat-e Halutz was the major Jewish organisation to promote and organise the emigration of these Jews in the early 1950s. Moreover, the lack of leadership and of ties between individual Jewish communities in Iran contributed to a low response in terms of a potential mass emigration of entire communities. The only exception was the community of Meshed that had been better organised and supported through the Meshed immigrants’ community living in Europe. Even if the Nehzat-e Halutz tried to merge all these different Jewish communities under the umbrella of Zionist ideology, such immigrants at that time were not familiar with Israel’s religious and cultural significance or, indeed, with making aliyah. In comparison to North African Jewish immigrants who came to Israel in the same period, Iranian Jews’ social and cultural status as well as their work skills were less developed. Due to the lack of knowledge of Zionism, Nehzat-e Halutz representatives began educational activities amongst Jewish communities living on the Iranian periphery. In light of the extent to which the socio-political conditions in Iran favoured Zionist activities in the country, its activists were able to organise the emigration only locally: Iranian Jews who wanted to make aliyah actually had to wait in their villages to be picked up by envoys of the Jewish Agency en route to Israel.6 Due to the increasing impoverishment of the periphery and the worsening of the connections between branches of the Zionist movement, Iranian Jews began to converge on Tehran in order to migrate to Israel. Once in Tehran, Iranian Jewish immigrants were lodged in immigrant camps: the presence of all the immigrants in the same place allowed representatives of the Jewish Agency to organise the

128

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

immigration and to prepare the required documents. All the bureaucratic paperwork was arranged in the camps. The Jewish Agency managed to allocate 300 visas for Israel every month from the beginning of 1950.7 Along with the Jewish Agency, the Mossad was also in charge of false documents and passports in order to accelerate and reduce bureaucratic procedures.8 The distribution of false passports became quite common after the mass emigration of Iraqi Jewish refugees to Tehran: because of the priority given to this Jewish group, some Iranian Jews were able to escape under a false Iraqi identity.9 The de facto recognition of Israel by the Iranian government facilitated the emigration of Iranian Jewry: El-Al was allowed to fly from Tehran and Jewish immigrants were therefore able to travel directly to Tel-Aviv.10 The Mossad arranged all the administrative details such as passports and plane tickets, while the immigrants had to pay for the airfare. The price of the ticket in the early 1950s was £29 per person. This was a considerable cost at that time, particularly given the impoverishment of the majority of the immigrants.11 The problem of the cost of the airfare raised an ideological issue amongst young members of the Nehzat-e Halutz: their main concern was that only those who could afford such an expense would be able to go to Israel. Therefore a class selection was actually being applied to the immigrants.12 Thus, while some people still travelled by plane, a cheaper way was found, travelling overland to Turkish ports and then crossing the Mediterranean by ship to Haifa.13 In August 1950, 92 Jews who lived in villages bordering with Turkey crossed the border by themselves. Once they reached Turkey they asked Israeli envoys to organise their emigration to Israel.14 The overland emigration was problematic since it was difficult to control the illegal exit of Iranian Jews from the region. Moreover the Jewish Agency did not want illegal immigrants arriving in Israel without any documentation or clear identification. It was not a good alternative to air travel. Zionist representatives began negotiations with the airline companies in order to facilitate the dispatch of Iranian Jews to Israel. The principal airline company was Iranian Airways, which reached an agreement with Shlomo Hillel, a representative of the Jewish

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

129

Agency in Tehran.15 The small Dakota planes that had previously been used by the Iranian airline were exchanged for larger planes that could carry 100 immigrants at time. However, from 1950 this route was no longer possible because of the huge increase in the number of immigrants from Iran as well as the growing number of Iraqi refugees. Therefore new airlines and different routes became involved in the emigration of Iranian Jewry. The first company was a Canadian company called Coastal Airlines that provided a direct service from Tehran to Tel Aviv. Each plane could carry 80 passengers.16 A Dutch airline company was another that made an arrangement with the Jewish Agency to fly Jewish immigrants from Tehran to Tel Aviv.17 In addition, a British Jew who had previously served in World War II as an RAF pilot and later joined the Mahal – overseas volunteers in the Middle East – bought a plane and started undertaking flights in the Middle East. His company was called Trans Ocean Airways.18 The number of Iranian Jewish passengers each plane was able to carry was between 11 and 15, probably with a few extra passengers on board illegally. Trans Ocean’s route was mainly via Cyprus. However, later in the 1950s travelling to Israel from Iran became more difficult. Emigration for Iranian Jewry became more difficult and the Jewish Agency relied on the ‘European route’. This consisted of a different way of leaving; rather than depart in larger groups, Iranian Jews would leave Iran in small groups. In the mid1950s, individuals and small families were leaving Iran via Rome, Athens or Istanbul. Some Iranian Jews told the Iranian authorities that they were leaving the country to study art in Italy or to go on holiday. It seemed that this type of emigration was a safer way to leave Iran, as it appeared less like a mass emigration at a time when the Iranian government was becoming increasingly concerned about the emigration of its Jews. For emigrating Iranian Jews, air remained the most popular method of leaving Iran. Nevertheless, the use of different airlines in the 1950s caused several problems for the Jewish Agency, both practical and ideological. The principal issue was related to passengers’ baggage: Iranian Jews were only allowed to carry a maximum of 30 kg per person.19 The weight limit caused a clash between Iranian Jews and

130

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Israeli envoys. The former wanted to carry more than the permitted weight since they always brought their valued carpets with them. Even the less well off took at least one carpet with them. According to Iranian cultural tradition, carpets were not a luxury product but an essential part of everyday life; hence they needed to be included as basic belongings.20 Israeli envoys did not understand the significance of carpets in Iranian culture and strongly opposed the transport of them. Delays in departure therefore originated in a cultural clash between Israeli and Iranian Jews over the understanding of Iranian belongings. In order to solve this issue, later in the 1950s the Jewish Agency decided to open a free port in Israel to deposit Iranian Jewish goods, including carpets, which were sent separately. However, there was no shortage of confusion about the transportation of luggage from Iran to Israel especially when immigrants had to transit through another country before going to Israel. In the majority of cases, their belongings did not travel with them and the new immigrants often arrived at the end of their journey without their possessions. The loss of luggage caused indignation and complaints and even the Jewish Agency’s warehouses in Israel were characterised by chaos and confusion. Days and even weeks were wasted in the search for elusive items of property. The number of immigrants from Iran to Israel peaked in 1953. The total number of Iranian Jewish immigrants in 1955 was 223 and the annual average of immigrants during the 1960s until the establishment of the Khomeini revolution in February 1979 was 1,000–1,500. The principal reasons behind the increase of Iranian Jewish emigration to Israel were both social and political. Diplomatic relations between Iran and Israel allowed the Jews of Iran to visit Israel freely. As such, while good relations between the two countries prevailed it therefore discouraged Iranian Jewish emigration and increased tourist visits by Iranian Jewry to Israel. Iranian Jews were able to make a ‘pilgrimage’ to the Jewish homeland without being forced to settle there. The movement of Iranian Jewish tourists who travelled between Israel and Iran was noted and accepted until the Khomeini revolution in 1979, when formal relations between the two countries ended.21 Iranian Jewish tourism to Israel was also a sign of an improvement in their socio-economic status. Thus, the emigration of

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

131

the Jewish middle class to Israel seemed to have lost its raison d’eˆtre: Iranian Jewish emigration in the early 1950s was principally motivated by the promise by envoys to improve the socio-economic status of Iranian immigrants; hence when the economic situation in Iran improved the Zionist dream of making aliyah also vanished.22 The emphasis given to the economic factor was confirmed by the trend that affected Iranian Jewish immigrants between 1948 and 1953. The first years of Israel’s existence were particularly difficult and it was reported that 7 per cent of the Iranian Jews who settled there in those years decided to return to Iran.23 The reality of settling in Israel strongly contradicted the mythical vision offered by Zionist envoys and further discouraged Jews from making aliyah.24

The integration of Iranian Jews in 1951 The Zionist vision of considering the Jewish people as one nation demonstrated its ideological vulnerability when the State of Israel came into existence and different Jewish groups were called upon to form Israeli society. In these difficult years, Jews had to acknowledge that the Jewish people were actually drawn from many different groups with different cultural backgrounds. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, the Mapai controlled the state agencies. Iranian Jews were asked to discard their non-Zionist diaspora culture in order to adopt the newly modern Israeli culture. Iranian Jewish immigrants’ first encounter with Israel was certainly not welcoming: they were often loaded onto trucks and driven to settle in remote areas where there was no regular water supply or other facilities. The majority of them were relocated in transit camps, settlements and collective farms around Israel: from Kiriat Shemona in the north to Beit Shean, Beer Sheva, Kfar Saba, Ashkelon, Netanya, Ramat Hasharon, Jerusalem (Talpiot), Petah Tikva (Amishah), Ramla, Lod, Nes Ziona, Nahalat Yehuda, Beit-Lid (Pardesia), Kadima, Pardes Hanna and Karkov.25 Iranian Jewish members of the Nehzat-e Halutz were also allocated in kibbutz Maagan-Michael, which was part of the Kibbutz Meuhad organisation.26 It was in this social context that Iranian Jews

132

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

encountered socio-cultural clashes with Israelis. A group of Iranian Jewish immigrants who were in Givat-Brenner complained that the kibbutzim did not allow members of the same family to live together. A majority of them therefore wanted to leave the organisation as they were not prepared to cut family ties; Iranian Jews often did not have any knowledge of Hebrew, European languages or Arabic and were therefore marginalised from the rest of the immigrants living there.27 The language barrier and ‘the radical ideology of the kibbutz’ represented the first cultural barriers that dissuaded Iranian Jewish immigrants from remaining on the kibbutz: only 3 – 4 per cent of Iranian Jews were established in the kibbutz system in Israel.28 The initial socio-cultural marginalisation of Iranian Jews was caused not only by the impact of the dominant Ashkenazi culture but also by the social structure endemic to Iranian Jewry. Iranian Jewry immigrants were scattered groups of people without a leadership that could represent them as a community: Iranian newcomers were therefore not well represented in the Israeli political arena.29 Unlike communities such as the Yemenites, where the existence of traditional elites guaranteed guidance and community ties between the various families, Iranian Jews arrived in Israel without this structured support.30 Nevertheless, Iranian Jews in Israel attempted to create an umbrella organisation to represent their rights. However, more than 20 different organisations were created over the years, all claiming to represent the immigrants. One organisation, called the Tehran Immigrants League, tried to serve the community from late 1949, albeit with no success. In 1952 another organisation, called the Union of Persian Immigrants in Israel, was founded. This organisation tried to solve the problems of the integration of Iranian Jewish newcomers, and to deal with issues such as language problems and the tax on carpets. The Israeli authorities disregarded the fact that for Iranian Jewry the tax was a primary and often sole source of their fortune.31 Although efforts to create some kind of leadership among Iranian Jewish immigrants had been attempted, their integration continued to be difficult and more so than other Middle Eastern and Sephardic Jewish minorities. According to the Jewish Agency’s representative

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

133

Baruch Duvdevani, the principal reasons for such difficulties lay in their class status rather than in the social structure of the community. The majority of them did not possess any professional skills that could be beneficial to Israel’s development.32 The majority of them were petty traders. In 1953 20 per cent of Iranian newcomers worked in agriculture, 25 per cent in public low status jobs (cleaning the streets, building roads etc.), 6 per cent were professional workers, 8 per cent had a profession, 8 per cent worked in commerce, 5 per cent were clerks and 28 per cent were unemployed.33 The class factor determined the slow process of integration into Israeli society as a reason for the degree of unemployment. However, such a trend was also a consequence of the ideology of the melting pot. The fixed salary that was given to an employee working in the public sector did not encourage Iranian Jews to improve their socio-economic status. Those who joined agricultural settlements experienced a different pathway. The agricultural settlement offered similar social conditions to those in Iran, and they were less restricted by the education programme imposed by the Jewish Agency. It was reported that 55 per cent of Iranian Jewish immigrants preferred to settle in agricultural settlements rather than in cities or urban areas.34 Thus, in these villages, Iranian Jews were able to maintain the family structure, which characterised the social organisation of Iranian Jewry: such strong family ties maintained cohesion and cultural habits amongst its members. Hence, within the family, traditional Iranian values were maintained. Iranian Jews were encouraged to integrate with the rest of the Israeli community through traditional religious channels such as membership of synagogues. Moreover, traditional values opposed secular patterns in the formation of the Israeli identity, which often tended to leave the Iranian newcomers isolated. The isolation experienced by Iranian Jewish families was particularly strong during the first stage of the process. The younger immigrants, as well as the first generation of Israeli-born amongst Iranian newcomers, were integrated through schools and the army system. At home they obliged their parents to communicate in Hebrew and the older generation gradually moved to Hebrew as a first language.35

134

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Ashkenazi Jews interpreted cultural divergences with Iranian Jewry in an ‘orientalist’ way: they claimed that Iranian Jewish immigrants had an ‘a-social element’ that prevented them from integration into society. The ‘a-social element’, they claimed, was due to their nature of being lazy and degenerate, which prevented them from working hard.36 Iranian Jews’ laziness, it was argued, explained the difficulties of integration and adaptability to the new Israeli situation: Iranian Jews lacked permanent employment and flexibility in changing their values and traditions. Such accusations led some towards political activity within the State of Israel, yet it could also be argued that compared to other Middle Eastern Jewish communities, Iranian Jews lacked such a tradition of political activity.37 Additionally, Iranian Jews’ traits were associated with miserliness and deceit as well as lack of hospitality and openness.38 In the early 1950s, the Iranian newcomers were described as an exotic community whose Judaism was practised in a very primitive way.39 Given this, representatives of the Jewish Agency reported that the emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel had been far more problematic than that from other non-European countries due to the absence of both working skills and of appropriate Jewish cultural traditions and awareness, which isolated them from the rest of Israelis.40 Several representatives of the Jewish Agency Absorption Department did not see the emigration of the Iranian Jewry as beneficial to the State of Israel. The discriminatory attitude of Ashkenazi Jews towards new Iranian citizens of Israel profoundly affected Iranian Jews’ understanding of being Jews in Israel. They were marginalised as an ethnic minority in the Jewish state and asked to discard their cultural values and habits in order to embrace the making of Israeli identity. Iranian Jews lacked an understanding of the values and cultural divergences with the majority of Ashkenazi Jews that tended to standardise Israeli identity according to Western values and traditions. The general reaction of Iranian immigrants to cultural discrimination was transformed into alienation and frustration, which isolated them further. The language barrier distanced Iranian Jewry from other Middle Eastern and European communities, and

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

135

this, as well as the lack of social infrastructure capable of absorbing their cultural traditions into the new Israeli society, made them extremely vulnerable.41 Between 1948 and 1953, 7 per cent of all Iranian Jewish immigrants decided to return to Iran.42 The cultural gap between the Iranian Jewish immigrants and the Ashkenazi majority was bridged to some extent by the new-born Iranian Jewish generation. The younger generation, through Israeli education and the military service, taught their parents how to be Israelis. They were forced to learn Hebrew and Zionist ideology at home in order to communicate with their sons and daughters. Despite these difficulties, by the time of the Islamic revolution this wave of immigrants had been absorbed into the Israeli mainstream and, amongst them, the youngsters not only diminished their link with Iran but some of them succeeded within Israeli society. Several Iranian Jews from this immigration have occupied some of the most prominent positions in Israeli political and public life. Shaul Mofaz, an Iranian Jew who emigrated with his family from Iran in 1957, is a notable Israeli politician. He is Israel’s former Defence Minister and from May 2006 until April 2009 served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transportation and Road Safety. He is the leader of Israel’s Kadima political party. Moshe Katsav, who served as the eighth Israeli President and was a Likud member, was born in Iran and migrated to Israel in the early 1950s. Katsav was President of Israel from 2000 until July 2007, when he resigned following accusations of rape and sexual harassment. The sons and daughters of this mass emigration have emerged as Israelis of Iranian origin, and most of them participate in the cultural and political activities of the State of Israel.

The aliyah of Iranian Jews in 1979 The Iranian revolution in 1979 not only changed Iran’s nationalist identity from being secular to being religious, but it also established Khomeini’s undisputed leadership. The distinctive religious character of Khomeini propaganda stressed the religious pattern in opposition to the secular leadership of the Shah. As such, clerics and

136

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

religious leaders monopolised power in the country after the downfall of the Shah. The drastic change in the leadership of Iran as well as in the identity of the state forced many Iranians to leave the country. Different waves of emigration occurred both during and after the Islamic revolution. Those Iranians who left the country in these years joined the already broad Iranian diaspora living mainly in the United States, Canada and Europe. The rapid transformation and modernisation of Iranian society in the 1960s and the 1970s persuaded the Iranian middle class that obtaining a degree in a Western country would ensure socio-economic security and political access upon return.43 Thus, between 1977 and 1978 the majority of Iranian middle- and upper-class families decided to send their children to study abroad in order to gain a degree, preferably in engineering or medicine, in Western countries. During the academic year that started in 1977 about 100,000 Iranians were studying abroad, of whom 36,220 were enrolled in US institutes of higher learning; the rest were mainly in the United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Austria and Italy. In the 1978–9 academic year, the number of Iranian students enrolled in the United States was 45,340, peaking at 51,310 in 1979–80. According to the Institute of International Education, more Iranian students studied in the United States at this time than students from any other country.44 When the Islamic revolution broke out, the majority of Iranian students decided to remain abroad and, in most cases, they were joined by their families and relatives. Along with them, an increasing number of Iranians decided to leave the country in the years immediately after the revolution. Khomeini and his followers began to rule the country through powerful clerical institutions such as the Council of the Revolution and political parties such as the Islamic Republic Party (IRP).45 The process of the ‘Islamisation’ of Iran not only affected the institution and political life of Iran but it also targeted specific social classes that were considered a ‘danger’ to or a ‘fatal poison’ for the Islamic Republic: royalists and Western-oriented intellectuals. Both groups were targeted by the new government’s cleansing process, which aimed to purge Iranian institutions and universities from ‘subversive’ elements. The cleansing process had

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

137

disastrous consequences for the Iranian middle class and Pahlavi elites as many of them fled the country to escape persecution. The royalist sympathisers and those families closely associated with the Pahlavi monarchy such as members of the government, military officers or bankers were the first group of immigrants to leave the country during the early stage of the revolution. The second group of immigrants was composed of intellectuals, professionals, entrepreneurs, leftists and liberals. This group of people came mainly from an educated middle-class background, and they emigrated because they preferred to live in exile than under the new Islamic regime.46 The specific nature of this second wave of Iranian immigrants accelerated Iran’s brain drain. According to the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education, immediately before the revolution and subsequent closure of all the universities in 1980, there were 16,222 professors teaching in Iran’s higher education institutions. When the universities reopened in 1982, this figure had decreased to 9,042.47 It is important to note that when they left Iran these first two groups of immigrants believed that it would not be a permanent choice. The majority of them thought that once the political situation was stabilised they would be able to return to Iran. Contrary to their expectations, the Islamic Republic proved its strength and lasted over the years. Thus these immigrants became exiles in Western countries. The third wave of Iranian immigration took place in the early 1980s as a consequence of the Iranian–Iraqi war that started when Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980.48 At the beginning of the war, many young male Iranians were asked to join the army and serve the Islamic Republic against Iraq. Many young men left the country in order to escape the military draft. An additional number of intellectuals and middle- and upper-class Iranians decided to leave the country at the same time in order to escape the war as well as post-revolutionary social conditions in Iran. This third wave of immigrants was composed of small groups and families who left the country independently and mainly illegally. The Iranian government increased control of Iranian borders, which, coupled with the closing of the US embassy, helped to reduce illegal immigration from Iran to Western countries.

138

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Two other groups were targeted by the Islamic Republic’s ideology and were more likely to emigrate from Iran: Iranian women and religious minorities. Young women and their families decided to leave Iran because of social restrictions that were imposed by the Sharia. Islamic Iran also expressed its religious identity through its stance towards women: they were considered to be inferior to men, forced to be veiled in public and offered decreased university possibilities.49 Many women therefore decided to emigrate to the West in order to receive university education and maintain their freedom. Iran’s 1979 Constitution recognised Armenians, Assyrians (Christians), Zoroastrians and Jews as religious minorities. There were an estimated 300,000 Armenians living in Iran in 1979 but many have emigrated due to government policies following the revolution. Current estimates of Iranian Armenians range from 200,000 to 250,000.50 The Islamic revolution equally affected the number of Zoroastrians living in Iran. Before 1979 their numbers in Iran were 30,000.51 Since the Islamic revolution, the Zoroastrian community numbers 20,000 or fewer in Iran.52 With the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the number of Jews living in Iran decreased and the majority of them left Iran. In 1979, 20,000 Jews left the country.53 The two principal reasons behind the second wave of emigration of Iranian Jews from Iran to other countries in the late 1970s were similar to the motives that encouraged Iranians to migrate to Europe during the revolution. Firstly, the majority of Iranian Jews in the 1970s were middle class and their principal preoccupation during the revolution was to find a place where their economic assets as well as their living standard could be safeguarded. Secondly, Iranian Jews principally emigrated in the late 1970s because the Islamic revolution left the country in a state of social and political insecurity and therefore religious minorities were targeted by local imams. Although social insecurity also affected the wider Iranian society, Iranian Jews were easily targeted by local Iranian authorities as being Zionist spies and supporters of Israel, the enemy of the Islamic Republic. Despite the fact that Khomeini officially distinguished between Zionism and Judaism, some Iranian Jewish members had been accused of working for Israel and they had been charged with

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

139

being Zionist spies and therefore condemned by the new Islamic government. This further aggravated the sense of insecurity of some Iranian Jews, who preferred to leave Iran. The practical organisation of the aliyah of the Jews of Iran between late 1978 and the beginning of 1980 was problematic due to the critical situation following the outbreak of the Islamic revolution in 1979. In one of his special missions to Iran on behalf of the Aliyah Department in 1978, Moshe Katsav reported: ‘Do not be surprised if one morning you read in the paper that there has been a massacre of the Jews of Iran.’54 The conflicting assessments of the general political situation in Iran were reflected in the Jewish community itself in its reticence about emigrating to Israel. Firstly, Iranian Jews’ attitudes towards the revolution were not clear, and generally Iranian Jews considered it to be transient and therefore not dangerous to the community. Moreover, Khomeini’s reassurances to the Iranian Jewish community confirmed a general sense of relaxation about their future in the country.55 The positive reaction of Iranian Jewry towards Khomeini’s Islamic Republic came from their longstanding experience of living amongst Muslims: since the Safavids, Iranian Jews had been granted recognition as a religious minority in a Muslim empire. Thus, Iranian Jews believed that the Islamic Republic, like the Safavids, would respect the rights given to the Jews. Secondly, the absence of any kind of authoritative and respected leadership isolated one Jewish group from another and encouraged the Jews to deal with the Islamic authorities as individual communities rather than as a whole. Finally, the majority of Iranian Jews in the late 1970s belonged to the middle class, and they were deeply concerned about the fate of their assets. Some Jews expressed the intention of remaining in Iran and facing the dangers rather than leave without sufficient capital to resettle elsewhere.56 Iranian Jews speculated that if they went to Israel without means of support, they would be transformed into social welfare cases.57 Certainly Iranian Jews’ perception of Israel was of a vulnerable country that could not offer them the same economic status that they had in Iran. The majority therefore, preferred to go to Western countries rather than

140

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

to Israel. In 1979, 20,000 Jews left the country but only 7,000 went to Israel.58 Confidence in the Islamic regime, the lack of solidarity amongst themselves and the satisfactory socio-economic status of the majority of its members were the principal reasons that prevented them from participating in mass emigration to Israel in the late 1970s. The Jewish Agency and other international organisations had to cope with the structural characteristics of the community in order to gain support for emigration. In order to rescue the Iranian Jewish community, the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency and the JDC had to cooperate in order to organise their emigration. They not only had the difficult task of organising the practical emigration of the Jews but also of gaining the trust of Iranian Jewish representatives. While the JDC and the World Jewish Congress worked hard to try to build up diplomatic channels with Iranian political parties in order to guarantee Iranian Jewry a viable future in Iran, the Jewish Agency was in charge of the rescue operation of those Iranian Jews who did not want emigrate to Israel despite political uncertainty in Iran.59 Although the Jewish Agency was criticised about its activities in Iran and the lack of experience of its envoys to cope with the delicate situation in Iran, it was officially in charge of the rescue operation in Iran. According to Yehuda Dominitz’s report in late 1978, the aliyah figures had slightly increased, and he expected the total for December to be about 300, which would have brought the total for 1978 to 800– 900. The low response to the emigration was a consequence of Iranian Jews’ principal preoccupation with their financial assets. Although there were proposals to establish a sort of international trust fund, which would have taken care of Jewish property until it could be disposed of at a fair price or handed back to the returning owners, the Zionist Executive decided to take immediate action and to grant assistance in the form of a $2,500 per-person long loan to any Iranian Jew on becoming an immigrant.60 Between 1978 and the middle of 1979 the Jewish Agency organised the emigration of the Jews to Israel mainly through air companies, until formal ties with Israel were cut off. The Israeli airline El-Al was the main vehicle for the transport of the Jews of Iran to Israel. In 1978 the airline tripled

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

141

its flights to Tehran in order to evacuate both the Jews and the Europeans who wanted to leave the country. Planes flew to Tehran empty and came back to Tel Aviv full of passengers. Nevertheless, until the end of 1978, the number of Jews who left the country using El-Al amounted to 450, since the majority still preferred to go abroad by themselves, mostly to the United States and Europe.61 The situation changed dramatically when Khomeini came to power and gave Iran a new political identity: Jewish organisations clearly had to avoid any provocative action and any activity within the community had to be seen as non-political: for instance the American Joint Distribution Committee changed its name, eliminating ‘American’ from its logo. When diplomatic relations between Iran and Israel were severed, the Jewish Agency organised the emigration of the Jews of Iran through several different routes: Iranian Jews flew to Greece, Italy and other European countries.62 In 1979 the number of Iranian Jews who left the country daily for Athens and Rome as transit destinations before going on to Israel was 500. The operation of rescuing the Jews from Iran continued during the period between 1979 and 1980 under the management of the Mossad. It took responsibility for the transit operation of Jews travelling from Tehran to Rome, Athens and also Istanbul. Those Jews who left the country as ‘tourists’ were automatically granted a ‘1a` visa’ permit for three years when they reached Israel. This gave them the status of temporary residence with all the benefits deriving from it.63 On 1 September 1980 the Iranian government issued a statement aimed at limiting the possibility of Jews travelling abroad, and settling in Israel therefore became more difficult. Despite this, the situation appeared to be quite flexible since Iranian Jews were still allowed to travel to European countries and Jewish organisations were still capable of organising the emigration via the ‘European route’. Moreover, the Islamic authorities later explained that the statement was actually aimed at limiting a mass emigration and not specifically at travelling abroad. Although the Mossad carried on with the transport of the Jews from Iran, many still awaited political developments in Iran.64 Those Iranian Jews who were forced to leave the country often decided to cross the Iranian– Turkish border and,

142

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

once in Turkey, applied for a visa to go to Israel.65 However, the illegality of crossing the border with Turkey meant that it was strongly opposed by the Jewish Agency for security reasons. In fact, some Iranian Jews who crossed the border illegally were taken back to Tehran and eventually executed. For Iranian Jewry the valid alternative to Israel was to emigrate to Europe or the United States. The more affluent members of the Jewish community, estimated to be around 10 per cent, had access to liquid assets to buy tickets as well as possessing valid passports. They could leave the country at any time, and the majority of them went to Western countries.66 The emigration to Western countries and in particular to the United States followed three patterns. Firstly, Iranian Jews applied directly to the embassies in Iran in order to obtain a visa.67 Secondly, those who wanted to go to the United States were eligible to settle there according to existing US immigration preference quotas. This allowed relatives of students and professionals already in the United States to settle there. Thus, Iranian Jewish migration to the United States became possible through young people who had already obtained a student visa to study there. The majority of them went through the ‘Lubavitch channel’, which absorbed Iranian Jewish youth in their yeshivot.68 Once the Iranian Jewish students had settled in the United States, they were able to bring over the rest of their family.69 Finally, later in 1979 when the political climate in the United States towards Iran became even more hostile due to the hostage situation, it became very difficult to obtain a visa for the United States. Attempts were made by the Anjoman Kalimian to ease the restriction imposed by US immigration law.70 In consequence, the majority of the Iranian Jews who wanted to go to the United States preferred to transit via England, France and also Israel while waiting for US visas. Travelling to England and France in 1979 served as the first port of call where they could temporarily wait in safety until the trouble subsided.71 In the majority of cases, the Central British Fund decided to extend their permission to remain in the United Kingdom in order to facilitate the acquisition of US visas. It was only later, in 1981, that the emigration of Iranian Jews to Europe – mainly to France and

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

143

the United Kingdom – decreased as a result of the issuing of visas for the United States. The emigration to the United States via Europe became a valid alternative for middle-class Iranian Jews who saw the US as a better place to settle than Europe. According to the statistics, until the first half of 1980, the number of Iranian Jews transiting via Israel to the United States was 448.72 The preference given to the United States and Europe rather than Israel was a consequence of the socio-economic status of the majority of the potential Iranian Jewish migrants. They often were highly assimilated into Iranian society with little interest in Zionism. It is almost impossible to calculate an exact figure of Iranian Jews who moved to Europe, the United States and Israel after the revolution because some of them subsequently decided to return to Iran when the political situation appeared to have become more stable. The final number of Iranian Jews who settled in Los Angeles during the Islamic revolution was estimated to be between 15,000 and 17,500, whilst an additional number of 2,500 arrived in New York.73 According to the statistical abstract of Israel, the supposed number of immigrants from Iran to Israel in 1979 was 5,391, of whom only 462 decided to settle there and become Israeli citizens.74

The integration of Iranian Jewish immigrants in the late 1970s within Israel and the United States The wave of immigrants who arrived in Israel in the years immediately after the Islamic revolution followed a different pattern to that of the previous mass emigration to Israel in the early 1950s. These reasons for the different processes of absorption lie in the socio-cultural nature of both Israeli society and Iranian Jewish immigrants. The majority of those who emigrated after 1979 were small businesspeople who had enjoyed greater freedom and were often prosperous in Iran during the period of the Shah. They were not prepared to migrate to Israel because they had little understanding of Zionism.75 In comparison with the early 1950s, Israel was not facing a period of constructing its society but instead was coping with severe economic problems. At that time Israel could not offer the new immigrants the

144

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

same standard of living that they had been used to Iran. They consequently faced problems of social and economic isolation from the rest of the society. This was amplified by the lack of solidarity of the first Iranian – Israeli immigrants. The earlier group was now fully integrated into Israeli society and actually felt some distance from the Iranian newcomers. Once in Israel, Iranian Jewish immigrants reacted to the process of integration in different ways, according to their flexibility and capacity to discard their Iranian habits in favour of a new identity. However, a majority went to Israel as a consequence of the Islamic revolution rather than for ideological reasons. A significant number of Iranians were therefore not ready for a radical socio-cultural change and in many cases Israel failed their expectations. One of the principal aspects that profoundly disappointed Iranian immigrants was the nature of the Israeli economy and the prospects for work. In the late 1970s the economic gap between mainstream Israeli society and the socio-economic level of these Iranian Jews was considerable. Israel was not able to absorb a well-to-do immigration in the 1970s.76 Israeli society, which was at that time still very much influenced by the social structure and philosophy of the kibbutzim and collective settlements, also misunderstood the Iranian Jewish way of expressing their wealth and social status. As happened during the previous Iranian Jewish mass emigration, the Israeli government taxed carpets and other Iranian handcrafts as luxury items, not as essential cultural expression of identity. Indeed, while other immigrants were allowed to bring into the country certain electrical appliances such as televisions and refrigerators, Iranian Jews still had to pay a tax for the entry of carpets and other handcrafts. Cultural misunderstanding of the value of possessions in Iranian tradition was only one facet of the socio-cultural divergence between the two groups. The model of social interaction in the process of labour negotiations profoundly differed between them. While Iranian Jewish businesses relied on social and interpersonal relationships, the Israeli economy was an open market based on competition and entrepreneurship. Priman Cohen and Moshe Poroustamian were two representatives of the Iranian Jewish community in Tel Aviv who failed

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

145

to understand the mechanisms of the Israeli economy. They both went to Israel during the years of the Islamic revolution and decided to start a business there. Cohen first tried to start a business based on the organisation of events and parties in Israel, which did not succeed. He then decided to put his efforts into the development of a carpet factory in the region. However, the high cost of labour as well as a different way of engaging in economic negotiations caused him a loss of over $1 million.77 Bankruptcy, the loss of his previous social status and a loss of confidence contributed to his eventual alienation from Israel. This was expressed in cultural ways and broad regrets for the absence of an ‘Iranian mentality’, which was based on loyalty and trust. In Iran, Moshe Poroustamian had made his fortune as the president of one of the Shah’s banks. When the Islamic revolution broke out in 1979, he and his family were forced to emigrate to Israel as he was persecuted by the Islamic authorities. Nevertheless, he was one of the few Jews who chose to go to Israel rather than to the United States for ideological reasons. However, as soon as he started his own business in Israel he began to lose his money. The loss of economic status was accompanied by an increasing lack of confidence in Israeli society. He went through an identity crisis and soon admitted to himself that Israel did not meet his expectations. He failed to assimilate within Israeli society.78 The drastic change of economic status was just one of the many difficulties that Iranian Jewish immigrants had to face when they arrived in Israel in the late 1970s. In comparison with Israelis, Iranian Jews perceived themselves as more sensitive, more concerned with family values and more polite and respectful. The Iranian Jewish social structure and communication code reflected egalitarian ideals rather than hierarchy. According to Menashe Amir, if it was expressed in percentages Iranian Jewish identity would have been 60 per cent Iranian and 40 per cent Jewish.79 Also, the way of expressing their Jewishness was very much intermingled with Iranian cultural habits. Two representatives of the community in Tel Aviv explained that when they went to Israel in the early 1980s, they experienced several cultural shocks in discovering how Israelis celebrated Shabbat and

146

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Jewish festivals. For example, Iranian dinners always include an abundance of rice and vegetables even at Passover, despite Ashkenazi customs. On the other hand, Israelis often stereotyped Iranian immigrants as ‘Parsi’. The term ‘Parsi’ summarised the socio-cultural dissonance and perspective that Israelis had of Iranian Jews. They were often considered to be miserly, interested only in money, untrustworthy, passive, lazy, primitive and deceptive.80 Iranian Jews were also considered to be lacking in the feelings of solidarity, a common trait of European Jewish diaspora communities.81 These stereotypes, which were bestowed on Iranian immigrants, indicated a problem of classification and acceptance in a pluralistic society. The expectations of a new existence in Israel were generally thwarted by the reality of life: Yitkik Poroustamian remembered that when he made aliyah he was shocked to acknowledge that there was crime and robbery in Israel even though it was the Jewish state and Jews lived there.82 The mythical framework offered by Zionist ideology did not match the reality and the majority of these Iranian olim therefore found the process of integration very difficult. Yet educated and wealthy Iranian Jews attempted to reclaim Iranian folklore and Iranian cultural habits in Israel and consequently brought Iranian Jews back closer to their heritage. They developed cultural centres in Israel for poetry readings as well as the celebration of Nowruz, Iranian cooking and music. They also strengthened Iranian organisations such as Irgun Haggag, already in existence in Israel. Other Iranian organisations were also active in the country such as the Iranian Zionist Organisation, Beth Kurosh and Meir Ezri’s organisation. Although the general trend of ‘returning to one’s roots’ in Israel had become popular among different Jewish groups in Israel since the late 1970s, this was particularly the case with regard to the Iranian Jews. According to a survey carried out by Leah Baer, some 25,000 Iranian Jews arrived in America just after 1979.83 The majority of them settled in Los Angeles and, on arrival, were challenged by two different socio-cultural structures. One the one hand, Iranian Jews had to accommodate themselves within a secular Western culture, and on the other hand they were challenged by an often Ashkenazi

IRANIAN JEWRY'S PROCESS OF MAKING ALIYAH

147

American Judaism. However, it seemed that the interaction with American Jewry did create similar problems to those that the Iranian Jews encountered in Israel. The general feeling of loss of identity that this crisis generated in the Iranian Jewish immigrants can be expressed as follows: ‘In Iran, Jews were Jews whilst in America there are many sectors and many choices. The question is: Which one is Judaism? This is the problem for Iranian Jews.’84 Iranian Jews in the United States had to worship with other American Jewish congregations even though there were limitations to social and personal contact with American Jews outside of the synagogue. If initially the interaction with American Jewry was difficult and distanced Iranian Jews from the rest of the Ashkenazi American mainstream, Iranian Jews began to redefine their customs and observances in a multicultural environment. Unlike Israel, America’s official separation of the state and religion offered Iranian Jews the same degree of freedom and rights as other American Jewish communities. The challenge was not imposed by the state but was part of the Jewish debate of confronting different cultural traditions. Iranian Jews’ complex cultural identity is a strong force in their lives and it has profoundly affected their Jewishness as well as any other socio-cultural sphere of their personality. Moreover, it seems that the difficulties of their integration into the American Ashkenazi mainstream often contrasted with an easier integration into the nonJewish Iranian community living in the United States. If the first mass emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel in the early 1950s was absorbed more quickly because these Iranian immigrants did not have the cultural confidence to resist the Zionist embrace, the latter emigration had certain socio-cultural and economic expectations that Israel failed to meet. Some of them decided to leave Israel and either went back to Iran or left for other Western countries. Those who decided to remain in Israel maintained a strong attachment to their Iranian habits and introduced Iranian festivities and cultural habits in Israel.

CONCLUSION

Political Zionism legitimised Jewish settlement in Israel, but appealed to the religious sentiment of the land of Israel as being the only possible place for the realisation of the Covenant between God and his people. Zionism succeeded in giving a territory to the Jewish people and it actualised the return of Jews to Israel. The new Israeli society that emerged from ingathering all the different ethno-cultural Jewish identities generated, through the years, an Israeli identity. The forging of Israeli identity is an on-going process and the result of different socio-cultural processes that shaped its characteristics. Israeli identity was framed around the beliefs and ideals of the east European veterans of the Yishuv who settled in Palestine, and were often imbued with socialist ideals. They merged an egalitarian model of society with Zionism, and were convinced that a Jewish society in Palestine fused on such ideals could be created. These egalitarian principles on which Israeli society should have been constructed were far more difficult to put into practice. As soon as the State of Israel came into existence, Israeli leaders had to the address a series of issues: the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs and Arab states, the economy, the security of its citizens, the increasing number of Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern countries and their differences with the mainstream Ashkenazi founders. Furthermore, the general policy of the state was to incorporate these immigrants into the evolving Israeli identity by negating their cultural background. Iranian Jewish

CONCLUSION

149

immigrants were among these Jewish groups who marginalised their cultural heritage in order to become Israeli. Israeli leaders neglected the centrality of culture to the identity of Iranian Jewish immigrants. There is no form of Jewish identity that has not been deeply marked by the conditions in which Jews have lived, their particular relationship to the land and their past. Zionism proved that it was not a motivating ideology rooted in the Iranian Jewry’s cultural heritage, as the majority of them migrated to Israel for often practical reasons rather than for ideological ones. The first wave of immigrants at the beginning of the 1950s was predominantly motivated to go to Israel because they wanted to have a chance to improve their social and economic condition, as in Iran they were amongst the poorest inhabitants of the country. Wealthy Iranian Jews would never go to Israel as they were benefitting from their country’s economic growth. Moreover those Jews who were ideologically motivated to migrate to Israel often had to wait for their time to go. Israeli envoys initiated a policy of selection among those Iranian Jews who were willing to migrate to Israel. According to the Jewish Agency, only the young and healthy could migrate to Israel. The strict policy of selection served to discourage many from emigration there. Another factor that penalised the emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel in the 1950s was the political exploitation of Zionist activities by Iran, Israel and other foreign countries. The political relevance of Zionist activities was used as a diplomatic exchange tool between these countries. As soon as these immigrants arrived in Israel they discovered the reality of everyday life was far from the mythical and positive ideal of being part of the same Jewish nation. Israel was a multicultural state, containing a lot of different Jewish groups with their own culture, language. Their perceptions of Israel and Judaism were profoundly influenced by their cultural heritage from their ‘host’ country. In the 1950s Israel was experiencing a rapid process of creating its own identity. Iranian Jews were particularly disadvantaged by the fact they mainly came in small groups without any leader or organisation that could help them through the process of integration. Moreover, they could not speak any Hebrew, European language or even Arabic.

150

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Iranian Jews from the first emigration realised that they were considered by many as ‘Iranians’ with peculiar ‘exotic’ features. Even so, many Iranian Jews were absorbed into Israeli society. They became Israelis even though they had never been Zionists. Some, however, preferred to go back to Iran instead of suffering from discrimination from the majority Ashkenazim. The later group of immigrants in 1979 arrived in Israel with a strong Iranian heritage and experienced a severe cultural shock when encountering the Israelis. This wave of immigrants decided to go to Israel only because they were in danger in Iran. Israel represented for them the quickest way of rescue. However, others preferred to remain in Iran even though they were in danger. Those who made aliyah realised that Israel was not the Holy Land of their ideals, but a state with its own social and economic problems and in an on-going state of war. Iranian Jews found Israeli society far different from their original culture, with many preferring to move to the United States with its greater economic opportunities and a much longer history of multiculturalism and integration. Those, for whom emigration to the United States was not possible for economic reasons chose Israel as the only opportunity to rescue themselves from the persecution of the Islamic authorities. A sense of frustration arose among the new Iranian arrivals, who not only integrated themselves with the rest of society but also wished to maintain their Iranian cultural identity, of which they were proud. From Iran, they brought Iranian festivals and festivities such as Nowruz. Both Iranian Jewish groups who emigrated in the 1950s and the 1970s remained attached to Iranian traditions. When the second mass emigration of Iranian Jews arrived in Israel, they revived Iranian customs and food traditions in Israel. The first generation of Iranian Jewish immigrants ‘rediscovered’ its Iranian identity without being ashamed of it and new cultural Iranian activities have developed in the country. The revival of Iranian culture in Israel is part of the broader changes that have occurred there since the late 1980s. Israel has gone through deep cultural and political changes since the fragmentation of the old Labour leadership. In 1977, for the first time in history, the right-wing party, the Likud, under Menachem

CONCLUSION

151

Begin, won the elections and the Labour movement went through a critical process of questioning the validity of socialism. The lack of recognition of Jewish cultures other than European was recognised by post-Zionists, and numerous scholars in the early 1990s argued for a multicultural society. In the 1980s, old-fashioned Zionist ideology gave way to the rise of a type of socio-economic ethos that catalysed the decline of egalitarian values. In the long run, the negation of Iranian Jewish identity by early Zionists did not erase the inner identity of Iranian Jews. Their connection with Iran was still very strong and their desire to reconnect with it has always been apparent. Zionism has not been ideologically strong enough to erase Iranian culture from Israel and its revival has come as a natural process of redefining the existence of Iranian Jews alongside other Jewish groups living in Israel. The need to recognise Iranian Jews and the relevance of Iranian identity in Israel now seem to have been acknowledged by Israeli society. It is interesting to speculate how, in the future, Iranian culture will contribute to the development of Israeli identity following its recognition as part of an Israeli multiculturalism. Although the repudiation of the existence of Israel by Iranian leaders has increased the distance between the two countries, the Iranian Jewish community is still a physical bridge between Iran and Israel. Menashe Amir, an Israeli journalist of Iranian origins, has broadcast news in Persian to Iran from his office in Jerusalem. In 2009, in one of his Friday sermons, the Ayatollah Khamenei called for the cessation of the activity of the ‘Zionist Radio’ that has broadcast news to Iran for the past five decades. Moreover, the existence of the dual identities of Iranian Jews living in Israel reflects the ambiguous relations between Iran and Israel. Although Iran has denied the existence of Israel, it still allows an Israeli journalist to broadcast news to Iran. A question needs to be answered: ‘To what extent are Iran and Israel effective enemies and how does their difficult relationship affects Iranian Jews’ status in Israel?’ This book has highlighted some less publicised aspects related to the historical development of Iran–Israel relationships and their indissoluble involvement in Zionist activities in Iran. Since the

152

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

appearance of Zionist envoys in Iran in the early 1940s informal political agreements have affected the existence of the movement in the country. It was not only Iran and the leaders of the Yishuv who considered Zionist activities as a diplomatic tool for political manoeuvres, but international actors such as the former Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States were also interested in the Jewish national movement in Iran. The emigration of Iranian Jews to Israel was of extreme political interest as it bridged the political interests of two non-Arab countries in the Middle East. The Iranian– Israeli relationship has shifted from one of closeness during the period of the Pahlavi dynasty in the 1970s to antagonism following the Islamic revolution. The longstanding presence of Iranian Jews in Iran and their dual identities, both Jewish and Iranian, have affected their situation in both Iran and Israel. Iranian Jews carry the duality of this relationship in their own history and this suggests that the two identities are determining components of their culture. In this respect, an analysis of Iranian Jewish perspectives and the effect that the current political situation between Iran and Israel had on them could help to clarify many questions that still lie behind the relationship of these two countries. At the time of writing, Iran has officially denied the existence of Israel and the two states do not have any diplomatic relations. Information regarding the current political relationship between the two states is impossible to gain as it is probably supervised by Israeli intelligence. Political speculation has filled the international media. Iranian Jews living in Israel continue to represent a cultural link between the two countries. The declaration that Israel should be eliminated presents the Iranian Israelis with some delicate decisions to make. The community has to navigate the renewed clashes between their cultural identity as Iranians and their citizenship as Israelis.

GLOSSARY

Achdut Ha’avodah

(Unity of Labour) Left-wing non-Marxist socialist party Agudat Bnei Zion Society of the Sons of Zion Agudat Yisrael Religious-orthodox and non-Zionist political movement Ahdut Ha’Avoda (Labour Unity Party) Jewish workers’ party aliyah To immigrate Anjoman Kalimian Jewish Committee of Iran Ashkenazim Jews from central and eastern Europe dhimmis Non-Muslims citizens living in an Islamic State Eretz Israel Land of Israel Halakhah Religious Jewish Law Halutzim Pioneers Hapoel Hatzair (The Young worker) Jewish workers’ party hasbarah Explanation of Idea Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Watchman) left-wing socialist Zionist scouting group Hibbat Zion movement Pre-Zionist nationalistic movement established in the 1880s Histadrut General Federation of Labour in Israel

154

Kanun-e-Jawadanan Keren Keyemet L’Yisrael (KKL)

kibbutz kvutza Mahall al-Yahud Majlis Mapai mellah Mizrahim najis Nehzat-e Halutz olim Otzar Ha-Torah Poale Zion Tudeh Party Yeshiva Ze’irei he-Halutz

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Club of the Youth of Iran Non-governmental organisation within the Zionist Movement, with the initial objective of acquiring lands as a fundamental step for the return of the Jewish People to their ancestral land Collective agricultural settlement Collective agricultural settlement Jewish quarter House of Parliament in Iran Labour party led by David Ben Gurion Walled Jewish quarter in the medina Jews from the Middle East Persons or things ritually unclean according to the Islamic law Jewish Youth Movement in Iran Immigrants on aliyah to Israel Organisation for Orthodox Jewish education (The Workers of Zion) Jewish Socialist party Communist political party in Iran Orthodox Jewish college or seminary Union of the Young Pioneers

NOTES

Foreword 1. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2003). 2. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (eds), Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10 (Detroit, 2007).

Introduction 1. Skolnik, Fred and Michael Berenbaum (eds), Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Frances Harrison, ‘Iran’s proud but discreet Jews’, BBC News, 22 September 2006. 5. David D. Menashri, ‘Reflection on the immigration of Iranian Jews in Israel’, in Houman Sarshar (ed.), The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews, vol. 2 (Los Angeles: The Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, 1997), p. 7. 6. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1955– 1956, No. 7 (1962). 7. Meir Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo (Or Yehuda: Hed Artsi, 2001). 8. David Yeroushalmi, ‘The Jewish Persian community’, in Yarshater E. Ehsan (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 14 (New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation Inc., 2008). 9. C10 2586, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 10. Yeroushalmi, ‘The Jewish Persian community’.

156

NOTES TO PAGES 8 –15

Chapter 1 Zionism and the Birth of Israel 1. Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975). 2. Kevin Wilson and Jan van der Dussen, The History of the Idea of Europe (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 74. 3. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds), Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 17. 4. Georges Bensoussan, Il sionismo. Una storia politica e intellettuale 1860– 1940 (Turin: Einaudi, 2007). 5. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2003), p. 8. 6. Claudio Vercelli, Israele, Storia dello Stato (Florence: Giuntina, 2007). 7. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. 8. Bensoussan, Il sionismo. 9. Vercelli, Israele. 10. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. 11. Suzanne Harris Sankowsky, A Short History of Zionism (New York: American Student Zionist Federation, 1936). 12. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. See also Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1995). 13. Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology. 14. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. 15. Sankowsky, A Short History. 16. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea (New York: Atheneum, 1975). 17. Leon Pinsker, Road to Freedom: Writings and Addresses (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1975), p. 78. 18. Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology, p. 34. 19. Hutchinson and Smith, Nationalism. 20. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology. 24. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. 25. Sankowsky, Short History. 26. Laqueur, The History of Zionism, p.104. 27. Ibid. 28. Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology. 29. Josef Fraenkel, Dubnow, Herzl and Ahad Ha-Am (London: Ararat Publishing Society Limited, 1963), p. 26. 30. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, p. 249. 31. David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 189. 32. Fraenkel, Dubnow, Herzl.

NOTES TO PAGES 16 –27 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

157

Israel Cohen, The Zionist Movement (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1945). Cohen, The Zionist Movement, p. 63. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, p. 255. Ibid., p. 251. Shmuel Almog, Zionism and History (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987). Laqueur, The History of Zionism. Fraenkel, Dubnow, Herzl, p. 28. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea. Fraenkel, Dubnow, Herzl. Ibid., p. 30. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea. Steven Zipperstein, ‘Ahad Ha-Am’s politics’, Jewish History 4/2 (1990), pp. 89 – 96. Vercelli, Israele, Storia dello Stato. Members were known as ‘biluim’, from the name of the movement Bilu’, the Hebrew initials for ‘House of Jacob, let us go’. Aharon Kellerman, Society and Settlement (New York: State University of New York, 1993). Vercelli, Israele, Storia dello Stato. During the early history of the establishment of modern Israel, the word was used in reference to communal life, later renamed ‘kibbutz’. Cohen, The Zionist Movement. Ibid. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. Henry Near, The Kibbutz Movement: A History, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Ibid., p. 52. Vercelli, Israele, Storia dello Stato. Ibid., p. 108. Ibid. Near, The Kibbutz Movement. Ibid. Moshe Unna, ‘The elements of the Religious Kibbutz’, in Fishman Aryei (ed.), The Religious Kibbutz Movement (Jerusalem, 1957), pp. 31 – 6. Fishman Aryei (ed.), The Religious Kibbutz Movement (Jerusalem: Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency, 1957). Explanation of events. Marcella Emiliani, La terra di chi? Geografia del conflitto Arabo-Israeliano (Bologna: Il Ponte, 2007). Yossi Beilin, Israel: A Concise Political History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992). Laqueur, The History of Zionism. Beilin, Israel: A Concise Political History.

158

NOTES TO PAGES 27 –34

67. Joseph Heller, The Birth of Israel, 1945– 1949 (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000), p. 9. 68. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. 69. Emiliani, La terra di chi?, p. 26. 70. Laqueur, The History of Zionism. 71. Cohen, The Zionist Movement. 72. Vercelli, Israele, Storia dello Stato. 73. Heller, The Birth of Israel. 74. Cohen, The Zionist Movement, p. 208. 75. Ibid. 76. Vercelli, Israele, Storia dello Stato, p. 148. 77. Ibid., p. 222. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., p. 153. 81. Beilin, Israel: A Concise Political History.

Chapter 2 Jews: Their History, Education and Social Status 1. Daniel Spector, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’, PhD thesis (University of Texas at Austin, 1975). 2. Kings 17:6. 3. Haideh Sahim, ‘Iran and Afghanistan’, in Reeva Spector Simon, Michael M. Laskier and Sara Reguer (eds), The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). See also Spector, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’. 4. Houman Sarshar, Esther’s Children (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002). 5. Vera Basch Moreen, In Esther’s Garden (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 3. See also Karen L. Pliskin, Silent Boundaries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 15. 6. Eli Barnavi (ed.), A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People (London: Hutchinson, 1992), p. 24. 7. Barnavi, A Historical Atlas, p. 11. 8. Jeremiah 52:28– 32. 9. Spector, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’, p. 11. 10. Ibid. 11. Anna Mamalat, History of Biblical Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 321. 12. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Judaism (London: Routledge, 2003). 13. Sarshar, Esther’s Children. 14. Judah J. Slotki, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah (London: Soncino Press, 1978). 15. Ibid. 16. Archibald H. Sayce, An Introduction to the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1985), p. 44.

NOTES TO PAGES 34 – 41

159

17. Cohn-Sherbok, Judaism. 18. Ibid. 19. Geo Widengren, ‘The status of the Jews in the Sassanian Empire’, Iranica Antiqua 1 (1961), pp. 117– 61. 20. Donald J. Wiseman, An Introduction and Commentary (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993). 21. Ibid. 22. Geoffrey Wigoder, The New Encyclopaedia of Judaism (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Sarshar, Esther’s Children, p. 43. 26. ACC/3121/E4/3, Archives of the Board of Deputies, London. 27. Spector, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’. 28. Ibid., p. 28. 29. Sarshar, Esther’s Children. 30. Gawdat Bahgat, ‘The Islamic Republic and the Jewish State’, Israel Affair 11/3 (July 2005), pp. 517– 34. 31. ACC/3121/E4/3. 32. Atlante Storico (Milan: Garzanti, 2003). 33. Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran (London: I.B.Tauris, 2006). 34. Ibid. 35. ACC/3121/E3/172, Archives of the Board of Deputies, London. 36. Walter Fischel, ‘The Jews in medieval Iran from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries: political, economic and communal aspects’, in International Conference on Jewish Communities in Muslim World (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute and the Hebrew University, 1985), pp. 1– 31. 37. Ibid., p. 11. 38. Newman, Safavid Iran. 39. Ibid. 40. Jewish quarter. 41. Bahgat, ‘The Islamic Republic’. 42. Newman, Safavid Iran, p. 21. 43. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). 44. Ibid., p. 47. 45. Sahim, ‘Iran and Afghanistan’. 46. Daniel Tsadik, Between Foreigners and Shi’is (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). 47. Amnon Netzer, ‘The Jews of Persia and alliance in the late nineteenth century: some aspects’, International Conference on Jewish Communities in Muslim World (1973– 4), Ben Zvi Institute and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 48. Tsadik, Between Foreigners and Shi’is. 49. Ibid., p. 36.

160 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

NOTES TO PAGES 41 –50 ACC/3121/B2/9, Archives of the Board of Deputies, London. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Atlante Storico. ACC/3121/E3/172. S20-451, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. Netzer, ‘The Jews of Persia and alliance in the late nineteenth century: some aspects’. Tsadik, Between Foreigners and Shi’is. S20-451. C10 2203, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Abraham Cohen, ‘Significant changes in Jewish education in Iran’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padayavand, vol. 1 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publisher, 1998). S20-451. Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006). S20-451. ACC/3121/E2/128, archives of the Board of Deputies, London. C10 2203. Mosheh Yishay, ‘An envoy without title’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 3 (Costa Meza, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999). S20-451. Ernst Stock, Chosen Instrument (New York: Herzl Press, 1988), p. 156. S6 5430, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Mellah – literally, Jewish district. Stock, Chosen Instrument, p. 133. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (eds), Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). S20-451. Ibid. S115-211, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2203. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. Spector, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’. Cohen, ‘Significant changes in Jewish education in Iran’. S20 451. Ibid. Cohen, ‘Significant changes in Jewish education in Iran’. Ibid. Daniel J. Elazar, The Jewish Community of Iran (Jerusalem: The Centre for Jewish Community Studies, 1975).

NOTES TO PAGES 50 – 61

161

87. Iosef Glanz, A Study on Jewish Education in Iran, Facts and Programme (Tehran: Israel Economist, 1972). 88. Elazar, The Jewish Community. 89. Simon N. Herman, Jewish Identity: A Social Psychological Perspective (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1977), p. 28. 90. Glanz, A Study on Jewish Education in Iran. 91. C10 2203. 92. S71-204, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 93. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 70. 94. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions. 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid. 97. Glanz, A Study on Jewish Education in Iran, p. 15. 98. C10 2375, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 99. C10 2203. 100. C10 2376 (54), Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 101. Ibid. 102. C10 2587, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 103. C10 2203. 104. C10 2376, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 105. Heinz Halm, Shi’a Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997). 106. Sarshar, Esther’s Children. 107. Ibid. 108. C10 2302, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 109. Bernard Lewis, Semiti e antisemiti (Milan: Rizzoli, 2003). 110. ACC/3121/E4/3, Archives of the Board of Deputies, London. 111. Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1979’, in Amnon, Padyavand, vol. III. See also The Jewish Chronicle, 13 June 1980. 112. Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1979’. 113. Ibid. 114. C10 2586, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 115. C10 2587. 116. Ibid.

Chapter 3 The Rise of Political Zionism in Iran 1. Ezri, Meir, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo (Or Yehuda: Hed Artsi, 2001). 2. Ibid., p. 34. 3. Esther Benbassa and Jean Christoph Attias, The Jews and their Future (London: Zed Books, 2004). 4. Interview with Yitzik Pourostamian.

162

NOTES TO PAGES 61 – 9

5. 148– 17, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem. 6. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 7. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. 8. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 9. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. 10. Ibid p. 35. 11. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 12. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). 16. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. 17. S86-24-194, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 18. Ibid. 19. S6-7098, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 20. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 21. Claudio Stroppa, Comunita’ e Utopia (Bari: Dedalo Libri, 1970). 22. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 23. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. 24. Ibid. 25. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Baruch Duvdevani, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1982). 26. S32-1295. 27. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 28. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions. 29. Farian Sabahi, Storia dell’Iran (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2006). 30. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 31. C10 2587, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 32. S5-11.488 Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 33. KKL5-16330, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 34. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 35. KKL5-6327, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 36. Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006). 37. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 38. KKL5-16330. 39. Gawdat Bahgat, ‘The Islamic Republic and the Jewish state’, Israel Affairs 11/3 (July 2005), pp. 517– 34. 40. Ibid. 41. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. 42. KKL5-16328, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 43. Ibid.

NOTES TO PAGES 69 –76 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

163

Interview with Shimon Hanasab. KKL5-6327. S32-1295. Ibid. S32-452, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Interview with Yitzhak Poroustamian. Bahgat, ‘The Islamic Republic’. S5-11.488. S32-452. S5-11488. Moshe Unna, ‘The elements of the religious kibbutz’, in Aryei Fishman (ed.), The Religious Kibbutz Movement (Jerusalem: Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency, 1957). S6-5051, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Ibid. Interview with Yona Cohen. Ibid. Ibid. Yosef Salmon, Religion and Zionism (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2002), p. 15. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Yona Cohen (Jerusalem, 1984). S32-452. S32 448, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S32-1295. S6-7098, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Yona Cohen, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1984). Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. KKL5-17799, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S32-449, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S32-452. S6-6537, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S32-452. Ibid. Ibid. S86-79, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S32-1295. Ibid. Sabahi, Storia dell’Iran.

164 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

NOTES TO PAGES 76 –84 Keddie, Modern Iran. Sabahi, Storia dell’Iran. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. Shkalim, Interview with Baruch Duvdevani. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. S5-11.488. C10 2375, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2203, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. Interview with Moshe Pourostamian. Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1979’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 3 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996), p. 19. Dated 24 January 1979. Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1979’. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. C10 2375. Ibid. C10 2587. Ibid. C10 2586, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Ibid. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1980, No. 31 (1980). Ibid. Iraqi Jews, Syrian Jews and Yemenite Jews all left their country of origins for Israel due to intolerant government measures against them.

Chapter 4 International Factors 1. Orna Almog, Britain, Israel, and the United States, 1955– 1958 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 1. 2. Ibid. 3. John P. Miglietta, American Alliance Policy in the Middle East, 1945– 1992 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002). 4. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 5. Jacob C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1956). 6. Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 2008), p. 58. 7. Almog, Britain, Israel. 8. Rouhollah K. Ramazani, Iran’s Foreign Policy: 1941– 1973. A Study of Foreign Policy (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1975). 9. S20-451, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 10. Ibid. 11. Interview with Shimon Hanasab.

NOTES TO PAGES 84 –9

165

12. Meir Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo (Or Yehuda: Hed Artsi, 2001). 13. S6 5051, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 14. Daniel Spector, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’, PhD thesis (University of Texas at Austin, 1975). 15. Joseph Wolff, Researchers and Missionary Labour among the Jews, Mohammedans and Other Sects, by Rev. Joseph Wolff during his Travels between the Years 1831 and 1834 (Philadelphia: Orrin Rogers, 1837), p. 93. 16. Spector, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’. 17. Ibid., p. 209. 18. Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2003), p. 572. 19. Claudio Vercelli, Israele, Storia dello Stato (Florence: Giuntina, 2007), p. 158. 20. Amnon Netzer, ‘Iranian Jews in Israel’, in Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The New Encyclopaedia of Zionism and Israel (London: Associated University Press, 1994). 21. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 22. Ibid. 23. S6-5051. 24. Mark J. Gasiorowski, ‘The 1953 coup d’etat in Iran’, Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987), pp. 261– 87. 25. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 26. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. 27. Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006). 28. Keddie, Modern Iran. 29. William R. Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945– 1951 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). 30. Arnold Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc, 1947 –53 (Urbana, IL: Chicago University Press, 1974), p. 9. 31. Robert O. Freedman, ‘Moscow and Israel’, in Robert O. Freedman (ed.), Israel’s First Fifty Years (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000). 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. 35. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 36. Ibid. 37. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). 38. Sepehr Zabih, The Left in Contemporary Iran (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986). 39. Afshin Matin-Asgari, Student Opposition to the Shah (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2002). 40. Ibid. 41. C10 2375, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 42. C10 2587, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel.

166 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

NOTES TO PAGES 89 –98 Michael Lowy, Redenzione e utopia (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998). C10 2587. C10 2376 (54), Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2586, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2587. Ibid. C10 2375. Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1979’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 3 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996). C10 2587. Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1979’. Miglietta, American Alliance Policy. Chris Harman, A People’s History of the World (London: Verso, 2008). Miglietta, American Alliance Policy. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. Miglietta, American Alliance Policy, p. 109. S6 5051. S71-747, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. S6 5051. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. Haim Sadouk, The Jews of Iran during the Shah Pahlavi Era: Iranian Jews in Iran and Israel, 1935– 1978 (Tel Aviv: Meizag, 1991). S6 5430, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. See also S6 5051. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. Sadouk, The Jews of Iran. SE10-1295, Central Zionist archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1979’. See also Netzer’s Archives, ‘The event of 1980’, in Netzer, Padyavand, vol. 3. C10 2376, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Leah Baer, ‘The Challenge of America’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 2 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996). Georges Bensoussan, Il sionismo. Una storia politica e intellettuale 1860– 1940 (Turin: Einaudi, 2007). Gawdat Bahgat, ‘The Islamic Republic and the Jewish state’, Israel Affairs 11/3 (July 2005), pp. 517– 34. Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 25. Ibid. Samuel Segev, The Iranian Triangle (New York: The Free Press, 1988). Ibid. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. Bahgat, ‘The Islamic Republic’. Interview with Shimon Hanasab.

NOTES TO PAGES 98 –108 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

167

S5-11.488, Central Zionist archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. S6 5051. S71-747. Uri Bialer, ‘The Iranian connection in Israel’s foreign policy: 1948– 1951’, Middle East Journal 3/2 (1985), pp. 292– 315. Ibid. Bahgat, ‘The Islamic Republic’. Parsi, Treacherous Alliance, p. 21. KKL5/16328, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S20-451. KKL5/16328. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. S6-6368, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1955– 1956, No. 7 (1962). Segev, Samuel, The Iranian Triangle. C10 2203, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2376. S6-10269, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Parsi, Treacherous Alliance, p. 88. Segev, The Iranian Triangle. Ibid. Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist (Tehran: Islamic Republic of Iran, 2003). Parsi, Treacherous Alliance.

Chapter 5 Domestic Factors: The Pull Factors in Making Aliyah in both 1951 and 1979 1. Oscar Kraines, Government and Politics in Israel (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961), p. 63. 2. Rael J. Isaac, Party and Politics in Israel (New York: Longman, 1981). 3. S20-451, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 4. S5-11.488, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 5. Kraines, Government and Politics. 6. KKL5/6327, State Archives of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 7. S5-11.488. 8. Mizrahi is a religious party in Israel. 9. S5-11.488. 10. S6 5051, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel.

168 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

NOTES TO PAGES 108 –16 Ernst Stock, Chosen Instrument (New York: Herzl Press, 1988). S5-11.488. S6 5051. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Baruch Duvdevani, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1982). S5-11.488. S32-452, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. S86-79, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. KKL5-17799, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Stock, Chosen Instrument, p. 127. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. KKL5/16328, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S5-11.488. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Shlomo Hillel, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1982). KKL5-17799. Shkalim, Interview with Shlomo Hillel. S6 5051. Ibid. Shkalim, Interview with Shlomo Hillel. S6-6480, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S6-6479, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S6-6480. 24-21/54, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S6-6479. S6-6480. S6-6479. S6-6480. S6 5051. Amnon Netzer, ‘Iranian Jews in Israel’, in Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The New Encyclopaedia of Zionism and Israel (London: Associated University Press, 1994), pp. 663– 4. S6-6536, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Giuseppe Mazzini, Scritti di Giuseppe Mazzini, Politica ed Economia (Milan: Casa editrice Sonzogno, 2009). Abdel-Wahab M. Elmessiri, The Land of Promise: A Critique of Political Zionism (New Brunswick, NJ: North American, c.1977), p. 24. Daniel Elazar, The Jewish Community (Jerusalem: The Centre for Jewish Community Studies, 1975). Stock, Chosen Instrument, p. 149. Aviva Halamish, ‘Zionist immigration policy put to test. Historical analysis of Israel’s immigration policy, 1948– 1951’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 7/2 (2008), pp. 119– 35, 128.

NOTES TO PAGES 116 –22

169

46. Reeva Spector Simon, ‘Zionism’, in Reeva Spector Simon, Michael M. Laskier and Sara Reguer (eds), The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 47. Maurice Roumani, The Jews of Libya: Coexistence, Persecution, Resettlement (Brighton: Sussex Academci Press, 2009). 48. Moshe Gat, The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948– 1951 (New York: Frank Cass, 1997). 49. S6 5051. 50. 2563/12-‫צה‬, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 51. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Munashe Umidubar, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1981). 52. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Yona Cohen, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1984). 53. S6-6733, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 54. Shkalim, Interview with Shlomo Hillel. 55. S6-5052, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 56. S6-6733. 57. S6 5051. 58. S6 6479. 59. S6 5051. 60. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. 61. Shkalim, Interview with Shlomo Hillel. 62. S6-5052. 63. S6-6732, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 64. S6-6536. 65. Stock, Chosen Instrument. 66. S6-6536. 67. Shkalim, Interview with Munashe Umidubar. 68. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. 69. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1955– 1956, No. 7 (1962). 70. S6-6732. 71. S6-6536. 72. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (eds), Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), p. 11. 73. C10 2375, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 74. C10 2203, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 75. C10 2376, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 76. C10 2203. 77. Haim Sadouk, The Jews of Iran during the Shah Pahlavi Era: Iranian Jews in Iran and Israel, 1935– 1978 (Tel Aviv: Meizag, 1991). 78. S6-10269, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 79. C10 2375. 80. C10 2203.

170 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

NOTES TO PAGES 122 –30 C10 2373, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2203. C10 2375. Ibid. S6-10269. C10 2373. S6-10297, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. Ibid. C10 2373. Amnon Netzer (ed.), Iran’s Jewry Today (Jerusalem: The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University, 1981), p. 11.

Chapter 6 Iranian Jewry’s Process of Making Aliyah and their Integration in Israel in 1951 and 1979 1. David Menashri, ‘Reflection on the immigration of Iranian Jews in Israel’, in Houman Sarshar (ed.), The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews, vol. 2 (Los Angeles: The Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, 1997), p. 7. 2. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1955– 1956, No. 7 (1962). 3. S6-6732, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 4. Menashri, ‘Reflection on the immigration of Iranian Jews in Israel’. 5. S6-6732. 6. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Baruch Duvdevani, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1982). 7. S71-747, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 8. S6-5051, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 9. Interview with Shimon Hanasab. 10. SE5-1335, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 11. S20-451, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 12. S6-5051. 13. Meir Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo (Or Yehuda: Hed Artsi, 2001). 14. S6-5052, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 15. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Shlomo Hillel, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1982). 16. S6-5051. 17. KKL5-17799, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 18. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo. 19. S6-5051. 20. Interview with Yehuda Dominitz. 21. Interview with Menashe Amir.

NOTES TO PAGES 131 –8

171

22. Esther Shkalim, Interview with Munashe Umidubar, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1981). 23. David Yeroushalmi, ‘The Jewish Persian Community’, in Yarshater E. Ehsan (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 14 (New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation Inc., 2008), p. 229. 24. S115-211, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 25. Ezri, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo, p. 67. 26. KKL5-17799. 27. S20-451. 28. S115-211, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. 29. Menashri, ‘Reflection on the immigration of Iranian Jews in Israel’. 30. Abraham Shumsky, The Clash of Cultures in Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). 31. S20-451. 32. Shkalim, Interview with Baruch Duvdevani. 33. S115-211. 34. S115-211. 35. Menashri, ‘Reflection on the immigration of Iranian Jews in Israel’. 36. S6-6732. 37. S115-211. 38. Judith L. Goldstein, ‘Iranian ethnicity in Israel: The performance of identity’, in Alex Weingrod (ed.), Studies in Israeli Ethnicity (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publisher, 1985), pp. 237– 58. 39. S20-451. 40. Shkalim, Interview with Baruch Duvdevani. 41. S115-211. 42. Yeroushalmi, ‘The Jewish Persian Community’, p. 229. 43. Mohsen M. Mobasher, Iranians in Texas (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012). 44. Akbar E. Torbat, ‘The brain drain from Iran to the United States’, Middle East Journal 56/2 (Spring 2002), pp. 272–95. 45. David Menashri, Iran (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1990). 46. Mobasher, Iranians in Texas. 47. Torbat, ‘The brain drain from Iran to the United States’. 48. Mohsen M. Milani, The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). 49. Persis M. Karim, Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2006). 50. Minorities at Risk Project, ‘Assessment for Christians in Iran’, 31 December 2003. 51. Eliz Sanasarian, Religious Minorities in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge Middle East Studies, 2000), p. 50. 52. Richard Foltz, ‘Zoroastrians in Iran: what future in the homeland?’, The Middle East Journal 65/1 (Winter 2011), pp. 73 –84, 2.

172 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

NOTES TO PAGES 138 – 47 C10 2376, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2203, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2375, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2587, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2203. C10 2376. C10 2203. Ibid. C10 2375. S6 10269, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Ibid. C10 2587. S6 10292, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2203. S6 10298, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2376. C10 2203. C10 2587. C10 2373, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. S6 10297, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. C10 2586, Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1981, No. 32 (1981). Amnon Netzer, ‘The problem of integration of Iranian Jews in the culture, society and politics of Iran’, Gesher 20 (1979), pp. 69 – 83. Interview with Yitzik Poroustamian. Interview with Priman Cohen. Interview with Moshe Poroustamian. Interview with Menashe Amir. Karen, L. Pliskin, Silent Boundaries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 90. Haim Sadouk, The Jews of Iran during the Shah Pahlavi Era: Iranian Jews in Iran and Israel, 1935– 1978 (Tel Aviv: Meizag, 1991). Interview with Yitzik Poroustamian. Baer, ‘The Challenge of America’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 2 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996). Ibid., p. 85.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary sources Interviews

Dr Menashe Amir, Jerusalem, 15 February 2008 Mr Priman Cohen, Tel Aviv, 20 April 2008 Mr Shimon Hanasab, Tel Aviv, 20 March 2008 Ms Janet, Tel Aviv, 4 April 2008 Dr Moshe Pourostamian, Tel Aviv, 19 March 2008 Mr Yitzhik Pourostamian, Tel Aviv, 25 April 2008 Dr Dominitz Yehuda, Jerusalem, 28 March 2008

Archives Archives of the Board of Deputies, London

ACC/3121/B2/9 ACC/3121/E2/128 ACC/3121/E3/172 ACC/3121/E4/3

24-21/54 C10 2203 C10 2302 C10 2373 C10 2375 C10 2376 C10 2376 (54) C10 2586 C10 2586 C10 2587

Central Zionist Archives of Jerusalem, Israel

174

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

KKL5/16327 KKL5/16328 KKL5-16328 KKL5-16330 KKL5-17799 S86-79 S71-204 S115-211 S32 448 S32-449 S20-451 S32-452 S71-747 S32-1295 SE5-1335 S6 5051 S6-5051 S6-5052 S6 5430 S6-6368 S6 6479 S6-6479 S6-6480 S6-6536 S6-6537 S6-6732 S6-6733 S6-7098 S6 10269 S6 10292 S6 10297 S6 10298 S6 10299 S5-11.488 S86-24-194

Other

12/2563-‫צה‬, State National Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. 148-17, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem. KKL5/6327, State Archives of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. Shkalim, Esther, Interview with Munashe Umidubar, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1981). ———, Interview with Baruch Duvdevani, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1982). ———, Interview with Shlomo Hillel, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1982).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

175

———, Interview with Yona Cohen, Oral History Archives of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem (1984).

Secondary sources 2 Kings 17:6. Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). ———, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). Almog, Orna, Britain, Israel, and the United States, 1955– 1958 (London: Frank Cass, 2003). Almog, Shmuel, Zionism and History (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987). Arendt, Hannah, The Jewish Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 2008). Atlante Storico (Milan: Garzanti, 2003). Baer, Leah, ‘The challenge of America’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 2 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996). Bahgat, Gawdat, ‘The Islamic Republic and the Jewish state’, Israel Affairs 11/3 (July 2005), pp. 517– 34. Barnavi, Eli (ed.), A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People (London: Hutchinson, 1992). Basch Moreen, V., In Esther’s Garden (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000). Beilin, Yossi, Israel: A Concise Political History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992). Benbassa, Esther and Jean Christoph Attias, The Jews and their Future (London: Zed Books, 2004). Bensoussan, Georges, Il sionismo. Una storia politica e intellettuale 1860– 1940 (Turin: Einaudi, 2007). Bialer, Uri, ‘The Iranian connection in Israel’s foreign policy: 1948– 1951’, Middle East Journal 3/2 (1985), pp. 292– 315. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1955– 1956, No. 7 (1962). Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1980, No. 31 (1980). Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 1981, No. 32 (1981). Cohen, Abraham, ‘Significant changes in Jewish education in Iran’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padayavand, vol. 1 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publisher, 1998). Cohen, Israel, The Zionist Movement (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1945). Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, Judaism (London: Routledge, 2003). Elazar, Daniel J., The Jewish Community of Iran (Jerusalem: The Centre for Jewish Community Studies, 1975). Elmessiri, Abdel-Wahab M., The Land of Promise: A Critique of Political Zionism (New Brunswick, NJ: North American, c.1977). Emiliani, Marcella, La terra di chi? Geografia del conflitto Arabo-Israeliano-Paestinese (Bologna: Il Ponte, 2007). Esposito, John L. and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Ezri, Meir, Mi ba-khem mi-kol amo (Or Yehuda: Hed Artsi, 2001). Fischel, Walter, ‘The Jews in medieval Iran from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries: political, economic and communal aspects’, in International Conference

176

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

on Jewish Communities in Muslim World (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute and the Hebrew University, 1985). Fishman, Aryei (ed.), The Religious Kibbutz Movement (Jerusalem: Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency, 1957). Foltz, Richard, ‘Zoroastrians in Iran: what future in the homeland?’, The Middle East Journal 65/1 (Winter 2011), pp. 73 – 84. Fraenkel, Josef, Dubnow, Herzl and Ahad Ha-Am (London: Ararat Publishing Society Limited, 1963). Freedman, Robert O., ‘Moscow and Israel’, in Robert O. Freedman (ed.), Israel’s First Fifty Years (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000). Gasiorowski, Mark J., ‘The 1953 coup d’etat in Iran’, Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987), pp. 261–87. Gat, Moshe, The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948– 1951 (New York: Frank Cass, 1997). Glanz, Israel, A Study on Jewish Education in Iran, Facts and Programme (Tehran: Israel Economist, 1972). Goldstein, Judith L., ‘Iranian ethnicity in Israel: The performance of identity’, in Alex Weingrod (ed.), Studies in Israeli Ethnicity (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publisher, 1985). Halamish, Aviva, ‘Zionist immigration policy put to test. Historical analysis of Israel’s immigration policy, 1948– 1951’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 7/2 (2008), pp. 119– 35. Halm, Heinz, Shi’a Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997). Harman, Chris, A People’s History of the World (London: Verso, 2008). Heller, Joseph, The Birth of Israel, 1945– 1949 (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000). Herman, Simon N., Jewish Identity: A Social Psychological Perspective (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1977). Hertzberg, Arthur, The Zionist Idea (New York: Atheneum, 1975). Hurewitz, Jacob C., Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1956). Hutchinson, John and Anthony D. Smith (eds), Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist (Tehran: Islamic Republic of Iran, 2003). Isaac, Rael J., Party and Politics in Israel (New York: Longman, 1981). Jeremiah 52: 28 –32. Karim, Persis M., Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2006). Keddie, Nikki, Modern Iran (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006). Kellerman, Aharon, Society and Settlement (New York: State University of New York, 1993). Kraines, Oscar, Government and Politics in Israel (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961). Krammer, Arnold, The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc, 1947– 53 (Urbana, IL: Chicago University Press, 1974). Laqueur, Walter, The History of Zionism (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2003). Lewis, Bernard, Semiti e antisemiti (Milan: Rizzoli, 2003).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

177

Louis, William R., The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). Lowy, Michael, Redenzione e utopia (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998). Mamalat, Anna, History of Biblical Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Matin-Asgari, Afshin, Student Opposition to the Shah (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2002). Mazzini, Giuseppe, Scritti di Giuseppe Mazzini, Politica ed Economia (Milan: Casa editrice Sonzogno, 2009). Menashri, David, Iran (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1990). ———, ‘Reflection on the immigration of Iranian Jews in Israel’, in Houman Sarshar (ed.), The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews, vol. 2 (Los Angeles: The Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, 1997). Miglietta, John P., American Alliance Policy in the Middle East, 1945– 1992 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002). Milani, Mohsen M., The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). Minorities at Risk Project, ‘Assessment for Christians in Iran’, 31 December 2003, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/469f3a9b21.html (accessed 10 March 2013). Mobasher, Mohsen M., Iranians in Texas (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012). Near, Henry, The Kibbutz Movement: A History, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Netzer, Amnon, ‘The Jews of Persia and Alliance in the late nineteenth century: some aspects’, International Conference on Jewish Communities in Muslim World, Ben Zvi Institute and Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1973 –4). ———, ‘The problem of integration of Iranian Jews in the culture, society and politics of Iran’, Gesher 20 (1979), pp. 69 – 83. ——— (ed.), Iran’s Jewry Today (Jerusalem: The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University, 1981). ———, ‘Iranian Jews in Israel’, in Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The New Encyclopaedia of Zionism and Israel (London: Associated University Press, 1994). ———, ‘The event of 1979’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 3 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996). ———, ‘The event of 1980’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 3 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996). Newman, Andrew J., Safavid Iran (London: I.B.Tauris, 2006). Parsi, Trita, Treacherous Alliance (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007). Pinsker, Leon, Road to Freedom: Writings and Addresses (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1975). Pliskin, Karen, L., Silent Boundaries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987). Poliakov, Leon, The History of Anti-Semitism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975). Ramazani, Rouhollah K., Iran’s Foreign Policy: 1941– 1973. A Study of Foreign Policy (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1975). Roumani, Maurice, The Jews of Libya: Coexistence, Persecution, Resettlement (Brighton: Sussex Academci Press, 2009).

178

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Sabahi, Farian, Storia dell’Iran (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2006). Sadouk, Haim, The Jews of Iran during the Shah Pahlavi Era: Iranian Jews in Iran and Israel, 1935– 1978 (Tel Aviv: Meizag, 1991). Sahim, Haideh, ‘Iran and Afghanistan’, in Reeva Spector Simon, Michael M. Laskier and Sara Reguer (eds), The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). Salmon, Yosef, Religion and Zionism (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2002). Sanasarian, Eliz, Religious Minorities in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge Middle East Studies, 2000). Sankowsky, Suzanne H., A Short History of Zionism (New York: American Student Zionist Federation, 1936). Sarshar, Houman, Esther’s Children (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002). Sayce, Archibald H., An Introduction to the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1985). Segev, Samuel, The Iranian Triangle (New York: The Free Press, 1988). Shimoni, Gideon, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1995). Shumsky, Abraham, The Clash of Cultures in Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). Simon, Reeva Spector, ‘Zionism’, in Reeva Spector Simon, Michael M. Laskier and Sara Reguer (eds), The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). Skolnik, Fred and Michael Berenbaum (eds), Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). Slotki, Judah J., Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah (London: Soncino Press, 1978). Spector, Daniel, ‘A history of the Persian Jews’, PhD thesis (University of Texas at Austin, 1975). Stock, Ernst, Chosen Instrument (New York: Herzl Press, 1988). Stroppa, Claudio, Comunita’ e Utopia (Bari: Dedalo Libri, 1970). Torbat, Akbar E., ‘The brain drain from Iran to the United States’, Middle East Journal 56/2 (Spring 2002), pp. 272– 95. Tsadik, Daniel, Between Foreigners and Shi’is (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). Unna, Moshe, ‘The elements of the Religious Kibbutz’, in Fishman Aryei (ed.), The Religious Kibbutz Movement (Jerusalem: Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency, 1957). Vercelli, Claudio, Israele, Storia dello Stato (Florence: Giuntina, 2007). Vital, David, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Widengren, Geo, ‘The status of the Jews in the Sassanian Empire’, Iranica Antiqua 1 (1961), pp. 117– 61. Wigoder, Geoffrey, The New Encyclopaedia of Judaism (New York: New York University Press, 2002). Wilson, Kevin and Jan van der Dussen, The History of the Idea of Europe (London: Routledge (London: Routledge, 1995). Wiseman, Donald J., An Introduction and Commentary (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

179

Wolff, Joseph, Researchers and Missionary Labour among the Jews, Mohammedans and Other Sects, by Rev. Joseph Wolff during his Travels between the Years 1831 and 1834 (Philadelphia: Orrin Rogers, 1837). Yeroushalmi, David, ‘The Jewish Persian community’, in Yarshater E. Ehsan (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 14 (New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation Inc., 2008). Yishay, Mosheh, ‘An envoy without title’, in Amnon Netzer (ed.), Padyavand, vol. 3 (Costa Meza, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999). Zabih, Sepehr, The Left in Contemporary Iran (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986). Zipperstein, Steven, J., ‘Ahad Ha-Am’s politics’, Jewish History 4/2 (1990), pp. 89–96.

INDEX

Abbas I, Shah, 39 Achaemenid, dynasty, 34 Achaemenid, period, 34 – 5 Agudat Bnei Zion (Society of the Sons of Zion), 63 Ahad Ha-Am, 14– 19 Ahdut Ha’Avoda, 23 aliyah, 20, 22 – 3, 25 – 6, 30, 60, 63 –4, 72, 74, 81, 84 – 5, 94, 98, 101, 105, 107– 15, 117– 24, 126– 7, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139– 41, 143, 145– 7, 150 Alliance Israelites Universelle (AIU), 41, 47, 49, 63, 66, 77, 111 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 46, 50, 53, 112, 140 Amir, Menashe, 145 Andjomane, 89 Anjoman Kalimian, 53, 123, 143 Arendt, Hannah, 83 Aryan race, 44 – 5 Ashkenazi, 50, 130, 132, 134–5, 146– 50 Ashura, 84 Babylon, 33 – 5, 37 Balfour Declaration, 22, 28, 83

Ben Gurion, David, 25 – 8, 106 Berlin Haskala’, 10 Bevin, Ernest, 31 Bilu, 20 blood libel, Damascus, 10 Bnei Moshe, 17 Book of Ezra, 34 Cyrus of Anshan, 34 Cyrus the Great, 32 – 3 Daneshrad, Aziz, 53, 79, 89 Degania, 21 – 2 dhimmis, 37, 40 diaspora, 16 – 17, 19, 23 – 5, 27, 67, 69, 86, 95, 100– 1, 105– 6, 115, 131, 136, 146 Dominitz, Yehuda, 47, 65, 119, 140 Eizenstat, Stuart, 47 Elghanian, Habib, 56, 120 Eretz Israel, 15, 60 –2, 72 Ezra, 34 – 6, 116 Geertz, Clifford, 12 Gurion, Ben, 25 – 7 halakhah, 73

INDEX halakhic, 24 – 5, 51, 74 halutzim, 23 Hapoel Hatzair, 21, 26 hasbarah, 25, 61 Hebrew University, 47 Herzl, Theodor, 10 – 19 Hibbat Zion, 12, 15 – 16 Histadrut, 23, 27, 67, 70, 107–9, 111 Iran-e`-Bastan, 45 Islamic revolution, 55, 77 – 80, 88 – 90, 94, 102, 121, 124– 5, 135– 6, 138– 9, 144– 5, 152 Islamisation, 52, 102, 136 Jeremiah, 33 – 4 Jewish Agency, 30, 42, 46 – 7, 50, 52 – 3, 63, 65, 69, 72, 74 – 5, 77 – 9, 85, 96, 106– 9, 111– 13, 115– 19, 125, 127– 32, 133– 4, 140– 2, 149 Judaic, see also Judaism Judaism, 16 – 19, 24, 35 – 6, 45, 48 –9, 51 – 2, 57, 72 – 3, 79, 102, 134, 138, 147, 149 Judeophobia, 11 Kanun-e-Jawadanan (Club of the Youth of Iran), 62 Katzav, Moshe, 52, 78, 122 Keren Keyemet L’Yisrael (KKL), 69, 107, 111– 12 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 55 – 6, 77, 80, 89, 96, 102– 4, 120– 2, 124, 135– 6, 138– 9, 141 kibbutz movement, 23 – 26, 63 –64, 66, 70, 72, 109 Kleinbaum, Dr Isaac, 42, 45 Knesset, 78 kvutzot, 21 – 4 Law of Return, 115, 119 Lilienblum, Moses Leib, 11

181

Mahall al-Yahud’ (Makhaneh Israel), 39 Maimonides, 15 Majlis, 56 – 7, 80 Mapai, 26, 106– 7 mellah, 47 – 8 Mendelssohn, Moses, 9 Mizrahi, party, 24, 27, 108– 9, 120 Moses Montefiore, 41, 43 Mossad Aliyah Beth, 106, 108 Mossadeq, Mohammed, 76, 86, 92, 100–1 Muhammad Pahlavi, Shah, 46 najis, 38, 84 nation-state, 10, 12 Nebuchadnezzar II, 33 Nehemiah, 34 – 6, 116 Nehzat-e Halutz (Pioneer movement), 63– 7, 69 – 76, 78, 82, 84– 5, 88, 94, 96 –9, 101, 107, 109– 11, 114–15, 117 –18, 127 –8, 131 Nowruz, 146, 150 olim, 21, 26, 146 ORT school, 50 Otzar Ha-Torah, 49 – 50, 72, 74 Parsi, 146 Peel Commission, the, 29 Persian Empire, 34 –5 Pinsker, Leon, 11 – 13 Poale Zion, 21, 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 56 –7 Qajar, 40 – 2 Republic, Islamic, 53, 57 – 8, 77, 81, 102–4, 122, 136–9 Reza Pahlavi, Shah, 44 –5, 48, 68, 76, 83 Riesser, Gabriel, 9 Safavid, 38– 9, 139 Sargon II, Assyrian king, 32

182

IRANIAN JEWS IN ISRAEL

Sarshar, Houman, 32 – 3, 37 Sephardi, 53, 132 Settlement, Jewish, 10, 15 – 17, 20 – 5, 28, 32, 35, 61 – 2, 64, 71, 83, 85, 98, 105, 131, 133, 144, 158 Skvira, 15 Spector, Daniel, 32, 37 Sykes – Picot Agreement, 83

ulemas, 40, 44

Talmud, 35 –7 Taub, Moshe, 70, 107 Tnu’at ha-No’ar ha-Ivri (Movement of the Hebrew Youth), 63 Tsar Alexander III, 11 Tudeh Party, 53, 66, 75 –6, 88, 90 – 3

Ze’irei he-Halutz (Union of Young Pioneers), 63 Zionism, political, 10 –11, 14– 15, 17– 18, 44, 46, 49, 51 Zionist Congress, the first, 10, 13, 17, 27, 29 Zoroastrians, 138

Vienna Congress, the, 10 Weizmann, Chaim, 19, 29 Yishay, Mosheh, 46 – 7 Yishuv, 22 – 31, 61